by ·Comments Off on Netherworld (1992, David Schmoeller)

Zombie conspiracy movie with lots of birds and boobs, from the director of O.G. Puppet Master, this videotape was very popular with some teens I could mention who were stuck at their great aunt’s house. The wannabe-Phantasm flying stone hand never looked extremely cool, and holds up even worse in HD, but the birdies have never looked better. The stone hand facehugs a would-be rapist using its barbwire grapples and maybe transforms the guy into a bird, and we’re off.

These red-crested cardinals and a cockatoo get carted into the background of every room/scene:

Verbose young man Corey arrives at his late dad’s estate and meets the staff, including lawyer Robert Burr (a doctor in Return to Salem’s Lot), Anjanette Comer who runs the place (she starred in The Baby with Arletty from Messiah of Evil), and her hot young horsegirl daughter who is constantly hitting on Corey (naming her “Diane Palmer” was probably supposed to spark some connections I didn’t catch at the time). The horsegirl says to stay away from the feather-eared bird people at the brothel next door, but her mom is one of them. Corey got a note from his late dad saying someone named Dolores can help resurrect him, and guess where Dolores hangs out.

The director appears onscreen, at left, as if to say “don’t take any of this too seriously”:

Corey keeps acting confident as he blunders around, way over his head, risking his ass to save the father he never met. He gets it on with his dad’s girlfriend while guest star Edgar Winter blows a sax solo. Anjanette maybe tries to kill him, but gets blinded by Dolores. The alliances are confusing… and the meaning of the stone hand… lotta good birds though. Zombie Dad gets almost-resurrected, intending to inhabit his son’s body, but Corey fights back at the last minute and dad turns into a zombie muppet eclectus.

by ·Comments Off on The Sixth Sense (1999, M. Night Shyamalan)

Most notable thing here after watching Trap a couple times last month is how still and quiet this is, a properly haunted-feeling movie completely unlike M. Night’s post-Signs style. Besides being seen as a weird loser at school, Haley Joel is always swinging between unease and complete terror as he’s visited by the recently-dead. Child psych Bruce helps HJ develop ghost communication strategies, and HJ helps Bruce realize that Duddits Wahlberg murdered him last year and that’s why Bruce’s wife Olivia Williams doesn’t speak to him anymore. Toni Collette is too young in this – she’s excellent as HJ’s mom but doesn’t look Collette-ish enough yet.

by ·Comments Off on Body Melt (1993, Philip Brophy)

I love finding uniquely bizarre movies like this one, wacko in all the best ways. Our pharma villain is introduced nude, injecting her man with a serum that will turn him goopy by sunrise. After looking up an address on his rad computer, he makes it all the way to the cul-de-sac where he was trying to warn(?) the residents that they’re all unwitting test subjects of the secret drug.

It’s vacation time, and the cul-de-saquers head out on their adventures. Slick-haired Paul (narrator of the Adam Elliot shorts) goes to the airport and sees people who aren’t really there. Two young guys on a road trip stop to get a new windshield where freaky kids are eating kangaroo adrenal glands. Family of four start melting (the son dies unrelatedly in a freak skateboarding accident), while the pregnant couple stay home and experience placenta-attacks. I’m not sure of the drug’s intended purpose, but the lead scientist’s ex-partner (father of the gland-chewing kids) ran off with the special ingredient that makes people not explode. Too much raver music, otherwise a perfect movie, the sole feature by a gang of art weirdos.

Did I mention it’s Australian?

by ·Comments Off on Night of the Living Dead Remake (1990, Tom Savini)

“This is hell on earth.” Produced by the guy behind the Death Wish sequels and opening with Johnny and Barbara recast as worse actors, this remake is starting out looking like a bad idea. Romero had already returned to the Dead with Day and Dawn, and the first couple Return movies had come out in the 1980s, but inexplicably there were no straight remakes of the public-domain original NotLD until Romero initiated this one, handing the reins to gorehound Savini, whose new zombie designs attempt to offer a reason for this movie to exist.

They’re coming to get you:

Tony Todd soon arrives with a second reason. A theoretical third would be Barbara (who had costarred with Savini in Knightriders), rewritten as a stronger character who does more than just cower in the corner, and even survives the movie, but I dunno. The original movie had the character behaviors and dark ending appropriate for its moment, and this one’s doing its own late-80s thing (but maybe still set in 1968 – hard to tell in a farmhouse).

Local kids, Tony, the normally basement-bound Coopers:

Local kid Tom is a horror regular, having appeared in at least five sequels including a Mark Hamill Watchers, and his fiery death at the gas station is a big improvement over the original version (and just as stupid), so, movie has three and a half reasons to exist – that’s more than most movies. The mean baldie in the basement who endangers them all and is righteously murdered by Barbara at the end later became a Rob Zombie star.

Do not shoot at the lock on the gas pump:

by ·Comments Off on Scream (1996, Wes Craven)

Opens with long takes stalking an increasingly upset Drew Barrymore, who tells the horror-trivia mystery caller/killer that the first Nightmare on Elm Street was great but the rest sucked, a confident/funny move from Craven. I last watched this the week before it opened wide, and liked it. But 1996 being the greatest year in human history for music and cinema (aka when I was 18), and having seen tens of thousands of teenagers murdered in horror movies since then, it’s hard to remember anything that happened past Drew’s terrible death, or to know whether this will still hold up (it does, now looking forward to the sequels).

Killahs:

Students who are vaguely bummed after the death of Drew and her barely-seen boyfriend: chaste ’96 Neve and her ever-patient boy Skeet, Rose and her boy Lillard, and lone wolf Jamie Kennedy, very funny as Randy the horror guy. Neve is still recovering from her mom’s violent murder a year ago, and being bothered about it by reporter Courteney Cox, who’s befriending Rose’s brother Deputy Arquette for access. Then they all start getting calls and visits from ghostface killahs and slinging blame around (to Jamie: “Maybe your movie-freaked mind lost its reality button”). Also good from Rose: “You’re starting to sound like some Wes Carpenter flick.”

Wes Carpenter, school janitor:

The kids always have alibis because the killer is both Skeet and Lillard. If I watch this again I’ll have to see if either of them walks with difficulty after the fight scenes, because Ghostface gets hit in the nuts in almost every encounter. So it’s a fun twisty mystery horror-comedy, with some absolute psychopaths at the center – they kill Neve’s mom and the school principal, kidnap her dad, and intended to slaughter everyone at the climactic party. I would’ve risked death to be at that party (Republica on the stereo, Prom Night on VHS, popcorn and original flavor Doritos).

Not returning in the sequels due to their deaths: Matthew Lillard, who went on to be Shaggy and also SLC Punk… Rose McGowan, who was only doing this between Araki films… Skeet: The Newton Boys then Ride With The Devil then nothing… Cox’s cameraman W. Brown: Deadwood… Drew Barrymore: Donnie Darko… and Henry “Winkler” Fonzarelli: Barry.

by ·Comments Off on The Blade (1995, Tsui Hark)

Apprentice blacksmith Vincent Zhao is set to become the new shop master when he learns details of his father’s death at the hands of a heavily-tattooed Clubfoot, so he takes dad’s broken sword and heads off on a revenge quest. But the boss’s daughter likes him and tries to follow, and when he tries to help her he loses an arm.

Long frustrating recovery/training process ensues, Vincent now with some girl in another town. Sure enough he gets his revenge after inventing a one-armed half-sword whirling fighting style, and stays with the new girl, the boss’s daughter still pining for him into old age. After the increasingly safe cookie-cutter comedy-action style of the Once Upon a Time series, the most notable thing here is the electrifying anything-goes filmmaking technique, turning the action into abstract jags (as opposed to the abstract smears of Ashes of Time), matching the brutality of the story.

by ·Comments Off on Nadja (1994, Michael Almereyda)

Since I just watched his New York Hamlet, here’s New York Dracula. With two Hal Hartley actors, My Bloody Valentine music, David Lynch cameo, black and white film with additional low-res Fisher Price material, hot lesbians in the city, and perverse ending, it’s the most cool-’90s vampire film.

Nadja, Pantera:

Nadja is Elina Löwensohn, daughter of the late Dracula. Peter “Van Helsing” Fonda and his man Martin Donovan (married to Lucy) are on the case, making sure Nadja can’t resurrect her father. Nadja flees to Romania with Van Helsing’s daughter Suzy Amis (The Usual Suspects) in tow. The others catch up and kill her, but her spirit has possessed Suzy, who then marries Nadja’s brother Jared Harris.

The Harkers:

by ·Comments Off on Once Upon a Time in China V (1994, Tsui Hark)

The stupidest, goofiest entry, thanks to the full line of disciples and family members from parts one through four being together for the first time – and also the most shootiest and explosionest. This time they’re fighting sea pirates, led by Elder Paco (a Yes Madam spinoff), Junior Stephen (Hard Boiled), and Elaine (The Bride with White Hair), and fortunately Katy didn’t watch this one (the pirates have an entire crate full of the severed fingers of their victims). It’s not as exciting as it sounds.

The gang:

by ·Comments Off on Demon Knight (1995, Ernest R. Dickerson)

This has a cute intro sequence with John Larroquette and the Cryptkeeper to justify its Tales from the Crypt title, but really it’s a standalone feature with an excellent script and cast. I would’ve loved to see this follow the original Halloween model, an anthology movie series where every year a new cast of characters in a single location gets killed by demons to a pop metal soundtrack (I waited in vain for Sepultura’s “Policia”). That was probably the intention, but then Bordello of Blood starred Dennis Miller and nobody wanted to see that, and the dream died.

Pounder, Church:

Our location is a New Mexico hotel where Jada Pinkett works for CCH Pounder… angry fired postman Charles “Roger Rabbit” Fleischer and old-timer Dick Miller and prostitute Brenda Bakke are hanging out when the sheriff and Deputy Gary Farmer arrive to investigate a car crash. The drivers were Jesus Blood Defender William Sadler and Demon Lord Billy Zane, and soon the sheriff is dead, Pounder’s arm gets ripped off, and hunky latecomer Thomas Haden Church is challenging Sadler for command of the survivors.

Jada, Dick, Postman:

The Church-led brigade fails to escape through the ol’ abandoned mineshaft, but they do find a kid, who will later be possessed by a Tales from the Crypt comic book (unlike Dick Miller, possessed through a bare-tittied liquor fantasy). As more people get taken by demons, Sadler reveals his supernatural burden, passed on from a WWI buddy named Dickerson (haha), now handed off to Jada. Billy Zane (great in this) is hot on her trail at the end, eager to claim the blood key and start the demon apocalypse. Shot by Rick Bota (the three worst Hellraisers), Dickerson’s followup to a Most Dangerous Game movie with Ice T.