[7] If ever there was something ripe for a remake, I think Stephen King’s It would be near the top of my list. The original 1990 TV mini-series is good, but it begins to fall apart in its second half, partly for budgetary reasons. The feature-film is being remade in two parts, so we’ll have to wait a year to see if ‘Chapter Two’ improves …
[5] Vincent Price headlines as a millionairre who offers $10,000 to five people if they’ll spend the night with him and his wife in their haunted hilltop mansion. The house is the site of countless murders and is supposed to be haunted by ghosts. But is it the paranormal the guests should be afriad of? Or is it Price and his wife, who seem to …
[6] Christopher Lee dons the fangs again for this sequel to Hammer’s original Horror of Dracula, but he hated his dialogue so much that he refused to say any lines. Even though he’s mute and his screen time is limited, a little Lee goes a long way. His performance is interesting and unusual, a more feral depiction than any of his other Dracula outings. Unfortunately, …
[6] Meteorites strike a small Australian fishing village and begin turning the citizens into zombies. It may not sound all that fresh or original, but Undead is a bit more than it seems. Twin Australian brothers Michael and Peter Spierig (Daybreakers) continue the low-budget horror legacies of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson in their first feature film, Undead. Their humor and inventiveness are very much …
[8] Stranded in the desert on their way to California, a family is attacked by savage cannibals in Wes Craven’s brutal, low-budget horror flick, The Hills Have Eyes. I love the setting and tone of the film. The isolation of the desert location and the darkness that surrounds the family’s wrecked camper create a palpable atmosphere of dread and terror that’s hard to shake, especially …
[7] Two high school buddies discover a girl chained to a table in an abandoned mental hospital. At first she appears dead, but she’s actually one of the “living” dead. And she’s all theirs… Yes, just when you thought zombies had been completely used up as cinematic metaphors, along comes Deadgirl, a provocative and deeply disturbing exploration of the slippery slope between male sexual impulse …
[7] The residents of a small California town are slowly being replaced by otherworldly “pod people” and it’s up to Kevin McCarthy and Carolyn Jones to warn the rest of the world about the invasion. This original film version is a modestly-budgeted but effective sci-fi/horror flick. It’s emblematic of the ’50s for its allegorical use of the Red Scare, but it also suffers from some …
[2] John Carpenter has given us a handful of gems over the years, but Ghosts of Mars is not one of them. The movie’s too exotic for its own good. It starts with some quick but tedious exposition, then plops us off in a confusing, alienating environment with little to latch onto. The story has something to do with ghosts and a bunch of leftover …
[7] This vampire flick from the Spierig brothers (Undead) is good old-fashioned B-movie fun. The concept of a world full of vampires on the brink of a blood shortage is interesting, even if the plot goes silly at times. I liked Ethan Hawke as the vampire in charge of finding a blood substitute (just when I was pretty sure I’d never like Ethan Hawke again). …
[6] Peter Cushing returns for Hammer’s first sequel to their highly successful Curse of Frankenstein. Cushing’s mad doctor escapes the guillotine and sets up camp in a new town, where he transplants the brain of his deformed assistant into a reanimated corpse. For campy horror fun, Revenge of Frankenstein begins and ends well, but the middle portion is pretty unremarkable — an uninspired rehash of …
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