My reviews of movies, books, music, games, and just about anything else I feel like reviewing, as well as news from the Horror and Fantasy world. I can be reached by E-mail at: daveshorrorreviews@hotmail.com
The name Rudyard Kipling has long been connected to a little jungle boy, dancing apes and a big blue bear, but for those who haven't delved into this writings beyond Jungle Book, they might be surprised to discover that old Rudy had a warped mind that he used to write several fantastic horror stories over the course of his life. One of his most popular was Mark of the Beast, and finally, Bloodbath Pictures and Hale Manor bring this tale to life.
Starring Debbie Rochon, Dick Boland, Ellen Muth and a host of Bloodbath regulars, like Phil Hall, Sheri Lynn, Matt Ford and Margaret Rose Champagne, Mark of the Beast is a departure from Bloodbath's previous films as it is played largely straight. The movie follows two people (Rochon and Boland) as they try to deal with saving a friend (Hall) who after defacing a religious shrine becomes cursed by the silver leper who lives in the forest that surrounds their homes. Their fight to survive becomes a life and death struggle for all involved, including the faceless silver leper, and the lengths at which they go to save their friend will not be without its repercussions.
With fantastic creature design and an outstanding, bombastic score, Rudyard Kipling's Mark of the Beast is Bloodbath's most inspired effort to date. Adapted for the screen by Thomas Edward Seymour (who also directed with Jonathan Gorman) and Sheri Lynn, Mark of the Beast effectively combines 70s-style horror with deep-running religious, political and moral themes -- and hey, it has Debbie Rochon in it!
While I'll always love Bloodbath's "Bikini Bloodbath" movies, I am glad to see that the troupe is spreading its wings and embracing tougher, more serious films. Seymour and the rest have a ton of talent to share with us and each film represents significant growth in their film making process, and Mark of the Beast is no different. I give Mark of the Beast****1/2 out of *****.
Check out the trailer for Rudyard Kipling's Mark of the Beast below:
With the Oscars just a few days away, I have to say that I am very disappointed with this year's top movie considerations. I mean, Moneyball...really? No movie starring Jonah Hill should EVER be in consideration for a top film, let alone him get a nomination. Talk about Hollywood politics! Anyway, since the Academy is a bunch of old blowhard fools with a penchant for stagnant movies, I figured I'd introduce you to THE TRUE BEST FILM of 2011 - I Saw The Devil. This movie is so good, it makes every American-made film from the past year look like crap.
I Saw The Devil gets inside your head, burrows deep into your guts and guess what? It lives there for a long time after you've seen it. You'll find yourself thinking about this movie over and over again. You'll have long conversations with your friends about how far someone would go for revenge, whether revenge makes a difference and who's really the one affected by it all.
Absolutely everything about I Saw The Devil is perfect. Watch it, feel it, experience it and I think you'll agree that it blows away any American-made film of the last five years. I highly recommend I Saw The Devil and give it ***** out of *****!
Hey guys, check out my review of the new book by Christine Dougherty, The Devil Stood Up, over at my book review site Words From The Vein. CLICK HERE!!
ARGGGHHH!!! Will somebody tell me right now just how this movie made it into theaters?! After seeing the trailer for Creature, I thought, OK, might be a little cheesy but it could be fun. Holy hell, I couldn't have been more wrong!
Terror has teeth?! TERROR HAS TEETH?! ARGGGHHHH! It took so long to see these so-called teeth I stopped caring by the time I did! This movie is an hour and a half of pure crapola. The monster is THE worst thing I've ever seen and the characters just can't die quickly enough for my tastes. Man, everything about this movie sucked, with the exception of Sid Haig, of course. In fact, the three hillbillies, of which Haig is one, are the ONLY things about this move that are half-decent. The twenty-something soon-to-be victims are so cardboard it's ridiculous.
This movie should have been titled, "Creature... That Slowly Stands from a Squat." Because that's ALL this creature does! Every time they show him, he's slowly rising from a squat. Sometimes he has some kind of turtle shell or something on top of him and sometimes he doesn't. What, does he carry that thing around like a cape or something? And that's not even the worst of it. When the creature growls or makes one of its other imposing noises, it does so without moving its mouth! Instead of killing swamp people, this mo-fo could have had a great career as a ventriloquist.
Creature is so bad, it shouldn't even be considered for one of Syfy's Saturday Night movies! In fact, this thing makes some of Syfy's offerings look like freaking Lord of the Rings! It doesn't even fit in the "it's so bad it's good" category. I'm telling you, I haven't been this pissed off after seeing a movie in ages. What a terrible waste of time this movie is. If you have a hankering to see an old back-Bayou killer movie, try Hatchet, or even Venom, as they are far superior to this swampy turd (and that's saying something!).
I give Creature a big fat alligator egg, 0 out of *****.
If there's one thing I can't get enough of, it's monster movies, but more in particular, Asian monster movies. In recent years, Korean filmmakers have reintroduced us to the beauty of mutant monster movies, something that we here in the U.S. haven't produced successfully since the 50s and 60s. These movies are supposed to be light on scares and big on fun. Case in point, Chawz!
The story follows a young police officer from Seoul who gets transferred to a small rural community, much to his chagrin. After his arrival, the body parts start piling up and the previously peaceful village has now become a haven for death and dismemberment conducted by a renegade mutant boar with a voracious appetite -- for human flesh! Eventually a world-famous hunter is called in, and along with the crazy police force, they set out to kill the beast. The only bad thing is they're completely unprepared for the job.
Written and directed by Shin Jung-Won, Chawz knows not to take itself too seriously and that's a good thing. All throughout the movie, there are laugh-out-loud moments and Korean cinema's trademark crazy characters, like the bumbling police force, the boastful hunter and the wacky female villager, that balance out the film perfectly. And, as you can see in the pic below, the cannibalistic boar doesn't look too bad either.
Is Chawz perfect? No. But it is funny, exciting and a lot of fun to watch. And while it is a monster movie, the allure of Chawz has more to do with the human characters rather than the spectacle of the beast, which also kicks ass by the way. I give Chawz**** out of *****.
Being a lover of director Stevan Mena's Malevolence, I was excited to see his latest film, Bereavement. This film is actually a prequel to Malevolence, which came out back in 2004, which is quite a lengthy span between the films, hence the fact that very little is mentioned about the first film in this one's promotions. While Bereavement works as a stand alone slasher movie for those unfamiliar with Malevolence, having seen it does add to the world in which this one takes place and we get to see how the killer in Malevolence becomes so, well, malevolent.
Bereavement is a very slow burn of a movie and for me, it never really caught fire. It does have plenty of things going for it, however. For starters, the movie has stunning cinematography and aptly creepy music which adds to the thick, heavy atmosphere that permeates the movie. This is a serious horror movie in which the consequences are very real. There are no stupid jokes here to help lighten the mood, folks, this is old school torture horror. There's even violence to children in this film, it's so doggone dark. But, like I said, the consequences are real and the violence is no joke.
My biggest problem with Bereavement is that I just didn't care for any of the characters. Michael Biehn and his entire family just didn't do it for me. I don't know why, but that's the truth of it. So, when things turn from bad to worse, I didn't find myself caring much. I was thinking, "Man, this is a really long movie!"
So, that said, Bereavement is not a completely bad movie, just like it is not a really good movie. It has its good points and its bad. In fact, it's the most middle-of-the-road movie I've seen in a long time. In the end, I give Bereavement**1/2 out of *****.
Let's start this review off by taking a look at the quote offered on Spiderhole's promo, "If you liked Hostel and Saw, you'll like Spiderhole." Oh those crazy editors, it's supposed to read, "If you like Hostel and Saw's grimy environments, then you MIGHT like Spiderhole."
Spiderhole is about four Brit thirty-something teenagers who are looking for a nice cozy and abandoned place to call home for a while. In other words, they're squatters. They happen upon this one place that seemingly looks perfect, but alas, is anything but. One by one, they're targeted and set upon by some behind-the-scenes madman.
So, these clowns, oh, I mean kids, start looking around the place that's going to be home. For some reason the greasy-haired leader doesn't want to search the place top to bottom, he says he scoped out the joint previously. Then, somebody opens a cabinet and blood-covered clothes and shoes fall out. Queue the "everybody freakout, we gotta get outta here, the leader convinces everybody to chill out and go to sleep" scene. Yeah, I mean, what's so bad about some blood covered clothing, right? Goodnight, see you in the morning. From this point on, Spiderhole starts slipping down the spiderhole.
As they wake up, they discover that somebody barred the door and now, they're trapped inside the building. Nevermind that when the one kid hits a window filled up with bricks that the bricks totally MOVE; he gives up and kicks the wall. Nevermind one girl gets a massive cut on her leg and you have no idea how or when she got it except when she tells the others she got it when looking in some other room she somehow explored while she never left our sight. Then, there's a horrible sequence that looks like segments of film got put together in the wrong sequence during editing. You're literally left asking, "is the killer in front of her or not? No, wait, now she's in a chair, no, now she's removing balusters, wait, wasn't the killer right in front of her a minute ago?"
Spiderhole is a film that had tremendous promise if it was done right, but sadly, it falls flat on its face. The trailer for this thing makes it look awesome, but sadly, it sucks big time. I hope this thing puts the final nail in the sadistic surgeon coffin bit, because it's starting to reek.
Spiderhole only gets * out of *****. Check out the preview below, but don't get caught in its web, this movie is pretty, pretty bad.
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