Subspecies (1991)

Genre: Vampires
Director:  Ted Nicolaou
Country:  United States
Availability:  DVD

Subspecies is one of those horror movies that is beloved by all who saw it as a kid, and bemoaned by those who see it for the first time as adults. Unfortunately I am of the latter camp and therefore this review will be decorated with words like ridiculous and silly.

I am actually quite the fan of ridiculous and silly and my tastes walk a fine line of the qualities that those words often times possess: sword fight between ugly vampire dude and hot vampire dude in a dank castle with babes in nightgowns fighting each other with fire - awesome ridiculous; girl gets a cut on her arm and is henceforth thrust into a constant fevered sleep which allows ugly vampire dude to feed on her undetected - dumb ridiculous.  The movie is rife with examples like those - there are awesome tiny claymation demons that are created by the severed fingertips of the ugly vamp dude, a bloodstone that looks like a bleeding teet that all the vampires suckle from, the aforementioned sword fight, a captive chick with her boobs hanging out of torn clothing, and the burgeoning love between a beautiful woman and a hot vampire guy who share not only passionate kisses, but also the same hair cut.

Subspecies could have been gold if not for the mundane scenes that take up most of the movie. Too much screen time is devoted to the three, rather uninteresting women who serve as the movie's vampire fodder. Still, the lovely scenery and atmospheric castles add a lot of weight to the authentic feel of the movie. The evil vampire serves his creepy role well (though admittedly a bit too silly to be taken completely seriously - he kind of looks like Robert Smith from The Cure) but for a movie called Subspecies (named for the demonic claymation creatures) there was a woeful lack of them.

Surprisingly, there are a total of five Subspecies movies - all which continue to revolve around the main female character and the dorky bloodstone - I may just be convinced to give the second one a try...

2.5 out of 5 stars

Hell Night (1981)

Genre:  Slasher
Director:  Tom DeSimone
Country:  United States
Availability:  Netflix Watch Instantly

Hell Night! An 80s' slasher flick about sexy teens partying in a supposedly haunted manor starring Linda Blair! What could possibly be bad about something that sounds so awesome?  Well, let me tell you...
Linda Blair cannot act. Sure, she was terrific as Regan - the demon possessed little girl in The Exorcist - but maybe it's easier to act like a demon than it is to convincingly portray a regular teenage girl. A few months ago I had the misfortune of seeing her in an atrocious movie called Roller Boogie. And while it was clear from that movie that her abilities must have not made it past the age of 14, I had high hopes for Hell Night bringing Blair back to her horror roots. Not so.

Alas, Linda Blair's performance was not the only element making Hell Night a ridiculous bore to watch. The script was obviously written by a 12 year old boy, "Scott: What a little twat. We should have left her behind.
Peter: Why? Her behind is the best part. We should have kept her behind and left the rest of her." Oh yeah, the movie is full of gems like that. As well as gag scares, quick kill shots with little to no gore, an over-the-top end chase scene and extremely cumbersome and killable killers. Despite all of this, the movie could have been salvageable if not for the dull "character building" scenes that dragged out the middle of the movie. The very last shot of the movie was pretty terrific though and it made me sad that any potential that Hell Night had was squandered by its creators.

2 out of 3 stars

The Innkeepers (2011)

Genre:  Ghosts
Director:  Ti West
Country:  United States
Availability:  In Theaters

Ti West immediately won me over with his brilliant House of the Devil, a loving tribute to the 70s' and 80s' style of horror movie that we rarely see today. So, naturally my interest and expectation of Ti West's new film The Innkeepers, was extremely high. And while the characters are likable and fleshed out, and the script was sharp, in the end The Innkeepers failed to deliver a punch. First off the movie was much too slow. Many of the scenes are simply of the two characters hanging out and talking about ghosts. When we finally do get to witness their "investigation" of the supposed haunting at the inn it lacks in suspense and reward. The story of the haunting itself is pretty basic, but what's frustrating is that aside from rumor and heresy the major story elements - the reasons and whys to the haunting story - were never explored. Apparently the entire idea for The Innkeepers was born through Ti West and his film crew actually staying at the Yankee Pedlar Inn (the inn in The Innkeepers), while they filmed House of the Devil. They learned that the inn was supposedly haunted and thus it became Ti West's new movie. And while the critics seem to be applauding West's recent effort loud and clear, this horror movie fan was hoping for something a little more compelling.

3 out of 5 stars

The Legacy (1978)

Genre:  Supernatural
Director:  Richard Marquand
Country:  United Kingdom
Availability:  DVD

The Legacy is a wonderfully atmospheric 70s' horror flick that, like most horror movies of its time, is more laced with mystery than it is with actual horror. Katharine Ross is fetching as the natural beauty and Sam Elliott balances her smooth elegance with his gruff and rugged handsomeness. The chemistry here is fantastic and the characters are interesting and likable, an important quality for the film since it's these two that we follow through most of the story. The gorgeous scenery is like a third major character, from the Gothic mansion's grand and elaborate rooms to the sprawling England estate's landscaping and rolling hills, it's this eye candy that makes the often erratic plot actually interesting and continuously compelling. It's a bit of a slow go at first, they take their time setting up all the characters and the situation that brings them all together, but once the ball gets rolling it's actually quite fun. The deaths, for the most part, are nothing too spectacular but the end reveal is what makes the whole movie come together. A must for fans of slow 70s' horror like Burnt Offerings, The Changeling or Audrey Rose.

3 out of 5 stars

Cold Fish (2010)

Genre:  Serial Killer
Director:  Shion Sono
Country:  Japan
Series:  Bloody Disgusting Selects
Availability:  Netflix Watch Instantly

I don't even know where to begin. From the trailer of Cold Fish I knew I was in for a rather bizarre movie but I guess I just didn't see this crazy, bloody, pornographic and abusive freight train of a movie coming. When we were twenty minutes in and they suddenly showed the opening title of the film it prompted us to look up the running time. 146 minutes! 146 minutes! At times throughout the movie it really felt like I had been watching Cold Fish for my entire life. Miraculously, the movie maintains a level of strange intensity for the majority of the film's storytelling, peppering the plot with subtle sexuality and then overt, somewhat violent sexual encounters that leaves you unsure as to what kind of movie you're watching and where it's really going. You're essentially always waiting for the other shoe to drop and when it finally does, it fucking clobbers you. The movie suddenly turns into an absolute bloodbath, quite literally, and the gore and depravity that spins us into our final scene is horror movie work at its finest. I wasn't the biggest fan of Cold Fish while watching it, mostly because it seemed to never end, but the last 40 minutes combined with a lot of reflection and afterthought I would have to say Bloody Disgusting Selects has once again offered up a surreal and quality horror movie.

3 out of 5 stars

The Dead (2010)

Genre:  Zombie
Director:  Howard Ford, Jonathan Ford
Country:  United Kingdom
Availability:  Amazon Instant Video

I briefly met George Romero at a NYC comic book convention some years back. He was wearing a t-shirt that read, "fast zombies suck". Someone asked him about it in the Q&A and he said, "Dead things don't move fast." And he's absolutely right (I mean, probably right), but then the question is, how fucking scary are slow moving zombies? In the movies they seem to have that eerie Jason Voorhees ability of always being one step behind you even though you're running your ass off and they're slowly lumbering after you with a broken ankle or a busted knee cap. And then, BAM! when you looked the other way for a moment they're suddenly right beside you sucking your brains out through your ears. But for the most part slow zombies are coming at you for like, ten minutes, and it's totally your own fault if you stand there fiddling with the safety of your gun or trying to tie your shoe lace or something and then Oh Noooos! they're biting your leg in half.

My point is, slow zombies are fucking slow so treating the story like an apocalyptic tale where the greater population is being decimated by them is just a little ridiculous and frustrating. This flaw is The Dead's  greatest one. Aside from that The Dead suffers from being an incredibly slow, rather boring story of a two men trying to locate a boy and find an airplane. On the positive side of things, the movie is well done, the performances are solid, the cinematography is at times downright beautiful and there are some nice gore scenes. If I had known I was in for a zombie-drama I may have adjusted my expectations and enjoyed the movie more instead of spending every 15 minutes sighing loudly and looking at my watch.

3 out of 5 stars

The Woman in Black (2012)

Genre:  Ghosts
Director:  James Watkins
Country:  United Kingdom
Availability: Theaters

I'm a hard sell for ghost story horror movies, they tend to rely too heavily on jumpy scares and bombastic music, seeming to forget that less is more and quiet is creepy. The Woman in Black is no exception. While the atmosphere is dripping, perhaps overly so, with the ghostly and ghastly feel, and while all of the players seem to be so pale and scared they look like ghosts themselves, it doesn't stop this story from being formulaic and a little drab. Having been a huge fan of the book the film would have benefited to stick more closely with the elegance of keeping the story simple. Sometimes when you don't try to impress your audience, you end up knocking their socks off. Unfortunately this movie adaptation of an unforgettably scary book will end up being completely forgettable.

3 out of 5 stars