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Good Bad Flicks: Terror at Red Wolf Inn (2014)
Eat up !
This film starts with pretty redheaded Emily (Linda Gillen) at university. She has no money and no prospects. She opens a mysterious letter. She has won a free trip to stay at a rustic seaside resort, the Red Wolf Inn.
This film is a campy horror movie. Emily meets Baby John Smith (John Neilson). The creepy old couple who run the resort have a terrible secret. At the banquet they serve a special recipe. Emily goes to the basement and finds a dead body. She tries to use the phone but the telephone is disconnected. She is desperately trying to leave. She commandeers a boat, goes to the house next door, but is captured by the old couple. Will she eat human flesh? Will they cook and eat her? Will Baby John help her escape? It is campy.
Where Birds Don't Fly (2017)
Dearly Beloved...
This is a contemplative film about the process of chasing a serial killer. The cops did not seem hardened except the experienced ones. Two of were downright paranoid, waving a gun around their homes.
The serial killers were typecast. One said absolutely nothing and the other blathered on about evil.
My problem with the plot is that the killers changed MO (modus operandi), first killing somebody with an extension cord.
Next he used a Hammer. Third he dunked a little boy in a vat of Clorox..
He attacked the retired cop with a Hammer. He tied up the cop's grandson with an extension cord. Then he found a large stone inside the house (sic) and was caught and arrested while hefting it.
The second psychokiller's maniacal laughter was cartoonish.
The part I liked was that at each crime scene, it took on a religious tone. The lights, the yellow tape, everyone serious, a body laid out at the center of the service. And the music.
The Caller (2008)
This film is too subtle for Star Wars fans
Elliot Gould, whom I usually detest for his New York sarcasm, actually played this role quite well.
The film is partially in French which will irritate the ordinary American. I speak French. This should be taken as a European film.
Here Gould is a private detective and a birder. (I confess to my having observed 367 different species).
The detective is hired to tail a crooked business executive. The other business executives who got burned badly by the crook when to have him assassinated. The crook says goodbye to his wife.
The tension is subtle but it builds. Gould meets with the crook's mistress. She recounts her history with the crook. The crook tells a girl he met in the park that Gould hid him from the Nazis in France. Now Gould does not recognize him.
Do the assassins complete their task ? Watch the film.
Harvest Lake (2016)
Horror without anything Horrific
A group of friends intend to spend time at the lake to celebrate a birthday. There is a couple. One gay guy. A tattooed lady. And a stranger with drugs who was invited to join them.
The first alien we see is a tree trunk with a large eye. Next we see the girl try to eat foam that was coming out of a kind of fungus in the forest. Her behavior was more strange than the alien's behavior.
There was an orgy scene, not in a nice cofy bed, but out among the poisin ivy, ticks and mosquitoes. Implausible.
The gay fellow was converted against his will bu other members of the group. He was forced to drink white sap from an extraterrestrisl fungus.
The final silly scene was an underwater orgy scene. Smearing tar on themselves. Writhing around the tattooed lady. If there was a point to this mish mash if a film, it is the dangers of peer pressure. Yet nothing in the film was horrific. Boo !!
Contracted (2013)
Samantha, go to the ER !
This film was interesting to me because of my abiding interest in medicine. The first symptoms Samantha displayed were headaches and auditory distortions. She was unable to reach out for help, because of work stress, girl troubles, nagging mom and flower competition.
Next came massive vaginal bleeding, which would have scared anyone. Next throwing up blood. Ebola has these unexplained bleeding symptoms.
This bleeding to me would have been an open invitation to the Emergency Room. There, they could perform many more tests than her doctor could at her primary physician's office. Even the puzzled doctor did not then point her to the Emergency Room.
Her right turned bloody and gross. It looked like her left eye had severe esotropia. There were veins visible in her stomach. There was a vaginal rash., unseen because of camera angle. Another rash developed on her left lower lip.
Samantha's personal behavior became strange. She kept hiding her symptoms, instead of going to the hospital. Working in a restaurant seemed very irresponsible. False pride is a serious problem. She clashed with everyone she met. She had friends but each one nagged her or harped on superfluous things.
The main character could not accept rejection, so she killed the blonde. She had explosive anger, so she killed the gossip. Riley actually wanted to copulate with this walking corpse. This part of the film went for me from bad to worse.
Samantha crashed her car, NOT headed to the hospital, got out of the car and starts swinging at other people. Then when police do not tase her, to nullify the threat, Samantha attacked her own mom.
This film is a study in the quick disintegration of the main character. Moral collapse. Familial alienation. Physical deterioration. Social isolation. Spiritual emptiness. And except for asking for help from her personal doctor, Samantha resisted all attempts to help.
White Sky (2021)
Bait and Switch
This film started to be an alien invasion film. Two white girls go camping with one black guy, however implausibly. Suddenly they say a large, alien spaceship hovering over the city. I am ready for a great film.
Then zombies start coming out of the forest. Snore. The implication, of course is that the alien invasion has turned some people into zombies. Now why that would be so, we would have to ask the writer Philip Daay.
These zombies run at you, which avoids the poignant sense that zombies are erstwhile people.
I skipped the head. I read my phone. I snacked on cheese and crackers. The film never got better.
The Chamber (2016)
Anomaly after Anomaly
The Norwegian whose sub was used as a cover was not aware that explosive charges had been stowed on the ship.
The Norwegian captain caused trouble before they found the target, so they tied him up. He was untied and then caused trouble after they found the target.
They mentioned that this sea next to N Korea was 300 meters deep and the search for their target would be difficult, yet they found it in fewer than three minutes.
The military chaps were said to be rough and ready Seals, but these were the most emotionally unbalanced Seals in existence.
The skinny leader "Red" because of a twist in the story was made to kill a man three times her size, which was implausible.
World War Z (2013)
Okay Film
Brad Pitt is Brad Pitt. He does not act in films, he just stands where the director says to stand and says what they tell him to say. His personality has no quirks. That works in an action film.
If you did not watch the trailer, the zombies run in this one. Forget "the Walking Dead", this film's zombies are more like those in "28 Days Later".
It is a big budget film, so plenty of planes, boats and buses all fill quickly with zombies. He flew to Israel to speak with a scientist. Why didn't he just telephone?
You know Pitt will survive. What might have helped this film, besides lengthening the absurd 12 second infection to turn into one rate, would have been the addition of humor. Every absurd scene in this film is played completely serious. And what makes a zombie film poignant is that these monsters used to be human people. Someone you loved, you now must kill. We see none of that in Pitt's film.
Just slaughter them all is the sentiment in this film. Well, Brad. The feeling is mutual.
Stash (2007)
Swing and a Miss
This film is a low budget affair. Two drug addicts try to steal drugs from a sex crazed drug dealer named Bud. On threat of death, they are required to procure three females in three days. They abduct a stranded motorist. They give her to Bud. Then they are arrested for possession.
Bud is seen burning corpses. The parents of the girl pine for her return. The cops gain a confession out of one of them. Bud rapes a girl with his underwear on.
What I liked : The camera zooms in on the faces. This added to the immediacy of what was happening.
This film was a better than average representation of poor white Kentucky.
Karen Boles was good looking and deeply sympathic
What I didn't : The. Character of Bud was pointlessly overblown. Instead of a splashy fat guy, more sinister would have been a thin quiet psychopath, who would hardly say anything. So when the drug addicts obeyed his commands, it would seem to come from more control.
Kentucky is famous for world class music, but these creeps listened to hip hop.
Dead Woman's Hollow (2013)
Disappointing
The murder of one hiker and the attempted murder of the other ought to have lended a seriousness to this project. Yet the Sheriff is dismissive, sarcastic and poorly acted. At the beginning of the film it is announced that this was based on real events. I still would have cut the film differently.
This movie could have been a murder mystery or a search for the killer. Instead we are served a nasty scene of girls getting shot and bleeding.
Films are a series of images. Music is written with notes and rests. The best poetry is implied, never stated directly. "Dead Woman's Hollow" puts a nude female on a railroad track as one end of the film and the dishonestly hunchy sheriff threatening a black man at the other end.
I wish the hikers had not been attacked. I wish I had not watched this unattractive movie.
The River Murders (2011)
Horsewhip the Director
The "River Murders" starred Ray Liotta, as a detective, who had had one night stands with several women. He was married to the beautiful Gisela Fraga, who confessed during the film to her having slept with hundreds of men. This may seem like peripheral points at best , but Liotta's sexual dalliances became the actual pretext for the murders.
The murderer Michael Rodick was an oxymoronic scripture-quoting Catholic priest. We learned he was the killer early in the film. This antagonist killed about 12 women and we're supposed to believe he killed these particular women because they had had an abortion. Catholics and abortion. Hmmm. Both Biden and Pelosi support killing the unborn and they are Catholics. Yet in this film, this Catholic priest freaks out about unborn babies being killed therefore he murders women. I am not religious, so this referential logic confused me.
Christian Slater was wasted in the role of an FBI agent. Ving Rhames played Liotta's supervisor.
In the film Liotta was told to go home from work because he knew the victims personally. From home Liotta started solving the murders.
The last woman found dead in a trunk was Liotta's coworker Sarah Ann Schultz made up to look dead. But I thought when I saw her it was Gisela Fraga in the trunk. Maybe his wife and his coworker ought to have looked radically different, since this was the central conceit of the film.
This whole project seemed to be tossed together. I would have cut the film in places to create a faster paced movie. The identity of the killer was pointlessly revealed in the middle of the film. Liotta looked fat. Slater was wasted. Horsewhip the director.
The Surgeon (2022)
The Surgeon
Suzie is a performance artist. She inherited a house from her grandmother. Childhood trauma and she became a very submissive personality type. Jamie is the alcoholic handyman who comes to love Suzie. Isobel is the mysterious tenant, who steals eggs and calls herself the surgeon. She kills elderly people and calls it art.
Plot twists. This film is a mix of alcoholism, sexual perversion, incest, murder and performance art.
Six out of Ten Stars.
2:22 (2017)
This premise was first worked up...
The premise of having a person's life repeat itself, was first worked up by Chris Carter in the X Files. Mulder's waterbed leaks every morning. He walks to a bank. He bumps into the bank robber's girlfriend. As he enters the bank Scully is shot by the bank robber.
I wonder did the director Paul Currie ever watch the X Files. Maybe he did not care that this had already been done as a segment of a television program.
The X Files treated it with humor and a mission, to save Scully. This movie made it a study of the mental processes of the main character. Meuh.