The End of Dr Blood's Video Vault

Yes, it's really the end of the blog this time.

This news will come as no surprise to my readers who have noticed that I've slowed down a lot over the last couple of years and not watched many movies at all. For one thing, I don't have the time or patience for reviewing horror movies anymore, and for another, I've lost interest in movies completely. I could blame it on various health issues that have come and gone, but really it's just part of getting older and growing out of stuff.

I'll leave the blog up as some of what I wrote is funny to go back and look at. In particular, the horrible punctuation mistakes of the early posts are somewhat amusing, and all of the vitriol I poured out on crappy low-budget horror is still relevant. Pointless movies made by delusional people which I really only wrote about because I had nothing better to do. Meh, we live and learn.

So what's next? Nothing really.

Up until fairly recently, I'd still been buying the occasional DVD from CeX, and although I wanted to write a series of posts called "The Joy of CeX", it's just not the same as those fantastic pawn shop scavenger hunts I used to go on. There's no satisfaction from the hunt when you can easily look up whatever you want and buy it from a website. The bargains are there, of course, because DVD and Blu-ray are almost dead as a format. Hell, the entire movie industry is pretty much dead now too, or if not dead, it's certainly extremely poorly and ready to kick the bucket at any time. There's nothing relevant for anyone my age. In fact, there's very little which is relevant for anyone over 18 now. It's mostly a lot of misguided, preachy, virtue-signalling, political crap which is so poorly disguised with feeble "storytelling" that only the very foolish still buy into it.

Having said that, I don't even watch the older movies I collected, they just sit on my bookshelves as a reminder of this great time-wasting folly. Same with the books I will never read and games which I never play.

So yeah, that's it. Nothing more to see here unless I change my mind again one day. I can't really see it happening though. There's no money to be made from any of this. In case you missed it, the magazines are slowly disappearing, and the big name blogs (which have never been acknowledged by normal people for having any credibility) are apparently e-begging. Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and all those Patreon pan-handlers can fuck right off. If you really want to pay "idiot tax" to a bunch of people who don't care about anyone except themselves, go ahead, but I'm not falling for it.

The whole "scene" is now an even bigger pile of cliquey shit with nothing but the really shitty people left in it. When they aren't cross-promoting each other, or falsely playing the victim while bullying and inciting witch-hunts against anyone who challenges their brainwashed opinions, they are regurgitating the same old nostalgia crap as clickbait. It's pathetic and boring. The rest of us, the good people who've seen the light, have kicked the dust of this crap off our feet and moved on.

Later, gators.


Update
Photobucket is holding everyone to ransom over third-party image hosting. It looks like they finally did what all the trolls, haters, psychopaths, bullies, and pathological liars couldn't do. They killed my blog.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)

"Alice returns to where the nightmare began: The Hive in Raccoon City, where the Umbrella Corporation is gathering its forces for a final strike against the only remaining survivors of the apocalypse."

There's no point writing any kind of in-depth review of "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter". It's just as disappointing and "samey" as all of the "Resident Evil" movies, and it's even more boring than playing one of the linear computer games that it's based on.

With lots of overly dramatic music, big bangs and explosions, crowds of zombies, close-up hand-to-hand combat, surprise T-virus mutated-zombie jump scares, and too much reliance on timers to create tension (which nearly always falls flat), you will rightly wonder who exactly this movie is intended for other than diehard fans. It certainly wasn't intended for me or anyone looking for characters with any depth or a story that can't be summarised in more than three sentences.

The only character to stand out even a little bit is Isaacs (played by Iain Glen, otherwise known as Ser Friendzoned from "Game of Thrones") who goes through various incarnations of being either a clone or the real Isaacs until you don't care which is which. Various other characters from the previous movies return as little more than cameos. Wesker, the Red Queen, and Claire whatever-her-name-is (played by Ali Larter) all get dressed up to play pretend for hardly any reason.

The rest is just a mess of running around and fighting in the dark with CGI everywhere and computery things popping up to remind you that this is all based on the Capcom console game which nobody has played since the late 1990s. It's not difficult to follow what little story there is, but it's not worth paying too much attention to it either.

There's a bit of anti-Christian nuttery to make it appeal to the Lefties, but since the motivation of the bad guys and subtext is blatantly more akin to the the rise of the SJW religion/virus and the rioting zombies who subscribe to that ideology, it comes across as a pathetic and hilarious misfire.

Sadly, the once uber hot Milla Jovovich really looks her age now (and more so, once you get the in-joke that I've just made), so I'm glad this is "The Final Chapter". Any more would be as embarrassing as middle-aged James Bond.

Still nothing good to review

Every so often I think about reviewing something again, but unfortunately, there's been nothing worth watching this year. The quality (and quantity) of new horror movies is even worse than last year, and the year before, and the year before that. There are lots of reasons for this, but the blame mostly lies with lack of talent and new ideas. It doesn't help that the various nepotistic cliques of niche reviewers keep praising utter shit (when they aren't writing lazy nostalgia pieces) because it's all they have left to talk about.

The only "Summer movie" I watched.

Yes, we've had "The Conjuring 2" which deserves some kind of mention for trying to match its sets to how things looked in the Enfield poltergeist haunting videos on YouTube. I noticed the pop posters and had a bit of fun trying to identify the ones which were obviously different or in the wrong places. The Bay City Rollers, David Soul, and Joanna Lumley posters were close, but I don't remember The Kinks pullout poster from Jackie magazine actually being one of the girls' decorations. I also have some concerns over the family owning 1960s-style telephones (especially the wall-mounted kitchen phone) rather than trimphones from the late 1970s, but I can let that pass as "good enough". British telecommunications were not this movie's focus or forte. As for jump-scares, yeah, the nun-demon got me, and old Reg had a good moment.

Some people remarked how "The Conjuring 2" felt like more of a Christmas movie than anything else (duh, because it's set at Christmas), and I have nothing else to add to that uber "insightful" (oh God, that awful low-brow word overused by sheep across the internet!) observation. It's not Christmassy like "Gremlins", but the seasonal trappings are there in the background if you bother to look for them.

Maybe I should congratulate James Wan on trying his hardest to make heroes out of a pair of known charlatans. I'd never even heard of the Warrens before "The Conjuring", mainly because I don't really "do" paranormal investigation bullshit, and of course, I'm not American. According to ghosthunter Harry Price, the Warrens only turned up once, very briefly, and weren't big players in the Enfield poltergeist investigation at all. Patrick Wilson singing an Elvis song as Ed Warren is also a bit weird, out of place, but probably kind of nice for the ladies. So kudos for having very little historical accuracy then. But hey, the whole thing was a hoax anyway, so who even cares?

Not the worst thing I've ever seen but damned close.

I've also watched some horrid Kevin Bacon movie called "The Darkness". It's filled with clichés and the usual predictable possession guff, albeit with a couple of seemingly original "native American" touches which fall flat. Typical Blumhouse shit and as worthless and instantly forgettable as everything else they churn out. I think they tried to make it controversial by having an autistic kid in it and making him even more evil than autistic kids usually are in movies, but it didn't work out too well. Most "reviewers" simply saw Kevin Bacon attached, exclaimed "Doesn't he look old now?", and that was the highlight for them. "The Darkness" was rendered virtually unwatchable, however, by being filmed with a handycam with its very noticeable quivers and judders. Could nobody afford a tripod? Perhaps they spent all the budget on advertising their website. I don't know and don't care.

From other genres, "Green Room" bored me rigid. American Nazis (for lack of a better term) imprison a punk band in their backwoods concert hall and much merriment fails to ensue. I couldn't understand what that Yeltsin guy (who died by running himself over this year) said in any of his mumbled lines, and the namby-pamby feebleness of the instantly unlikable characters frustrated me. A couple of gunshot effects were undoubtedly cool near the end, but "Romper Stomper" is still the go-to movie if you like this kind of thing.

Fuck me, I liked something!

The biggest theatrical release for me was "Gods of Egypt". I actually enjoyed "Gods of Egypt" to the extent that I got threatened with physical assault on Facebook (and one person blocked me) because I dared to like something. The fucked-up-ness of that whole situation is quite hilarious. I've seen people getting all bent out of shape because I didn't like something but never the opposite. Even my infamous and blatant love for the "Twilight" movies never went that far. To this day, people still bitch about how I liked an incredibly successful franchise which they consider to be "non-horror" even though it had vampires and werewolves in it, while at the same time, they rave about their shitty horror-comedies which are even less worthy of being part of the genre. Some people, as we know, are just nuts.

Don't get me wrong, "Gods of Egypt" isn't a great movie, but it's easily as good as "Clash of the Titans" or any of those other adventures meant for little kids. It looks fantastic, the story is okay-ish, and it certainly didn't wreck Egyptian mythology as much as "Immortals" shat all over the ancient Greek legends a few years ago. I saw some SJW bullshit about "whitewashing" with the casting, but since those comments came from people who have no education or faintest idea about the diverse ethnicity in Ancient Egypt, I can laugh that off. There's no point arguing online with liberals, SJWs, or any other brainwashed "causers" because their combined IQs are less than a tin of pilchards. They clearly didn't watch the movie anyway, because if they had, they would have realised that there are more black characters than any other race portrayed. It may be one actor (Chadwick Boseman playing Thoth) repeated hundreds of times, but it still counts!

Starring lots of beautiful actresses whose names I can't remember.

Lastly, as far as new movies go, I watched "The Huntsman: Winter's War" and almost loved it. Again, nothing all that new, and no Kristen Stewart in it, but it has some nice bawdy British humour and a little bit of visual subtext which reduces the current "gender wars" (which really only exist in fake realities such as American college campuses or online, you know) into the minuscule kerfuffle that they truly are. If you don't pick up on it, you aren't good at reading images and certainly shouldn't review movies.

Among many things I've boycotted, I obviously haven't watched the remake/re-imagining/reboot/sequel of "Ghostbusters" because I don't like horror-comedies and didn't ever like the original or its sequel. The original failed at everything I call entertaining, apart from the one scene with the old woman/librarian ghost, and is just too sickeningly "American" for my taste. In other words, its comedy is fucking lame. Big deal that they changed all the genders, I couldn't care less if they replaced the characters with talking bags of shit. I doubt that anyone would notice the difference, but it's possible that I'd be more inclined to watch it if they had. Replace the cast with cats though, and I'd definitely watch the next one.

Please don't make any more of these!

Thanks to Amazon Prime (and a mixture of curiosity and boredom), I suffered through the three "Divergent" movies. I had no idea what to expect, and now wish I hadn't wasted my time. They are full of "pretty" talent, owe a lot to "Starship Troopers", and have some decent eyecandy here and there, but sci-fi blows anyway, and this is particularly shit sci-fi at that. When the kids all celebrated one of their minor victories by self-harming with tattoos, that was enough for me. I'm not the target audience for this crap, and even if I was, such trendy teen sci-fi has really gone downhill since "The Hunger Games" ripped off "Battle Royale".

In other news, I may start a new blog eventually about computer games. Aside from making cat videos and intentionally awful 5-hour podcasts, I've been playing computer games more than watching movies this year because, as I said at the start, this has already been a truly shit year for movies, and it isn't going to get any better.

Happy Hallowe'en 2015!

Happy Hallowe'en, everybody!

Meh. Horror is dead.

My Top Ten Black Cats

Although you should appreciate cats every day, August 17th is officially "Black Cat Appreciation Day".

Often associated with bad luck and witchcraft, and portrayed as incarnations of evil, it's obvious that black cats have had some very bad press and a lot of misconceptions about them over the years. Horror movies, particularly, have done nothing to redress the balance.

Bearing in mind that black cats are completely harmless and lovable pets, and that their often sinister depiction in horror movies is purely fiction, here's a quick top ten list of my favourite black cats.


1. Becker from "Blacker Than the Night" (1975).

2. Mar from "The Grudge" (2004).

3. Wellington from "The Uncanny" (1977).

4. Pluto from "Masters of Horror: The Black Cat" (2006).

5. Satan from "Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key" (1972).

6. Belasco from "The Legend of Hell House" (1973).

7. Satanas from "Dr. Cyclops" (1940).

8. Mittens from "Funeral Home" (1980).

9. Hecuba from "Drag Me to Hell" (2009).

10. Ebony from "The Eye 3" (2005).

Bonus: Mr. Kittles from "Scary Movie 2" (2001).

For even more black cats, please visit: The Horror Cats - a Celebration of Felines in Horror Movies and Television.

Tomcat: Dangerous Desires (1993)

"Jacki, a scientist involved in genetic research, meets Tom, a young modern dancer who is suffering from a degenerative nerve disease. Jacki experiments with using genetic material taken from a cat to cure him, but the cure has side effects, and Tom begins to take on feline characteristics that may turn him into a monster. The situation is further complicated by Tom's attachment to Imogen—and Jacki's growing jealousy as she fears the loss of her patient and lover."

Since there's very little information about "Tomcat: Dangerous Desires" online, and only a few short reviews which I could find, I decided that it was about time for me to redress the balance by rewatching and reviewing this "guilty pleasure" movie myself.

Although I have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about when I watch any erotic-thriller, especially one with a "CatMan" (to quote the German VHS title) and former Bond-girl Maryam d'Abo nude in it, I have to preface my review by saying that this is not entirely typical of the movies which I normally watch, but it's close enough to provide an example of things to come.

Having said that, I'll probably never watch "Tomcat: Dangerous Desires" again unless I have a very good reason to share it, but once I've finished telling you about it, I'm certain that you'll want to see this for yourself.

"I want to talk to you up close."

"Tomcat: Dangerous Desires" is a typical '90s straight-to-video product which contains all the elements that the hipsters and SyFy channel viewers now only enjoy ironically. There's mostly bad acting, horrible cheesy dialogue, and lots of softcore sex scenes involving very hot actresses.

Richard Greico's outstanding feline performance is kind of great, because he suits the role perfectly, but the ladies will be sad to learn that he only gets semi-nude. You do get to see him shirtless several times, and he shows his bottom, but you're not going to see Richard's other Richard.

Offscreen kills and nothing particularly gruesome apart from some cruelty to insects, plus an anaesthetised cat with tubes coming out of it head in grainy video-footage of the important operation, mean that the R-rating is only for the nudity and occasional swearing which doesn't get any harder than the word "Fuck!"

At the heart of "Tomcat: Dangerous Desires" is a fairly tame Frankenstein-genre plot with so many moments of humour that you can't believe the serious performances which surround them. How can this not be a comedy when the first things to give you a hint that Tom is half-cat are the types of food and bottles of milk in Tom's fridge?

"What a loser. No fucking beer!"

As a cat caregiver myself, those contents aren't much different to the ones in my fridge, give or take a couple of dozen cans of Monster, but we already have the title of the movie in our minds, and it's pretty obvious that Tom doesn't have a pet.

Because the story starts in medias res, the secret of why Tom is a little bit odd and has superhuman powers is the next thing revealed. We find out that sexy Dr. Jacki (Maryam d'Abo), who is now Tom's girlfriend (for lack of a better term at this point), has performed an unethical experiment.

Tom initially went to Dr. Jacki suffering from a terminal hereditary illness, and just as any good Canadian NHS doctor might do, she cured his genetic problem by replacing his damaged human cells with cat brain cells. Purrfect! Nothing could possible go wrong!

"You're not killing the cat!"

Here's where things start getting a bit more involved. Tom is prone to going out at night, staying out, and coming back in the morning... just like a cat. And what do tomcats need to go out for at night? Yeah, you guessed it. He's not the most faithful fella in the world.

Suffice it to say that Tom and his sexy dancing partner Imogen (Natalie Radford) start getting jiggy with it after what can only be described as the worst version of "Swan Lake" ever performed. There's wirework and flying through the air in this shit!

Not blue Bart Simpson.

Just to make sure that we still understand that Tom is a bit catty now, a playful splash of water scares him and causes him to take off his shirt (revealing a panther tattoo!), which is followed by some very astute observations and accusations about Tom's behaviour from Jacki. She's suspicious, a bit jealous, and she knows but can't prove that there's something wrong.

"You dumb, stupid, stubborn, zadnyaya chast' loshadi!"

It isn't long before the affair becomes more obvious. Without giving too much away, Jacki catches Tom and Imogen kissing at a nightclub called "Feline Sex Club". I shit you not, that's its name. Feline. Sex. Club. Nothing naughty could ever happen there!

It's not what it looks like. She's inflatable.

Lest I ruin the rest of the movie with spoilers, it's enough for you to know that Jacki and Tom break up in a bad way, a VHS tape of Jacki's experiment on Tom falls into the wrong hands a couple of times with deadly consequences, Tom becomes more unstable and unfaithful, and Imogen has a boyfriend who also becomes a problem.

"I'm King of the World... I mean King of 21 Jump Street!"

For anyone who suffers from vertigo, as Tom used to before he went all catified and found that he preferred high places, I'll just warn you that a torturous scene with Imogen might give you the heebies. It's not as bad as the one in "The Devil's Advocate" (1997) though.

"Do you like scary movies?"

Possibly the most awkward scene involves Imogen selfishly and tantalisingly having phone sex with Tom while he is on his cellphone in a public area of a hotel, but it's undeniably hot too! If watching this part of "Tomcat: Dangerous Desires" makes you want to see more of Natalie Radford, you won't need to go to another movie because she's not shy! Trust me, you'll see everything you need to eventually.

The big question, however, which I'm sure you're asking, is "Are there any cats in this movie?" I'm delighted to tell you that, yes, there are.

There's a Persian cat during the opening credits, a Tabby cat involved in the experiment, and Imogen and her boyfriend Dale (Sean Orr) share a Siamese cat. Two black and white moggies (from what appears to be stock footage which is flipped horizontally at one point) also hang out and watch Tom and Imogen run around a lumber mill near the end.

Written and directed by Paul Donovan who (according to the IMDb) also directed "Def-Con 4" (1985) and 12 episodes of the "Lexx" TV show (1997-2002), neither of which I've seen, "Tomcat: Dangerous Desires" isn't a great horror movie, but it's far from being a terrible one. It's better than 99.9% of today's progressive-liberal tainted rubbish anyway.

It may look like a TV movie, and it's more about a very weird romance than it is about horror or sci-fi, but "Tomcat: Dangerous Desires" is nicely filmed on location in Vancouver (with real cameras and tripods and stuff rather than handheld shakycams in someone's backyard), and it's an amusing little product of its time.

There's nothing to get too upset about with this movie unless you're looking for a hardcore porno or some extreme bloody violence, because it isn't one of those. It's not that "Tomcat: Dangerous Desires" doesn't have any violence at all or some absolutely beautiful and thoroughly refreshing politically incorrect moments, but it's not meant for horror purists, and it certainly isn't scary.

Yes, it really is called "CatMan" in Germany, and they replaced Maryam d'Abo with Natalie Radford on the VHS artwork. Meh. It could be worse.

Unlike the mean-spirited and humourless twonks who rated "Tomcat: Dangerous Desires" as 3.6 on the IMDb, I'm giving this highly entertaining movie 6 out of 10 because it wasn't slow, boring, or preachy, and I liked it.

5 Horror Films Which You Probably Haven't Seen

Many clickbait lists of "Horror Films You Haven't Seen" come and go, but I'm almost willing to bet money that you haven't seen all of these movies.

As usual, I'm sticking primarily to the best rather than the cheap and nasty, no-budget "hobby horror" indie crap. Having said that, some of these movies aren't highly-rated by the unwashed masses, and I haven't put them in any particularly order. None of their stories are very original, and your enjoyment of them, sadly, may differ from mine.

(Because I'm lazy, all the synopses are taken from the IMDb. Yeah, I know. No big surprise there.)


1. Sector 7 (2011)

"Something awaits 2,500 meters under the deep sea off the southern tip of Jeju Island... Directed by Kim Ji-hoon and produced by JK Youn, the sci-fi action thriller Sector 7 revolves around an oil rig crew forced to battle a deadly creature at sea."

If you liked "The Host" (2006), this will fill in some time while you continue to wait for the official sequel. It's mainly all CGI with a few practical effects, but the monster is suitably nasty.

The girls in it are very beautiful, the men are a mixed bag of quirky and handsome, and the setting itself is exactly what you might expect of an oil rig in a fun action movie rather than being in any way realistic.

Similar to: The Host, Alien, Deep Blue Sea, Leviathan, and Deep Rising.

2. The Hotel!! (2002)

"Sarapee and Pun inherit a beach mansion from Luang Narubal, the husband and benefactor whom they betrayed and left to die in sorrow. The two now decide to move in and turn the mansion into a hotel in order to make some money. Twenty five years pass. Sarapee has died. Her two children from her marriage to Pun, Parinya and Patama, are now fully grown and they return from living abroad to take over the hotel. After renovating it, the mystery begins. Deaths occur over and over again, and sometimes Parinya and Pattama witness them. It isn't long before they are the only two people left to uncover the mystery and fight to stay alive. But who is the mysterious murderer?"

It's a Thai ghost story/murder mystery. The story lags in a few places, and overacting abounds, but the effects are surprisingly good considering the obvious low-budget.

There aren't too many scares, but there are a few grisly bits which might surprise you.

Similar to: Spectres, The Green Man, The Haunting of Seacliff Inn, and even parts of The Omen.

3. Blacker Than the Night (1975)

"When four women move into an old house left by one woman's aunt, strange things begin to happen. Bizarre voices, visions of ghosts, and mysterious noises lead them to discover the darkest powers of evil and a horror and agony beyond terror."

Another supernatural murder mystery which borders on being a slasher. It's Mexican and better known by its Spanish title of "Más negro que la noche".

Before anyone starts thinking that the word "negro" is racist, the title refers the colour of the black cat's fur in the movie. And yes, Becker the cat does play a very important part.

Considered a classic in some circles, harsher critics only rate "Blacker Than the Night" as average. Inevitably, it was remade (albeit by another Mexican director) last year. Although it also has its detractors, the remake is okay too.

Similar to: The Legacy, The Amityville Horror, The Woman in Black, and virtually any other haunted house movie.

4. See the Sea (1997)

"Sasha, a young British woman, is living with her baby daughter at Ile d'Yeu, a peaceful beach community. A stranger appears. Her name is Tatiana, she's passing through, and pitches her tent in Sasha's yard. The two women build an odd rapport, and tension builds as events unfold."

Originally called "Regarde la mer" (because it's French), this is a short one in that it's only 52 minutes long. Fortunately, it doesn't feel like a modern short, and for a low-budget movie, the production values and acting are very good throughout.

The story certainly isn't as predictable as you might expect. Some might even say that it's shocking. Either way, it's notable for being a kind of precursor to "À l'intérieur" (2007), but it's far more classy, believable, and memorable.

Similar to: Empty Cradle, À l'intérieur (aka Inside), and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.

5. The Dark Hours (2005)

"Dr. Samantha Goodman, an attractive psychiatrist in her thirties, joins her husband and sister for a weekend at a winter cottage when an unexpected guest arrives. Harlan Pyne, a violent sexual offender, is convinced that Samantha conducted unethical experiments on him while she was his doctor. With the assistance of his troubled yet eager protege, Harlan forces Samantha and her family to participate in a series of nightmarish games. On this night of terror, escape is not an option, truth guarantees nothing, and revenge will not necessarily be sweet."

It's Canadian (so it borrows from all over the place like most Canadian horror movies) and has great acting.

I have nothing new to say about "The Dark Hours" because I've already reviewed it. It's nice that you can get it for only 50c at Amazon now though.

Similar to: Identity, Sublime, Frailty, Cheap Thrills, and Would You Rather.

So there you have it. I was initially going to list ten movies, but it's too hot today, and as I said previously, I'm far too lazy.

I chose mainly foreign language movies because, let's face it, the slew of crappy American horror has had nothing good to offer anyone outside of the "noobs" and "nyuk-nyuk-nyuk brigade" for many years.

You can buy most of these movies from Amazon or rent them from Netflix. You'll also find them on YouTube, Hulu, Vudu, and other video streaming sites.

Tracking these movies down should keep you occupied, and hopefully, they will stop some people from constantly complaining that there's "nothing to watch".

Gore Orphanage (2015)

"Set in the depression era, Gore Orphanage shows that some things are worse than losing your family."

Sharing the title and same urban legend with an earlier low-budget horror movie from 1980 which I've never seen, "Gore Orphanage" adds to one of Ohio's most famous (albeit extremely fanciful) ghost stories by successfully slipping the motivation of real life English murderer Mary Bell into the mix.

Obviously, being British myself, I wouldn't have ever known about the Gore Orphanage urban legend, but I did know about Mary Bell who was all over the news in the early 1980s and caused another kerfuffle during the Tony Blair era when the government failed to prevent her (as a convicted murderer) from profitting financially through sales of her published story.

Of course, if you don't know or care about any of those things, it doesn't really matter. "Gore Orphanage" is a work of fiction whether you choose to read Emily Lapisardi's "Gore Orphanage: The Novel" right now or wait a few months longer to watch this movie which Emily Lapisardi has directed and co-written (with producer/actor Cody Knotts) when it's officially released in October. I've been one of the lucky few reviewers who was selected to see the screener, and I mostly enjoyed it.

"Gore Orphanage" stars Maria Olsen as a sadistic proprietor of a privately owned orphanage in a role reminiscent of the latest incarnation of prison governor Joan "The Freak" Ferguson from the Australian "Wentworth" TV series. Mrs. Pryor (Maria Olsen) is a nasty piece of work with mental health issues which may excuse but not condone any legal justification for her actions. You'll hate her, but you're supposed to. As usual, Maria looks attractive in some scenes and appropriately horrible in others, but either way, she can certainly act.

As a foil to Maria Olsen's character, Keri Maletto plays the younger and nicer Miss Lillian who also shows similarities to an early Joan Bennett from "Wentworth". I'm not saying that there are any borrowings as such here, just stereotypical and easily recognisable genre characters. I may have noticed them in "Wentworth" (the rebooted "Prisoner: Cell Block H") most recently, but such characters have been part of every prison and orphanage drama.

I don't know why Miss Lillian never takes her hat off when she's indoors.

Sharing the burden of looking after the orphanage is Bill Townsend playing Ernst the German janitor/handyman. I won't spoil it for you, but things may or may not be as they first appear with Ernst. There's certainly some good work there with the script and characterisation. More screen time for Ernst would have been nice, but maybe a little more depth would have wrecked his subplot too.

Since this story is set in an orphanage, the rest of the cast is mostly comprised of child actors including Emma Smith, Nora Hoyle, and Brandon Mangin Jr. I believe that this is their first movie, so I'm not going to judge any of them too harshly. Some of their performances are better than others (and some made me cringe), but generally, they do an acceptable job. None of them are up to the same standard as kids in movies such as "The Bad Seed" (1956) or "Stephen King's It" (1990), but they're as good as any Children's Film Foundation actors from back in the day.

If I had to pick one child actor out of all of them who looks like she will have a big future ahead of her, it would be little Nora Hoyle who plays Esther. She has some great expressions, is aware of the other actors, and makes her scenes convincing. I simply wasn't very impressed by Emma Smith in the lead role as Nellie, but she does have her moments.

To be brutally honest, the camerawork and the direction doesn't work in the favour of many of the children. Wrong angles, some bad framing, and keeping them on their marks tends to show through. In particular, faults are most apparent when the children are speaking to each other and eye contact isn't made at the right angle, and there are unnatural movements when these young actors have to walk or run to a certain point.

Again, I also have to make some allowances because this is Emily Lapisardi's debut feature and she still needs to learn her craft. Giving credit where it's due, she's done a lot better than I could ever do, but that's a redundant point since I'm not a filmmaker and have no desire to ever be one. I'm just an often overly critical viewer.

Mealtimes involve a lot of playing with food rather than eating it.

The cinematography by Nicholas Carrington is inconsistently but mostly competent. I prefer the scenes where he clearly used a tripod rather than the shaky handycam, but that's because I'm old-fashioned that way. The best of these is when Mrs. Pryor reads a passage from the Bible to the kids before they eat. Only in one scene near the end does the handycam accidentally make you think that you're watching a "killer's point-of-view", and this could possibly be stabilised more in post-production to remove that slight problem.

Editing is a laborious process for anyone, so I fully appreciate the effort which has gone into "Gore Orphanage", but even as a slow-burn murder/mystery/horror, it would benefit from being a bit tighter. The pacing is okay as it is, but... yeah, if I knew how to do it, I would swap a few scenes around and excise a couple of others. The soundtrack is also very basic and occasionally echoey as well. All these things are standard problems with low-budget productions, so you can take what I'm saying with the usual pinch or sackful of salt.

The 1930s depression era setting works well, and care has been taken with the various props, costumes, and location. "Gore Orphanage" is not quite as good in that respect as the movies which have inspired it, but it's noticeable that someone cared enough about attention to detail within the contraints of the budget.

Similar looking and themed movies such as "Flowers in the Attic" (1987), "The Others" (2001), "The Devil's Backbone" (2001), "House of Voices" (2004), "The Orphanage" (2007), "The Awakening" (2011), and ""The Secret pf Crickley Hall" (2012) do more or less the same thing, but "Gore Orphanage" doesn't have anywhere near the same budget as even the cheapest of those productions.

She still has that hat on!

One final (and very minor) gripe is that Chris "The Irate Gamer" Bores is listed in the credits but doesn't appear until after them. Apparently, he was in a cut scene which involved paranormal investigators. The only bit that remains is a post-credits bonus in which you only see him running away with three other people and have no idea who any of them are. Oh well, I guess that he won't be promoting this movie much on his YouTube channel now.

If you think from my critique so far that I hated a lot of this movie, you'd be wrong. In fact, I enjoyed the storytelling despite "Gore Orphanage" not being the supernatural or even bloody event which I initially thought that it was going to turn into. I truly enjoyed the acting, and I definitely got a kick out of the "twist" element. The wraparound scenes give that away more than I just have.

"Gore Orphanage" may not be brilliantly or slickly realised, and it's predictable for those of us who've seen too many movies, but it's generally okay. A little nod to "The Shining" doesn't become a cliché, and I totally respect and am grateful for the restraint shown there. I'm also grateful that no holds were barred when it came to the more taboo subject matter.

Having said that, I'm not entirely convinced that "Gore Orphanage" should be classed as a horror movie. It may be within the wider scope of the genre and contains a few slasher elements, but it's more of a drama and mystery than a "shit-yer-pants-scary" affair anyway.

For that reason, more than any other, I can only give "Gore Orphanage" a slightly below average rating as it stands at the moment. As much as I'm tempted to hypocritically gush about this movie and drop a marketing-friendly "quote" into my review to get a mention on the DVD sleeve, I just can't do it. "Gore Orphanage" isn't scary, and horror movies should be scary.

For more information about the DVD release, please check out the "Gore Orphanage" Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/goreorphanagethemovie.

The Human Centipede III: Final Sequence (2015)

"Taking inspiration from The Human Centipede films, the warden of a notorious and troubled prison looks to create a 500-person human centipede as a solution to his problems."

Featuring extended cameos by Robert LaSardo (best known for playing Escobar Gallardo in "Nip/Tuck"), Eric Roberts (who clearly is not likely to be remembered for anything apart from being Julia Roberts' brother), and director Tom Six himself, this final entry in the now worn-out but once hilarious Human Centipede joke is undoubtedly on most people's "must see" list. Hell, it beats watching the dubious "Poltergeist" remake or the equally crappy-looking "We Are Still Here" this weekend, doesn't it?

Even more political incorrect (it kind of says so on the poster) than the previous installments, "The Human Centipede III" certainly does not disappoint. From the opening scene where Dieter Laser (playing the insane prison warden Bill Boss) fingers sexy Bree Olson (as Daisy, Bill Boss' beautiful personal assistant and sex toy) in front of Laurence Harvey (Dwight Butler now rather than Martin), you know that things can only get better. Or worse. It all depends on your point of view. Normal people will laugh at it, Right-wingers will laugh with it, and Lefties just shouldn't ever watch this movie without adult supervision because it will make them cry like the entitled little babies they are all over the internet forever and ever amen.

"You're a sadistic, vile, asshole!"

As a "meta" movie, "The Human Centipede III" often strays too far up its own arse (pun self-consciously intended) to actually be "in-joke" funny, but with decent production values (not unlike those of Full Moon) and a cast who know that they are supposed to be chewing the scenery (another pun there) as much as possible, it's quite amusing. Standouts are obviously the maniacal double-act of Dieter Laser and Laurence Harvey, but you know, that's exactly why they are in this movie in the first place.

Of course, it's all as predictable and as offensive as can be, but that's the point. There's racism, sexism, patriotism, and all the other "isms" that drive those irritating progressive-liberals batshit crazy. Plus there's more than one blatant attempt at injecting some damning condemnation of the American prison system into this satire. It doesn't entirely work (since everything about the justice system in America is constantly mocked by the rest of the civilised world), but Tom Six is a goddamned genius-troll with these things, and you just have to admire him for it. I wish he could direct an episode of "Orange is the New Black" in the same style.

Orange is the New Centipede.

As usual, I'm not going to give any major spoilers. This blog is only supposed to a free "guide" rather than a collection of moral essays after all. Another reason is that, hard as it may be to do so, "The Human Centipede III" is best viewed with as little prior knowledge as possible. There are a few gruesome shocks but much less gore than in its predecessors, and of course, things turn out very badly indeed for everyone involved. Highlighting every fart that goes to fair about how and why will absolutely ruin it for you.

Although never likely to be talked about as much as "The Human Centipede", nor quite as disturbing as "The Human Centipede II", "The Human Centipede III" is good wholesome family entertainment which should keep everyone amused on this Memorial Day (also known as just another barbecue day) weekend.

Highly recommended to Tom Six fans and sick fucks with a sense of humour everywhere.