Tag Humanoids/Mutants

Incredible Melting Man, The (1977)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews, ScI-Fi Movie Reviews Tagged with , December 20th, 2012 @ 12:41 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: William Sachs

  • Writer: William Sachs

  • Starring: Alex Rebar, Burr DeBenning, Myron Healey, Michael Alldredge

  • Run Time: 84 mins

The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

The first new horror creature

An astronaut returns to Earth from an ill-fated mission to Saturn and is stricken with an awful disease, literally melting away. Escaping his hospital confinement, he finds that the only way that he can stay alive is to kill and eat human flesh.

 

With a title like The Incredible Melting Man, what do you think you are going to get when sitting down to watch it? Well there’s a man in it and, yes, he does melt. 1977 may have been more noted for its other monstrous sci-fi hit (a film set a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away) but this low budget goop-fest showed that there was still life in adult-orientated shock-horror sci-fi that didn’t involve gold-plated droids and heavy-breathing bad guys. Don’t make any mistakes though – The Incredible Melting Man is not a good film and has been sent up on Mystery Science Theater 3000, though whether it warranted such an accolade remains to be seen.

The Incredible Melting Man sounds decent in concept – the idea of astronauts returning to Earth after being stricken with galactic diseases out of the limits of human knowledge has been a well that many sci-fi films have tapped in to (The Quatermass Experiment springs to mind). But the execution of that concept is woeful. With direction that is lifeless, a script that is as bizarre as it is terrible (with arguments about crackers being a random highlight) and overall production values that scream 70s movie, the film should never have been given the fame that it seems to have garnered.

Well that is until the make-up effects are called in question. When you sit down to watch a film about an incredible melting man, you expect to see an incredible melting man. Thankfully, and rather surprisingly given the poor quality of everything else on show, the special effects are marvellous but that’s expected when Rick Baker is behind them (he did the make-up inStar Wars the same year as this). The gradual decay of the ‘melting man’ is disgusting and you really sympathise for the character all the way through the film right through to the final meltdown.He is a gruesome sight to behold and the effects are done splendidly – at one point one of his eyes just drops out because the flesh and bone holding it in place has melted so badly.Though clearly not meant to have any deeper meaning in the script, the idea that by killing someone else you can preserve your own life is a moral dilemma that would make for interesting analysis. If you were in his position, would you kill to extend your life? Or just horribly melt away?

Unfortunately the special effects are the only positive in the film – the rest of The Incredible Melting Manis virtually a plot-less stalk ‘n’ slash film in which we’re introduced to a minor non-character, they are given a few brief moments to impress the camera and try and eek out some sort of personality before they meet their doom at the hands of Mr Gloop. Replace the astronaut with a guy in a mask and a machete and you have the sort of structure to the narrative.

The acting is shocking too, porn industry standards have been set higher. Undoubtedly the star of the show is of course Alex Rebar as the Melting Man who just stumbles around the woods like a zombie and doesn’t really do much since he’s usually caked up in make-up. The script says that he’s getting stronger as he melts and that he can kill people easier but surely if he’s losing body mass, bone structure and muscle tone, he’ll be getting weaker?

 

Ah who cares?The Incredible Melting Man is absolute nonsense with the exception of Rick Baker’s special effects and it has become a cult favourite because it’s so appalling. Check it out and have a good laugh at how a reasonable concept can make a trashy film when the makers of the film have no idea what to do with it.

 

 ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Hills Have Eyes II, The (2007)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , , September 29th, 2012 @ 5:16 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Martin Weisz

  • Writer: Wes Craven, Jonathan Craven

  • Starring: Michael McMillian, Jessica Stroup, Jacob Vargas, Flex Alexander

  • Run Time: 89 mins

The Hills Have Eyes II (2007)

The Lucky ones die fast

A squad of National Guard are sent into the New Mexico desert on a supply mission to a team that is installing a new system into an abandoned facility. When they get there, they find no sign of the team until a distress call is received from the hills. Making their way up the hills, the soldiers are attacked by a group of mutants and equipment is damaged and stolen. With no way of getting back down the hill, the remaining soldiers must find their way through an old mine to get back to base.

 

The 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes certainly surprised me as being a brutal, gory and relentless ride which, in many ways, bettered the original. And just like the revamped The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake in 2003 saw a sequel, Alexandre Aja’s slick remake has spawned a sequel for whatever cash-related reason. Out went Aja, the man responsible for the disturbing and savage nature of the original, and out with him went that brutal and unforgiving edge – you got the sense that anything went in his film and there would be no prisoners, no matter how sick or depraved it was going to be. In its place comes a totally out-of-place comic tone, more mutants you can shake a stick at, more characters to get killed and more gore. Say goodbye to everything that made the remake such a great ride.

The problems with The Hills Have Eyes II are evident from the start and that lies with the characters. For starters, I don’t want to see a bunch of soldiers being chewed up, decapitated and hacked to pieces because surely they should be trained enough to deal with this sort of thing better than anyone (I know you don’t get mutant-fighting training anywhere but at least they practice combat regularly as opposed to say, me who has never done anything like that and wouldn’t stand a chance against the mutants). I like seeing ordinary people put into extraordinary situations and seeing how they cope with it. So by throwing the best prepared humans into that situation and watch them suffer doesn’t really hit the same nerve.

Secondly, if you’re going to give me soldiers, then at least make an effort to humanise them and characterise them a little. Names are for tombstones in films like this and it’s funny how you won’t remember 90% of the names by the middle of the film, let alone the end. Instead just sit back and call them their token names: hotshot, black guy, coward, hot chick, etc. It borders spoof at times with the silliness of the characters. Do you remember a little film called Aliens back in the 80s? That involved a bunch of bad ass soldiers taking on acid-spitting aliens. But James Cameron never once let the characters descend into caricatures. He humanised them, gave each one personality traits and made the audience care about them, even the ones who didn’t survive too long. Here they’re just going through the motions of the generic “macho bullshit” that soldiers are portrayed as having in the movies.

They also do some of the most ludicrous things I’ve seen in a horror film and as such, plot developments can be seen way ahead of time. Thinking of climbing down a mountain using a rope? Good idea but stand around dithering for ages and you’re going to be in for it! I can’t really comment on the actors involved because some of them may suck, some of them may have talent – it’s just impossible to see through the awful script. And when you consider who wrote this – WES CRAVEN no less, it’s a complete travesty.

Now I’ve had a rant over the script and characters, where else to begin? Well the fact that the film descends into a pointless sequence of chases around the dark, abandoned mine is a start. The Descent showed how you could breathe a little life back into a setting as over-used as this with its sense of claustrophobia and constantly lurking danger. No such atmosphere or skill here, just annoying characters stumbling around the dark looking for an exit or looking to be killed. How about the silly comic tone that the film has? In one moment, a mutant pulls an arm of one of the guys and waves it back at him. Mildly amusing when you see it but totally out of place here. The gore stakes have been ramped up but without the savage tone, without the brutality and without the violence of the original, it’s all wasted.

 

The Hills Have Eyes II is a pointless, stupid exercise in gore. It’s a total rush job and it smacks of pandering to the modern horror fans who only watch these films to be shocked with blood and gore. Does anyone know how to create a story any more? Or build up suspense? Even former genre icons like Wes Craven seem to have lost their way.

 

 ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (2009)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , , September 29th, 2012 @ 5:03 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Declan O'Brien

  • Writer: Connor James Delaney, Alan B. McElroy (characters)

  • Starring: Tom Frederic, Janet Montgomery, Gil Kolirin, Christian Contreras

  • Run Time: 92 mins

Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (2009)

What You Don’t See Will Kill You

A group of dangerous criminals are transported through a remote rural backwoods area in order to avoid a potential jail-break attempt by one of the inmates’ gangs. But the bus is soon forced off the road by a truck and soon the criminals and guards start to be picked off one-by-one by inbred mutants who have been living in the mountains.

 

After two entertaining instalments, it was only a matter of time before the Wrong Turn series derailed and this is the culprit – a limp, by-the-numbers sequel. What could be worse than a group of stereotypical teenagers smoking pot and getting naked? Well it’s the group of stereotypical prisoners that are unleashed in this one. I mean seriously, how many films do we see where each group of convicts contains one complete psycho, one rapist, one weasel/little runt, one of the silent types and not to mention the guards, one of whom is usually a family man or dreams of a better life? Are American prisons that full of equal numbers of ethnic groups that each prisoner transfer contains Hispanics and white skinheads? And who thinks that having a horror film full of nasty, ruthless and depraved convicts is a good idea? We’re supposed to root for the people who fall victim to the mutants, not the other way around.

The script is all over the place and this is the film’s downfall. There’s actually a reasonable story in there waiting to come out with the cons killing the mutant’s kid and sticking his head on a pole as warning for him to back off. But the film does nothing with this vengeance story and it’s virtually dropped as soon as it happens. The mutant doesn’t seem to get any more angry or any more determined to kill them (after all, he was going to kill them all anyway) and apart from a stand-off with the head con later in the film, that’s it. The script also spends a lot of time establishing a couple of characters but then throws it all out of the window in the final scene which opens the door to another sequel. I think that says it all when the entire characterisation of the film is blown away just for the benefit of a ‘plot twist’ finale and sequel set up.

Too much of the film is spent with the cons bickering about the money that they find in an armoured truck in the woods (upside down and in the middle of nowhere no less – go figure that out) and it almost turns into a mini-episode from the second season of Prison Break. The group of characters then spend the rest of the film wandering around aimlessly in the dark, occasionally falling foul of another hillbilly trap before arguing with each other again. The dialogue is terrible and whoever wrote it obviously thought that a lot of swearing and profanity from Tamar Hassan’s psycho Chavez character would be a good idea. His performance is awful too and when he’s not struggling to disguise his thick British accent, he’s just shouting abuse at the top of his voice. The other actors don’t fair much better and it’s arguably the innate cackling and howling from ‘Three Fingers’ that makes for the best performance.

I will say that the film isn’t boring and at least manages to keep a steady pace. The CGI kills, as ridiculous as some of them may look, are actually quite inventive and there are a few decent practical effects including one of the cons stepping into a full-body barbed wire trap before being dragged off down the road. Unfortunately some of the novelty value is quickly eroded by the lousy CGI effects which follow the initial shock of seeing someone diced into three! The film needed more female characters (come on, this is a horror film after all and we need breasts – this film’s sole quota being filled in the first five minutes but worth the watch!) to put into peril.

The film needed less macho crap, less pointless arguing and more mutants. It’s as simple as that. This mutant has some uncanny ability to teleport anywhere in the woods at any time so he sits up in trees, appears from behind doors and can outrun a speeding truck and appear in the road a couple of miles further along from where the characters last saw him. A few more mutants would have alleviated that problem. The budget for this one looks to have been dramatically cut resulting in fewer mutants, more stupid CGI gore and some of the worst green screen effects work since the dawn of movie making. Take a look at the background in the driving scenes and it’s like something out of the 40s where some lousy rear projection is played whilst stagehands rock the prop vehicles from side to side.

 

Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead isn’t the sequel I was hoping for and is such a disappointment after the last sequel. With annoying characters, some grade school script problems and a general sense of reducing the sum of its successful parts, the ‘franchise’ has certainly taken a wrong turn somewhere – let’s hope the next sequel finds the right route!

 

 ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , , September 29th, 2012 @ 4:58 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Joe Lynch

  • Writer: Turi Meyer, Al Septien, Alan B. McElroy (characters)

  • Starring: Erica Leerhsen, Henry Rollins, Texas Battle, Aleksa Palladino

  • Run Time: 96 mins

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

In the Forest, Only They Can Hear You Scream.

Six contestants taking part in a survival reality TV show find themselves pitted against a family of hideously deformed and inbred cannibals in the woods in West Virginia.

 

A belated sequel to 2003′s Wrong Turn, you would be forgiven for thinking that this would be a straight rehash with more blood, guts and a bigger body count. That’s what horror sequels are supposed to do, right? Well if you think that Wrong Turn 2: Dead End is going to be any different, you’re wrong.

Sticking to the same formula of a bunch of pretty boys and hot chicks being stranded in the woods and hunted down one-at-a-time by a bunch of inbred cannibals, it surprisingly doesn’t seem stale at all. The original Wrong Turn is a particular favourite of mine from the last ten years of horror films, simply because it didn’t skimp on the visuals when someone was sliced and diced. It got nasty when it needed to and it was just a fun all-round watch (having Eliza Dushku in a glorious white top didn’t harm things either). This sequel sticks rigidly to the formula and ups the ante with some more gruesome kills – in fact some of the most entertaining kills I’ve seen for years (though the years have been sparse for creativity).

The original tried to go for a more serious atmosphere more akin to one of the late 70s backwoods horror films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Wrong Turn 2: Dead End goes for the jugular and becomes just a fun, light-hearted, no-brains hardcore splatter fest! The pacing is cranked up. There are more characters to dispose of (the good ol’ “sequels have a higher body count rule”) and the blood flows freely. One of the reasons the film works is because of the script. Not just your cut-and-rush job like most sequels, the writers actually spend a bit of time getting us used to the characters before all hell breaks loose. Granted the characters are all stock (the slut, the comic relief, token black guy, ex-army ranger, etc) but at least some of them are made out to be more than just things where axes and sharp objects should be inserted. Even the inbred cannibals are given some development – you realise towards the end of the film that they’re not just maniacs but actually a loving family who know no better than the life they have chosen.

It still doesn’t stop the brutality though and believe me, lovers of gore and splatter will find plenty to marvel here. I don’t really want to spoil the film for those who may be pondering a look but there are some hilarious deaths, some nasty ones and some of both. The film opens with a kick ass kill and it doesn’t let up from there right until the final showdown. Get the sick bags ready.

Out of the cast, you’ll no doubt recognise Erica Leerhsen from the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre but that’s about it for the younger cast. It’s rapper-turned-spoken word maestro Henry Rollins who steal the show as the gung-ho presenter of the reality show who reverts to type when the threat of the cannibals hits home. Also of note is the gigantic Ken Kirzinger who plays the dad of the cannibal family – this is one big dude you don’t want to mess with.

On the flip side to all of this, if you’ve seen one backwoods horror you’ve pretty much seen them all. With recent remakes of The Hills Have Eyes and its terrible sequel as well as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its terrible prequel, the market is pretty crowded. Cannibals and mutants are a bit over-exposed at the moment so expect the same generic scenes of grunting dialogue, freakish lifestyles (what cannibal movie wouldn’t have a dinner scene?) and disgusting living quarters. Also despite the character development at the start, the dialogue is pretty annoying at best with the exception of some one-liners from Rollins. There are some irritating people in there you want hacked to pieces from the start and thankfully the film fulfils your wishes.

 

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End whips up an awesome mix of thrills and spills despite presenting us the same meal we horror fans have been gorging on for so long now. Director Joe Lynch has clearly made a film by horror fans for horror fans and one that doesn’t disappoint. Top sequel and I can’t wait for his next flick.

 

 ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 

 

 

Scanners (1981)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , September 29th, 2012 @ 4:10 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: David Cronenberg

  • Writer: David Cronenberg

  • Starring: Jennifer O'Neill, Stephen Lack, Patrick McGoohan, Lawrence Dane

  • Run Time: 103 mins

Scanners (1981)

There are 4 billion people on earth. 237 are Scanners. They have the most terrifying powers ever created… and they are winning.

An experimental drug given to pregnant women gives birth to a number of people with extraordinary telepathic powers, known as Scanners. Cameron Vale doesn’t realise that he is a scanner until he finds his way to Dr Paul Ruth and his research team, who allow him to tap into his powers and try and control it. But they have a reason for training him – a powerful scanner called Daryl Revok is amassing an underground movement of scanners in an attempt to take over the world. Vale must infiltrate the organisation and put an end to Revok’s plans.

 

Before I go on, yes this is the flick with the exploding head! David Cronenberg shot to prominence with a series of low budget horror-sci-fi flicks in the late 70s including the likes of The Brood and Rabid but Scanners is probably the film which he will be most fondly remembered for. It’s another low budget take on Cronenberg’s favourite topic of the internal conflicts that the body has to struggle with and he milks that idea for every penny.

The scanners are all tormented souls, damned for something they can’t really control and destined to lead lives of constant suffering and misery. Even the most controlled scanners show psychopathic and unpredictable tendencies. In a film which could have been dominated by over reliance on gore and special effects, Scanners comes off as more effective when it’s dealing with the pains that the scanners have to put up with. Particularly disturbing is the scene where Cameron Vale is strapped and drugged to a table and can hear the voices of the other thirty-odd people in the room in his mind. The scanners are made out to be sympathetic but at the same time highly dangerous, even to those who are trying to help.

Of course, the film is going to be forever remembered for some of its gory set pieces. The effects team go into overdrive here and this is where the film gets a bit of a bad name. It’s not all about the gore but because there are two startling set pieces, the rest of the film gets lambasted as a result. The finale with two scanners fighting each other is horrific as skin bursts, veins pop and the unlucky loser bursts into flames. But the main talking point is pretty early on in the film during a scanner demonstration where one unlucky scientist scans someone without realising they are a scanner and has the process reversed on him in head-exploding fashion. It’s a set piece that was repeated and done to death in the two sequels but its effectiveness here is still top notch.

As for the acting, the two leads are pretty flat and wooden in their roles, mainly Stephen Lack. Despite the requirements of the Vale character to show emotions when needed, Lack is pretty bland in the role. It’s the supporting roles from which we get the best performances. Patrick McGoohan gives a sinister edge to his fatherly Dr Paul Ruth. You know that this guy has a shady past that he is trying to put right by helping Cameron Vale. Michael Ironside puts in a great nasty turn as Daryl Revok and Lawrence Dane is also impressive as his head of security. Though the film has become infamous with the splatter scenes, Cronenberg takes plenty of time out to allow his characters to develop thoroughly. He’s not afraid to slow the pace of the film down (which he does considerably in some places) to let his characters breathe a little and talk about themselves and their problems. The audience is allowed into their mindset quite frequently, turning the likes of Vale and Revok into well-thought out characters with motives, before he then places the mental barriers back up for the brutal splatter moments.

 

Scanners has one or two grey areas which Cronenberg would admittedly liked to have sorted but that’s not taking anything from the fact that this is a top notch sci-fi-horror film with a great story, good performances on the whole and those gory set pieces which you’ll never forget in a hurry.

 

 ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 

 

 

UKM: The Ultimate Killing Machine (2006)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , September 29th, 2012 @ 4:04 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: David Mitchell

  • Writer: Tim McGregor, Tyler Levine

  • Starring: Michael Madsen, Mac Fyfe, Steve Arbuckle, Victoria Nestorowicz

  • Run Time: 90 mins

UKM: The Ultimate Killing Machine (2006)

Death is the only option

A small group of outcasts and misfits decide to join the army as an alternative to prison and wind up serving at an experimental facility where they are to be turned into ultimate killing machines by a crazed doctor and his stem cell research. However one of his previous creations, a former soldier who didn’t turn up the way the doctor ordered, breaks loose and begins to cause havoc across the facility, killing anyone who stands in his way.

 

There’s nothing remotely wrong with calling a film UKM: The Ultimate Killing Machine if said killing machine does actually get to kill someone. There is a big problem however when said killing machine fails to deliver on the kill front. Unfortunately for me, this falls into the latter category. Once again the lure of a cool-looking cover box with a kick ass title has suckered me in. Like a silly moth unable to resist the lure of the bug zapper on the porch door, I am inexplicably drawn to dreck this and still go back for seconds, thirds and fourths, hell I’m probably on eight-hundredths now. I have earned the right to criticise a film which has damaged more brain cells than a bump on the head. Even more perplexing is quite why and how Michael Madsen is in this film but more on him later.

UKM: The Ultimate Killing Machine does have the look and feel of a big budget release at times. The only signs of its constraints are sparsely furnished sets and the very limited number of characters (this top secret facility is manned by about five guards and two scientists) – and with a low number of characters comes the inevitable low body count. When the super-soldier is accidentally released and goes on his ultimate killing spree, I was expecting the screen to be filled with carnage galore. Even the front cover is doused in a dark shade of red to make it look like it’s going to be a bloody massacre. It isn’t. A head is lopped off. A face is ripped apart. When you think of the phrase ‘ultimate killing machine’ you immediately get visions of a completely rabid monster tearing everything up in its path with as much anger and ferocity as possible. You don’t think of some big guy walking around the same few sets occasionally popping out to say boo to someone before killing them instantly. So that was grossly disappointing.

They had the perfect set-up and spoil it by just having him do nothing. The whole idea of giving him super-strength and a super-sex drive was there for the writers to mine and mine some golden nuggets from. But like a lot of things that happen in the film, they are either good ideas with bad execution or just no execution at all. Plots and threads are dropped at random and picked up whenever they are needed to explain something. There’s no real sense of urgency. No feeling of excitement when anything happens. And above all, there is absolutely nothing to be scared of. I can’t recall a scene where any future scare is built up with a bit of tension. No atmosphere is created and as a result, the film just goes through a lot of motions.

Michael Madsen is giving top billing and he gets plenty of screen time. The question is he still asleep whilst he is acting or does he try? Well is the Pope Jewish? That’s a stupid question. Madsen slums as always, even struggling to get his words out at times. The mad doctor is played by an eccentric-looking actor. His assistant is played by a hot chick. The rest of the army grunts do just that and shout “maggot” a lot. It’s left to the four main characters to actually do a decent job in their roles. They’re not the usual sort of folk. The girls are pretty unattractive and don’t do the usual skanky things like dropping their tops. The guys fall into more clichéd territory with the roles of nerd and jock taken. But even they manage to eek some life out of their characters with decent performances. You actually do care a little for these people and I’m guessing that’s due to the opening scenes where they explain their reasons for joining the army. It’s a bit refreshing to see but it’s a shame that the rest of the film doesn’t really care.

 

UKM: The Ultimate Killing Machine has such a class name for a film that anything other than an all-out splatter fest was going to be a disappointment. I just wasn’t expecting the disappointment to be as bad as this. It’s not a complete waste of time but it might as well be.

 

 ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Mind Ripper (1995)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , September 29th, 2012 @ 3:24 pm
  • AKA: The Outpost

  • Director: Joe Gayton

  • Writer: Jonathan Craven, Phil Mittleman

  • Starring: Lance Henriksen, Claire Stansfield, John Diehl, Natasha Wagner

  • Run Time:

Mind Ripper (1995)

The Government Created Him. Now They Must Destroy Him.

A team of scientists in a remote desert research facility find a dying man nearby and use him as the test subject for the new regenerative drug they’re designing for the military. But the experiment goes wrong and the man escapes, trapping the team inside the facility. Former head scientist Stockton, who quit after being unhappy with the uses that the drug was being marketed for, is called for to help out. He was about to set off on a camping holiday with his family and, not being informed of the magnitude of the situation, takes them with him. Soon they are trapped inside the facility too, pursued by a super-human being with a taste for human brains.

 

Originally penned as the second sequel to Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes, for whatever reason that idea was scrapped and Mind Ripper then became a standalone feature film, with Craven’s son Jonathan co-writing the script and Craven himself taking up an executive producer credit. Whatever the original intention, the outcome is as throwaway as they come – an Alien wannabe which looks like a cheapo 80s B-movie masquerading in a 90s environment.

Comparisons to Alien are evident, lesser so The Thing. Either way, it’s clear that Mind Ripper is just a rip-off from far superior films. It’s a by-the-numbers routine which might work well on low budget but when it’s got big names attached to the production both in front of and behind the scenes, you expect a little better. Maybe if Wes Craven had taken the director’s chair, he might have been able to make something out of the very raw materials on offer. As a result, Joe Gayton’s direction is flat, lifeless and just devoid of any creativity or suspense. What should have been a decent location in the middle of the desert turns into yet another meandering mess of steel frames, corridors and dimly-lit rooms. It could have been set in outer space for all the film really cares about its setting.

Clearly when a film comes across as ‘no one really cared about it during its production’ then the audience is going to feel the same way. Heck, even Lance Henriksen said his bags were packed every day during filming so he could get out there as soon as it was wrapped up. No one cared so why should you? The film is so middling and tiresome that it’s just pointless to sit through. Characters are virtually non-existent, there’s no tension when they’re about to die and the deaths are kind of ‘meh.’ Even the finale is a mess as there are too many stop-start endings as if the director didn’t know when to call it quits. We get one really poor action set piece that you think will be the end but then another one comes along and then another one. You’re actually hoping for the film to end by this point to put you out of your misery.

Henriksen is the main star but as much as I like the guy in his roles, there’s no question that this has to be one of his worst. His character is pathetically written – I mean who in their right mind would let their kids venture into a top secret government facility, let alone allow them to explore and wander off on their own, especially when he knows that something is not quite right. His dialogue is terrible and his character gets out of far too many situations which would have spelt death for any of the other characters. There’s also a really icky sub-plot about how he’s bee a bad father and his rebellious son doesn’t get on with him.

Giovanni Ribisi makes his feature film debut here as the aforementioned son and, whilst he’s a solid addition to the cast, the role isn’t exactly something to get stuck into. It’s one-dimensional padding which serves little purpose to the overall narrative, simply add in a few unnecessary scenes of character conflict. To be fair, at least they get a sub-plot. Most of the other characters in the film don’t get anything even resembling a normal person. They’re simply one-dimensional walking ready meals, designed to purely walk around the set until the monster can get them. Speaking of which, Thor, the monster, looks and acts like a steroid-enhanced surfer for some bizarre reason. The only thing monstrous about him is the Alien-like tentacle that comes out of his mouth to suck brains. It’s a hardly a film to be reliant on special effects and the end result is somewhat cheesy when he does get hungry.

 

Mind Ripper? More like Money Ripper! Craven and Henriksen should be ashamed to add their names to the credits, especially Craven. It’s the kind of the film that pays their monthly bills whilst they’re waiting for better roles but we all know that they’re both more talented than this. The phrase ‘cash in’ comes to mind and both men have pimped their name out to a turkey of epic proportions here.

 

 ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Ice Queen (2005)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , September 29th, 2012 @ 12:21 pm
  • AKA:

  • Director: Neil Kinsella

  • Writer: Peter Beckworth, Neil Kinsella, David R. Williams

  • Starring: Ami Chorlton, Harmon Walsh, Noelle Reno, Jennifer Hill

  • Run Time: 92 mins

Ice Queen (2005)

Gruesomely Deformed … Viciously Powerful … Terrifyingly Evil

A scientist finds what he believes to be a frozen female humanoid from the ice age and arranges for the body to be transported by plane. However he is double crossed and in the midst of a mid-air struggle with the mercenary pilot, the humanoid awakens and causes the plane to crash into the snow-covered Killington Mountains. The resulting avalanche traps a group of friends inside a ski resort lodge. With no hope for rescue, they now have an unfrozen and deadly humanoid on the loose.

 

I’m a bit wary of straight-to-DVD horror flicks now. I have been for a while. The video shop is full of horror films which sound good and have kick ass front covers but look like they’ve been made by a bunch of students on their summer break with appalling acting and horrendous production values. It has been rare for me to unearth films which do deliver. It pains me to even think what made me pick up this flick with a picture of an odd-looking monstrous woman on the front. It has been sat on my shelf for months whilst other, blatantly crap-looking films have found their way into my DVD player. So it came of a bit of a surprise to find out that Ice Queen is nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. Don’t get me wrong it’s a pretty generic, throwaway ninety-two minutes featuring everything you would expect from a film like this. However it has reasonable production values and it seems like its heart is in the right place.

The premise is nothing really new. There’s a bunch of a characters stuck inside an isolated location with a monster killing them one-at-a-time. Writers must dip their hands into a hat of generic characters whenever they pen a new horror flick and see which random characters they have to blend together. There’s the weird scientist, the slutty blonde, token black guy, etc. The mistake made here is that too much time is wasted trying to develop their characters when this precious time should have been used to build up a bit of suspense and tension. I don’t really care about a catfight between characters in the ski resort because someone has been cheating with the blonde, especially when the Ice Queen has already been released.

That’s the underlying problem here. They have a cool monster but don’t really do much with her except have her growl from a distance and occasionally freeze people who get too close. She’s more like an afterthought, popping up whenever the writers need to take a break from the daytime soap opera love triangle. The ski resort didn’t look that big either and there doesn’t seem to be a many places to explore or hide so where does everyone hide for the duration of the film or for the Ice Queen to be out of shot for so long? Despite being buried under an avalanche, the sets are still pretty well lit and you rarely get the feeling that anyone is trapped. The film does make you feel chilly a few times though with numerous cave-ins and plenty of artificial snow.

The villain of the piece is actually a pretty original creation. The Ice Queen looks unique and thankfully they haven’t lifted ideas from other more famous monsters (usually the monsters in these cheapos look like the alien from Alien). She freezes people from the inside out and isn’t afraid of smashing her hands into people either. The film isn’t very gory though but it isn’t really about that, given that her usual method of dispatch is freezing. The actress inside the make-up does a good job of giving her some quirky movements, although at one point the character does stick her middle finger up to one of the other characters – she’s supposedly been frozen for millions of years and it’s pretty remarkable if people were flipping each other the bird in the ice age.

 

Ice Queen surprised me with its slightly-better-than-average production values and attempts to make something other than just another genre flick. Unfortunately that’s all it turns out to be in the end and not a very good one at that. It wears its heart on its sleeve but it has clearly stopped beating in the ice.

 

 ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Ghoul, The (1975)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , August 21st, 2012 @ 1:34 pm
  • AKA: Night of the Ghoul

  • Director: Freddie Francis

  • Writer: Anthony Hinds

  • Starring: Peter Cushing, John Hurt, Alexandra Bastedo, Gwen Watford

  • Run Time: 80 mins

The Ghoul (1975)

…

A former missionary to India keeps his crazed, cannibalistic son locked away in the attic of his country house in order to keep him from killing to eat. When a group of people in a cross-country race stop off at the house, it is only a matter of time before the son escapes to feed.

 

British horror in the 70s was at its lowest point. Hammer and Amicus had been churning out the same horrors for years with dwindling results and a new breed of horror was emerging from America with the likes of Night of the Living Dead, The Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Audiences didn’t want to keep watching Dracula, Frankenstein or other monsters stalking victims through Gothic settings. Some people foolishly stuck to the formula that had brought about the greatest success in the hope that people would eventually come full circle again but all it did was expose how poor and one-dimensional the films had become.

Tyburn Films was a new studio established by Kevin Francis, son of horror director Freddie Francis, that attempted to replicate the Hammer formula at a time when everyone else was trying not to replicate it. What we got was a handful of competently-made but ultimately weak and feeble horror outings that may have scared people back in the early 60s but looked woefully short of imagination and scares in the mid-70s. The Ghoul is one such outing.

The Ghoul might as well have begun with characters saying “been there, done that and got the t-shirt” because it’s so routine, unimaginative and uneventful. The story itself is very thin and it plods along way too slowly to do anything effective. There’s lots of padding early on with the antics of the racers taking up the bulk of the early running time. Even when they do get to the country house, they spend too much time doing very little of note. Freddie Francis’ direction is competent but so devoid of energy and life. He lets the film play out like an elongated sketch that should have been short and snappy but was dragged out to full feature-length levels.

Whilst the film is well shot, with plenty of fog-drenched moors and remote locations, it just doesn’t do anything with it. There’s no atmosphere, no sense of dread or foreboding or worthwhile build-up to the eventual reveal of the cannibal. Typically of old school horror films, the monster isn’t revealed until the very end of the film and its no surprise to find out that it’s a big let down. The ‘ghoul’ of the title is simply a man with a bit of green paint on his face. It’s hardly going to make you wet your pants, especially as he looks to be wearing a huge nappy and waddles across the floor like he has just done something naughty in it.

It’s a shame because it’s got good pedigree with the cast and crew: director Freddie Francis is a British horror legend, helming some of Amicus’ most popular anthology films as well as a few Hammer films; writer Anthony Hinds produced some of Hammer’s best early outings; both Peter Cushing (no introduction needed!) and Veronica Carlson starred in their fair share of Hammer horrors; John Hurt would shoot to fame when an alien burst out of his chest a few years later in Alien; and Ian McCullough starred in his fair share of late 70s/early 80s Italian exploitation horrors. Cushing does what he does best and that is improve the watchability of any rubbish film simply by his performance. This was three years on from the death of his wife, from which he never really recovered, and apparently he broke down a few times during filming. It’s not one of his best performances, if you can call it that, as he seems to be portraying himself – a heartbroken man full of grief and mourning. He chose the right character to play but probably at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons. John Hurt pops up as the crazy gardener.

 

The Ghoul isn’t going to win any horror awards with its pedestrian, lifeless formula being about ten years out of date. It’s harmless enough but just a chore to sit through the same old, same old time and time again.

 

 ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

Blood Beast Terror, The (1968)

0 comments By andrewSMITH951 Filed in Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews Tagged with , , August 21st, 2012 @ 1:32 pm
  • AKA: The Vampire-Beast Craves Blood

  • Director: Vernon Sewell

  • Writer: Peter Bryan

  • Starring: Peter Cushing, Robert Flemyng, Wanda Ventham, Vanessa Howard

  • Run Time: 86 mins

The Blood Beast Terror (1968)

…

Detective Quennell investigates a series of murders in which the victims are found drained of blood with huge claws marks over their bodies. His investigation takes him to good friend and entomologist Karl Mallinger. Here he finds out that Mallinger has been conducting experiments that have caused his daughter to morph into a giant Death’s Head moth and she has been killing the men who are attracted to her.

 

Peter Cushing once remarked that The Blood Beast Terror was the worst film he ever took part in and he’s probably not too far from the truth. The Anglo-horror era in Britain in the 50s and 60s saw plenty of international smash hits churned out from the likes of Hammer. But there were also a few lesser known studios which wanted a piece of the pie and tried to muscle in on the market to little avail. This one is from a studio called Tigon who made the excellent The Witchfinder General but then struggled to keep the hits coming. It’s easy to see why they’re forgotten about when people continually talk about Hammer and Amicus.

The Blood Beast Terror is a complete mess. Even the worst of Hammer films usually had some form of coherent plot which made sense no matter how stupid some of them became. Here, there is nothing done to explain anything that happens. No doubt you’re wondering what the hell the plot is all about and it’s never explained throughout the course of the film. We don’t know how Mallinger managed to create a moth that big, let alone one that can change appearance between human and moth in the blink of an eye. Nor does it explain why the moth becomes a vampire, desperately needing blood to survive as opposed to nectar or whatever moths eat to stay alive. I guess any reasons would have been silly but at least we’d have a reason! It’s better than clutching at straws.

The film itself is terribly flat. Not a great deal happens. There’s a pointless subplot with Mallinger’s servant who continually harasses Mallinger’s eagle pet with a big stick before it pecks him to death and that plot thread ends. There’s a few deaths scattered around with a splash of blood on some of the bodies but nothing to get worked up over. The music adds nothing to the film whatsoever, with lots of misplaced and badly-timed cues of music which detract from some of the film’s most serious moments.

At least the acting is pretty reasonable with Peter Cushing being flawless as always (despite the absurdity of the material on hand) and Robert Flemyng being a bit of a turncoat as Mallinger. It’s the sort of role that Cushing can do in his sleep but one which he approaches with his traditional professionalism and ability to turn even the worst dialogue into intelligent science and fact. Wanda Ventham stars as the ill-fated ‘moth woman’ and it’s a thankless task. The moth costume looks ridiculous – fancy dress hire quality with its black bodysuit, big red eyes and some tacked-on wings.

The finale where Cushing builds a huge fire to attract the moth to it is so badly timed and rushed that it’s over before it begins. There’s one shot of something flying towards the fire but the lens seems to have been out of focus so it’s hard to explain what it is. Then the film ends. I had to read up on it in order to understand just what happened because it was all so quick and sudden. If there is one positive, it’s the great in-joke as some students put on a play of Frankenstein in Mallinger’s house. Cushing’s character peers through the window and smiles at the play, a self-referential wink to one of his greatest performances in The Curse of Frankenstein.

 

Cushing was right. The Blood Beast Terror was the worst film he ever starred in, through no fault of his own – but almost everyone else’s. It’s awful and not the way I want to remember British horror.

 

 ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

 

 

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