Nightmare Castle

NOVEMBER 30, 2007GENRE: GHOSTSOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)When I was like 4 or 5 I saw a movie on Cinemax that involved a haunted castle. I am pretty sure it was near the ocean, and the ending, which occurred (I think) at sunrise, involved a woman turning into sand/dust. I don’t think she was a vampire though, more of a mummy. Numerous submissions to “Help with this movie title?” threads on horror movie forums have been fruitless, probably due to my terribly vague recollection. So every time I see a movie about a castle, I hope that it might be it. Nightmare Castle is not it.But it’s ac

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Ghost, Horror Classics, Revenge,

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Bloodlust (1961)

NOVEMBER 29, 2007GENRE: SURVIVALSOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)Bland Guy: “Theres no ammo!”Other Bland Guy: ”There’s gotta be, THESE guns are useless without it!”Ah, Bloodlust; a film that apparently takes place in a world where certain guns don’t require ammo. I should note, for no reason other than the fact that whenever I review a movie without mentioning a particular actor someone gets on my ass about it, that Bland Guy #1 is Robert Reed, aka Mike Brady. That’s all I have to say on the matter.Mill Creek bills this as an early example of a “Teen Scream” movie, but none of the teens die, s

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Horror Classics, Survival,

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Bluebeard (1944)

NOVEMBER 28, 2007GENRE: HERO KILLER, SERIAL KILLERSOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)Is there anything more upsetting than when you watch a movie thinking it’s about a killer pirate and it turns out to be a movie about a “romantic” killer, filmed in the days before things like graphic violence or blood were shown on screen? Such was the case with Bluebeard, which I watched without reading the description, since many of the Mill Creek synopsii spoil parts of the film.I dunno if it was a stylish choice, or if that the woman just couldn’t be bothered to act, but one of the film’s highlights was a pr

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Hero Killer, Horror Classics, Serial Killer,

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Ray Banks' "The Big Blind"

Ray Banks is the author of The Big Blind (his debut), Saturday's Child, and Donkey Punch.Should The Big Blind be adapted for the big screen, here are the author's suggestions for the principal cast and director:The Big Blind, the movie?Okay, let's say I had it all my own way: The Big Blind would keep its northern British roots, that big Manchester rain and the grey concrete bleakness of modern trading estate Britain. If it ever made it to the screen, the visuals should make people think of wet dog - that's the best olfactory summary I can come up with. Maybe wet dog with the hint of stale lag

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Species III

NOVEMBER 27, 2007GENRE: ALIENSOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)Was there really a demand for Species III? It’s hard to find anyone who likes the original, and NO ONE likes the 2nd one. So why bother with a 3rd entry, especially if they can’t even get Michael Madsen back? Well, surprisingly enough, it’s not all that bad. It’s certainly better than the last one, though that wouldn’t exactly be difficult.Like yesterday's Teeth, the Species films seemingly exist primarily to scare men out of wanting have sex. The aliens in these films are beautiful, sexually aggressive women who will fuck the shit o

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Alien,

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Teeth (2007)

NOVEMBER 26, 2007GENRE: COMEDIC, MONSTER, WEIRDSOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)Contrary to the belief of anyone who’s ever read a BC-penned review of a Bruce Willis movie, I am a straight man. So watching Teeth, a film in which the horror elements are strictly limited to men getting their genitalia severed by “Vagina Dentata” (it’s exactly what you think it might be), may possibly leave me with permanent mental scars, or worse... certain, uh... dysfunctions.For women, and men who can separate cinema from reality, it’s a lot of fun. There’s a lot of dry humor, which is right up my alley,

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Comedic, Monster, Weird,

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Altered States (1981)

NOVEMBER 25, 2007GENRE: PREDATOR, MAD SCIENTIST, PSYCHOLOGICAL, WEIRDSOURCE: CABLE (HDNET)Well, after Gothic, I was certainly not clamoring for more Ken Russell movies, but I always heard good things about Altered States, and any movie with William Hurt AND Bob Balaban can’t be altogether bad, so I gave it a shot. And while I wouldn’t go so far as to say I loved it, it was certainly enjoyable for the most part, if totally fucked up and at times just utterly baffling.The film reminded me of old school Cronenberg (The Brood and Videodrome in particular) in which a ridiculous concept was taken

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Based On Novel, Mad Scientist, Predator, Psychological, Weird,

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David Wellington's "13 Bullets" & "99 Coffins"

David Wellington is the author of the Monster Island trilogy, 13 Bullets, and 99 Coffins.Here he shares some ideas about the casting for film adaptations of the vampire novels:My novels, 13 Bullets and the upcoming 99 Coffins, are set in a world where vampires have long been a historical fact, having always lived beside, and preying on, the human population. They’re bigger than us, much faster, and almost impossible to kill even before they start drinking blood. Afterwards they’re virtually bulletproof. They can only be brought down by destroying their hearts — all other wounds heal insta

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Stir Of Echoes: The Homecoming

NOVEMBER 24, 2007GENRE: GHOSTSOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)I was one of the 9 people who went to see Stir Of Echoes when it came out in theaters in the fall of 1999. I really dug the film, and would get enraged when someone would say it was a Sixth Sense wannabe, since that film came out about 5 weeks before. Yes, David Koepp quickly wrote, directed, edited, and released a film in a month or so to capitalize on the success of a movie that also featured ghosts and otherwise had absolutely nothing to do with his film. Fucking idiots. Anyway, even though I knew it had zero relation to the origin

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Ghost,

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Welcome To The Jungle

NOVEMBER 23, 2007GENRE: CANNIBAL, INDEPENDENT, MOCKUMENTARYSOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)Earlier this year (or maybe late last year), there was some brouhaha over the nature of Welcome To The Jungle, with some folks reporting it was a remake of Ruggero Deodato's masterpiece Cannibal Holocaust, and Welcome writer/director Jonathan Hensleigh (a man who will forever be in my OK book due to his myriad Bruckheimer contributions, including my beloved Armageddon) claiming his film nothing to do with that film. Well, now that I’ve seen it, they’re both right.On one hand, yeah, it’s incredibly similar to

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Cannibal, Independent, Mockumentary,

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Non Canon Review: End Of Days

NOVEMBER 22, 2007GENRE: RELIGIOUS, SUPERNATURALSOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)One of my stranger holiday traditions is always taking in a viewing of one of the last Schwarzenegger spectacles (and the only one of his films that could be considered horror, and please do not make a Batman and Robin, Junior, or Jingle All The Way joke in response to that), End Of Days. I saw it for the first time on Thanksgiving, in 1999, and have rewatched it every Thanksgiving since. But the viewing comes with a challenge: I have never ONCE stayed awake through the entire film, sometimes barely seeing half of it

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Non Canon, Religious, Supernatural,

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Bubba Ho-Tep

NOVEMBER 22, 2007GENRE: COMEDIC, SUPERNATURALSOURCE: CABLE (HDNET)I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to seeing Bubba Ho-Tep. I love Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm films, I love odd comic/horror blends, and I love movies that feature old people stealing other old people’s glasses. Bubba has all of these and more! Yet, I was kind of left “meh” afterwards. Not that it was bad, but it wasn’t as funny as I was expecting. Part of the problem is the odd pace. The mummy thing goes absent for a long stretch while we learn how Elvis came to be in the old folk’s home. This is something

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Based On Novel, Comedic, Supernatural,

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The Corpse Vanishes

NOVEMBER 21, 2007GENRE: SERIAL KILLERSOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)Like quite a few of the movies on the Horror Classics set, The Corpse Vanishes is probably best known as an episode of MST3k than anything else. But I haven’t seen that episode, since it wasn’t on Sci-Fi (I never had Comedy Central until the show made the switch). And it must be a “short” episode, since the movie’s only an hour long.Well it starts off promisingly, with a bride dying just before saying “I do”, which momentarily had me thinking the film was a fantasy and not a horror movie. But then Bela Lugosi showed up, so

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Horror Classics, Serial Killer,

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Alex Scarrow's "A Thousand Suns"

Alex Scarrow is the author of the thrillers A Thousand Suns and Last Light.About A Thousand Suns:Off the coast of New England, a trawler tangles its nets on wreckage from sixty years ago - a B17 'flying fortress' , perfectly preserved and containing the final and most terrifying secret of WWII. When freelance photographer, Chris Roland, enters the sunken plane , what he discovers in the dark, tomb-like interior changes everything he knows about the end of the war and how desperately close it came to being the end of everything.A Thousand Suns is a tale that cuts breathlessly between the pres

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Tormented

NOVEMBER 20, 2007GENRE: GHOST, PSYCHOLOGICALSOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)“It’s bad enough to accept a musician in this family, but a jazz musician is just asking too damn much!”You gotta hand it to George Yates, writing a film around his desire to slam jazz musicians. That has to be the film’s reason for existing, because otherwise Tormented is pretty pointless, and even at 75 minutes, feels padded and repetitive.Much like Hands of a Stranger, we have a musician who has murderous intent toward a little kid. Except at least in that movie, he totally killed the kid. We’re not so lucky here.

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Ghost, Horror Classics, Psychological,

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He Knows You're Alone

NOVEMBER 19, 2007GENRE: SLASHERSOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)How’s this for weird: As I go to put in the He Knows You’re Alone DVD, I see that the Al Pacino movie Scent of a Woman is on. I watch it for a few minutes, and I see an actor who is one of those guys that’s in every movie ever, but you don’t know his name and probably would have trouble actually NAMING one of the movies if you saw him on the street. His most memorable turn is probably in ID4, as the Secretary of Defense who constantly wants to nuke everything and confesses to the President that Area 51 is real. Anyway, not thinking m

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Slasher,

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Rise Of The Dead

NOVEMBER 18, 2007GENRE: POSSESSION, WEIRDSOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)OK, let’s get something out of the way. Rise Of The Dead, despite its very zombie sounding title, not to mention rotten zombie guy on the cover, OR the fact that it’s called a “Frightening Zombie Thriller!” on the back, is NOT A FUCKING ZOMBIE MOVIE. A ghost possesses some folks, and when they are possessed they drool and get that dazed look on their face you might expect from a zombie, but once the possession is over they go back to normal. The people who are killed never come back either.That said, this movie is an unpara

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Possession, Weird,

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Jack Getze's "Big Numbers"

Jack Getze, a former reporter for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and the Los Angeles Times, covered financial and economic issues for more than 15 years; then he switched professions and later sold stocks and bonds for a regional securities firm on the New Jersey Shore.Big Numbers, his first published novel, is based on his experiences as a retail broker, sales manager, and financial executive.Here Getze shares some ideas about the casting for a film adaptation of Big Numbers:I can't remember who I had in mind as Austin Carr twenty years ago when I started Big Numbers. But I rewrote A

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