The ABCs of Death (2012)

"A 26-chapter anthology that showcases death in all its vicious wonder and brutal beauty."

"The ABCs of Death" is responsible for another 2 hours of my life which I'll never get back, but on the bright side, at least I didn't have to wait to see this megaturd at one of the 30 or so selected cinemas which will be showing it next week. "The ABCs of Death" has been available as a VOD for some time now although I don't recommend that you pay for it if you can help it. It's even more of an insult to any normal human being's intelligence than "V/H/S". I wouldn't even let animals watch this crap.

Because I couldn't care less if I spoil this for you, here's the list of the 26 short "movies" (hahaha, what a joke to even call them that!) or segments and what I thought about them. My ratings are in parentheses.

"A is for Apocalypse" - very short but to the point with decent gore. (4/10)

"B is for Bigfoot" - predictable, but the pretty Mexican actress has lovely boobs. (3/10)

"C is for Cycle" - I didn't get it. Like most of the movies in this anthology, it makes no sense. (0/10)

"D is for Dogfight" - nice choreography but stupid, and I didn't understand the ending. (2/10)

"E is for Exterminate" - Angela Bettis' entry is too quick and predictable. (2/10)

"F is for Fart" - the Japanese girls are kinda hot, but the story is too bizarre. (2/10)

"G is for Gravity" - What? Did a shark get him or something? Who cares? (0/10)

"H is for Hydro-Electric Diffusion" - just weird. I didn't like it or understand what was going on. (0/10)

"I is for Ingrown" - What was ingrown? I expected toenails and got nothing. (0/10)

"J is for Jidai-geki" - a couple of stupid masks, and that's it. (0/10)

"K is for Klutz" - a badly drawn cartoon. Entertaining in a childish way but pointless. (1/10)

"L is for Libido" - one of the better ones. Reminiscent of "A Serbian Film" but with more punches pulled. (4/10)

"M is for Miscarriage" - Ti West gave less than a minute to this. Who cares though? All his movies suck anyway. (0/10)

"N is for Nuptials" - the bird is funny. Reusing an old Jethro joke isn't. (2/10)

"O is for Orgasm" - I have no idea what this is about other than a mess of camera tricks and a woman with bad skin. Feel free to enlighten me by writing your answer on the back of a stamp. (0/10)

"P is for Pressure" - very nasty ending and based on something which really happened online. I don't even want to talk about it, but it's another reason to boycott anything else from Simon Rumney. (0/10)

"Q is for Quack" - nice boobs at start, cute duck at end, but "meta" all the way. (0/10)

"R is for Removed" - utter crap. So surreal that I have no idea what it's supposed to be about. (0/10)

"S is for Speed" - also didn't make any sense to me. Heroin isn't the same thing as speed, is it? (0/10)

"T is for Toilet" - crappy claymation with a twist ending. Not acceptable. (0/10)

"U is for Unearthed" - a handycam vampire exhumation. Some originality, much borrowing. (1/10)

"V is for Vagitus" - lots of sci-fi action and gore, but no point. (1/10)

"W is for WTF?" - exactly, just a mess and even more "meta" than "Q". (0/10)

"X is for XXL" - beautifully gory and very good storytelling. If you find this segment online on its own, save yourself some time by only watching this one. (8/10)

"Y is for Youngbuck" - another story which makes no sense. (0/10)

"Z is for Zetsumetsu" - which is apparently some kind of weird Japanese porn with lots of fake sexual organs and sushi. (0/10)

It comes to something when a dog is the best actor in the film.

I've seen many terrible movies in my time, but "The ABCs of Death" really deserves some kind of award for being such a self-indulgent waste of the 26 lots of $5000 which each filmmaker was supposed to spend on his or her segment. Apparently, it costs $5000 for Ti West to throw some uncooked meat wrapped up in toilet paper down the bog and film a girl in glasses with a plunger in her hand looking at it. Well done, Ti, for proving yourself a total douchebag.

As for the animal cruelty (either shown or implied) which has been dumped in this just to be controversial, I'm against most forms of censorship, but if I had the power to do anything about it, I would pull "The ABCs of Death" in a second, have all copies of it destroyed, and have the filmmakers prosecuted individually. Kids who are looking for cheap thrills will always find them because of rumours, but sicker kids will seek out a "movie" like this and use it as inspiration.

All copies of "The ABCs of Death" ought to be destroyed anyway in case today's braindead generation start thinking that burning a load of glorified YouTube videos onto a DVD is the equivalent of making a real movie. With this lack of talent for them to emulate, no wonder horror is dead. In another 20 years, there probably won't be any movies except for 5 minute long ones on video hosting sites.

Furthermore, I have no idea why Amazon lists this as starring Ingrid Bolsø Berdal. She's not in it anywhere.

According to the IMDb, "The ABCs of Death" will be in movie theatres from February 28th. I advise you to watch something else.

V/H/S (2012)

"When a group of misfits is hired by an unknown third party to burglarize a desolate house and acquire a rare VHS tape, they discover more found footage than they bargained for."

I'm not going to lie to you, this isn't a review. I didn't actually get to see enough of "V/H/S" to even write the shortest horror movie review ever. I can't tell you who was in it, who directed it, or any details at all, and, quite frankly, I don't care about this piece of crap.

I started watching "V/H/S", and at the 15 seconds point when "The Collective" logo came up followed rapidly by the "Bloody-Disgusting" logo, that was it for me. OFF! I have nothing but contempt for those sellouts, and I certainly never wanted to watch one of their amateur horror offerings. I know I should have done my research more carefully, but honestly, I never expected them to go through with their threat to start making their own feeble movies.

Since I was stuck with it, I thought I'd better at least attempt to see what all the film festival fuss was about, but after struggling through the motion sickness inducing prologue and the even shakier first story about a succubus, that was enough. I PUKED!

More than that, I kept on puking until I thought I was going to bring up every meal from last week along with the tomato skins and beans on toast which I don't remember eating. After about an hour, because I'm a masochist, I even tried to watch the rest of "V/H/S" on fast-forward. I saw a few boobs, but the picture was jumping so badly that I threw up again. Bleeeeurgh!

Well done, whoever, for making a film so shaky that it was completely unwatchable. Bulimics everywhere will salute you!

Dead of Night (1945)

"An architect senses impending doom as his half-remembered recurring dream turns into reality. The guests at the country house encourage him to stay as they take turns telling supernatural tales."

Although a lot of people rave about "Dead of Night" being one of Britain's finest horror anthologies, I've never really thought much of it myself. Just because it was the first to link several short horror stories together doesn't make it the best, in my opinion, although it's quite entertaining in places if you are easily pleased.

Two of the five stories are very weak and there's a stupid comedy one involving two golfers which I loathe even more than the entirety of "Shaun of the Dead" so it must be bad. The best ones for me are the racing driver's tale and the story of the ventriloquist's dummy which has a life of its own although I've seen that one done better since as well.

"Dead of Night" isn't so much dated as it is simply a rather unsatisfying experience overall. The ending is particularly messy and then the final twist is just annoyingly predictable, but at least it ties the other stories together in a better way than a lot of the wraparounds on later anthologies.

I'm keeping this review short as I really don't like "Dead of Night" all that much. It's highly overrated (especially on the IMDb of course) and there isn't one single moment that's actually scary in it.

If you like "The Twilight Zone" TV series, you'll probably get something out of "Dead of Night" but, best of all, you can watch it for free on YouTube (in the video which I've posted above). I don't recommend this as a purchase or even a rental as it's just one of those average films which you can only watch once and will then forget about quite quickly.

Why do I have two copies of Asylum on VHS?

"A young psychiatrist interviews four inmates in a mental asylum to satisfy a requirement for employment. He hears stories about 1) the revenge of a murdered wife, 2) a tailor who makes a suit with some highly unusual qualities, 3) a woman who questions her sanity when it appears that her brother is conspiring against her, and 4) a man who builds tiny toy robots with lifelike human heads."

"Asylum" (1973) isn't exactly my favourite Amicus film or anything. In fact, I've fallen asleep three times trying to get through it because it's actually rather boring. Not even Peter Cushing can save this one.

I just have two copies because I bought one from the local pawn shop and somebody where I used to work gave me their copy. I'm not surprised that they didn't want it either. The rating on the IMDb is 6.4 but I would only give it half of that.

Amusingly, the second copy starts by announcing that it is a Criterion release. As somebody who has never bought into those overpriced Criterion DVDs, I now own a Criterion VHS tape. I have no idea if it's the same company or not though. It says "Interglobal Home Video" on the box and my research shows it to be from a Canadian company which was notorious in the '80s for badly transferred, low-budget films.

I have a suspicion that the Prism version may actually be some kind of collectible due to its artwork having virtually nothing to do with the movie itself. It can't be worth more than the $1 that I paid for it though as the cardboard is creased and torn. I still can't get my head round why American VHS tapes came in such ridiculous and easy to damage packaging rather than the proper plastic cases like we had in the UK.

Trapped Ashes (2006)

"Seven strangers on a Hollywood movie studio tour are trapped inside an infamous House of Horror and forced to tell their most terrifying stories to get out alive."

I used to love the old Amicus anthologies even though most of them weren't actually very scary so I was really in the mood to see what appeared to be an updated version of "The Vault of Horror" (1973). Unfortunately, even though it boasted the talents of five directors (Ken Russell, Sean S. Cunningham, Joe Dante, Monte Hellman and John Gaeta) and had a cast which included several well known faces such as Henry Gibson and John Saxon, it was thoroughly disappointing.

"Trapped Ashes" was little more than an excuse to get all the actresses in the film topless as much as possible. I'm not going to complain about that, of course, or the half-dozen softcore sex scenes, but it really made the film far too comical. As each segment started, I was just counting off the minutes until whichever actress was involved got naked.

Basically, "Trapped Ashes" looked like it was made up of rejected episodes from "The Hunger" TV series (which has now disappeared from Netflix, in case you wondered) and was sadly lacking in the horror department. It looked like it was made for TV but I have no idea if it was or not. Presumably it was released directly to DVD and I'm so glad that I didn't rent it at the time.

The wraparound story, directed by Joe Dante, had the same result as all the Amicus anthologies and so, even though it was silly and predictable, it was arguably the best part. The segments themselves were just very bland and no amount of boobs could cover that up.

The best (and least comedic) of the segments themselves involved Lara Harris who was the star of the whole show for me. Her almost J-horror ghost story (called "Jibaku") was directed by Sean S. Cunningham who, obviously, everyone knows because of "Friday the 13th" (1980). I thought Lara Harris was perfect in the role of Julia and made up for the story itself being rather weak.

If you prefer blondes and comedy, Rachel Veltri, was very good in Ken Russell's "The Girl with the Golden Breasts" but I found that whole segment to be very unappealing and it ruined the tone of the whole movie so much that it never recovered afterwards. It probably wasn't the best idea to make it the first story either.

Later on, John Saxon did quite well as an actor who was once involved in a love affair with a vampiric witch although he didn't really have much to do with it apart from appearing at the beginning and end. "Stanley's Girlfriend" was directed by Monte Hellman who is famous for "Beast from Haunted Cave" (1959) which isn't actually something to be very proud of either. The story felt like a filler and didn't really go anywhere or accomplish anything at all.

The final story, directed by John Gaeta, called "My Twin, The Worm" tried to be gruesome but the visual effects didn't really do anything for me which was a shame. Considering that John Gaeta is a visual effects guy rather than a director in the first place, I expected more.

Like so many of the films which I've watched on Netflix recently, "Trapped Ashes" is going straight into The Dungeon. It was entertaining in a few places but so very disappointing as a horror film that I really can't recommend it.

Little Deaths (2011)

"Composed of three disturbingly sensual and terrifying short narratives, unified by the twin themes of sex and death."

With each section being respectively written and directed by Sean Hogan, Andrew Parkinson and Simon Rumley (who was also responsible for "Red White & Blue"), this new British horror anthology is an uneven yet still highly entertaining collection of bizarre sexual nastiness.

In the first story, "House and Home", a rich couple who abduct a homeless girl for their own sexual gratification get a lot more than they bargained for. I enjoyed this gory story most of all but it was over far too quickly.

"Mutant Tool", which comes next, is the longest and most excruciatingly dull tale of a prostitute, her boyfriend and an experimental drug. I couldn't get into it and just wanted it to be over. Unfortunately, it dragged on and on with nothing much happening and no great surprise ending. I've got nothing against Andrew Parkinson and enjoyed "Dead Creatures" from ten years ago but this section seemed very out of place and quite confusing. If you make it through (although I recommend using the fast forward button), the final story is worth the wait.

Entitled "Bitch", this is the Simon Rumley section which completes the trio and has a most definite style to it. Flawed as it may be with yet another overpowering piece of background music at the end, at least this involves some poetically twisted piece of justice. I'm not sure if bestiality is more than suggested but there are at least three scenes of sado-masochism which should satisfy most sick puppies (yes, the pun is intended).

Overall, I enjoyed this low-budget anthology but it was very reminiscent of the "Urban Gothic" TV series and just as rushed except, as I've already said, for the middle story which wasn't worth wasting even five minutes on. The acting was good, the actresses were pretty and everything was as sleazy as you'd expect from a piece of gritty British filmmaking.

I know that "Little Deaths" has been doing the festival circuits and hasn't even got a distributor yet but some bright spark has been uploading it to over a dozen different places on the internet where you can watch it for free.

Judging by the quality of the streams, this must have been done by someone with access to a DVD version of the film (which was supposed to have been released in the UK on June 6th) and I wouldn't put it past one of the directors themselves as being responsible for uploading it. If I'm wrong about this and they have actually been ripped-off by a pirate then the three writers/directors should probably take some comfort from the fact that the middle section is so bad that it's doubtful that anyone would give them any money to see their film anyway.

I doubt that any of them are looking for advice from a horror blogger but, constructively, each director needs to go back and re-edit their own (or each other's) stories if they really want "Little Deaths" to be a success.