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eileenmchenry
Reviews
Horror High (1973)
I really liked this w/o respecting it in the least
Considering the budget, I have to say this movie really succeeded. It had some great seat-jumper moments far above what I hoped to see in a film of this caliber. The chemistry test scene was utterly delicious. The acting was really very good -- you could tell everyone was serious about making this movie even though they really had no business doing that. The pace was good, the story was sound, the makeups and costumes were good (especially with what had to be a buck-ninety-eight effects bankroll), most of the camera work and stuff was pretty good. And so it actually worked! Unexpected in a movie that dares to take "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" into the recess yard.
Dark Water (2005)
Meh -- it was OK, I guess
This was a decent horror picture, but it could have gone so much farther, you know? It reminded me so much of "The Ring" and "The Grudge" that I was not overly surprised by anything that happened. Don't get me wrong -- damp ghosts are the best kind in my opinion. The setting and the atmosphere were perfect. Sheesh, what a horrible place. But I felt I was seeing a lot of scare potential go to waste. I wanted to see much bigger things happen in the waterlogged apartment, for one thing. Most in-your-face ghostage. I wanted to see certain parties get it, but good, and I was disappointed. I wanted to see a little tiny glimmer of beauty or good cheer SOMEWHERE in this movie to break up the depressing atmosphere and remind us that not everything in the world looked like Roosevelt Island.
The Believers (1987)
Not half bad, really
This is a rather slick, big-budget horror picture that is kind of low on the horror, but nice if you want some "suspense lite" of an evening. Good story progression, boss visuals, nice special effects, good production values. There was a certain lack of dramatic tension that brought the whole thing down. The story would have been more convincing if Martin Sheen had acted, you know, a little bereaved in the wake of his wife's death. Ditto his son. Now, about that kid. This is one of the most egregious examples of the Odious Child role ever -- so much so that I really suspect him of having been the most threatening person in the story. He was a more convincingly evil character than Malik Bowen's Santeria priest -- oh, sure, the priest's eyes change color when he's feeling the Spirit, but everywhere the kid goes with his tribal fetish doll, someone dies horribly. COINCIDENCE?
The Maze (1953)
Fine Fifties Fear
I remember this film of old. It's a great, chilling, atmospheric horror picture about a man who moves into a Scottish castle, only to discover that there are strange goings-on in the corridors at night. And there are even stranger events taking place out back, in Hollywood's most familiar hedge maze. Yes, this is the maze you've seen in every feature-length film that ever involved a topiary puzzle, up to and including "The Shining." But the punchline to this story is about the last thing you would guess. I certainly didn't see it coming. This is a fine example of how good and convincing a movie can be even when the premise is utterly loopy, bordering on laughable. I'd recommend it to anyone.
The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961)
Here's your source for the slowest chase scenes in moviedom!
This story is all about Cold War paranoia, the downside of visiting a missile test range on family vacation, and what happens to defecting Soviet scientists when they are exposed to a tad too much radioactivity. EVERYTHING in this story happens in slow motion, except for a couple of refreshing shots of a very Fifties husband and father taking one bullet after another, but not slowing down, while fleeing on foot across the desert. The rest of the story goes on in slo-mo: Tor Johnson moving at a crippled snail's pace across the burning chaparral, with that characteristic out-of-breath expression on his face. Car chases conducted at walking speed. Even the air chase seems incredibly slow -- no matter how long they are in the air, the Desert Ranger is still looking out his window at the same small stretch of road. But the many funny moments, not to mention Johnson's touching reconciliation with Mother Nature in the final scene, make this one worth watching.
Mermaid Chronicles Part 1: She Creature (2001)
this is the good stuff
I don't know what I was expecting when I rented this movie, but it turned out to be delightful. It has a comforting, familiar "Tales From The Darkside" feel to it, involving a look into a corner of the world (carnival life) that a lot of us will never get to see, plus a queasy ethical conflict and a pretty decent level of human drama. All this and mermaids, too. The mermaid herself was stunning -- not at all fake-looking, with some of the most beautiful effects I've seen in ages. The chemistry between Sewell and Gugino was really good, and the story moved right along at all times. Not a single character fell flat. My only regret is that we didn't get to see more of the mermaid's home. Dare I hope for a sequel? After one viewing I ran right out and bought this one.
Mindhunters (2004)
One of the dumbest movies we'll see this year!
Rarely have I given such a bad rating to a movie, even in the case of a big-budget craptacular like this one. The plot was derivative and 100% predictable: I hoped all along that they would do something I hadn't seen in a movie before, but it was not to be. The cast was annoying -- a bunch of the usual twentysomething micro-stars except for Val Kilmer and LL Cool J, both of whom were underused. The premise was unbelievable, putting a bunch of supposed FBI trainees who didn't want to have to learn any icky police work onto an island for a weekend to profile a phony serial-killer crime scene -- apparently anyone who catches the killer gets to graduate. Apparently nobody writing the script knew that profilers can't and don't catch serial killers. Apparently they also didn't know that people this psychologically unbalanced wouldn't pass the entrance requirements for Quantico. The script made me want to claw my eyes out of my head -- it's full of lines you've heard in every previous suspense thriller ever made, like "He's using our weaknesses against us!" and "Don't you see -- that's just what he WANTS us to do, you fool!" The sets were an amalgam of "Saw," "Se7en" and several other familiar tiles. I could not wait for the movie to end. Save yourself the five bucks. I wish I had.
What Is It? (2005)
A roller-coaster ride for the brain...
This is a movie we will all be talking about for a long time. It's full of disturbing images, dialogue that is very hard to make out in spots, and narrative tangents that make you, almost, forget what happened in the previous scenes. It all does gel together in the end, but you need to keep watching and be patient. I am so glad I did...Not many movies give me this much to think about. (These days, how many movies give you ANYTHING to think about?) A film that can make me simultaneously puzzled, grossed out, intrigued, offended, and delighted is worth seeing. I am still very glad the director was on hand to tell us what he was thinking about when he made this movie; otherwise I would still be guessing about it almost a month later. I really can't wait for the sequel.
Barn of the Blood Llama (1997)
Astoundingly bad, but I think they intended it this way...
This was one of those movies that was so bad it was hard to watch. At times, however, I caught a definite glimmer that the filmmakers were kidding us and knew exactly what they were doing. I have to say it kept me watching, just to see what was going to happen next. The usual young-misses-driving-through-a-small-town-in-Texas-find-trouble plot line went all wacka-wacka early in the picture, and it got us into the seamy underside of the business of llama farming. A farm called World O Wool outside Justiceburg, TX proves to be a den of incest, veterinary experiments gone terribly awry, unorthodox youth-enhancing treatments, interspecies romance, brain transplants, and the illegal detainment of bowlers, among other things. It all comes together in the end, believe it or not. I like this one without respecting it in any way.
House of the Damned (1996)
not worth even my time!
This movie is a clumsy mishmash of various ghost-story and suspense-thriller conventions, none of them fully realized and all of them rather irritating. The script was perfunctory. The acting, ditto. The scary FX were mostly laughable except for one exquisite seat-jumper moment that scared me even though I saw it coming a mile off. Now, explain to me someone why you would need ghosts, AND black magic, AND arcane ritual objects, AND Count Crapula CG boogeymen, AND psychic investigators, AND family curses, AND Irish superstitions, AND bowls of milk left out for the supernatural beings, AND possessed dollies, all in the same movie? With all that you would expect more than one good moment of horror, but this movie is lame, lame, lame.
Brigham City (2001)
Beautiful movie!
Brigham's sheriff -- a terribly sad, but extremely decent man -- is forced to admit that there is a serial killer in his small, friendly, pretty little town. He sets about looking for the killer from what appears to be a hopelessly blinkered perspective, refusing to believe that anyone but an "outsider" could be responsible. He gradually finds his way to the answer, and it hurts to watch. I could happily see a film by this director every day of the week. This was absolutely brilliantly done -- such a nice change from all the crash and bash of more typical overacted, overplotted, punctuated-by-explosions movies. Dutcher gives the lie to the idea that movie characters (especially the police) need to be wisecracking, high-octane, postmodern cardboard cutouts in order to solve a crime. It's a rare example, too, of a film filled with deeply religious people who are not simply a bunch of flakes.
Open Water (2003)
rough viewing
I saw this yesterday, and I still have not recovered from the low-grade seasickness and high-grade psychological horror of this film. It is almost too real to take. Two very average, bland people in dire need of a relaxing vacation end up in about the worst situation I can imagine. Why? Because of some guy they never met before who can't count to twenty. I found myself thinking over and over, "She must be so thirsty after puking like that, and where is she gonna get a glass of water, huh? Huh???" And, "When are these sharks going to stop circling like vultures and make a move? Are they getting a charge out of making these people suffer or what?" This was an incredibly long 76 minutes.
Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002)
What a terrible, terrible movie!
This was touted to me as the funniest ripoff of "Jaws" ever. This proved incorrect. I liked it OK, but I am not known for my discriminating taste in these matters, and even I would not pay to see it again. It's now clear why my local video outlets didn't even bother to stock the tape for rental. Normally I adore a bad movie involving killer fish, but this one leaned far too heavily on off-color humor and simply did not involve enough Megalodons. I must say that the giant killer sharks I did see were spectacular. For a change you got an idea of just how big the fish were and how much they could swallow without belching. But the actors were low-rent, the script was lame, the editing was choppy, the CGI looked even worse than usual for movies of this type, and they REALLY should have sprung for some professional stunt people. For some reason all the Mexicans in the movie had Russian last names in the credits. I thought those accents sounded funny.
Matango (1963)
Utterly delightful!
This is the finest film you are ever likely to see on the subject of giant, giggling mushrooms. An oddly-assorted group of pleasure boaters (including a banker, a mystery writer, a nightclub singer and a psychology professor) gets shipwrecked on an obscure Pacific island. There are battered hulls everywhere, no sign of survivors and just about nothing to eat on the island. A logbook left behind by persons unknown describe the study of the mushrooms found here, which have a deleterious effect ion the nerve fibers. But the mushrooms start to look better and better as the canned goods run out, even as petty human drama ruins the morale of the plucky castaways. There are some REALLY cool special effects of the mushrooms growing at terrifying speed in a heavy rain. The acting and story are good and the ending is a delight.
Ôdishon (1999)
Super disturbing!
This is one of the most disturbing, horrifying movies I've seen in years, and for a change this is also actually a very well-made film. A lonely widower sets up a phony movie audition to meet some nice girls, and one of the resumes catches his eye. He falls in love with the actress even before interviewing her, and they start dating in spite of the suspicions voiced by other people. His wife actually comes back from the dead to warn him that there is something wrong with the girl. We find out what, too, after a careful buildup of suspense -- she is a a tortured soul looking for some way to make sense of a violent, sickening childhood. The movie becomes a nested series of flashbacks and hallucinations(?) about her hideous life, culminating in a scene involving the phrase "Deeper, deeper, deeper!" and a length of cunningly-applied piano wire that will haunt you for a long time.
Gojira · Ebira · Mosura Nankai no daikettô (1966)
a delight!
This is one of my favorite Toho monster movies. The action makes sense, the rubber monsters are terrific and the Kenny factor is zero. It also has the Twins of Infant Island singing a duet and, at the very beginning, a boss dance marathon. I often regret the fact that we have never gotten to see Ebirah (the MAMMOTH LOBSTER! as one character calls him) from that day to this -- Toho could profitably have spent years developing a vision of the world's oceans filled with crawdads the size of aircraft carriers, but for some reason they never went ahead with it. The showdown (or is it a handball tournament?) between Godzilla and Ebirah is one of the finest action-comedy scenes ever. This movie also features a spectacular safecracking scene in which the bank robber jimmies a lock on what looks like the door to a bank vault, the plucky castaways nip inside -- and then nip outside even faster, saying, "It's a nuclear reactor!!!" I would recommend this film to anyone.
Marusa no onna (1987)
a swell feel-good movie!
This is one of my favorites of all time. It concerns the years-long quest of a tenacious Japanese Revenue Service assessor to uncover the misdeeds of a crooked businessman. The tax evader finds himself increasingly attracted to her brains and persistence, even as she gets closer to blowing his cover and getting him in hot water with the government. The viewer can also see just where this man is coming from, since the tax system in Japan is painted as any Republican's worst nightmare. This has the same director and central cast as the even more wonderful "Tampopo." The only problem I have with this film is the unbelievably annoying soundtrack; it's loud, piercing and doesn't leave my head until several days after I've seen the movie.
Helter Skelter (1976)
Meh, it was OK, but...
I think the filmmakers bit off more than they could chew in attempting to fit this immense, complicated story into the format of a TV movie. There was just so much going on here, and although they did a decent job of cramming all the important pieces of evidence in and tracing the progress of the trial, they left out 99% of the real horror and pain of the situation. In other words it was shrunk down into a standard courtroom drama, ignoring the most important part of the story. In the process, they end up giving far too much leering attention to the Manson Family, while the victims and survivors are almost dismissed. The main value of this movie is that it is likely to persuade you to read the book it was based on, which tells you much, much more of the real story, giving the victims the respect they deserve.
Kaosu (2000)
delicious
If you liked "The Lion In Winter," "Blood Simple" and "Memento," I can recommend this one highly. It's an incredibly contorted mystery story full of doubles-crosses and stabbings-in-the-back -- the kind of movie that leaves you so bollixed up that until almost the final frame, you are asking what's happened to whom and why, and if any of it is even real. The kidnapping and killing may or may not have happened, and the reasons gets less and less clear as time goes on. At the very end they pull it all together so you finally get what really happened -- WITHOUT resorting to having a character sit down and explain it to you. It may well be that the viewer understands more of what's going on than any of the characters in the story. My only complaint is that the pace is just a leetle slow for my taste -- it gave me a few hair-tearing moments of "Dear Cod, are they ever going to finally explain what's going on here?" I found it very satisfying, and was not sorry I stayed up late to see the end.
Possession (1981)
a delight
What a wonderful movie. I was startled to see that this one won an award at Cannes -- a piscatorial romance? A Sam Neill picture? ARE YOU SURE?? -- but once I saw it I understood why. On one level, it's about a guy who comes home from a long trip to find out his wife has had an affair. On another, it's about stepping over the line that separates the mundane world from the dimension of Lovecraftian horror. The visuals are gorgeous, with a terrific hall-of-mirrors quality to it -- everyone looks like everyone else, just enough to startle you and make you wonder what is going on here. The acting is very subtle and nuanced (especially considering the demented subject matter), and the end is weirdly satisfying. Until I saw this movie I never realized what a good actor Sam Neill is.
Psychomania (1973)
could be worse
This is the lamest possible biker movie, but it's also a blazing expose of the vile practices of wealthy, effete British frog-worshippers. It gives impressionable youngsters the lowdown on how you can come back from the dead by wishing really, really hard. It reveals all about the critical importance of never, never, never losing your lucky frog pendant. There are a few logical gaps in this story. They never do explain, for instance, why the apparent leader of the frog cult is also evidently working as the butler for one of his own minions. Or why, after you come back from the dead, you can drive your motorcycle thru a brick wall without damaging it. Or what the deal was with the magic Buddy Holly horn-rimmed glasses in the empty room. But I liked it anyway. I never told you I had taste.
Visitors (2003)
pretty darn good
I liked this one. It's a phantasmal little movie about a woman sailing alone around the world, becalmed in the Indian Ocean when she's only a few days' sail from the end of her trip. She starts to see all kinds of strange and troubling things on board her yacht, including the ghost of her mother, pirates that appear and disappear, and a Maori tribesman in traditional native costume. The movie offers three possible explanations for why this is happening: A) she's been alone too long and is going bazongas, B) she's really seeing ghosts, and C) the magic crabs hitching a ride on the boat's hull are creating the whole situation. I like the crab theory myself, but the movie leaves the question tantalizingly unresolved.
Johnny Got His Gun (1971)
superb psychological horror
Sum this one up by calling it "Diary Of A Basket Case." A recent WWI volunteer recruit wakes up not knowing what happened to him. Eventually he realizes he's become, in the slang of the day, a "basket case" -- his arms and legs are missing. It gets worse as he realizes he also can't see, hear or speak. The movie traces his attempts to figure out where, when and why he exists. It will leave you feeling drained for days. Amazing anti-war statement at the very least, but there's a lot more going on here.
Return to Pontianak (2001)
wow, this was really bad!
Now, I LOVE bad movies but even I couldn't stomach this one. It consists largely of a group of total strangers who travel together to an obscure corner of Malaysia, to hunt up the long-missing mother of the group leader. They promptly get lost in the middle of nowhere and spend the entire time trekking through the woods, arguing in quacking, droning voices that made me want to pound my head on the floor to get away from the sound. They are warned by a passing priest that the area they are entering is "unclean" but they go right ahead. Sure enough, they are killed off one at a time by SOMETHING IN THE WOODS that looks like a beautiful woman having a really bad day. WILL ANYONE SURVIVE? I didn't care by the time the movie was half over. I imagine you won't, either. Bad acting, bad FX, bad character development, bad everything.
True Stories (1986)
Delightful
I love this one. The action centers on Louis Fyne's search for matrimony, set against the sweeping backdrop of the Sesquicentennial Celebration of Specialness in Virgil, Texas. Lots of great acting, Talking Heads music, and vague, random, drifty commentary by David Byrne who narrates the story. I saw this movie when it first came out in the late Eighties, and it was my first exposure to both John Goodman and Spalding Gray. It converted me for life to watching both of them every chance I got. It's still some of the best work by both gentlemen.