THE RING (2002) *

I went to a horror convention back in the summer of 2002 and there was a vendor who had piles of unmarked VHS tapes for free.  I took my copy home and played it on the old VCR (RIP) and it turned out to be the black and white tape featured in The Ring.  It was a great promotional gimmick, and like many of you, I went out and saw the movie on opening night.  Unfortunately, that old tape is infinitely scarier than anything in the actual movie. 

I hated The Ring when it first came out.  I probably hate it more now in retrospect due to the fact that it spawned an entire genre of Little Ghost Girls on a Bad Hair Day horror movies.  That is to say, American remakes of Asian horror movies.  Every few months during the ‘00s, one of these turds like The Grudge, Pulse, and Dark Water would land in multiplexes, much to the chagrin of true horror fans wanting a REAL horror movie.  

At least this flick solidified Naomi Watts as a leading lady.  It was a big hit, so she was able to generate a career from it.  She’s not exactly good in it, but she looks hot.  The only thing saving The Ring from a No Stars review is the fact she’s in almost every scene and since she’s so easy on the eyes I couldn’t bear to give it anything less.  

After all these years, it still pains me to say that a guy named “Gore” Verbinski directed a horror movie that had absolutely no gore in it.  I still can’t believe it.  I liked his Lone Ranger flick, and one or two of the Pirate movies are okay, but his horror films are just total crap.  I will say the opening sequence is effective.  However, the payoff is utter shit, and the rest of the movie just gets worse as it goes along.

That’s not even getting to the stupid “rules” of the movie.  If you watch a haunted videotape, you receive a mysterious phone call, and then seven days later, you die.  The villain is even worse.  Little Ghost Girls have never been, nor will they ever be scary.  The only good part is when a horse gets eaten by a boat, but even that’s not all that great. 

Like, The Sixth Sense, it’s also a Creepy Kid movie.  No, I’m not just talking about the Ghost Girl, I’m talking about the kid who plays Watts’ son.  He’s one of those cliched precocious, wide-eyed, know-it-all, annoying-as-fuck brats.  Not only that, but the kid delivers what is probably the worst child performance in the history of film.  After his first line of dialogue, I was already rooting for the Ghost Girl to drag his ass down the well. 

Here’s a hint to just how dumb this movie is.  When you play the DVD, there’s a tape roll during the FBI Warning label to make you think the DVD is haunted.  However, only a VHS tape would do that.  A DVD would just freeze up or get pixelated if there was something wrong with it.  The target audience (it’s one of those useless PG-13 horror movies) is probably too stupid to realize the difference.

FILM HOUSE FEVER (1986) **

Steve Buscemi and Mark Boone Junior star as two video junkies who run out of movies to watch at home.  While looking through the paper, they see an ad for an all-night film festival, so they hop in their car and speed down to the theater.  There, they are treated to the “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” commercial, drive-in ads, and trailers for The Psychic, 2000 Maniacs, and Blood Feast before the show begins.

The “show” as it is, is nothing more than clips, snippets, and montages of old horror and exploitation movies.  This stuff is a lot of fun, but the scenes with Buscemi and Boone are corny, unfunny, and sometimes painful to sit through.  Their screen time would’ve been much better spent on more trailers or clips.  The useless cutaways to them eating popcorn in the theater get annoying fast and ruin the flow of the compilation.  

It’s really not their fault though.  I like both actors a lot.  It’s just that the shtick they’ve been given is awful thin.  Also, with an hour-long running time, that means you only get about forty minutes of clips and twenty minutes of their mugging, which isn’t a good trade-off if you ask me.

The clips themselves are pretty good though.  They include:  Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Rocktober Blood, Something Weird, The Gruesome Twosome, The Wizard of Gore, Color Me Blood Red, Daughter of the Sun, She-Devils on Wheels, Sex and the College Girl, Living Venus, Bad Girls Do Cry, Warrior and the Sorceress, Just for the Hell of It, Suburbia, Sno-Line, Steel Arena, and Scum of the Earth.  Even with an impressive line-up like that, it pains me to say that the best segments aren’t always shown.  The best snippets come from a black and white Indiana Jones spoof called Cleveland Smith:  Bounty Hunter, starring Bruce Campbell.

I’m a big fan of horror movie compilations and I’m here to say, this is not the way to do it.  If you’ve got your heart set on showing the bozos gawking at the clips, do it in such a way that it doesn’t disrupt the flow of the movie.  I did like the segment about then-unknown actors (like Harvey Korman and Charles Grodin) paying their dues in schlock, which is fitting because Buscemi and Boone are doing the exact same thing.  

Still, I can’t completely hate any horror compilation that has such a heavy concentration of Herschell Gordon Lewis movies.  It also contains a montage of his work that is very similar to the one found on all those Something Weird releases.  Because of that, Lewis fans will probably want to check it out.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: TROUBLE EVERY DAY (2001) **

Vincent Gallo and his wife (Tricia Vessey) are on their honeymoon in Paris, but he keeps putting her off to bug a bunch of doctors about a latest miracle drug.  Meanwhile, Core (Beatrice Dalle) goes around the city devouring men while her husband (Alex Descas) cleans up her messes.  We eventually learn they are both afflicted with a strange disease that turns them into cannibals whenever they are sexually aroused.

Claire (High Life) Denis’ Trouble Every Day is a deliberately paced variation on the vampire legend.  It explores the loneliness and isolation that comes with savage bloodlust, and does so in a moody, artsy-fartsy way.  It stops just short of being absorbing, but it does give you enough tantalizing glimpses of the female form and/or vomitous bloodletting to keep you watching.

Gallo is one of my favorite actors, and he is perfect for the lead.  (He also has one of the best websites on the planet.)  At all times, he looks sheepish and sad, with his melancholy suggesting something sinister lurks just below the surface.  Dalle is quite good too, and her performance reminded me a bit of Anne Parillaud in Innocent Blood. 

For a while, it works.  However, it ultimately falls apart due to the lethargic pacing.  I’ll admit, I started to zone out during some of the long takes where nothing happens thanks to the droning soundtrack.  

The more interesting passages deal with the practicality of living with the disease.  It’s decidedly less so when the concentration is on Gallo’s search for a cure as many of the lab-based scenes are the weakest in the film.  Still, stick with it and you’ll be rewarded by a scene where Gallo literally eats a woman out.  Even then, it’s not quite enough to make up for the movie’s more lackluster passages. 

Still, if you ever wanted to see Vincent Gallo shoot his load, this is the movie for you.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: DON’T MESS WITH MY SISTER! (1985) * ½

Usually when I do The 31 Days of Horror-Ween, I pick the movies out ahead of time.  Sometimes, in an effort to cover all genres, I accidentally wind up with a movie that Isn’t Really a Horror Movie.  It looks like a horror movie.  Sounds like a horror movie.  It even comes from people with a pedigree for making horror movies.  However, for whatever reason, it’s anything but.  That’s pretty much the case with the awesomely titled, awfully made Don’t Mess with My Sister!

Steven (Joe Perce) is stuck in a dead-end job working as an accountant in his brothers in-law’s junkyard.  Steven’s wife, Clara (Jeannine Lemay) hires belly dancer Annika (Laura Lanfranchi) for his birthday party.  When she leaves her costume at his house, Steven agrees to return it to her.  He then gives her a ride to her next client, who tries to force himself on Annika.  Steven intervenes on her behalf, accidentally killing the guy in the process.  In the throes of passion, they wind up hooking up, and when Clara learns of Steven’s infidelity, she sends her burly brothers out to teach him a lesson. 

Don’t Mess with My Sister! gives director Meir Zarchi another opportunity to explore his penchant for giving men with oddly shaped faces long, disgusting close-ups.  Unlike his classic I Spit on Your Grave, there’s no real payoff to justify the slow-burn opening.  It gets bogged down right from the get-go with lots of annoying family drama and it never really recovers.  To make matters worse, much of it is just plain boring.  

Badly acted, and crudely put together, it lacks the punch to the gut feeling of I Spit on your Grave.  I don’t know if Zarchi set out to recapture lightning in a bottle, but there’s absolutely no lightning to be found here.  Heck, you’d be hard-pressed to find a bottle.  

I will give him this, he always fills his movies with weird touches that make them memorable.  I mean most filmmakers would’ve just made the Annika character a stripper and called it a day.  Zarchi instead turns her into a belly dancer and gives her lots of long scenes of her fluttering her belly around to Moroccan music.  He also has an undeniable knack for coming up with a great title.

Sadly, to my chagrin, this isn’t really a horror movie.  It’s more of a tale of white trash relationship woes.  At times, it almost feels like a scuzzy version of a Lifetime movie.  There was a kernel of an interesting premise here.  Unfortunately, it just devolves into a lot of scenes of family members shouting, pushing, hitting, and discharging firearms.  You know, typical domestic disturbance stuff.  Hardly the sort of thing you’d expect from the guy who made I Spit on Your Grave. 

AKA:  Family and Honor.  AKA:  American Junkyard.  AKA:  N.Y. Fire Street.

ISLAND CLAWS (1980) * ½

A Three Mile Island-style accident causes gallons of contaminated water to spill into the ocean.  That just so happens to be the spot where a bunch of crabs do their nesting.  Barry Nelson (the same year as The Shining!) is the scientist who’s working on a way to grow the world’s food supply exponentially.  Meanwhile, crabs start attacking the locals and before long, they are menaced by a giant killer crab the size of a Volkswagen.  

So, wait.  Was it Nelson’s super food that turned the crab big or was it the nuclear accident?  Or was it a combination of the two?  Heck, I just watched the movie and I can’t even remember.

Most times though, it’s just a bunch of little crabs running around.  Now, I’m from Maryland so we have blue crabs here that are way bigger and more threatening than these little guys, so the whole thing was kind of ridiculous to me.  Once the giant crab shows up, it’s good for a laugh, but first (and only) time director Hernan Cardenas manages to screw the pooch during the climax.  I will say he does offer up one or two effective shots when the monster is backlit.  In these moments, it looks marginally menacing.  When they shine a light on it, the thing looks fucking stupid.  Luckily, they go back to bathing the movie in total darkness soon after so you can’t see the damned thing for the bulk of its screen time.  If you think the monster scenes are handled clumsily wait till you see the scenes of racial tension among the islanders and the Haitian community.   In fact, many of the nighttime scenes are so dark it’s near impossible to make anything out.  That might’ve been for the best now that I think about it.  

In the right hands, this could’ve been a fun, if cheesy, Animals Gone Wild movie.  It even uses the durable Jaws 2 cliché of a victim wildly trying to kill the attacking animal, only to wind up blowing themselves up in the process.  Unfortunately, like most crabcakes, there’s just too much filler here for its own good.

Ricou Browning who famously played the underwater Gill Man in Creature from the Black Lagoon, co-wrote the script.

AKA:  Night of the Claw.

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: THE EVIL (1978) **

Richard Crenna and his wife (Joanna Pettet) buy a big-ass mansion that has a checkered past dating all the way back to the Civil War with the intent of turning it into a drug rehab clinic.  She starts seeing ghosts almost immediately during the walk-through, which is certainly something I would’ve brought up to the realtor myself.  Anyway, they gather a crew of friends and colleagues together to spruce the place up.  Of course, Crenna stupidly awakens the malevolent force that lurks in the basement and the newly unleashed sinister specter traps them in the mansion and begins picking off his pals one by one.

Since this is a low budget ‘70s horror movie, of course, Andrew Prine is in it.  If you’re watching a low budget ‘70s horror movie and Andrew Prine is nowhere to be found, you almost feel like you’ve got to send out a search party.  His mere presence in schlock like this is somewhat comforting, even if the film itself is terrible.

The real star is the mansion itself.  Director Gus (The Sidehackers) Trikonis can’t keep the story moving along, but he does manage to offer up a few creepy shots inside the house.  While the place is loaded with dark and dreary atmosphere, it’s also loaded with a lot of dull dialogue scenes.  Because of that, the movie stalls out in between the attack scenes.

There’s a larger cast than usual for this sort of thing, so the body count is higher than you might expect.  We get deaths by fire (the pyrotechnic burn effects aren’t bad and include one burning stunt that occurs in mid-air), electrocution, dog attack, and strangely enough, quicksand.  (You should have a word with the landscaper about that.)  The most memorable moment though is the mishap with a power saw.  

Most of the spirit attacks are repetitive and mainly involve people getting thrown around the room by the unseen evil.  There’s even one sequence that kind of plays like a warm-up to the invisible assault scene in The Entity, although it’s not nearly as graphic (or effective).  Unfortunately, you’re forced to accept a bunch of scenes of wind machines working overtime and blowing in the cast’s faces in lieu of actual scares.  The sounds of the ghost howling uncontrollably during these sequences get a bit grating too. 

Most of this is watchable, but the ending feels like it came out of an entirely different movie.  Victor Buono’s extended cameo is certainly an odd way to wrap things up.  I’m not sure if it was a reshoot or what, but the look and tone of it just doesn’t match anything that came before.  His portrayal will probably remind you of Peter Stormare in Constantine. 

I think my favorite character was the drunk caretaker who happens to be the first victim.  I especially liked how he muttered exposition in between swigs from his flask.  It’s not a great scene or anything, but it was an amusing attempt to dole out necessary plot information in a novel way.  

AKA:  The Evil Below.  AKA:  House of Evil.  AKA:  Cry Demon.  

POSSESSION (2010) *

Sarah Michelle Gellar stars in this tepid, tedious supernatural drama from Yari Film Group.  Yari went bankrupt before the film’s release, causing it to sit on the shelf for a few years.  It should’ve stayed there.  No, in fact the shelf is too good for Possession.  It belongs in the trash. 

Possession has nothing to do with the Isabelle Adjani movie.  It has nothing to do with the Gwyneth Paltrow one either.  It has everything to do with being the movie equivalent of chloroform.  One whiff of this flick and you’ll be out like a light.

Jess (Gellar) takes her doting husband Ryan (Michael Landes) for granted, mostly because his fuck-up brother Roman (Lee Pace) lives with them.  Jess used to be Roman’s parole officer, which makes it even more awkward.  When the brothers are involved in a car crash, it results with both of them in coma.  While Ryan lay comatose, Roman awakens claiming to be his brother.  Jess is skeptical, but Roman seems to know things only she and Ryan would know.  Has Ryan’s spirit somehow become mixed up inside Roman’s body, or is Roman (who has a history of abuse) just putting her through some sort of elaborate mental torture?

Possession does that thing where nothing happens for the longest time.  You sit there hoping it’ll get better, waiting for some kind of payoff.  When the payoff finally comes, it’s so tame that it wouldn’t even scare your grandmother.  (It would look right at home on Lifetime.)  By that time, it’s hard to care either way if it is some sort of supernatural B.S. or just Pace playing head games with Gellar.  

One interesting thing to note:  Pace plays a dude named Roman in this movie and he played a guy named Ronan in The Guardians of the Galaxy.  Okay, that’s not interesting at all, but I’ve got a word count to hit here. 

AKA:  Shuffle 2:  Exchange.