Category: Reviews

The Plague of the Zombies (1966)

Directed by John Gilling [Other horror films: Escape from Broadmoor (1938), Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1952), The Gamma People (1956), The Flesh and the Fiends (1960), The Shadow of the Cat (1961), The Night Caller (1965), The Reptile (1966), The Mummy’s Shroud (1967), La cruz del diablo (1975)]

This Hammer film may be one of the last voodoo zombie films before Night of the Living Dead launches a new way forward for the zombie sub-genre, and it’s certainly the last big name zombie film before Romero’s classic. Being a Hammer movie (and being in color), The Plague of the Zombies isn’t too shabby, but it’s not a personal favorite of mine.

I enjoy the performances, though no one really blows me away. Perhaps my favorite here is André Morell, because seeing a slightly older man take the lead is a bit of a rarity, and his character is enjoyable, being a distinguished doctor, and yet partaking in robbing graves. He was just fun. Playing his daughter is Diane Clare, and she gets along quite well with Morell. Brook Williams, as a young doctor asking for Morell’s advice, is a bit generic, but he has his moments. John Carson did quite well here as a somewhat mad Cornish squire – much like Morell, he’s fun throughout, especially toward the end.

The atmosphere here is pretty solid, and there are some pretty solid scenes (perhaps my favorite is a dream sequence in which zombies rise from the grave, which looks quite beautiful in color), but as decent as the story was (in it’s average Hammer fair), trying to turn the same premise of White Zombie into a better-made version by throwing in color isn’t really my idea of a great time.

The Plague of the Zombies is a bit of a classic as Hammer horror is concerned, and for good reason (worth noting, many of the same sets are used in The Reptile, another Hammer film from the same year, which I like a bit more), but even as far as 1960’s horror goes, this doesn’t quite make my Top 10 list.

I’m not trying to throw The Plague of the Zombies under a bus – I think it’s a decent film, and I wouldn’t object to seeing it a few more times in the future. It’s just that I’ve seen it twice now, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s not the best the 1960’s has to offer.

7/10

The Gorgon (1964)

Directed by Terence Fisher [Other horror films: Three’s Company (1953, episodes ‘The Surgeon’ & ‘ Take a Number’), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula (1958), The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), The Mummy (1959), The Stranglers of Bombay (1959), The Brides of Dracula (1960), The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), The Horror of It All (1964), The Earth Dies Screaming (1964), Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), Island of Terror (1966), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), Night of the Big Heat (1967), The Devil Rides Out (1968), Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969), Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)]

This Hammer film is a very worthwhile watch on many levels. Not only is the cast superb, but the story here is actually decently mysterious up to a point, and though the finale isn’t all that it could have been, the story here’s interesting and memorable.

Peter Cushing is one of the stars, playing  a tight-lipped medical examiner, and that alone is enough to push this movie in a positive direction, given Cushing is one of my favorite actors (after Vincent Price). What’s even better is that Christopher Lee eventually shows up, and the two of them together is great. Lee is always of good quality, and he’s best here during his heated conversation with Patrick Troughton. Horror fans might best remember Troughton from The Omen, and that was a solid role, but being a rather big fan of the science-fiction series Doctor Who, I know Troughton as the Second Doctor, perhaps one of my favorite incarnations of the character.

Seeing Cushing, Troughton, and Lee all in one movie is very much a treat. Lee has a very commanding presence here, and though Troughton is a bit brow-beaten, his situation doesn’t really do him any favors. Even without those stars, Barbara Shelley (who has a somewhat unique story arc here), Michael Goodliffe (though he gave one of the worst justifications for the belief in the supernatural that I have ever heard in my life), and Richard Pasco came to play. Goodliffe really carries the first half of the film, and has a somewhat touching last scene. With a cast like this, even an okay story can go a long way.

Luckily, The Gorgon has a somewhat interesting one, which deals with memory loss and people being turned to stone. Much like other Hammer films, this possesses a strong atmosphere, and while in my opinion the color somewhat mutes that, it’s still nice to see a classic story like this using the best of the techniques at the time.

I’ve seen The Gorgon a handful of times before, and I still find it an enjoyably solid movie with a pretty interesting (and somewhat surprising) finale. The only real flaw here is that the design of the Gorgon, when it fully appears, is somewhat laughable. Otherwise, this is an enjoyable slice of 1960’s British horror. Just look at that cast and say ‘yes.’

7.5/10

Snake Outta Compton (2018)

Directed by Hank Braxtan [Other horror films: Evil Deeds 2 (2010, segment ‘The Hebrew Hacker’), Blood Effects (2011), Chemical Peel (2014), Unnatural (2015)]

To quote N.W.A, you are now about to witness the strength of snake knowledge. I’m not trying to mock N.W.A. – that’s how the film starts out.

I know what I was expecting with this one. A bad movie, certainly, but an interesting mixture of generic rappers versus a bunch of snakes. What I wasn’t expecting was a parody film, which is quite a bit of what Snake Outta Compton is, and boy, is it a hard movie to watch.

The snake looked terrible (and yes, it was just a single snake as opposed to a nest), but that really plays no part in just how bad this movie is. I don’t know what was worse – the character Vurkel (a parody of Urkle from Family Matters, complete with the glasses and suspenders) or the characters Denz and Ethan (rip-offs from the 1999 Training Day, starring, you guessed it, Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke). Or the rap battle against the snake.

Yeah, this movie went places that weren’t locations much worthy of a visit.

There are a few meager things about this I liked, though not enough to boast this above the atrocious rating it’s going to get. For one, a few of the rap lines here were decent, my favorite being ‘cold-blooded showman like Frosty the Snowman’, and another one made reference to Godzilla, Mothra, and Ghidorah. Also, Arielle Brachfeld, who played a white girl who did everything possible to act black and thug, was sort of funny. Her character was pretty terrible, but she had heart, and was about the only character (and I do mean only) that was worth anything.

Otherwise, this movie is really cringy. Why they chose a twenty year old action movie to parody, I have no damn idea, but it doesn’t work at all, and the movie was just as terrible as a movie could be. Vurkel’s character arc was awful (by the end, he becomes a part-snake superhero, because of course he does), and overall, this movie was just painful to watch.

I was really hoping for something else when I marked this to record on my DVR. Like I said, I wasn’t expecting anything stellar, but I definitely didn’t see a parody coming, and boy, was this an utter disappointment, almost entirely void of worth. Not something I’d recommend unless you’re high as fuck and want a good time. I wasn’t, and thus, no good time to be had.

1.5/10

Better Watch Out (2016)

Directed by Chris Peckover [Other horror films: Undocumented (2010)]

I pretty much knew next-to-nothing about this when I started it out. It seemed pretty clear cut at the beginning, a home invasion movie with a Christmas theme, but as the movie went on, I was taken on a rather unexpected and enjoyable ride.

To speak of some aspects of this movie and the story without spoiling anything might be hard, but I will certainly try my best.

Olivia DeJonge, who starred in the surprisingly decent The Visit, did great here as a babysitter with a few personal problems that she’s going through, and a crush on her by the kid she’s babysitting (Levi Miller) doesn’t make matters better, nor does the break-in of armed assailants. DeJonge did great in The Visit, and puts up a very fine performance here also, especially as she becomes more the kick-ass chick toward the end.

I can understand complaints about Miller’s performance, because it was a bit much at times, but he is a younger actor, and I certainly thought he did pretty well here, and Ed Oxenbould (also from The Visit) was fun too, as a sort of comic relief character (though not without his own drama, to be sure).

Also, I have to point out that Patrick Warburton makes a small appearance as Miller’s father. I know him from many things, be it voice-acting on Kim Possible, Family Guy, and Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated to small appearances throughout his career (such as on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). It was just fun seeing (and hearing) him here, no matter how small the part.

Better Watch Out isn’t about the gore, and there’s not a whole lot here in terms of that, but there are still a few okay kills throughout. What matters more is the small cast and their solid performance, and that, mixed with the story, made the movie a very decent watch, and certainly worth seeing at least once.

7.5/10

This is one of the films discussed on the Fight Evil podcast. If you want to listen to Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I discuss this one, enjoy.

Mirror Mirror (1990)

Directed by Marina Sargenti [Other horror films: Child of Darkness, Child of Light (1991)]

A satanic mirror? Sounds like it has potential. And really, Mirror Mirror did, and I wish that I could have liked it more. For something like the first half of the film, I was enjoying it pretty shamelessly, but then the second half happened, and the route changed, leaving me an old and bitter man.

This same type of plot has been done in later films, such as the Canadian television movie Devil’s Diary, so it didn’t feel that fresh to me (despite the fact this came out 17 years earlier). It’s an interesting idea, what with a teenage girl becoming addicted to the power of an iffy mirror, but it went down a path I didn’t much care for, and while the end redeems a bit of the lost potential, it was too little, too late.

Playing the goth teen Megan, Rainbow Harvest (which is indeed her real name, apparently) really felt like a slightly older Winona Ryder’s Lydia. She had a solid punk/new-wave/gothic look that I sort of liked, so of course she was picked on mercilessly by others in the school. Her mother, the well-known Karen Black, was pretty solid, though I felt somewhat bad about where the movie eventually took her.

One of my favorite sub-plots in the film dealt with a class president election between bitch Charleen (Charlie Spradling, from Meridian, a movie I saw not long before this one) and the one nice girl, Nikki (Kristin Dattilo). I’m a sucker for politics, so seeing an underdog campaign being fought against the establishment bitchery was a solid source of entertainment. It didn’t hurt that Dattilo was an attractive actress, and Spradling had a lovely nude scene later in the film.

It’s when the mirror, which has been causing some distressing incidents in Megan’s life, such as a massive nosebleed suffered by someone during lunch, or a brutal asthma attack a teacher has, starts sharing the power with Megan, and she becomes almost a witch, that I start losing interest. Because at this point, the strange outcast girl becomes the dangerous, school-shooter type (instead of guns, she has an evil mirror, but what’s the diff?), and she loses much of the sympathy she fairly possessed beforehand.

Now, it gets a little better, as Nikki tries to save Megan from herself, but by that point, things are pretty much a lost cause (both Megan and and Nikki have lost loved ones, so any victory at that point would be hollow anyway). Still, we got a solid death by steam in a locker room shower, and someone else gets impaled by glass, so it’s not all bad. The suspenseful garbage disposal scene, too, was worth seeing.

As a movie overall, though, Mirror Mirror fell flat, which was a damn shame, as it really did start off decently well, only to lose it’s way as the movie goes on. It’s a movie that’s probably good for a single watch, but unless my view on this one changes the next time I see it, it won’t become a 90’s favorite of mine.

6.5/10

Alien: Resurrection (1997)

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet [Other horror films: N/A]

I didn’t think the third Alien was anywhere near as good as Alien or Aliens, but it was still serviceable. Alien Resurrection, though, strikes me as somewhat a disgrace.

There’s a lot of faces and names here I know, which makes it even more disappointing. I’ve never been a big fan of Ron Perlman, so it didn’t surprise me I wouldn’t take to his character, but with Brad Dourif, Raymond Cruz, and Winona Ryder, they couldn’t have come up with a better movie?

Winona Ryder was pretty solid here, and her character is probably one of the more interesting ones. Dourif doesn’t appear that much, but I definitely thought he should have been smart enough to realize that the blood of the aliens are acidic. And Raymond Cruz? It took me a few scenes to realize it was him, and I didn’t really know until after he finds out about an android, in which he excitedly speaks about it, in the exact same way Tuco would in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Seeing a younger Cruz here was fun, and I hope he had more appearances in the genre.

The story here is somewhat pitiful. After the events of the third movie, I would have been happy with Ripley never coming back. I liked her story arc there, and the fact they just bring her back by making a clone of her (that has super strength, agility, and other positive clone attributes) really, really rubbed me the wrong way. And the ultra alien queen? Yeah, no, count me out.

Honestly, there’s not a lot about the story I did like aside from the characters involved. The last act in particular was really difficult to care about, despite Dourif’s character popping back up. It just felt so off, and that’s really what can be said for the movie. The third one was more generic than anything, but this one is just bad.

If there are two scenes worth watching, I’d recommend the underwater sequence, which was decently suspenseful, and the scene in which they run into previous attempts to clone Ripley, which was quite a grotesque and troubling sequence. Otherwise, I don’t really think Alien Resurrection has much to offer. I know it has it’s fans, but I’m not one of them.

5/10

Alien³ (1992)

Directed by David Fincher [Other horror films: Se7en (1995)]

So, while I’d seen the first two movies (Alien and Aliens), I never voyaged past the second one, so I was sort of surprised to find that I enjoyed this a bit more than expected. Oh, it’s not a great movie, nowhere near as good as the first two, but some strong performances and a decent story pull it up.

I find it somewhat funny, though, that the only surviving character from the second movie is Ripley. Just a bit of a suckerpunch, given all she did to try and save others. Still, for the story, being that their ship crash-landed on a prison planet, it worked. The story, though, loses something after they all decide to work together and trap the alien – it was still okay, but it felt so much more average than the first half of the film.

What cannot be denied, on a personal level, is the impact Charles Dance had early on. I pretty much only know Dance from his role on Game of Thrones, and he looked much the same here, but he really brought a lot to the film. One of the few characters I legit liked, it was a shame to see that he doesn’t make it near as far as you’d hope, but I still really liked seeing him regardless.

It’s not as though without Dance, the cast is void of big names and solid performances, but I do think that Dance was definitely one of the best here. Otherwise, we have Charles S. Dutton (Gothika), who does okay with his character, the same of which could be said of Pete Postlethwaite. Both Brian Glover and Ralph Brown did well as ineffectual authority characters, and seeing Lance Henriksen come back (in a limited capacity) was a pleasure also.

The problem here is that, as I mentioned, past a certain point in the story, the events begin feeling much more generic. I do personally quite like the end of this film, but getting there is a bit of an unmemorable journey, which wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but it was disappointing.

Alien³ is an okay movie. It’s a large drop-off from the first two, but I think this straddles the average rating. I think compared to the first two movies, it’s definitely much worse, but as a movie standing alone, Alien³’s okay. It’s nothing special aside from Sigourney Weaver and Charles Dance, but it’s by no means the worst movie of the 1990’s.

7/10

Aliens (1986)

Directed by James Cameron [Other horror films: Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (1981)]

While it’s true that it took me until my most-recent viewing of Alien to fully appreciate it, Aliens is a movie I loved from ‘hello,’ and it’s probably the best horror/action/science fiction movie in the history of the moving pictures.

Let’s dispense with the problems first, though:

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the myriad of great performances (it’d almost be easier to talk about those who didn’t make a positive impression, but that didn’t strike me as fair).

I loved Sigourney Weaver in the first movie, but she’s even better here. Once she takes control, she really takes control (the scene in which Ripley usurps Gorman is fantastic), and though she’s all bad-ass, she still has a sensitive side, as seen when dealing with Newt (Carrie Henn) and Hudson (Bill Paxton). She is the exact right person in that situation, and I enjoyed watching her kick ass throughout (especially in regards to Paul Reiser’s character).

And speaking of Reiser, boy, does he cause some whiplash. At first, he seems a decent guy, one of the few trying to back-up Ripley’s experience and get her back into a suitable profession, but then we find out something later on that shines a whole new light on him, and he quickly becomes one of the most hated characters in the whole of cinema (perhaps an overstatement, but man, I utterly abhor this guy, and I definitely thought he should have been killed just as soon as his secret and actions were discovered). Reiser does a great job playing a terrible character, so kudos.

It’s Gorman, played by William Hope, who at first seems to be the main antagonist. Very quickly, though, we find out that he’s not so much a bad man as he is just under-experienced. He certainly thought he had control of the situation, but when Ripley shoves him aside, he takes it gracefully, and I always low-key appreciated him for that. Another individual who takes a little while to really make a place for themselves is Hicks, played by Michael Biehn. To be honest, I barely noticed him until he retained command, but I loved him as soon as he sided with Ripley, and from there on out, he gave it his best to protect everyone.

Others who merit a positive mention are probably obvious, being Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein, Bill Paxton, Mark Rolston, and Al Matthews. Henriksen as the android Bishop really did well here. Being an android, he didn’t need to have much in the way of emotions, so Henriksen was a perfect fit, and I definitely enjoyed him throughout (especially towards the end). Goldstein kicked ass about as much as Weaver, and her comeback to Hudson near the beginning was cuttingly brutal.

Paxton’s Hudson lost control past a certain point, but he was still a solid character to the end, and though Rolston’s Drake didn’t last near as long as I was hoping, he too was a character I really found myself enjoying. Of everyone, though, it’s Al Matthews, who, as soon as he awakens from cryofreeze, the very second, he has a cigar in his mouth. Love that guy’s dedication. I also rather liked Colette Hiller, though she appeared for only a short time.

As far as the special effects go, everything here looks great, and though at first glance it might look like the movie runs a little long (as it’s around two-and-a-half hours), I think everything feels smooth and well-paced throughout the film. The setting is a nicely deserted alien world, and there are some absolutely fantastic scenes of suspense here (such as Ripley and the kid being trapped in the room with the facehuggers).

Let’s face it – Aliens is a fantastic movie, and this is probably one of my least controversial movie opinions of all time. The movie currently sits in IMDb’s top 100 movies, and I’m very much mistaken if I think that’s going to change anytime soon. It’s an action-packed ride with with a ton of suspense, scares (that locked room with Ripley and Newt gets my heart racing every time), action, and I can’t recommend the movie enough.

10/10

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

Directed by Terence Fisher [Other horror films: Three’s Company (1953, episodes ‘The Surgeon’ & ‘ Take a Number’), Dracula (1958), The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), The Mummy (1959), The Stranglers of Bombay (1959), The Brides of Dracula (1960), The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), The Horror of It All (1964), The Gorgon (1964), The Earth Dies Screaming (1964), Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), Island of Terror (1966), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), Night of the Big Heat (1967), The Devil Rides Out (1968), Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969), Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)]

The Curse of Frankenstein is a classic that I don’t really have that much to say about. It’s not as classic a movie as 1931’s Frankenstein, but this Hammer production is still one of the best renditions of the story.

A large part of this is the very solid cast, and who could expect differently coming from a Hammer movie. Peter Cushing is a favorite of mine, and he’s been in so many movies of the genre that it’s really hard to narrow down his best performances. Playing Frankenstein here, Cushing was fantastic, and his sole focus on his work (at the expense of his fiancé, Hazel Court) was, as always, fun to watch.

Playing his long-time mentor and eventual foe, Robert Urquhart did a great job, and during their many arguments about the morality of Frankenstein’s experiments, Urquhart and Cushing really get into it, and you can really see his disappointment in Frankenstein toward the end of the film. These two are easily the most important, but Christopher Lee brings a lot as the Creature, playing a very different version than Karloff did, and Hazel Court too was a nice, although somewhat unimportant, addition.

I also really liked the layout of the story, with the bulk of the horrors occurring via flashback told by a condemned Cushing. The ending was somber, and truthfully I felt pretty bad for Frankenstein, though I certainly think he had his problems when it came to approaching his experiment (though the base of the experiment, I thought, was perfectly valid).

This is a Hammer classic, and I enjoy it more than the following year’s Horror of Dracula. Both are good movies, quality re-imaginings of classics, and I’d easily recommend the both of them to fans of classic horror.

8/10

House of Usher (1960)

Directed by Roger Corman [Other horror films: The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955), Day the World Ended (1955), It Conquered the World (1956), Not of This Earth (1957), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), The Undead (1957), War of the Satellites (1958), The Wasp Woman (1959), A Bucket of Blood (1959), The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Premature Burial (1962), Tales of Terror (1962), Tower of London (1962), The Raven (1963), The Terror (1963), X (1963), The Haunted Palace (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), The Tomb of Ligeia (1964), Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound (1990)]

This Roger Corman movie is one I’ve been wanting to see for some time now, and now that I finally have, I’m somewhat underwhelmed. Oh, House of Usher is solid enough, and possesses both great performances and an enjoyable atmosphere, not to mention a fantastic conclusion, but still, I couldn’t help but expect more from it.

Even with the slight disappointment, though, there’s no doubt that Vincent Price brings a hell of a lot to this film. His character, paranoid and somewhat of a bastard, is great, and his performance is up there with the best of his material (House on Haunted Hill and Theater of Blood among them). The delivery of his lines is fantastic, and he just works wonderfully here.

The others are decent, and somewhat amusingly, my second-favorite performance here is not Mark Damon nor Myrna Fahey, but the butler, played by Harry Ellerbe. His loyalty to the dying House of Usher, despite all of the decay that he’s witnessing first-hand, was quite admirable, and I enjoyed him throughout. Fahey was good also, though I felt she didn’t really reach her stride until the finale. Truthfully, while Mark Damon was okay, I think he was the least stellar of the cast.

Also worth mentioning is the beautiful setting, being a desolate, decrepit mansion in the middle of a foggy swamp. With a cast as small as House of Usher had, this location brought more character to the movie, and the fact that it was in color, though gloomy still, was a nice touch. Related, the coloring here was solid, and it really shows in the psychedelic dream sequence, one of the moments that stands out a bit more.

The finale is fantastic, what with the mad search for a woman buried alive, only to discover that the woman has escaped her coffin and went mad, her bleeding fingers leading a trail to a great confrontation. Of course, this truly is the end of the House of Usher, and that’s probably for the best, given Price’s very apparent unstable mind-set.

House of Usher is a classic, and I don’t have a problem saying that. I just wish that I liked it a bit more than I already do. Perhaps I was overselling it to myself before seeing it, but still, the movie is certainly above average, and boasts a very good atmosphere and, of course, Vincent Price near his best.

7.5/10