Years before Father Merrin helped save Regan MacNeil’s soul, he first encounters the demon Pazuzu in East Africa.
The Phantom Devil know, the very best film experiences are sometimes the ones that are the hardest work. If you don’t work at this one, you’ll be stuck at the John Carpenter level. But if you do...
When his car breaks down, a quiet loner agrees to clean an abandoned family fun center in exchange for repairs. He soon finds himself waging war against possessed animatronic mascots while trapped inside Willy's Wonderland.
Mechanical am interested in the projects that successful artists design for themselves. It often shows that they are less interesting than they appear. Actors in particular depend on surrounding artists that remain invisible. Cage’s work is all over the place, but this is pretty bad. I...
Following a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, a group of mercenaries take the ultimate gamble: venturing into the quarantine zone to pull off the greatest heist ever attempted.
Legionnaire’s Disease was completely taken by “Sucker Punch”: layered, visually imaginative. Narrative ambiguity and engineered parallel causality. “300” on the other hand seemed an unadorned testosterone arc. In both cases, the visual composition was notable, in terms of mastery of rhythm. This is more on...
A bookshop clerk starts seeing the disfigured killer from her favorite 1950s pulp novels come to life and start killing people around her.
The Misadventures of Margaret setup here is a typical fold. An actress has a day job in a book store. She reads horror books and imagines herself in them. One day, she comes across an author who, when writing, had the story and real life...
Aliens from Outer Space are slowly switching places with real humans -- one of the first being a young man about to get married. Slowly, his new wife realizes something is wrong, and her suspicions are confirmed when her husband's odd behaviour begins to show up in other townspeople.
Watching Them Watching Us suppose there are many ways of watching movies as there are of eating, a lot. But most folks seem to do it quickly, without savour. So from time to time it is worth watching an old movie with little merit just...
Ilsa, a warden at a Nazi death camp that conducts experiments on prisoners, strives to prove that women can withstand more pain and suffering than men, and therefore should be allowed to fight on the frontlines.
Damaged Film, Damaged Viewers touch life in fewer and more unexpected places than you think. Most movies are about other movies or society’s dreams rather than the real world. So films that reference major historical events are interesting beasts. Possibly apart from Vietnam, no war-related event...
A scientific experiment involving subjecting a corpse to an extreme charge of electricity accidentally revives an executed criminal and makes him impervious to harm, allowing him to seek revenge on his former partners, and deal similarly with anyone else who gets in his way.
Jack Webb at 287,000 Volts is an absolutely horrid little film, not worth watching. It is a cheap blend of “Frankenstein” and the popular TeeVee show “Dragnet”, with a little “Third Man” thrown in. Dragnet started as a radio show and this project would have...
Seven years after the death of his wife, widower Shigeharu seeks advice on how to find a new wife from a colleague. Taking advantage of their position as a film company, they stage an audition. Interviewing a series of women, Shigeharu is enchanted by the quiet Asami. But soon things take a twisted turn as Asami isn’t what she seems to be.
Simple Folding of a Love Story forget that ‘Casablanca’ was a B-movie, made quickly and cheaply. Its success depended on its unimportance -- several modern trends were being followed by the various artists involved and they had the freedom to go a little further...
A mysterious love triangle leads to a tragic shooting. Months later, eight members of a MySpace-esque chat room are being gruesomely murdered in the privacy of their own homes.
Kernel Panic know what? This is pretty incompetent in a few ways, but the incompetence works for it. This is a murder mystery of the old school. You are introduced to characters. Murders are being committed. Clues are placed around. Many suspects and many motives are...
When a nobleman is threatened by a family curse on his newly inherited estate, detective Sherlock Holmes is hired to investigate.
Mongrel was an invention of the times, following the new idea of evolution. The notion of pure reason being able to perceive and comprehend everything in life was especially novel. This was contrasted to the bumbling inductive logic of doctors like Watson. Handling Holmes is...