Movie Review: Chain Letter

Chain Letter starts out extremely promising, but when I find myself not wanting to spoil the OPENING, that's when I know something went terribly wrong along the way. This story takes the old chain letter urban legend and gives it a nasty twist. If you don't pass the email chain letter to five others, you'll die within 24 hours. If you delete the chain letter, you die almost instantly! To boot, you got killed by some guy with a burned face using CHAINS, get it? Chain letter? Ugh!

Now, there are some pretty cool kill scenes in this movie, but this is one of those times when there's a ton of promise that gets wasted. This could have been a really good slasher film. Instead, we get a convoluted story, a group of 35-year old "teens" (none of which you really wind up liking), a ton of techno-terrorism theories and way too little of Brad Douriff. I mean, you have Brad Douriff in your movie, man, USE HIM, he's awesome!! I wonder who's brilliant idea it was to have the computer say "You've got chain letter email!"? Like the computer knows the difference between chain letters and regular email!

On a more positive note, I really liked the way the film was shot. The camera work and cinematography were pretty impressive and the look and sound design of the movie are well represented on blu ray. It's one of the more sparse blu ray discs I've ever seen as all it contains is the movie and the trailer, no special features to be found anywhere.

Like I said, this movie started out with a bang. The opening scene was expertly shot and really set a stage for the movie that it ultimately failed to live up to. At the end of the day, not much was revealed, too many questions were left unanswered and it wasn't good enough for me to care about finding out the answers should Chain Letter 2: The Missing Link (made up title) be made.

Chain Letter gets *1/2 out of *****. The one and a half stars go to Brad Douriff because he's AWESOME!!

Check out the trailer for Chain Letter below

DVD Review: Bikini Bloodbath Christmas

We've seen Bikini Bloodbath, Bikini Bloodbath Carwash and now, Thomas Edward Seymour and Jonathan Gorman bring us Bikini Bloodbath Christmas! This film continues the tradition founded in the first two to bring copious amounts of blood and boobies, but unlike the first two, this film has my hero -- Lloyd Kaufman -- in a hilarious cameo. It also features one of my other favorites, Debbie Rochon (although in a much less visible role than the first two features), so needless to say I would have watched anyway.

But what I loved the most about this film was the tour de force acting of one Mr. Dick Boland. Boland is a hilarious actor and he not only shows it here, but in Seymour's previous film, London Betty, as well. Also putting in a brilliantly funny job is Phil Hall, who plays a smarmy character named Gina Davis. I honestly don't know how this film got made because with those two guys acting like they do, I find it hard not to laugh just listening to how they talk.

Like the first two in the series, Bikini Bloodbath Christmas is not for the faint of heart, nor the overly religious, as it has a certain religious figure doing something nobody would ever imagine him doing. But that's how the minds of these guys work, and I for one, wouldn't have it any other way. I mean, how can a movie featuring an up-close visual of explosive diarrhea be bad?

While I did miss Debbie Rochon's lesbian Miss Johnson character, Phil Hall and Dick Boland made this movie irrevocably memorable for me. I give Bikini Bloodbath Christmas **** out of *****.

Check out the trailer below!



Or buy the DVD!!