Disturbing Behavior (1998)

Disturbing Behavior (1998)

[7]

After suffering the suicide of his older brother, Steve (James Marsden) and his family relocate to Cradle Bay, where some of the kids at school aren’t quite themselves these days. With the help of new-found friends Rachel (Katie Holmes) and Gavin (Nick Stahl), Steve discovers that a local doctor, Caldicott (Bruce Greenwood), is conspiring with parents to lobotomize their teens in order to create “good boys and girls”, all of whom become members of the school’s Blue Ribbon elitist clique. Caldicott’s experiments stymie the Blue Ribbons’ sexual impulses and mold them into academic achievers that spend a great deal of time trying to recruit others to “the program”. Unfortunately, the experiments don’t always work.  As someone comments in the film, “Whenever one of these kids gets a hard-on, they want to beat someone over the head with it.”  But this doesn’t stop Caldicott or the town’s parents from expanding Blue Ribbon membership.  When Steve’s parents enter him in Caldicott’s program, he plans a desperate escape, not just from Cradle Bay, but from school, his parents, and the past — the archetypal plight of just about every teenager that ever lived.

The Mothman Prophecies (2002)

The Mothman Prophecies (2002)

[5] After the mysterious death of his wife sends him on a hunt for clues, a journalist ends up in a small West Virginia town where a series of strange events and sightings of a shadowy, supernatural character portend an…
Willard (2003)

Willard (2003)

[8]

In this remake of a 1971 film, Crispin Glover (Back to the Future, River’s Edge) stars as the title character, a socially misfit momma’s boy with a telepathic connection to the colony of rats collecting in his basement. With his bed-ridden mother and condescending boss constantly picking at his self-esteem, it’s just a matter of time before Willard snaps and sends his army of furry friends to do his bidding. But the rats are a bit like the genie out of his bottle, which complicates this straight-forward little story quite nicely. Willard sews discord into his rat army by favoring the adorable white rat, Socrates, over the very large and envious Ben. So it’s a love/hate relationship between Willard and the rats, and though they may leap at the opportunity to murder for their master, they may also end up being his undoing.

American Mary (2012)

American Mary (2012)

[6]

Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps) puts in a solid performance as a student surgeon whose life takes a serendipitous turn into the underground world of extreme body modification in Jen and Sylvia Soska’s American Mary. After one odd surgery procures her some much-needed cash, her name is quickly bandied about the message boards of people who are into things like… horns, tails, split tongues, appendage swaps… you name it, really. One character in the film is trying to look as close to a living Barbie doll as possible, and asks Isabelle’s character to surgically remove her nipples and genitalia (as much as possible). Another is trying to look and sound like Betty Boop. What’s most interesting about American Mary is that it sheds light on a real-life subculture that most people would find interesting and perhaps a little frightening. But the Soska Sisters (who wrote and directed the feature together) paint their subjects in a flattering, sympathetic light. That’s not to say the Soskas don’t take advantage of the sensational potential here — they just do it with respect.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

[6] As far as early '80s made-for-TV movies, you could do a lot worse than Dark Night of the Scarecrow. Larry Drake (Dr. Giggles, Darkman) plays as mentally-challenged man who is murdered by vigilantes after being falsely accused of assaulting…
The Collector (2009)

The Collector (2009)

[3] A man decides to rob the home of a client, unaware that a psycho-killer has already laid claim to the family and has booby-trapped their entire house. If you'd never ever seen a home invasion or torture porn flick,…
The Kindred (1987)

The Kindred (1987)

[4] Somehow, Oscar-winners Rod Steiger (In the Heat of the Night) and Kim Hunter (A Streetcar Named Desire) got swindled into starring in this sub-par creature feature about a scientist (Hunter) who performs Frankenstein-like genetic experiments in her basement. On…
Forbidden World (1982)

Forbidden World (1982)

[5]

Somehow, Roger Corman’s rip-offs tend to be the best around. This one takes aim at Alien, centering around a team of scientists who accidentally breed a genetic mutant that escapes and starts eating them, all one by one. The dialogue is atrocious in a ‘so bad, it’s good’ kinda way and the special effects are hit-and-miss, but Tim Suhrstedt’s cinematography is far better than usual for B-movie’s of this sort. Since Corman’s involved, you also get a healthy dose of extraneous sex and boobage. Director Allan Holzman inter-cuts one of the sex scenes with a kill sequence to interesting effect, and you have to love it when dull exposition is delivered by two female scientists while they sponge-bathe each other in the shower.

The Bay (2012)

The Bay (2012)

[4] Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Good Morning Vietnam) slums it with this found footage horror flick about a small Maryland community that gets infected by mutant parasites. The core concept is a solid one, building off the real-life…
Halloween II (2009)

Halloween II (2009)

[2]

When Rob Zombie re-booted Halloween in 2007, trading Michael Myers’ boogeyman mystique for a more pointed psychological explanation for his behavior, I didn’t hate it. While I much prefer not to see the man behind the mask or to understand his motivations, I thought Zombie’s remake was a somewhat interesting experiment. But his version of Halloween II is a whole different and far worse endeavor.