Horror Movie Checklist 2012

I knocked out quite a few titles this Halloween.  I'll give a lazy man's synopsis, followed by some quick thoughts and a grade.

REC
Fun little shaky cam scare-fest about an apartment building thats been quarantined.  We follow a fearless reporter into an infected tenant's dwelling and all hell breaks loose.  The section in the attic is really chilling.  B-

The Ring
Finally saw it!  Killer VHS tape+phone call= bad omen. Atmospheric and scary to be sure.  Above average cast makes the story a little more credible, but that's not really the point anyway.  Gore Verbinski can direct any genre! B+

Let's Scare Jessica To Death
Now that's a good title! Eerie and well-directed 70's ghost story about a woman named Jessica who has just been released from an insane asylum after having a meltdown. She's doing better now...until she moves into a weirdo town in the country, and stays in a haunted house!  Jessica and her hippie friends encounter a vampire, some kooky locals, and there's something in the pond out back!  Occasionally cheesy, but has some very effective moments too.  Zohra Lampert (Jessica) is terrific- her performance carries the whole movie. B-

PontyPool
Shock jock has been kicked off the airwaves and is relocated to a small town where some unusual things are going on.  Hot damn, this movie starts terrific, the first 45 minutes are purely dialogue, but gets the imagination going!  Then we're forced to swallow this concept, and it does NOT go down easy.  From there it gets way too heavy-handed and stupid.  Too bad, because I love the shock-jock actor, the reports of mayhem coming into the station, it's a great way to build suspense.  Frustrating experience. C-

Slaughter High
Heartless bullies torture and humiliate ultimate nerd..."Marty"  Oh, and then they accidentally burn him alive in a lab explosion.  Cut to high school reunion, where only the same kids show up, and they're knocked off one by one, by who else?  Cheaply shot and made, this makes Troma look posh!  Boring and stupid.  F

The Last Exorcism
Awesome documentary-style chiller about a charlatan Reverend Marcus,who coasts on his theatrics and charisma, but is wholly unprepared to encounter an actual threat when he visits a possessed girl in Louisiana.  The cast is flawless, which makes it seem all too real- there's no CGI that I know of, and there are two star-making performances, Patrick Fabian and Ashley Bell. The ending is sort of a letdown, but still a fun ride.  A-

Halloween III
Doctor Tom Atkins and grief-stricken junior detective, Stacy Alkin, must know what's going on with those Shamrock masks!  Awful performances and even worse dialogue is occasionally so bad it's funny, but the movie drags.  One effective sequence involves an obnoxious family subjected to the Shamrock promo, but nothing in this movie makes any sense.  Good for a few laugh-out-loud moments, but good luck getting those commercials out of your head.  D+

Dust Devil
Serial killer dressed like a gunslinger, hitchhikes across the South African desert, occasionally murdering and baffling police with beheadings and colorful crime sites.  The movie is gorgeous and impressively shot.  The hitchhiker is the least interesting thing about the movie, but everyone else is great!  It gets a little too artsy fartsy for its own good, but that aside, there are some awesome stunts and you get the feeling the director nearly killed himself to making this movie.  Definitely a one-of-a-kind experience, this guy also directed the robot killer movie, "Hardware"  B+
Excision
Annalyne Mccord plays a social outcast with no shortage of eccentricities or weirdo surgical dreams.  Let's just say that her turns-ons are probably limited to pain and hurting others. This movie just didn't do it for me.  The cast is definitely not at fault, Traci Lords is fantastic as the mother!  Annalyne is good too, but she's clearly a gorgeous woman, uglied up for this movie- almost to a comical effect.  It could've been way more subtle, they made her hideous.  Sure it's amusing to see John Waters and Malcolm McDowell pop up too, but it's still a ho-hum expreience.  See MAY instead! C-

The Initiation
Daphne Zuniga's first film is sort of a yawner.  As a child she witnessed her father getting burned, and from there we get a series of murders/red herrings that truly throw you off track.  Too bad it's barely worth it, the 2nd half in the mall DRAGS.  The twist is so stupid, but it did have me guessing.  D-

Fade To Black
Christopher Dennis (Grown-up Eddie in Stephen King's IT) is a movie fanatic living with an evil wheel-chair bound mother, who detests everything he does.  He works at a movie studio, and is harrassed by a very young Mickey Rourke!  Anyway, he meets the girl of his dreams- the most jaw-dropping Marilyn Monroe look-a-like I've ever seen!  Like most of these movies, the girlfriend thing doesn't work out, and he finally snaps from all the torment, killing his mother and dressing up like his favorite movie monsters/villains. A series of dated impersonations and good make-up does not make a memorable killer.  Another disappointment with a good cast.  D+   

Bad Dreams
Nightmare On Elm Street clone involves former cult member (Jennifer Rubin), who bailed on a group suicide, and survived a fire.  Now she's in group therapy, and safe in her new hospital environment...or so she thinks.  Sizzled sausage-face cult leader starts turning up to torment her, patients start dying- run Nancy run! Oh, wrong character.  Rubin is a good actress, and Dean Cameron is great as another high strung patient.  Some creative kills and a kick-ass soundtrack boost this wannabee to an above-average experience. B+

Evilspeak
COOPERSMITH!  Hey COOPERSMITH!  Get over here Coopersmith!  Clint Howard plays Coopersmith, so get ready for a fun drinking game.  They say his name about 30-40 times.  For some inexplicable reason he wants to summon the devil, I guess because he can't stand to hear his name every 30 seconds, and wants to shake things up!  Clint Howard is very sympathetic and good here, but he's too nice a guy, I don't believe he'd want to kill anybody.  Every scene drags an extra 2 minutes too long, but if you can hang in there for the ending, it's pretty hilarious.  It's not every day you get to see someone eaten by a pig, or a flying Clint Howard donning a sword. D+

Dark Night Of The Scarecrow
Solid TV movie about a group of trigger-happy rednecks that suspect a mentally challenged man in the near-demise of a young girl.  Before the authorities can get involved, they shoot him, and get away with it...for awhile.  Charles Durning is masterful as always as the leader of the posse- the friendly neighborhood mailman, with a pretty nasty secret.  His buddies are vanquished one-by-one, and Durning thinks the mother of the victim might have something to do with it. The body count increases, and Durning starts to lose his cool.  Dig the truly creepy scarecrow and a satisfying climax. B+

Cabin In The Woods
Kids go to cabin in the woods.  Bad stuff happens.  That was easy.  Did I care about them?  No.  Does that matter?  Probably not.  The whole point of the movie is the unique Truman Show-like setting, so with that said, it was a fun device.  The last 30 minutes were imaginative and had a whole lot of eye candy. C+

VHS
Anthology movies are usually hit or miss.  This one misses most of the marks.  Some very effective and creepy moments, but extremely mean-spirited and full of reprehensible male characters.  I HATED two segments, enjoyed three segments, and the wraparound story didn't amount to much.  You could do a lot worse though, try sitting through Trapped Ashes.  C+

The Freeway Maniac
This feels like one of those late night movies you'd catch on the USA network at 3am.  It's GOD-AWFUL, but it's worth watching for the killer.  Every time he was on screen, I was dying with laughter.  Truly one of the best villains ever, he doesn't lumber around and take his time- this asshole SPRINTS.  He throws a man off a ten story tower and then JUMPS ON TOP OF HIM, body-slamming the guy!  There's a priceless scene where he's tied to a chair in court and with no warning GOES BESERK, you have to find a clip on youtube, it's worth it.  There's a sub-plot about this terrible sci-fi movie production that's being shot, and the killer sneeks on the set.  There's endless mind-numbing scenes of a sleazy producer hitting on the cast, and the lead actress's agent trying to negotiate....(snores)  SO bad, but the killer and his victims are outstanding, it's like they cast a bunch of stunt men and let them go nuts. D-

Bride of the Re-Animator
Disappointing sequel, with some moments of ingenuity here and there.  The direction is really stale until the very end.  The effects are fun though and Jeffrey Combs is great as always.  Major points for bringing Dr. Carl back!  The movie finally empties its bag of tricks in the last 30 minutes, where it goes bonkers.  C+

The Thing From Another World
Sorry old timers, I don't care how effective this was, give me Kurt Russell and John Carpenter.  This movie started it all, and it's fast with the quips and snappy dialogue, but to the point where nobody takes a breath like a real life person- they're all waiting for the next line!  None of these actors stick out, they're interchangeable studio stock players, the star is the script, and the monster.  The romance IS cute, I'll give it that.  The action scenes are very well done, and the ending does generate some excitement, but Carpenter's remake improved every aspect of the original.  C+

Possession
Wow!  This movie is completely nuts.  Imagine if "War of the Roses" was directed by Lars Von Trier.  This is a horror movie about a brutal divorce.  Sam Neil tries to patch things up, but his wife is beyond communication, and she has started bunking with someone else.  When Sam decides to snoop around, things take an extra turn for the surreal.  It's brilliantly shot and Isabelle Adjani's performance is unforgettable.  She won a special Best Actress award from Cannes and deservedly so.  You'll never forget the subway scene, it'll leave you speechless.  This movie will challenge you, some may find it unintentionally funny at times, but it fascinated me. A true original.  A-

Demons
Lamberto Bava directs this amusing punk-rock zombie flick about a bunch of theater-goers (and one pimp) that attend a sneak preview.  As the gore happens on screen, a barely explained zombie plague happens off-screen, launching an all-out zombie attack on the audience.  Featuring some hilariously dubbed dialogue, a kick-ass 80's soundtrack with Billy Idol and Motley Crew, a knife fight between a pimp and zombie, some over-the-top gore, and a classic motorcycle showdown!  Completely ridiculous and great entertainment!  B+

Anguish
Here's another movie within a movie.  Michael Lerner plays a weirdo under his mother's hypnosis, carving out people's eyeballs at her command.  His mother is played by the psychic lady from Poltergeist. It starts out a routine slasher movie, but then it's revealed that there's an audience watching Michael Lerner in a theater.  Sort of like the gimmick in, "Rubber"  Then this movie actually tries to legitimately hypnotize YOU, pretty nifty, but only succeeds in brainwashing a member of the audience- HE goes on a killing spree in the theater.  Take away the gimmick and there's nothing here, (the movie within the movie is nothing special) but it's nice to see a horror movie try something different.  C-

Inferno
Supposed to be somewhat of a loose sequel to "Suspiria" but I couldn't really follow the plot anyway.  There's an investigation of murders, a witch's
cove, and the usual Argento weirdness.  Talk about a gorgeous movie.  Every scene has colorful lighting.  There are a couple of insane moments that I will never forget, involving a hot dog vendor- it's so completely out of left field and laugh-out-loud funny.  Wonder what Peta thinks of the cat scenes- I was joking to my buddy that, "Let The Right One In"  didn't have a choice, they had to CGI the cats going nuts, you wouldn't want to put the actors in danger no?  Well Argento has done it. People are THROWING REAL CATS at the actor.  I wish there was behind-the-scenes footage.  There's also a beautifully shot underwater scene. Definitely worth a look.   C+

Sleepaway Camp
This is a terrible move, but unlike Slaughter High, it has plenty of camp value and memorable WHAT THE *%@! moments.  The twist at the ending/final shot is truly disturbing.  There is a casualness to pedophilia in this movie that is jaw-dropping in its bad taste.  The opening boating accident is HILARIOUS, along with the over-the-top mother, who seems to be in a completely different film.  I had the pleasure of watching this, so I could follow it up with Paul Scheer's awesome podcast, "How Did This Get Made" which I highly recommend for bad movie cinefiles.  You can listen to that episode here:
http://www.earwolf.com/episode/sleepaway-camp/
Or watch Sleepaway Camp in its entirety first!  Youtube has the whole movie here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePkcsSvnu0I
Anyway, probably a great bad movie night with friends- plenty of laughs and crazy moments to merit a watch.  D+

Here's a quick list of fun horror movies that more people should see.  Nothing too grim, all a fun watch:
1. Spider Baby
2. Them!
3. The Green Slime
4. Dead Alive
5. Critters
6. Night of the Creeps
7. Dead Snow
8. Dead and Buried
9. Basket Case
10. Blood Junkie

Awful Horror Movies You Can Skip:
1. Puppet Master
2. The Prowler
3. Howling 3
4. Maniac
5. The Beast Within