Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews of horror movies.

REVIEW: Grabbers (2012)

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Grabbers

Grabbers: C+

There’s these sea monsters in Ireland that, yup, grab people. They have tentacles and an appetite for human flesh.

When the natives realize that alcohol to these monsters is like holy water to vampires, they all get super-trashed and the monsters leave them alone. Any monster that tries to snack on a drunk person pops like a water balloon.

After this plot point is out of the way, we get a Sean of the Dead style splat-stick where a gaggle of foul-mouthed gregarious Irishmen (and women) drunkenly beat up amphibious CGI monsters. There’s a variety of monsters ranging from chicken-sized face-huggers, to dog-sized octopi, to a building-sized full-fledged sea monster. They all get literally smashed by figuratively smashed, inebriated gingers.

Yeah, this movie cheaply relies on the stereotype that Irish people are wont to be drunkards, but it was somehow entertaining to watch people stumble around and bludgeon purple carnivorous octopi with table legs. Way more entertaining than other horror movies I’ve seen that shamelessly rely on stereotypes to carry the plot.

I actually got into the spirit of things and I got black out shit-housed while watching this one. So, I dunno, maybe it deserves better than a C+. Maybe worse. All I know is that it was a swell, hair-above-average time taking belts of Jameson and watching this one.

Burp!

REVIEW: Devil’s Pass (2013)

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Devils-Pass

Devil’s Pass: D-

This film, that claims to be “based on a true story,” is about a Russian mountain range that was the site for the mysterious deaths of several hikers in the late 1950’s. Also, in this film that is “based on a true story,” the mountain range covers a space-time vortex. Yeah. Just like in other stories “based” on “true” ones.

Some annoying 20-somethings go snooping around the mountains with camcorders which results in some wretched found footage, about 90% of which focuses on the boring dynamics of their hiking group. I guess this was the “based on a true story” stuff.

One hiker looks IDENTICAL to Claire Danes but is not Claire Danes.

This aura of disappointing familiarity pervades the film. I feel like they tried to channel the disorienting, creeping found-footage terror from The Blair Witch Project where inexperienced explorers go searching for answers and wind up getting lost and slaughtered. The mountain landscapes defy their maps, nullify their compasses/GPS devices, and worry the one sensible character, who didn’t star in that show Homeland, but looks like she could have. This ate up a lot of movie time and ate away at my will to live. No shortage on complaint-ridden wandering scenes.

“People have gotten lost before,” the producers must’ve said. “That’s a true story.”

Further highlights from this story “based” on a “true” one include CGI teleporting cannibals, radioactive Star-Gate-like portals to other dimensions, subterranean Russian bunkers, and X-Files levels of government conspiracy relating to illegal and immoral science experiments. There is a fucking monster on the cover of the DVD right next to the words “Based on a true story” and right under the name of the actress who didn’t star in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet.

I kept watching to see what was in the bunker but wound up being pretty disappointed. The actress who didn’t star in My So-Called Life uncovers a huge international conspiracy that doesn’t seem like anything resembling a “true story” and then you’re treated to really loud insufferable monsters who look like Silent Hill rejects. They lope around with all the rigidity of poorly rendered Resident Evil Playstation graphics while they scream, scream, scream for a long, long time.

Or was that me screaming? Probably was.

REVIEW: Sssssss (1973)

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sssssss

 

Sssssss: UV

Not five S’s. Not six S’s. Seven S’s. Sssssss .

I was really tempted to just copy+paste “Sssssss” until it filled up the page and have that be my review for this garbage, but I ultimately decided against it (and it almost went the other way). One of the hardest calls I’ve ever had to make. The movie itself was basically one big “Sssssss.”

Here’s what happens:

  1. An ominous disclaimer fills the screen warning the viewer that ALL of the snakes in the film are REAL SNAKES flown in from exotic locations for the sole purpose of making Sssssss. The disclaimer also thanks the actors for being brave because they had to work with REAL king cobras and pythons. OMG HERO ALERT! Fucking heroes here!
  2. A hunky college bro named David starts working for this guy named Dr. Stoner. Dr. Stoner loves snakes. David looks like a handsome corn-fed character from that show The Waltons and his line delivery rivals a certain garbage day in its awkwardness.
  3. Dr. Stoner shows off his snake collection which includes a cobra, a python, and a black mamba.
  4. Snake footage. All the snake footage you could ever want.
  5. First day of work: Dr. Stoner injects David with a serum that slowly transforms him into a human-snake hybrid. Rough.
  6. Anyone who starts to realize that Dr. Stoner is a Mad Scientist who wants to create a new race of Snake People gets killed by snakes. We’re talking a lot of out-of-context shots they use to make the snakes look like they’re attacking people.
  7. All sorts of Snake Stuff happens. Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss Sssssss.
  8. David becomes a recluse because he is becoming more snake-like kind of like Goldblum in The Fly but the make-up is a billion times worse. Dr. Stoner is stoked and he delivers a passionate monologue about the glorious future of Man-Snakekind.
  9. There’s a mongoose all of a sudden.
  10. Dr. Stoner is bitten and killed by the king cobra and sheriffs blow the snake’s head off. It looks like a piñata filled with grapefruit getting shot with buckshot.
  11. David turns full snake and fights the mongoose. The sheriffs kick the door in and watch David the Snake fight the mongoose.
  12. That’s it. Locked in a bitter stalemate with the mongoose, the frame freezes on David’s screaming girlfriend and the credits start rolling.

 

REVIEW: Breeders (1997)

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Socrates: So, Glaucon, you recently saw a film you found… compelling?

Glaucon: Compelling? Socrates, it was something else altogether. Breeders – a horror movie like no other! It has all the ingredients to make a chilling film! Monsters, college girls, and absolutely no restraint at all. I loved it!

Socrates: Hmm, indeed. I assume this monster is a rather complex villain, yes? Perhaps the reason this film is worth of your love?

Glaucon: Complex? Well… no… he’s quite… single-minded. He’s an alien living in catacombs under a girls’ boarding school, driven by one thing: breeding with the college girls.

Socrates: Ah, so he must have a certain magnetism, this alien of yours? How does he, ahem, attract these young women?

Glaucon: (chuckling) Oh, it’s absurd, Socrates. He uses alien technology! He’s got these glowing meteor fragments. They look like gemstones, so naturally, several girls transform them into jewelry. Classic case of reckless vanity.

Socrates: And these “attractive” space rocks… I assume they are merely fashionable and have no secret function — for that would be predictable and cliche.

Glaucon: Hardly! They put the girls under his telepathic control, leading them, one by one, to his lair beneath the school. You can guess his intentions.

Socrates: Fascinating. I take it they willingly stroll to their doom?

Glaucon: Not exactly willingly, no! The Breeder’s got them telepathically bound, making them climb into these giant cocoons to be impregnated. It’s downright sinister.

Socrates: And you find this intergalactic date rape to be… thrilling? Perhaps terrifying? Arousing in some way? I must say I find it distasteful.

Glaucon: Well, “thrilling” isn’t quite the word. And I suppose I was never gripped with terror… I was certainly not aroused. It takes a good fifty minutes for anything meaningful to happen, and the Breeder’s approach isn’t exactly subtle.

Socrates: So, a rather pedestrian villain? No clever machinations, no chilling aura of suspense?

Glaucon: None of that, Socrates! In fact, it’s almost laughable. There is a hero, though! A professor who, somehow, manages to piece together the Breeder’s entire plan. He descends into the tunnels to “rescue” the girls, including one he’s already romantically involved with.

Socrates: How noble of him. I take it this adds depth to his character?

Glaucon: Depth? Hardly. This professor is more of an accidental hero, really—a sweater-wearing fellow who doesn’t add much to the story now that I think about it.

Socrates: Truly, it sounds riveting. And the climax? A battle, perhaps, between the two?

Glaucon: If only, Socrates! Instead, we get a tedious 25-minute cat-and-mouse chase that drags on like moss creeping up a tree. The Breeder lumbers around, roaring like some kind of panther, while the professor and the girls trip over cocoons and—of all things—space goo.

Socrates: And I suppose the Breeder himself is a masterwork of frightful design?

Glaucon: (sighs) Not quite. He suffers from what I’d call “Power Ranger Villain Syndrome.” He looks like he should be taking orders from a cartoon villain, not terrorizing a boarding school.

Socrates: So, Glaucon, let me understand you rightly: the villain is uninspired, the hero is shallow, suspense is absent, and the horror… rather absent as well?

Glaucon: Precisely, Socrates. It’s as though the filmmakers knew the entire premise was laughable. Even the Breeder’s “scary” moments are underwhelming. But the women are gorgeous, Socrates!

Socrates: Ah, and there we have it. Remove these poor women at whom you pathetically leer and we’re left pondering why anyone would want to watch this at all. It seems you’ve reached an unexpected conclusion, Glaucon: that Breeders is, in fact, a thoroughly regrettable film.

Glaucon: (reluctantly) Yes, Socrates, I believe you’re right. It’s terrible.

REVIEW: Martyrs (2008)

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martyrs 2008

 

Martyrs (2008): B

I changed the grade on this flick three or four times.  I started in the “C” range, but the more I thought about it, the more I had to admit that there was a bunch of stuff that stuck with me, and that counts for a lot.

I was made aware of this French indie on one of those “movies that shouldn’t be viewed” lists, and there is certainly a large segment of the population to which Martyrs would be UV (Unviewable).  This movie is fucking brutal.  However, unlike something like Hostel or other “torture porn” of that ilk, there is something to the pain that’s inflicted on the two unfortunate “martyrs.”  It’s done for a purpose, not for sadist enjoyment.  I finally settled on a B because the film’s ambition is laudable, and it earns points for doing things I’ve never seen before, some of them I wish I could un-see.

The film starts by chronicling the escape of a young girl (Lucie) from a lair where she is imprisoned on an iron chair with a hole cut in the seat to piss through.  She’s force-fed a disgusting gruel and beaten savagely by faceless assailants.  However, she‘s not sexually abused, which makes the motives of her captors unclear.

She ends up in a foster home, where she befriends another youngster, Anna.  However, Lucie is attacked in the night by a fearsome female apparition that is capable of inflicting physical harm on her.

Meanwhile, we jump to a seemingly normal family of four, sitting around the breakfast table, about to start a seemingly normal day.  The doorbell rings, the father answers it….and a grown up version of Lucie blows him away with a shotgun and proceeds to wreck shop on the rest of the family, including two teens who beg for their lives.  Lucie calls Anna to tell her that Lucie has finally found the people responsible for her childhood trauma.

To go much further would veer into spoiler territory, but I can say that if agonizing, repeated onscreen violence perpetrated against women is a deal-breaker for you, you’re gonna want to give this one a pass.  What ultimately happens to the protagonist is one of the more unsettling acts of naked brutality I’ve ever witnessed onscreen.  However, the philosophy behind the torment elevates Martyrs beyond simply torture porn into some form of art.  It’s not art that everybody can appreciate, which is ok.  We simply can’t all be this fucked up.

 

REVIEW: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

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dracula

Bram Stoker’s Dracula: B+

If you read the description for this movie in the Comcast menu, it says the film is a “highly erotic adaptation” of the classic vampire tale. No kidding! I actually read Stoker’s novel and I can’t recall a scene where Dracula, in half-wolf form, repeatedly gropes/rapes Lucy on a bench while chewing on her throat. I also don’t remember the part where undead Siamese twins give Harker a blowjob.

Whatever; it worked. Everything in the movie is turned up to 11 so when there’s these extra scenes of flamboyant sexual carnage, they fit with the gaudy sets and Victorian costumes.

Anthony Hopkins plays Van Helsing (sit the FUCK down, Hugh Jackman) and he leads a band of do-gooders around 19th century London while they hunt for Count Dracula, played by Gary Oldman. Everyone knows that Dracula can shape-shift into things like bats and wolves and whatnot but few may know that he can also transform from a crusty, yellow old man in a red bathrobe to a sunglassess-wearing stud with flowing locks in a Dumb-and-Dumberesque silly tuxedo. This is some of Oldman’s best work in my opinion. He plays a creepy Nosferatu one second and then a tortured gentleman the next. You’ve got to appreciate an actor who can act through their make-up, especially when they have lines like “vengeance will be mine!”. You feel Dracula’s pain and actually sympathize with him, unlike the Dracula from the book who is a straight-up asshole.

Dracula thinks that Winona Ryder is the spiritual incarnation of his centuries-old true love and he travels to London to permanently establish himself among the populace and rekindle his romance with Victorian era Winona Ryder. I don’t think ANYONE has ever loved Winona Ryder this much! And if you were worried about her acting spoiling things, don’t worry; her BF is played by Keanu Reeves (he of the undead Siamese-twin blowjob) and he waaaaay out-stinks her. It, like, fucking hurts to watch him speak sentences in this movie.

The film has shape-shifting, telepathic bonds, decapitations, boobs, Tom Waits eating bugs, and computer generated energy force fields. The sets are crazy-detailed and the cinematography is mouth-watering. Dracula steals the show, as he should. Really visually satisfying and evil. I recommend it!

REVIEW: Hatchet (2006)

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Hatchet (2006)

Grade: B-

If you like your kills gory, your villains deformed, and your nudity gratuitous, Hatchet will probably do ya just fine for 90 minutes.  The producers were clearly going for an old-school ‘80s slasher vibe here, and they mostly succeed.  But there’s absolutely zero innovation.

How much of a retread is Hatchet?  Well, one of the guys killed in the opening scene is played by Robert Englund.  Yup, Freddy Krueger himself.  The titular character who metes out the pain (sometimes, but not always, by hatchet)?  Kane Hodder, who played Jason in the Friday the 13th flicks.

The film is set in New Orleans, which allows us some early glimpses of nubile mardi gras boobies.  A bunch of bros are partying on Spring break, but one of the bros is being a total buzzkill because his girlfriend just dumped him or some shit.  As if that’s a reason to be down on alcohol and seeing young boobies.  Lemme ask you, faithful Bloodcrypt readers, has there EVER been a situation in which you’d pass up the opportunity to drink beer and lustfully eye college-age chicks flashing their still-immune-to-gravity college-age titties?  Freddy and Jason could run a train on my mom that ended with her brutal disembowelment, and the cure to that horrific shit would be a 40 oz and some college-age titties, STAT.

Where the fuck was I?  Oh yeah, so this dude wants to go soak up culture off the main drag (where all the boobs and beer is at); as a result, he drags his reluctant bros to a shady shack advertising a haunted swamp tour.  The proprietor?  The fucking Candyman, I shit you not.  Anyway, they must’ve only had the budget for five minutes of the Candyman, because he sends them on down the road to this Asian tour guide with a ludicrous Cajun accent.

Off they go on their doomed excursion, accompanied by various other tourists, including a super pissed off younger chick who won’t interact with anybody, an old married couple, and a dude who’s basically shooting “Girls Gone Wild: New Orleans” with these two semi-attractive porn starlets whom he frequently prompts to flash the camera and make out with each other.  One of them is Harmony from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so that’s a plus if you’re a Buffyphile like me.

After the boat crashes (of course) the surly bitch flashes a .45 and tells everyone they’re screwed because this is Hatchet’s neck of the woods, and she came here to kill him (Freddy Krueger was her dad, and she wants revenge).  Why she thought taking a handgun on the New Orleans equivalent of the Disneyland Jungle Cruise ride was an effective plan for battling an unkillable supernatural evil is unclear, but it was a miscalculation.

Turns out this Hatchet dude (real name: Victor Crowley- how old school is that?) is a mutant from birth who got made fun of by the other kids.  One night they pulled a prank on him that set Victor’s cabin on fire, and in the process of trying to save him by chopping down the door, his dad accidentally…well, dude’s named “Hatchet” for a reason, amiright?

So Hatchet kills most of these fools one by one in fairly entertaining fashion.  Not only is he good with tools, but he’s also super strong and can rip limbs off and shit.  I’ll be honest; I’m not even sure what happened at the end because I was pretty drunk by then.  However, there are two other Hatchet flicks, so I’m pretty sure that whatever victory achieved over him is short-lived.

REVIEW: V/H/S 2 (2013)

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VHS2

 

V/H/S 2: B+

Although I’m the resident found-footage expert at Bloodcrypt, I let Bloodcrypt Keeper have a go at reviewing the original V/H/S because I was busy buttfucking a hobo.  He did ok, though.  Although I probably would’ve gone B-/C+ with the first installment, I couldn’t quibble too much with his assessment of the film’s vignettes.

Usually, when a sequel comes out within a year of its predecessor, it’s a rushed hack job, intended to capitalize on the success of the previous installment (lookin’ at you, Saw franchise).  V/H/S 2 actually improves on the formula it established.  First of all, the narrative arc binding together the found footage on the tapes is more intelligent and scarier than the first movie.  A private investigator and his partner are investigating a teen’s disappearance and enter a seemingly abandoned house with a bunch of computers and vhs tapes.

The original had five mini-movies; this one opts for quality over quantity with four.  The characters in the film sit down to watch them, and just as before, they’re a mixed bag.  But a better mix this time: more peanuts and cashews, and fewer almonds.  Almonds suck.

The first short is about a dude who has ocular surgery due to losing his sight in an accident, and a permanently-running camera implanted in his eye documents his every waking move (cleverly sidestepping the found-footage Achilles heel of “why are you still filming this?”).  He starts seeing creepy dead people, and this chick who saw him at the hospital comes over and tells him she had an ear implant (cokeular?…cochlear?…cockular?) and sees the same fucked up shit he does.  She tells him not to pay attention to them and then strips off her shirt and rides him, beautiful breasts bouncing.  Some other stuff happens after that, but that’s the high point.  Anyway, pretty good: B(oobs)

The second vignette puts a unique spin on the current zombie craze.  It’s shot almost entirely from the p.o.v. of a mountain biker’s  “Go Pro”-style helmet cam.  He runs into a bleeding woman in the woods, stops to help, and whoops!  He’s a zombie.  A zombie with a helmet cam.  He and other fellow zombies attack hikers/bikers and then a kid’s birthday party.  Flesh-eating ensues, but from an original perspective: B+

In the third clip, shit gets bananas.  A t.v. news crew goes to Indonesia to do an exposé on a cult with one of those charismatic leader types.  It’s got an underground bunker, classrooms full of creepy kids getting indoctrinated, and, of course, mass suicide.  It’s completely bonkers in the best way, and the climax is splendid, when the thing the cult has been worshipping manifests and brings doom.  Fucking phenomenal: A

The final story is about some clichéd-looking aliens who invade a slumber party.  It suffers from the usual “why are you still filming this?” problem much more than the other vignettes.  I have no idea why the filmmakers chose to end with this relative dud, but it robs the movie of a lot of its momentum.  It’s still better than the worst stuff in the first V/H/S, but I would’ve put it earlier to get it out of the way: C

According to the main plotline, though, watching the tapes in a certain order is imperative, so maybe the worst one HAD to be last, I dunno.  At any rate, this franchise is starting to earn some serious horror street cred.  Who knew old tapes could be so scary?  Well, other than the ‘90s hairstyles (both above and below) from those old pornos I can’t seem to let go of…