Category: Reviews

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow [Other horror films: N/A]

This vampire film is a very unique addition to the genre, and is generally well-liked. Having seen it twice, while I definitely appreciate it, Near Dark isn’t my type of movie at all, though.

Horror takes a backseat to a moral drama of sorts, with heavy dashes of romance and the importance of family. I’m not a drama fan, nor much a romance fan, though, so much of this film, while somewhat emotional in many ways, isn’t my cup of tea whatsoever. When there are solid horror elements, such as the bar sequence, the movie gains a lot more of my attention. But for a lot of the film, aside from a few characters worth watching, Near Dark didn’t have much to offer.

There were some solid performances here (such as the lead Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, and Tim Thomerson among them), but the real stand-out here was Bill Paxton as Severen. His wild antics and attitude, especially during the bar sequence, really made him a character worth remembering. Lance Henriksen was decent, don’t get me wrong, but Paxton ultimately stole the show almost entirely.

I don’t love Near Dark, but I do appreciate what it was going for. For many people, it’s a fun ride and a memorable experience. I’ll give them that it’s definitely memorable, but as for me, I didn’t have a lot of fun with it, especially the final twenty or so minutes, which I honestly didn’t care for whatsoever. The highlight was definitely the bar scene (as one can probably tell, as this is the third time I’ve mentioned it), and if the rest of the movie had been like that, I’d have enjoyed Near Dark a hell of a lot more.

5/10

Near Dark was covered on Fight Evil’s podcast, so to hear Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I discuss it, by all means, join in on the fun and listen brahs.

Directed by Jack Weis [Other horror films: Crypt of Dark Secrets (1976)]

This is a movie that I’ve long wanted to see, and for the longest time, I’ve pretty much known it wasn’t going to be that great, which is certainly accurate after finally having seen it.

In many ways, I was reminded of the classic H.G. Lewis flick Blood Feast from 1963, from a sacrificial killer to decent gore, only it wasn’t near as engaging (Blood Feast, on a side-note, isn’t really an amazing movie, but in many ways, it blows this out of the water). The main problem was that this was so repetitive, almost to the point of parody.

Step one, the killer enters a bar and asks for someone evil. Step two, the evil woman accompanies him back to his apartment. Step three, the killer offers some wine. Step four, they go to a room where oil is rubbed on the evil woman’s nude body before she’s tied up and stabbed through the hand, sliced on the sole of her foot, and lastly, slit from her gut upward. This happened three times in the movie with minimal variation. The first time was fine, and the gore is decently gruesome (or it tries), but God, is it as dull as it sounds? Is it ever.

It doesn’t help that the main protagonist of Mardi Gras Massacre is a woman-hitting cop (which isn’t surprising, as a rather high amount of cops beat their spouses) with the sympathy level of a KKK Grand Wizard, played by Curt Dawson. None of his investigation was particularly interesting or noteworthy, and when he slaps his girlfriend (Gwen Arment) twice, I hoped for a painful death that he never got. Instead, the girl apologized to him and they got back together. Fantastic character arc – love it. The killer, played by William Metzo, did the best of everyone, and possessed a certain charm, so if you see this one for any reason, do it for Metzo.

Also worth noting, I’m not opposed to disco. I love me some Bee Gees, Tavares, KC and the Sunshine Band, and a handful of others, but when your whole soundtrack is composed of generally generic disco, I’m going to have a problem, which I did. It was sort of funny, but boy, just like the repetitive nature of the plot, the soundtrack got really old.

With a title like Mardi Gras Massacre, I personally think people would expect a movie more wild and fun, but this is neither. It’s not a great film whatsoever, and it’s pretty close to being too dull to classify as a ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ film. The best I can say is that the gore is decent, but even that can’t make up for the unlikable characters or the dull nature of the film.

4.5/10

This was discussed on Fight Evil’s podcast. Listen to Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I discuss this below.

Directed by Chuck Russell [Other horror films: A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), Bless the Child (2000)]

Often considered one of the better remakes of the 1980’s, I’d only seen The Blob once before, edited on Chiller, prior to seeing it again. It certainly holds up better than what I remember, and all-in-all, it’s an enjoyable film.

There’s a little unpacking I have to do first, though. The original Blob, from 1958, is one of my favorite horror films. It’s a movie I grew up on, and I’ve watched my VHS copy so many times, I’m surprised the tape’s not frayed. When I first saw the remake, edited as it was, I went in with the idea nothing could match up to the original, given how much I loved it, and with that frame of mind going in, it didn’t. I didn’t hate the film when I first saw it, but I didn’t think it was particularly good, either.

I now see that The Blob is a good movie, though the 1958 version is still my go-to.

The effects in the film are probably the best of the 1980’s, and there’s a lot of gruesome body melting here, all of which is appreciated. I preferred the simpler look of the Blob from the original, but this is still okay. The multitude of deaths in the film, many of which are rather violent, certainly make the film even more memorable. Also, the conclusion as a whole, though somewhat expected, was still a lot of fun.

Shawnee Smith (best known, perhaps, as her role of Amanda from the Saw films) does solidly here as a kick-ass cheerleader. Kevin Dillon (who is a guy I’ve never heard of before) also did great job in his anti-authority teen role. Perhaps most disappointing here is Jeffrey DeMunn, who is an actor I really like, having appeared in Storm of the Century, The Green Mile, and The Mist. He’s great here, make no mistake, but I feel they could have done a lot more with him than they did. Lastly, both Joe Seneca (who played an utterly detestable character) and Art LaFleur stood out positively also.

Overall, I think The Blob is a good film, and a very enjoyable piece of 80’s horror. It doesn’t quite capture the magic of the original, but it’s an enjoyable film all the same, and though I don’t agree, I can certainly see why many prefer it to the original 50’s classic.

8/10

This was covered on a Fight Evil podcast. If interested, listen to Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I discuss this one below.

Directed by Rick Roessler [Other horror films: N/A]

When I first saw this one some years ago, I went away with a vaguely lukewarm feeling. I didn’t hate Slaughterhouse by any means, but I wanted more from it than I got. Watching it again after all that time, I’ve come to appreciate the movie a little bit more, and while I could have done without some of the more overt comedic influences, I generally found this an enjoyable slasher.

One thing I really thought they got right was the setting, a disused slaughterhouse, and the simple, yet effective, design of Buddy (the main antagonist) is pretty solid. Joe B. Barton is just a hulking monster in this, and that humongous cleaver he carries around with him was another good choice.

Hell, even the story is mildly interesting, as many of the killings are a form of revenge by a man about to be kicked out of his home. It’s just unfortunate that some teenagers got mixed up in it, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but hey, at least we got some pretty decent kills (slit throat, and other galores). They even did a close up of a fingertip being sliced open, which looked damn painful.

I don’t think Joe B. Barton is the end-all be-all as far as casting is concerned here. William Houck is decent as the concerned sheriff, Sherry Leigh a solid final girl. Jeff Wright was even okay at times. Don Barrett, who played Buddy’s father, was way over-the-top at various points throughout the film, but I also felt somewhat sympathetic to him. I thought perhaps he was one of the more compelling characters here.

The problem, though, is the creeping comedic influence into the movie. You can tell during the opening credits, as we’re shown the process of butchering a pig (to be honest, that was a solid beginning, so no complaints there), but overlaying the graphic imagery was a hideously upbeat number that never should have been released. Later in the film, there’s just a silly moment with Buddy pretending to be a cop, and it was that type of stuff that rubbed me the wrong way.

Despite sometimes be labeled a ‘black comedy’ though, a lot of this movie was decently solid, and gave me what I was looking for. Great setting, solid kills, a memorable antagonist, so it’s mostly a rewarding affair.

I do have to give a shout-out to the deathgrind band Mortician – I know that much of their music isn’t particularly well-loved, but it was their song based off this film that first introduced me to this, and while, like I said, I didn’t like it the first time around, I wasn’t really that displeased with the final product this time around.

7.5/10

Slaughterhouse is one of the films that has been covered on Fight Evil’s podcast. Listen to Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I discuss this one below.

Directed by Jonathan Milott [Other horror films: Becky (2020)] & Cary Murnion [Other horror films: Becky (2020)]

I didn’t go into this one with many expectations, which is probably a positive, as I doubt that Cooties could have surpassed them. For a zombie comedy, Cooties is definitely a competently made film, and it may even be a good movie, but I don’t think it’s particularly great in any way.

The higher-budget production here looks nice, and we’re given a decent amount of mildly interesting characters, but the movie doesn’t really transcend the feel of an average film. Special effects, cinematography, it’s all decent, but at the same time, I really didn’t see much in here that’s likely to be either that memorable or that praise-worthy, mainly because zombie comedies are a tough sub-genre to crack anyway.

One high selling point here is the cast, of course. I never much cared for the star, being Elijah Wood (an actor who I personally haven’t seen in much, but is most well-known for Lord of the Rings), and I could have done entirely without Rainn Wilson’s (The Office) character, and now that I think on it, the characters played by Jack McBrayer, Nasim Pedrad, and Peter Kwong didn’t add much either.

If it weren’t for Alison Pill and Leigh Whannell, this would have been a much harder movie to swallow. I didn’t necessarily love Alison Pill’s character, but she did have much the same attitude her character from The Newsroom possessed, and I generally liked her spunk. Whannell, of course, played Adam in the first Saw movie, and though he’s noticeably older here, his socially awkward, scientifically-detached character is quite a lot of fun. Shout-out to Matt Jones’ (Badger from Breaking Bad) single appearance, which was nice, but the brunt of the enjoyment from performances came from Pill and Whannell.

The comedy here is moderately balanced, but it can really get a bit overboard at times (and many of these times revolve around Wilson’s ridiculous character, who seems right out of a Will Ferrell movie), which didn’t help matters. The gore was pretty solid, and I did like seeing zombie kids get taken down, but some parts were just too silly, and much of the ending itself was sort of suspect.

There’s also not near as much a sense as dread as you’d hope. Virtually none of the main characters die. One seems to have been torn apart, but they pop up at the end of the film, along with another character who had gone missing. I just didn’t get how at least three of the more likely suspects weren’t killed off, just to give us a sense of some type of real danger, but it just never happened.

Cooties isn’t a bad film, but it really should have been better, especially with the budget and solid cast members. I don’t think it really broke ground in the zombie comedy genre, even with zombie kids and teachers kicking their asses, but like I said, it’s still a competent enough film. It’s just not memorable, or really remarkable whatsoever.

7/10