I Know Who Killed Me

JULY 31, 2007GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICALSOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)There’s a certain level of endearing idiocy in I Know Who Killed Me that I have never thought possible. For starters, the idiotic title is actually a line of dialogue in the movie. Someone actually says "I Know Who Killed Me". It's things like that that make this movie simultaneously amazing and god awful. Strangely, its faults have almost nothing to do with Lindsay Lohan, who isn’t much of an actress but is still among the least of the movie’s problems.Despite trying wayyyyyyyy too hard to be an Argento movie (both in

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Psychological,

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I Bury The Living

JULY 30, 2007GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICALSOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK!!!)I Bury The Living is one of those titles you always hear but probably haven’t seen the film. I’m actually kind of shocked that there hasn’t been a remake of this one, as it’s one of the best ideas for a Twilight Zone style movie I have ever heard, but with a dumb (and not original) ending that betrays the whole thing.Note I said the story is great. The dialogue and way things develop are not. For example: in the first 20 minutes, about a half dozen people just sort of swing on by the graveyard office. Look, there are only two re

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Chilling Classics, Psychological,

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Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed

JULY 29, 2007GENRE: WEREWOLFSOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)Way back in April, I watched the first Ginger Snaps, a film that started off almost unbearable but eventually turned out pretty great. Luckily the sequel, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, has no such problems. Yes, we have here a true rarity, especially in the DTV world: A sequel that improves on the original.The movie picks up more or less where the original left off, though the mother is MIA and never mentioned. Brigitte, a.k.a. the less hot sister, is now becoming a werewolf, and worse, is haunted by the ghost of her sister. I say worse b

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Werewolf,

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Mike Doogan's "Lost Angel"

Mike Doogan has been a Teamster, a janitor, a baggage handler, a mailroom flunky, a writing teacher and a legislative aide, but worked for most of his adult life as a journalist and writer. For 14 years, he was a columnist for the Anchorage Daily News. He is the author of three books about Alaska, and editor of a collection of essays on life there. He is currently serving in the Alaska House of Representatives.And he writes mystery novels. His mystery writing has won Mike the Robert L. Fish Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the Spotted Owl Award from the Friends of Mystery. His fi

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Mountaintop Motel Massacre

JULY 28, 2007GENRE: CRAP, SLASHERSOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)Another goddamn slasher. Tomorrow's movie won't be, I swear. I am sort of limited to what I grabbed on my way out the door as I left for Comic Con, but still, I should have been more selective. My apologies, readers who probably didn't notice or care!Let's move on to the subject at hand, which is: how can a movie with a title like Mountaintop Motel Massacre be so damn boring? And why don’t we ever see the goddamn mountain?Ripping off films ranging from Psycho to Motel Hell to Funeral Home, and yet never approaching anything as i

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Crap, Slasher,

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The Initiation

JULY 27, 2007GENRE: SLASHERSOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)What the hell’s with all the slashers? I’m supposed to be evening this out, but this is like four in a row, five if you count Bay of Blood. Still, I shouldn’t complain… beats trying to watch five goddamn anthology movies in a row.The Initiation is of course one of several (or two) Daphne Zuniga slasher movies that came along long past their time. But it’s marginally better than Dorm that Dripped Blood, mainly due to the fact that it doesn’t bore you to tears from the first scene. No, this one begins with a little girl stabbing her mom

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Slasher,

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Penny Dreadful

JULY 26, 2007GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, SLASHERSOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)Earlier this year, I watched the boring as hell movie Wind Chill, which was about two kids more or less trapped in a car during a snowstorm. A half hour or so into Penny Dreadful, I began having mostly unpleasant flashbacks to that film, as Penny is about just ONE person stuck in a car during a snowstorm. But unlike Chill, this one actually has some stuff fucking HAPPEN from time to time, before similarly just sort of ending with a cinematic shrug.Penny was of course one of the "Eight Films To Die For", which, in reality,

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After Dark Fest, Psychological, Slasher,

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SL8 N8

JULY 25, 2007GENRE: GHOST, POSSESSION,SLASHERSOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)SL8 N8, aka Slaughter Night, was recommended to me on the Rue Morgue (a magazine all horror fans should read btw; it blows Fangoria and Horrorhound right the hell away) boards, after I claimed Hatchet was the greatest slasher in the past 10 years. A replier chastised me for only counting American slashers. Well I am not one to be ignorant (Australia and New Zealand confusion excepted) so I decided to check out this Dutch one out. And… Hatchet is the best slasher movie I have seen in the past 10 years.However, this one

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Ghost, Possession, Slasher,

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David Fulmer's "Storyville" books

David Fulmer is the author of, among other works, the acclaimed Storyville mysteries featuring Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr. The first volume of the series, Chasing the Devil's Tail, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Mystery/Thriller Book Prize and the winner of the Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel.Here he speculates about which actors might best portray the characters in the Storyville novels:Since there have been numerous nibbles and discussions about one or all of my Storyville books reaching the screen, I've spent some time thinking about the talent in the roles. It's a

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Death Row

JULY 24, 2007GENRE: CRAP, SLASHERSOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)I purposely rented this movie knowing it would be bad. A good friend of mine, with a similar appreciation for watching a bad horror movie and laughing at it, sought out the perfect piece of crap to watch before I left for Con. And Death Row certainly fit the bill. For the love of Christ, they actually claim it has a “stellar cast including Joe Estevez, Todd Bridges”, and some other guy I have never heard of and have already forgotten. And it wasn’t even as good as I expected.Most of the problems stem from the description on the back

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Crap, Slasher,

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Bay Of Blood (aka Twitch Of The Death Nerve)

JULY 24, 2007GENRE: GIALLO, ITALIANSOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)What do you call it when you’re watching a movie that’s not exciting you that much and you start to wish you were watching another movie from the same director only to find out later that they were both the same movie? There’s gotta be a Sniglet for that.Such was the case with Mario Bava's Bay of Blood. Once it became clear it wasn’t as great as I heard it was, I began to wish I had rented Twitch of the Death Nerve instead, which I thought was a different movie. Turns out they are the same. In fact, Tim Lucas (who provides thos

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Giallo, Italian, Video Nasties,

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Dagon

JULY 23, 2007GENRE: WEIRD, ZOMBIESOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)Man, I really thought Dark Harvest would have provided me all of the ‘bad actor as lead’ movie watching I could handle this week, but along comes Ezra Godden in Dagon to prove me wrong. Luckily, unlike that disaster, Dagon is good, often even great, and Godden’s abysmal acting isn’t enough to sink it.The CG effects, on the other hand, come dangerously close to doing just that. For a story that relies heavily on giant storms, sea monsters, etc, the CG budget should have been a lot more than the apparent ten, twelve dollars tops it actu

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Weird, Zombie,

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Stigmata

JULY 22, 2007GENRE: RELIGIOUSSOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)Why does every single movie about a priest who goes around disproving miracles have to begin with him in some third world country? Don’t folks in big cities make shit up too? Stigmata follows suit, but at least we are spared the “This is fake, I am going home to get a new assignment that will turn out to be a genuine miracle” sequence of events. He finds the real one right away!It is in this sequence (before the most annoying credit sequence in cinematic history, which is like a music video edited on a broken Avid) that we see a quick

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Religious,

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Dark Harvest (2004)

JULY 21, 2007GENRE: CRAP, SLASHERSOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)The hit streak is over!!! Actually it was intentional that I watched a movie of Dark Harvest’s caliber. While I love seeing a good movie as much as the next guy, writing good reviews isn’t all that fun. It’s infinitely more enjoyable to mock ineptly made garbage, right? And where is a guaranteed source of shit? That’s right, direct to video movies distributed by Lion’s Gate!Actually this one was ‘recommended’ by a HMAD reader, so I thank you. I was starting to think I was turning soft, what with all the positive reviews of late. But

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Crap, Slasher,

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Duane Swierczynski's "The Blonde"

At least one reviewer has suggested that the smart money in Hollywood should snap up Duane Swierczynski's The Blonde and adapt it for the big screen.Here the author speculates about which actors might best portray the characters in his novel:I didn't have any specific actors in mind when writing The Blonde -- in fact, I think that's a recipe for disaster. Instead of allowing your character to develop his/her own voice and personality, you risk having them all sound like Samuel L. Jackson. Because that's who I could cast in every single role of every single novel or story I've written: Samuel

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Isolation

JULY 20, 2007GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MONSTERSOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)Back in October of 06, I sat down to watch Isolation as part of the LA Screamfest (which also featured Gravedancers, Behind the Mask, and HATCHET, a film I already declare the best of 07). After a few minutes, I walked out. Not that it was bad, but because it had the strangest projection errors I had ever seen in a film. Basically, it looked like it was cropped to a 1.33:1 ratio, but then stretched and cropped on the top and bottom to fit a 2.35:1 screen? It seems you would actually have to go out of your way to make somethin

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Mad Scientist, Monster,

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Right At Your Door (2007)

JULY 19, 2007GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICALSOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)Four in a row! Woooo!!Unfortunately Right At Your Door isn’t REALLY a horror movie, at least not in the traditional sense (despite the press notes doing their best to make us think otherwise, stating the film was rated R for strong gory violence throughout, language, nudity, and drug use – only ONE of those things was true and you can probably guess which one). However, if actually scaring the audience was the only requisite for a horror film, this movie would be the most qualifying of all the 160 or so Horror Movie A Day

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Post-Apocalyptic, Psychological,

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