MY CALL: With such a great cast, this movie felt like a huge missed opportunity. This is a low-priority rental for an afternoon and nothing more. Watchable, but not recommended. Fun, but not that fun.
MORE MOVIES LIKE Bloodsucking Bastards: For more horror comedies try Critters (1986), Blood Diner (1987), Frankenhooker (1990), Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh (1991), Leprechaun (1993), Head of the Family (1996), American Psycho (2000), Shaun of the Dead (2004), Black Sheep (2006), Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009), Piranha 3D (2010), Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010), Final Destination 5 (2011), Chillerama (2011), Piranha 3DD (2012), Grabbers (2012), The Cabin in the Woods (2012), Bad Milo (2013), Warm Bodies (2013), Burying the Ex (2014), Smothered (2014), What We Do in the Shadows (2014), Cooties (2015), Deathgasm (2015), Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015), Housebound (2014), Zombeavers (2014), The Voices (2014), He Never Died (2015), Ava’s Possessions (2015), The Final Girls (2015), Krampus (2015; not exactly comedy, but occasionally hilarious), Love in the Time of Monsters (2015), The Greasy Strangler (2016), Mayhem (2017), Happy Death Day (2017) and The Babysitter (2017).
Amid a typical sales office, Evan’s (Fran Kranz; The Cabin in the Woods, The Village, Donnie Darko) world is falling apart. He lost his girlfriend, on old college rival (Pedro Pascal; Game of Thrones) snatched his promotion out from under him, and his coworkers are being brutally murdered and replaced by vampires.
Between the premise and the cast, I was really excited to see this and bought the DVD blindly. I don’t exactly regret that, but this movie was not the exceptional delight for which I hoped.
Director Brian James O’Connell delivers a movie that is moderately fun and breezy. It’s not great, but it’s a nice way to spend a lazy afternoon. I never really felt any sense of urgency (even during the vampire killing scenes), shock or scale (it all takes place in the office), nor were the jokes ever laugh out loud affairs. Just a lot of grins and a few giggles.
Pedro Pascal is entertaining, but still he feels like he’s phoning it in. The real performance efforts come from Joey Kern (Cabin Fever), Emma Fitzpatrick (The Collection) and Fran Kranz. The gore, wounds and blood are not abundant except for a few scenes, but it’s nice when you see your heroes unexpectedly blood-doused a la What We Do in the Shadows (2014). But with that said, the gore is mostly blood and largely limited to the last 30 minutes.
For me, the greatest victory was adding to my lexiconical sense of “office horror” movies. And by that, I mean things like Mayhem (2017), The Belko Experiment (2016) or other fare discussed in our Office Horror podcast episode. Otherwise, this film is hard to recommend. You may have noticed this is a very short review for me… I guess I just don’t have much to say about it (good or bad).
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John’s Horror Corner: Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort (2014), neither best nor worst in this hillbilly horror franchise.
MY CALL: This remains watchable for those seeking some guilty pleasures in the form of boobs, gore and uninspired kills. Watch this for fun, not for “horror.” MORE MOVIES LIKE Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort: Well, of course, you need to go back to Wrong Turn (2003; the best one), maybe Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007; more silly but fun), but probably skip Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (2009) and go straight to Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings (2011; the best of the sequels) and Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines (2012). More to try include The Hills Have Eyes 1-2 (1977, 1984, 2006, 2007), Just Before Dawn (1981), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Hatchet (2006) and its three sequels, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) will all continue to satisfy the hillbilly horror subgenre, and then maybe Cabin Fever 1-3 (2002-2014) for the gore hounds.
Director Valeri Milev (Re-Kill) follows the sloppy patterns of his predecessors, opening with a breasty sex scene and a gory murder sequence. And with these death scenes this sequel reintroduces us to our favorite inbred hillbilly cannibals: Three Finger (Radoslav Parvanov; Undisputed 2-3, Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines), Sawtooth (Danko Jordanov; The Hills Run Red) and One-Eye (Asen Asenov). Unfortunately, they don’t look as good as they used to (in terms of make-up quality) and they lack any sense of personality that differentiated them in past franchise installments (e.g., Three Finger was the loony and hyper one whereas now they’re all equally off-kilter). Instead they’ve been reduced to ugly, mutant hillbilly cannibals 1, 2 and 3.
In this shakily written sequel, a mysterious inheritance brings a twenty-something and his friends to a West Virginia Appalachian resort with a dark history and a weird pair of sibling caretakers. Keeping things classy, this movie boasts more sex scenes than death scenes, a stupidly convoluted plot (much as Texas Chainsaw 3-D) and—if we’re being honest—not quite enough horror. It almost goes into pervy territory with its sexualized storyline and themes (even with respect to the kills). Not that it doesn’t have its moments… they’re just heavily biased towards the final third of the film.
The razor wire death scene is engaging for gorehounds (and a nice call back to part 1), but much of the slashy/stabby gory effects rely on CGI finishing (e.g., an arrow through the head, the beheading). Such has been the case with the last several Wrong Turn sequels. At times I wonder if this is really less expensive than approaching them from a fully practical angle, or if it’s simply easier to handle these issues in post-production. But at the end of the day, these films continue to entertain me.
We enjoy a brutal leg break and dismemberment, an awesome headwound, the unforgettable anal firehose death scene, and a really weird family reunion reminiscent of Bleeders (1997) or Basket Case 3 (1991).
All in all, this was a moderately satisfying flick for a rainy Sunday afternoon. Certainly not worthy of being main event of the evening, but I got a few chuckles. The writing might be terrible, yet this sequel manages to entertain without much regret. You’ll feel more fun (or tedium) than fear. But this could make for a great Bad Movie Tuesday if you’re looking for some gory laughs.
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MY CALL: This is the first film in Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy and a worthy education in early non-Romero zombie horror for any genre film fan. It has a decent premise, good pacing, and a satisfying diversity and abundance of special effects. Highly recommended. MORE MOVIES LIKE City of the Living Dead: Easily the best choice is Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Fulci’s Zombie (1979). Fans of Fulcian gore may continue with The Beyond (1981) and The House by the Cemetery (1981), which are the remaining films of Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy.
Journalist Peter (Christopher George; Graduation Day, The Exterminator) investigates the mysterious simultaneous deaths of a suicidal priest and a woman (Catriona MacColl; The House by the Cemetery, The Beyond) who saw the Gates of Hell opening during a séance. Despite many locals’ skepticism of the supernatural, winds eerily pick up, mirrors shatter, buildings begin to crack, walls bleed, and Mary (the woman who died during the séance) rises from the dead to speak of the horrors she witnessed and to warn that the gates must be closed before All Saints Day or the dead will overtake the Earth.
I don’t think enough attention is paid to the fact that she rose from the grave (and that Peter seems just fine with that), but Fulci was never really known for thorough writing. So, Mary and Peter go on a road trip to Dunwich (a lot like In the Mouth of Madness) to stop this great evil at its origin. Apparently, reclosing the gates to Hell requires destroying the ghastly priest who serially appears hanging before his victims.
References to witch ancestry from Salem and a 4000-year-old of Book of Enoch hint at the ancient evil they face… although these concepts never really get explored so much as mentioned for the sake of flavor.
While the premise is interesting enough, this film observes a significant change in effects quality from Zombie (1979)—specifically, with respect to the zombies. Many of our zombies are simply pale-faced people, I was generally unmoved by the completely random worm-enshrouded rotting fetus, and when our undead priest smothers a woman with a handful of wormy grave mud I’m equally baffled as to the significance of this poorly executed scene. This is some of the random lunacy we see in Fulci’s more haphazard films Manhattan Baby (1982) and Aenigma (1987). Later the zombies get messier, with sloppy chunky gooey latex wounds and worms about their faces—but still, they don’t look very good. Just sufficiently gross to be entertaining or even off-putting.
But the film certainly has its moments—a LOT of them! A gorehound fan favorite scene would be when the zombie priest gazes upon a young woman who then bleeds from the eyes and starts to slowly vomit up her own organs—just pounds and pounds of gore-slathered intestines. There’s also when her date (Michele Soavi; Alien 2: on Earth, Phenomena, Demons) has the back of his head chunkily ripped out (a gory gag that gets repeated in the film to our messy delight). But even the occasional bite wound, hideous zombie face, power drill through the head, gusting storms of insect larvae, or crypt zombie will continue to please horror fans of diverse interests.
Among the cast, you’ll notice some familiar faces other than those cast members mentioned above. Among them are Giovanni Lombardo Radice (The Omen, Cannibal Ferox, The Church), Carlo De Mejo (Alien Contamination, Manhattan Baby, The Other Hell), Daniela Doria (The New York Ripper, The Black Cat, The House by the Cemetery).
Writer and director Lucio Fulci (Manhattan Baby, Aenigma) stormed the horror scene riding in on George Romero’s undead coattails with Zombie (1979). Deviating significantly in style from Zombie (1979), this feels less like a zombie movie and more like an infernal undead demon movie. This is no infection or virus, but an affliction prophesied in an ancient tome. Moreover, these teleporting gooey zombies and their passage through a gateway to Hell leave me with the sense that this may have influenced the monsters of Prince of Darkness (1985), Evil Dead (1981) and Demons (1987). Just when you thought you saw everything this film had to offer, there’s the crypt scene (at the end of the film) loaded with cobwebbed corpses and a subterranean set offering a nice change of pace.
This is the first film in Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy and a worthy education in early non-Romero zombie horror for any genre film fan. It has a decent premise, good pacing, and a satisfying diversity and abundance of special effects. Highly recommended.
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The MFF podcast is back and we’re talking about M. Night Shyamalan’s B-movie classic The Happening. We here at MFF love The Happening and we couldn’t wait to talk about its alternate timelines, lemon drinks, and Mark Wahlberg putting in some A+ work as a very confused science teacher. Way back in 2008, Shyamalan told interviewers it was “the ultimate B-movie” and for some reason, nobody listened — and it was met with a critical mauling and justified confusion. We totally get the backlash, but now there are 10 years behind it and it’s time the world started appreciating the performances, cinematography and streamlined story more. You gotta appreciate how it tells an INSANE Story in 90 minutes and feels totally unique and unexplainable. If you are on the fence about The Happening (or totally hate it) you need to listen to this podcast and we are 100% certain that 63% of you will change your minds and embrace the greatness of M. Night Shyamalan’s B-movie masterpiece.
You need to rewatch The Happening and look at it as a B-movie spectacular
As always, we answer random listener questions and discuss if book monsters (monsters that are also books) could be defeated by white paint. If you are a fan of the podcast make sure to send in some random listener questions so we can do our best to not answer them correctly. We thank you for listening and hope you enjoy the pod!
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Set It Up may come across as a breezy little thing that gets by on cast chemistry and an adherence to old-school romantic comedy tropes (airports are featured). It certainly is breezy and loaded with talent, but it’s worth noting there is a reason why movies like this don’t come along very often — they are hard to make. Director Claire Scanlon (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Suburgatory, The Office) and writer Katie Silberman (How To Be Single – Producer) should be applauded for putting together a great cast and nailing the direction and writing. In lesser hands, Set It Up could’ve been a perfectly mediocre little thing that features two good-looking people falling in love — while they try to make other good-looking people fall in love. However, Scanlon helps the movie earn its 94% Tomatometer score by embracing (not copying) romantic comedy tropes, keeping the pace brisk and getting very charming performances from Zoey Deutch, Glen Powell, Lucy Lui, Taye Diggs, and everyone else in the movie.
They need to be in more movies together.
The movie takes place in New York City and focuses on two twenty-something assistants trying to hook their horrible bosses up so they can have more free time. Harper (Zoey Deutch) works for famous sportswriter Kirsten (Lucy Lui) — a take-no-prisoners writer who made her name by uncovering the dirty secrets in the sports world. Charlie (Glen Powell) is stuck with a powerful financier named Rick (Taye Diggs) who only drinks whiskey that is over $200 and has been stringing poor Charlie along for three years of demeaning assistant work. The two assistants meet during one of their long nights of working in the same building (how haven’t they met before?) and are initially frosty towards each other until they come up with a plan to hook up their bosses. Their plan leads to romantic comedy shenanigans involving baseball game kiss-cams, constant lying, and an unfortunate elevator instance that ends with a naked man peeing in some shot glasses.
It’s impossible to dislike Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell who between their roles in Hidden Figures, Scream Queens, Flower, and Everybody Wants Some!! (Great movie – they are both in it) have proven themselves to be super charismatic and likable. The two have immediate chemistry during their meet-cute involving delivered food for their bosses and I loved watching them deliver the super-quippy dialogue with ease. Their banter is reminiscent of rom-com classics like When Harry Met Sally, Annie Hall, and The Apartment, but it never feels stock or mimicked. Another fun aspect of Set It Up is how it allows the strong supporting cast to thrive and make meals out of tiny moments. Take a look at the trailer and you will see what I mean
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Set It Up is a charming movie that deserves a watch and hopefully springboards Deutch and Powell’s career into bigger and just as good things. If you are looking for a fun romantic comedy it doesn’t get any better and I guarantee you will really enjoy it.
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MY CALL: It’s not Romero, but it remains an excellent and classic zombie film worthy of any true horror fan’s time. Enjoy the gore and the honor clearly placed upron Romero’s work. MORE MOVIES LIKE Zombie: Easily the best choice is Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). Fans of Fulcian gore may continue with City of the Living Dead (1980), The Beyond (1981) and The House by the Cemetery (1981).
Riding in on George Romero’s undead coattails, director Lucio Fulci (Manhattan Baby, Aenigma) brings us Voodoo zombies rising from the grave in gloriously gory fashion. Originally released as Zombi 2, a follow-up to Zombie (the Italian release title for Dawn of the Dead), this film changes the “when Hell is full the dead will walk the Earth” premise while preserving Romero’s beloved atmosphere.
After her father disappears in the Antilles and his zombie-passengered yacht appears in a NYC harbor, Anne (Tisa Farrow; Anthropophagus) teams up with reporter Peter West (Ian McCulloch; Alien Contamination, Zombie Holocaust) to investigate his disappearance. With the aid of Brian’s (Al Cliver; Demonia, 2020 Texas Gladiators) boat, they sail to the cursed island of his disappearance.
On this Caribbean island, Dr. Menard (Richard Johnson; The Haunting, Screamers) is researching the origin and possible cure for this undead epidemic. In a most uniquely forgivable (and very long) gratuitous nudity scene, this film features a sexy naked scuba-diving (Auretta Gay) session that turns into a dangerous shark encounter and then a marine zombie attack culminating in zombie versus shark. Talk about a novel way to introduce your protagonists to your zombies! But not all the gratuitous nudity in this film is so tactful. We have the typical shower scene fare as well because… uhhhh… more boobs! Right?
Consolations with the budget are apparent, but I appreciate where they aimed their efforts and it’s all quite satisfying! Crud-covered zombies leave messy wounds, rended latex flesh and rich (bright thick red paint-colored) spurts of blood. The zombies themselves often look like they took a Savannah mud bath before wandering to their fresh-fleshed fare and digging their hands into piles of intestinal offal (aka, Mrs. Menard LOL).
After the zombie-shark attack, perhaps the most famous and iconic (and gruesome) scene in this film is the eye gauge. During a struggle a zombie breaks through a wooden-blinded door and grabs the victim’s head, pulling her toward the door and its now splintered shudders. The wooden shard slowly approaches and (also slowly AND on-screen) sinks deeply into her eye and head! Wow! Some of the bite wounds and zombie head wounds are shockingly awesome as well.
Of all the cheap spin-offs and copycat filmmakers in the wake of Romero’s zombie trilogy, Lucio Fulci managed to add value to the genre with this fun (but never funny), gory, well-paced chapter of an ongoing zombie apocalypse that started with Romero’s small scale house siege by a cemetery, expanded across America with consumerism allegory bringing us to a mall siege, and now (through a new filmmaker’s eyes) we see how it affects a remote Caribbean nation. And whereas the dialogue and ancillary characters’ beliefs point to Voodoo as the cause of the walking dead, such rituals performed amid Romero’s world (in which zombies rise indiscriminately) could readily be perceived as the work of Voodoo instead of Hell hitting maximum holding capacity. Were I to insert this into Romero’s existing trilogy timeline, I’d place this during or even before the events of Night of the Living Dead (1968), leading into the much larger scale Zompocalypse of Dawn of the Dead (1978).
Highly satisfying to gorehounds and horror “film” critics alike, this is for Romero fans, zombie movie fans, and old school practical effects fans. I’d even contest this to be Fulci’s greatest work. The actors were better than the genre could expect at the time (as was the case in Dawn of the Dead) and the effects team stretched every dollar to its maximum (splatter) potential befitting Fulci’s vision. If you’re still reading and haven’t seen this film, please just buy it… right now.
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SUMMARY: Last week we discussed Tom Holland’s Fright Night (1985) and the documentary of the making of the film (You’re So Cool, Brewster). This week we explore the merits of the Fright Night (2011) remake, CGI versus iconography, and its dynamite cast. We’ll address why was there no Billy Cole or wolf form, modernized characters and David Tennant’s new spin on Peter Vincent, vampire turning farms, and what would happen if Green Room (2015) and From Dusk til Dawn (1996) crossed paths as we answer some inspired Listener Questions.
Check out Episode 133: Fright Night (1985 vs 2011), part 1.
For more horror podcast discussions, check out…
Episode 129: The Babysitter
Episode 128: A Cure for Wellness
Episode 126: The Shape of Water, del Toro’s gill-man love story
Episode 123: The Ritual, Swedish hiking and the Norse Jötunn
Episode 117: Event Horizon, Hellraiser in space, and wrestling Graboids
Episode 116: Happy Death Day
Episode 115: Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Episode 114: Office Horror, Mayhem & The Belko Experiment
Episode 113: Elise, her Demons and the Insidious Franchise
Episode 108: The Best Horror Films of 2017
Episode 78: Carpenter vs Zombie Halloween Rematch (1981 vs 2009)
Episode 76: The Blair Witch Pod (1999 vs 2016)
Download the pod on iTunes, PodBean, Stitcher or
LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOG TALK RADIO.
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From ‘The Whole Nine Yards’ to ‘A Sound of Thunder:’ The Rise and Fall of Franchise Pictures
There I was 27, from Thailand, living my dream and working with an A-list crew, kicking ass and getting great footage, all while staying on budget and on schedule. We were the only movie made by Franchise Pictures that did that by the way, something I’m weirdly still proud of. Wych Kaosayanada – Director of Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
When Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever celebrated its 15th birthday last September it felt necessary to do a deep dive into the movie because I wanted to find some cheeky stuff to add to my ever-expanding collection of dumb data. I didn’t find anything worth writing about but I did learn about the production company that made it happen. Between 1999 and 2007 Franchise Pictures released a torrent of films that underwhelmed at the domestic box office and left many critics scratching their heads (30% Tomatometer average). 26 of their films were released in theaters and only two of them (Half Past Dead, The Whole Nine Yards) made their budgets back domestically. After eight bonkers years, the production company eventually closed down amid lawsuits, financial failures, and bankruptcy.
Franchise Pictures was the brainchild of a dry cleaning, real estate and independent film producing tycoon named Elie Samaha. In a profile in 2000 with The New York Times, Elie was fresh off his success with The Whole Nine Yards and was in fine form for the profile. In the article, he talks about his process of buying films in turn around (cheaper), letting actors film their passion projects (they take pay cuts) and cutting production costs (shortened production schedules). His idea to bring in A-list talent to film their passion projects was inspired, but what he didn’t realize is that A-list talent doesn’t mean box office rewards or A+ films. For instance, Elie’s first massive flop and eventual bringer of demise was Battlefield Earth.
Battlefield Earth was adapted from a novel by L. Ron Hubbard and carried with it a lot of controversies. Elie ignored the naysayers, called John Travolta and told the actor the project he had been trying to get off the ground for 15 years would finally happen. The math behind Samaha’s guarantee for success made sense in a warped kind of way. Basically, Travolta had ruled the 1990s box office and Battlefield Earth only needed to make $35 million domestically due to Samaha selling off the foreign rights to distributors. So, Samaha was pretty sure with Travolta’s clout his big-budget science fiction epic would be a monster hit that would propel him into the Hollywood big leagues.
Battlefield Earth is not good.
In the same New York Times profile, John Ptak a senior agent at Creatives Arts Agency was justifiably skeptical of the success and almost seemed to know where Franchise Pictures and Battlefield Earth was headed with this quote:
”Elie’s first real test will be ‘Battlefield Earth,”John Ptak says. ”Elie listens and he’s charming. But that stuff’s all Act 1. This is a three-act business. Act 1 is style and personality and relationships. Act 2 is creating the avenues and highways to put the cars on. And Act 3 is creating the actual cars, which are the movies. You need all three acts to be successful. The Whole Nine Yards proved something. We’ll see if Battlefield Earth can continue on that road.”
Battlefield Earth was the first big flop ($21 million domestic) and it lead to a stream of very bad films. The avenues and highways were created, but the cars were breaking down all over the place. After Battlefield Earth crashed and burned like a “baby Psychlo on a straight diet of Kerbango,” Franchise released 18 more films into the theaters. Seven of them had inflated budgets over $60 million and they proved to be Franchise’s undoing. The films averaged a 12.25% RT rating and none of them recouped their budgets at the domestic box office. Here they are:
- Battlefield Earth (2000) – 3% – Travolta Passion Project
- The Art of War (2000) – 16%
- Get Carter (2000) – 12% – Stallone Passion Project
- 3,000 Miles to Graceland (2001) – 14% – Costner Passion Project
- Driven (2001) – 14% – Stallone Passion Project
- Angel Eyes (2001) – 33%
- Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002) – 0%
- A Sound of Thunder (2005) – 6%
On paper, they sound pretty great (Race cars! Assassins!) but something was off about every single one of them. They all fell flat and the majority of them including the lower budget offerings had behind the scenes issues that affected them. The writer of Battlefield Earth released an apology, James Franco said Tristan & Isolde suffered from major rewrites and Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever director Wych Kaosayanada (Kaos) was kicked out of the editing suite and also endured many rewrites. Kaos did a fantastic interview with Film Combat Syndicate and he broke down his side of the filmmaking process. I love what he had to say about the title.
“And one last on all of this – the original script was called Ecks vs Sever. It was decided that the title didn’t work. So because of my love for Bullitt, I suggested Ballistic be inserted into the title, but it ended up being Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. That pretty much sums everything up right there.”
The most notorious of their notoriously bad films is Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. The 2002 film is the worst reviewed movie of all time and is one of the rare films that is so bad it hasn’t accrued a diehard cult audience who worship its badness. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever tells the story of two people beating up other people while many things move in slow motion and fireballs erupt everywhere.
Franchise Picture’s first curious decision was to bring in a young director named Wych Kaosayanada (AKA – Kaos) who had only one independent film to his resume and put him at the helm of a $70-million-dollar action spectacle that would be set in Bangkok. Looking to cast Vin Diesel, Chow Yun-fat and other big names they eventually settled on Antonio Banderas and Lucy Lui. Due to 9/11, the film was relocated to Vancouver and the massive budget was used to flip a lot of cars and make Vancouver look very smokey.
After Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever crashed and burned, Samaha, impressively put together $80 million via international distribution deals to film the big-budget science fiction film A Sound of Thunder. The film went through the initial behind the scenes turmoil and eventually, Franchise went bankrupt leaving the film with little money for post-production. The finished product was really bad and Franchise Pictures was no more.
A Sound of Thunder is comically bad.
Franchise Pictures left behind a legacy of bad films and a strategy of what not to do when producing movies. Their films have mostly been forgotten, but I hope Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever can hold on to the 0% Tomatometer legacy for another 15 years. Franchise Pictures worked very hard to achieve that honor and it’s a fond memory of Elie Samaha’s short reign in Hollywood.
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John’s Horror Corner: Demonoid (1980), a B-movie about a murderous disembodied crawling hand.
MY CALL: Really mistitled, this should be considered a passable B-movie about a murderous crawling hand. That said, this is a serviceable B-movie perhaps worth your time for a single viewing—but that’s probably it. MORE MOVIES LIKE Demonoid: For more horror movies that happen to take place (in part) in Mexico, try Hellraiser: Revelations (2011), Dolly Dearest (1991) and The Ruins (2008). Also, consider The Crawling Hand (1963) and Idle Hands (1999) for better killer hand fare.
Director Alfredo Zacarías (The Bees) gives this film a strong opening as a preternaturally powerful (or perhaps possessed) woman battles hooded cultists in a torchlight cavernous lair. The scene is complete with one-handed neck breaks (by the woman), some robe-tearing rapey boob-loosing exploitation shots typical of the 80s (e.g., The Haunting of Morella), and an awesomely campy-gory shot as her hand is chopped off with an ax leaving it to crawl off on its own! PS—This will be the highlight of the movie.
Flash forward to present day, and these caverns are now a silver mine in Mexico owned by Jennifer (Samantha Eggar; The Brood, The Uncanny, Curtains, The Astronaut’s Wife) and her husband Mark Baines (Roy Jenson; Soylent Green, The Car). However, his miners are reluctant for fear of an ancient curse: the curse of the Devil’s Hand.
Deep within the mines Mark and Jennifer discover an ancient chamber complete with quicksand booby traps, a temple with a creepy one-handed demon statue, and a silver hand-shaped container filled with dusty remains—which would later reform into an undead crawling hand.
This demonic hand goes on a body-swapping and re-severing killing spree across Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The special effects shenanigans include low budget face-smushing deaths, fiery possession-compelled suicide, a mutilated skinless zombie-thing, flying prosthetic hands flung about at victims’ faces, a really dumb boxing priest scene, an even dumber syringe stab-fight, various other stabbings and amputations, and lots and lots of crawling severed hand!
Jennifer recruits the help of Father Cunningham (Stuart Whitman; Night of the Lepus, Eaten Alive, The Monster Club) to track down the evil extremity. And speaking of which, apparently a “demonoid” is simply the hand or whomever the hand has momentarily possessed. Sadly, the cool demon statue from the movie poster never comes into play.
Despite its strong opening, this movie weakens considerably into something haphazard and uncompelling. It can certainly be enjoyed for its silly badness, but I’d say this is a one-and-done with no redeemable rewatchability.
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John’s Horror Corner: Chaw (2009, aka Chawu), a Korean film about a boring giant killer boar.
MY CALL: This film completely failed me on all levels. It was boring, unexciting, terrible effects and CGI, no gore, and the alleged “comedy” was horribly executed. MORE MOVIES LIKE Chaw: For more (and better) killer pig films, try Razorback (1984), Pig Hunt (2008) and the upcoming Australian film Boar (2018). For more Korean horror, I’d recommend Train to Busan (2016), The Wailing (2016), I Saw the Devil (2010), Thirst (2009) or The Host (2006).
I love foreign horror films. LOVE THEM. But, admittedly, “reading” films can pose a challenge to one’s attention to the visual cues, timing and tone. Subtitles can result in a lot being lost in translation, and subtitles often paraphrase resulting in a change of perceived context. Yet, with this film, I cannot help but to feel that the writing is weak, highly simplistic, and that the frequent attempts at hokey comedy are cheap and uncompelling. I’m just not buying into it… and that sucks.
A small town outside of Seoul finds its share of excitement when a recent grave is dug up and the local police force investigate. After another body appears and it’s evident that a large wild animal is responsible, the local police try to keep everything quiet in their famously crime-free village until things get out of hand. It feels a bit like the premises of Hot Fuzz (2007) and the mayor from Jaws (1975) are behind this.
Eventually a professional hunting team is hired and they fail—catching the much smaller female mate and effectively just pissing off the big bad male. After the big bad boar wreaks havoc on the village celebration, the villagers take things more seriously, setting traps with claymores and dutifully working together to track the beast to its lair.
So… the boar is really a bore—sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Really bad CGI effects fail to bring any credible life to this Korean-ScyFy movie-of-the-week monster. Even as some scenes deliberately echoed the classic Razorback (1984), I couldn’t get into it. The effects were too lousy, the scenes never felt dire, and nothing is ever exciting. Even the chase scenes are flat and uninspired, and gore is hardly present at all. Nothing relevant transpires onscreen. Worse of all, the finale battle with the boar was lame—even boring. [Sigh.]
Despite my recent obsession with giant killer boar films, writer/director Jeong-won Shin (To Catch a Virgin Ghost, Ghost Sweepers) has royally failed to entertain me. Terrible writing. Terrible and boring. I watch a lot of bad movies and, quite frequently, I manage to find the good in them. However, this may be my most regrettable movie of the year so far. I find noting redeeming about it.
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