Midnight Horror: 8 Movies

I have no idea when Echo Bridge Home Entertainment released this multipack other than sometime in 2012. I got it from my local pawn shop a little under a month ago although, as it turned out, I already had a sealed copy which I bought from Wal-mart last year. Ah well, these things happen when you're dealing with movie collections which are designed to confuse the buyer into purchasing the same movies over and over again.

The powers that be must really have it in for me though because I had to scan the cover of this "Midnight Horror" multipack too (and it blurred in the bottom left corner). On the plus side, once again there are no other reviews online and no listing on the official website so I now have my second exclusive in forever. Yay, me! I'd do the Snoopy dance if I even knew what that was.


Night of the Living Dead (1968)

"A brother and sister visit the gravesite of their deceased father... but the trip turns into a terrifying nightmare when darkness falls and zombies attack."

Really, Echo Bridge Home Entertainment, really? Do you think that there's anyone who hasn't got this famous Public Domain movie already? It's even come free inside packets of cereal in some places!

Whatever. I'm not reviewing it again.


Windcroft (2007)

"When his father dies, John inherits the family farm... and a dark and disturbing past."

Sounds like a bundle of laughs, doesn't it?

Actually, "Windcroft" is all very serious and rather dull in spite of having the best looking blonde that I've seen in any low-budget horror movie ever. She can even act a bit too. Her name? I have no idea without looking it up... but having done that, it's Vanessa Daniels. She hasn't done a lot of other stuff apart from being in a couple of episodes of "Law and Order", but based on her performance in "Windcroft", I wouldn't mind seeing her in another horror one day.

Having obviously skimmed the IMDb for the finer details, I noticed that a lot of the "reviewers" (I mean synopsis writers) were complaining about the acting. But what do they know anyway? The IMDb is full of 12-year-olds who can barely put one word after another let alone know what the terms they use mean. An "IMDb reviewer" complaining about "acting" usually means that he or she didn't like the characters. You'll rarely see one add an "-isation" to the word "character" either or mention "empathy". As far as the IMDb is concerned any actor/character over 30 is old and not somebody they can identify with anyway. But I digressed.

There's really nothing that wrong with the acting in "Windcroft". The script would have benefitted from having someone with better dialogue writing skills go through it and give it some polish, but the acting itself is fine. Given the subject matter (which I'm not going to spoil for you), a little bit of nudity wouldn't have harmed anything either.

The location is great (albeit far too clean for a working farm), and the camerawork is outstanding for this kind of movie. The only niggle I have with some of the shots is that the cameraman must be long-sighted. Short-sighted people make the best cameramen, just so you know, because they use the camera lens to compensate and get in closer. If you're aiming for an oppressive or claustrophic atmosphere, you can't have all that space and distance going on.

The two things which really let "Windcroft" down are the pacing and the really irritating "music" in it. I can almost allow the former because the slowness makes the movie slightly offbeat in a Lucky McKee or Angela Bettis way, but I can't forgive whoever thought it was a good idea to put that horrible cacophony in the background. All the way through, I wanted to turn down the backing track and enhance the vocals, but of course, there's no way to do that.

If someone were to re-release this movie with no "music" (I can't bring myself to remove the quotation marks because it's that bad!), some tighter editing, and whatever clever digital enhancement there is available to make it look more "filmy", "Windcroft" would be a real award winner rather than boasting ones from obscure festivals which nobody has ever heard of.

As it stands, "Windcroft" shows the potential of whoever made it, but it doesn't deliver the goods where it counts, i.e. to anyone watching it who expects either a horror movie or the "modern gothic" tale that I imagine it was meant to be.


Interview with a Serial Killer (1994)

"A well-known crime novelist has reason to believe that her new tenant is a serial killer who has brutally murdered more than a dozen women."

Also known as "White Angel", this is a low-budget/TV quality British crime drama which apparently failed to get a major distribution deal. In the UK, it can be found as a double-feature with "Urban Ghost Story" from the same company. Despite a little bit of brutality, blood, and a flash of boobs or two, it's hard to call this horror. For one thing, the kill scenes are more off camera than on.

There are real actors in this including Peter Firth and Don Henderson (in an extended cameo), but Harriet Robinson is clearly out of her depth in the lead role of Ellen Carter after only being in bit parts beforehand. I don't know if hairy-forearmed Harriet realised that she wasn't cut out for acting or if something more sinister happened, but she was never in anything else afterwards. From her accent, she's Canadian, not that it or her hirsuteness is important to the story in any way.

As a very dated character study with a twist, "Interview with a Serial Killer" isn't a bad role for Peter Firth, but the movie feels like it should be a TV episode of "Bulman" from the 1980s due to Don Henderson's occasional appearances. The late Ken Sharrock who was typecast as a policeman throughout his career makes a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance as a bank teller too.


Keepsake (2008)

"When a freak accident strands Janine on a deserted highway, a call for help soon becomes a fight for survival."

The first of the two DVDs in this collection ends with some below average torture porn in the form of "Keepsake".

In spite of a powerful start, good production values (apart from the cheaper practical effects and handheld camerawork which was trendy 5 years ago), and an actress with an unexpectedly attractive body which she doesn't mind showing, it's a real shame that a movie which promised so much goes into the realm of flashbacks and hallucinations instead of staying linear.

While it becomes obvious what the filmmakers were trying to do, the eventual twist doesn't work so well either and borders on contempt for the audience. On the plus side, at least this is a more contemporary horror movie even if it isn't a particularly memorable one.


Colour from the Dark (2008)

"A family accidentally frees something from the Earth's womb while drawing water from their well and now a sinister glow is seeping into their lives."

Debbie Rochon stars in this, but don't let that put you off. "Colour from the Dark" is the classiest thing that she's ever been in, and it's not her fault that the movie is boring. Debbie certainly doesn't mind getting naked for purely gratuitous reasons, and even though she's 40 years old here, she's still a very good looking woman.

The setting in World War 2 Italy is anachronistic but also looks the part, and the atmosphere starts off right. Unfortunately, it's the horribly slow pacing of the story (based on "The Colour Out of Space") which isn't conducive for excitement. A little bit of gore here and there tries to liven things up but without much success.

While I didn't completely hate this movie, I found it slightly confusing and very unfocused. Some very odd casting choices complicate matters unnecessarily by having quite a mix of nationalities with no explanation of how or why they are all in Italy.

Nobody has ever made a good adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story anyway, but filmmakers still keep churning out these overambitious low-budget attempts. I suppose it's better to be overambitious than to have no ambition though.


Final Remains (2005)

"Four college students, who think they are making a harmless midnight stop at the mortuary, are caught in the middle of a deadly and twisted encounter."

Originally named "Mortuary" to confuse people looking for Tobe Hooper's movie from the same year, "Final Remains" is absolute crap of the highest order. While obstensibly a satire of the "Halloween" movies, it's too ineptedly put together to be funny. Thus, even if you give it credit for recognising the slasher formulas, "Final Remains" is nothing but a z-grade copycat.

A couple of flashes of full frontal female nudity early on are just randomly placed teases and don't lead to more of the same, which is a shame considering that the lead actresses are very pretty indeed. Without them, this movie would be an even greater struggle to get through, but it's still quite an ordeal. The first half is such a mess that I was tempted to hit fast-forward myself.

At the end of the day, this isn't much of a step-up from the kind of hobby horror dreck that drunken friends make in their backyards after getting a camcorder for the first time. The camerawork is considerably better than any of those abominations, but the acting, unoriginality, and half-arsed kills are easily as bad.


My Sweet Killer (1999)

"An ex-mental patient becomes obsessed with the beautiful woman who committed suicide in his apartment."

The best way to describe "My Sweet Killer" is as a no-budget version of "Taxi Driver" but with less plot and a faux ghost story to pad the 77 minutes running time.

It's not horror but drama, and as a languid character study where you're supposed to empathise with the lead, Kirk Harris isn't interesting, charismatic, or a good enough actor to draw anyone in. There are lots of movies about mental illness like this including "Loving Walter", "May" and "Roman". The most famous is "The Machinist" (2004), but I don't think "My Sweet Killer" had any influence on it.

Since very little happens until the very end, eyecandy is provided by Stephanie Knight. Recognisable TV face Clifton Collins Jr. also makes a brief show-stealing appearance.


Dark Woods (2010)

"A couple moves to a secluded cabin to deal with the wife's terminal cancer... but an erratic young visitor forces the husband to make a deadly decision."

Finally, a movie which looks like a real movie... or at least a TV movie with decent production values and solid cinematography!

Acting-wise, "Dark Woods" is full of TV actors including Mary Kate Wiles, James Russo and Corey Mendell Parker so there's a certain level of quality throughout this which most movies in these "Midnight Horror" packs tend to lack. The leads, Tracy Coogan and John Muscarnero (who is also the writer/producer), are virtual unknowns however.

It's not all good news as the pacing is very slow and a lot of the interactions between the husband and the girl are clearly inspired by "The Crush" (1993) starring Alicia Silverstone. What makes it worse is that the name of Mary Kate Wiles' character is Alicia too!

Initially, I wouldn't call this horror as it's more of a tragic love story/psychological thriller with a lot of sexual temptation going on, but there's also a macabre twist which I'm not going to spoil for you. You can already guess that things do not end well.


It's nice to end this series of posts on a high note although I still wouldn't rate these movies together as more than average. Average is better than something which you want to take outside and set fire to though.

Unlike the other "Midnight Horror" collections, there's no subtitle or volume number this time. Another thing which used to bug me more than it should is how these packs don't form a real collection due to having so many changes in the style of artwork. In this case, I think it's meant to be an oval mirror in the middle, but it could be a wooden plaque. Who knows? I don't suppose it matters, and I no longer even care after turning my brain to mush with all these crappy movies in the last couple of weeks. I'll be glad to see the back of them.

Of course, if anyone wants to donate some money to my PayPal begging bowl (link on right), I'll happily trot off to Walmart or Kmart and rummage through their bargain bins for more. At the present time though, this is the final "Midnight Horror" pack that I own, and I won't be reviewing any more of them for a while. As awesome as I am, I can't sustain reviewing 8 crappy movies a day forever.

Next week, I'll write a couple of articles about the history of these multipack releases, but I'm not in any rush to buy the dozen or so packs which I haven't acquired.

Midnight Horror: Hatchets & Cleavers

Having looked all over the internet for a picture of this multipack before being forced to scan it myself, it looks like I might have an exclusive here for the first time in years. Despite being released last October, nobody else has reviewed "Hatchets & Cleavers" yet. There aren't even people complaining about it on Amazon!

Thus, it falls to me to break the bad news about this penultimate Echo Bridge Home Entertainment 8 movie pack. On the bright side, I only have one more of these collections to watch and write about before I'm done with them forever. Yay!


Loaded (1994)

"Seven young adults gather at a country home to shoot a horror movie. But they quickly learn that friendship, seduction and jealousy can be a very dangerous combination."

Originally called "Bloody Weekend", this is a BFI funded (and Miramax distributed) movie which stars Thandie Newton and a load of other Brits who no one has ever heard of. It's also as far from being a horror movie as possible so it makes no sense that it's part of a horror movie collection.

Basically, "Loaded" is a drama about emotionally immature art student types who alternate between poncing around while making a crappy handycam movie and talking about their relationships until, after an hour, they all get high on acid, have an accident, and go into low-rent "Shallow Grave" territory.

It's not a bad movie for what it is, and there are brief flashes of nudity, but it never really takes off. Good acting performances, and one character who sounds a lot like David Walliams, don't make up for the story being a whole lot of nothing which just fizzles out at the end. There are no scares either.


The Ridge (2005)

"A group of young adults head off to a vacation home in the mountains where they are joined by a legendary murderer known as The Ridge Runner."

Moving on from irritating British teenagers, "The Ridge" now presents a group of Americans with such a lack of communication skills that most people will turn these neurotic stuttery-gutses off in the first five minutes. If Vicky Pollard has an American equivalent, it's every character in this movie. Nothing they say makes any sense even within the internal logic of their own conversations.

Of course, what we have here is another batch of irksome cannon fodder all ready to be offed by an athletic serial killer in the most ungratifying offscreen ways that the low-budget will allow. Even for a generic slasher clone, this is an extraordinarily bad one.

Among all the lousy camerawork, improvised dialogue and non-acting, "The Ridge" is nothing but tropes, clichés and extremely alienating, pussified, teenage WASP behaviour. It also takes ages before it becomes anything other than a load of talk.


Animal Room (1995)

"When Arnold Mask is sentenced to isolation in a controversial program at his high school called 'The Animal Room', he is pushed to the brink by a gang of bullies."

"Animal Room" is another drama which doesn't belong in a horror collection. Just because it contains a brief discussion of "Night of the Living Dead" is too much of a stretch. By that token, it won't be long before "Juno" appears in a "Midnight Horror" multipack for mentioning "Suspiria" and "The Wizard of Gore".

Despite being almost as gritty as "Scum" (1979), "Animal Room" is very much a product of '90s America, a lot more punches are pulled, and it's hard to sympathise with any of the characters. Think "The Breakfast Club" with an R-rating and aspirations to be more "cult" than it really is. A home-invasion scene borrows so heavily from "A Clockwork Orange" that all claims to originality are lost at one fell swoop.

Once again, this isn't a bad film, but it probably only remains in print because it stars Matthew Lillard as a psychopathic bully and Neil Patrick Harris as his victim. There are some great performances (especially from Gabriel Olds as a half-way house looks-wise between Brandon Lee and James Franco), and a fair bit of violence and swearing. Unfortunately, it's all rather dated, uneven, and cringeworthy with it.

I enjoyed the novelty value of "Animal Room" being a movie that I'd never seen or heard of before, but it's not something I'd ever want to watch again. Although it's very brief and you don't see anything, the animal cruelty to a rabbit has no place in my entertainment.


Dirt Boy (2001)

"While reading the best-selling serial killer book 'Dirt Boy', Matty Matthews begins to make mysterious connections between the story and a small Cape Cod community."

I don't often do this, but I skipped most of this one on fast-forward because it's boring. Maybe I'll watch it one day after I've had my brain damaged by a stroke or something.

"Dirt Boy" is only a self-referential crime thriller with the gimmick of being a story within a story anyway, and it's not something that I could ever get into. Slow-moving, slightly comedic, murder-mystery movies starring uncharismatic leads simply aren't my cup of tea.


Hollywood Scarefest Premiere Edition (2010)

"A collection of award-winning shorts from the annual Hollywood Scarefest premiere."

Whenever I see this kind of short movie labelled as "award winning", it makes me wonder what exactly that award was for. In every case here, the award was presumably for being a crappy film school project.

The 6 shorts are:
"Vision" - a futuristic eye transplant with a criminal rehabilitation twist.
"Horla" - based loosely on the short story by Guy de Maupassant, an artist gets interfered with by some kind of succubus. (In black and white.)
"Recharge" - a dreary sci-fi about a quality inspector in a battery factory who kills people in gas masks for no apparent reason. (Also in black and white.)
"Cellular" - badly filmed images of people talking on cellphones which looks as if the camera was damaged when they made it. It turns into body horror as addiction causes the phones to embed themselves on the users' faces.
"Last Stop Station" - a tabloid photographer stops at a "gas station"... literally! Lots of dry ice and a couple of thieving Grim Reapers appear. (Black and white again.)
"The Suffering: Static" - a moderately attractive blonde falls asleep in front of the TV and sees herself getting murdered on it, but which side of the screen is reality?
"Fait D'hiver" - a Dutch horror with subtitles about a bald businessman stuck in traffic whose phonecall home reveals his wife to be having an affair. The twist reveals that he called the wrong number.

"Fait D'hiver" is a nicely reworked "Tales of the Unexpected" episode and is the best of a bad lot.


Green River (2008)

"Haunted by her sister's mysterious disappearance, Charisma and her friend Allison, return to Green River for answers."

The aerial shots of a car driving along a road during the opening credits look like an homage to "Burnt Offerings" or "The Shining", but that's as good as it gets. Everything goes downhill once the story begins.

Nothing happens for the first half of the movie other than a couple of uncomfortable-looking city girls get intimidated by the mere existence of hillbillies in a backwoods setting where much prettier girls have already disappeared. Red herrings, plot holes, and overuse of the "Chekhov's gun" trope abound, not that whoever made this movie understood how to use any of those devices properly anyway.

The camerawork is nice, and there's lots of scenery to look at, but all attempts at creating a tense atmosphere fall flat. From the constant expression of disgust on the stressy brunette Alison's face, blonde Charisma must have been farting next to her continuously out of spite. Sexier leads or some hot lesbian action might have made things more interesting. Hiking though woods and a failed bit of rock climbing provide a miniscule amount of characterisation but far more padding than is necessary.

Once the girls kidnap a suspicious game warden, the movie changes gear into the kind of "torture porn" that the Hallmark Channel would make if they did torture porn. I have to admit that Kristina Hughes' performance as an increasingly more horrible psycho-bitch is kind of entertaining, but her acting is still pretty bad.

I suppose there are worse ways of spending 90 minutes in front of the television, although I can't immediately say what they are without digressing far too much. The ending makes absolutely no sense at all.


Followed Home (2010)

"Four young adults witness a deadly attack during a weekend trip to the mountains. But the tragic experience continues as the killer follows them home."

As soon as the hot brunette during the prologue told whoever was on the other end of her phone, "the cabin down the street gets super loud" that was nearly the end for me. The correct word is "VERY' or "REALLY" not "SUPER" (ugh!) unless you are a Japanese marketing executive. Oh God, I hate this "super" nonsense that's crept into common usage via YouTubers from the West Coast in the last three years. Fortunately, the hot brunette then gets stabbed by a masked attacker so I was able to continue my appraisal of this low-budget crap with the satisfaction that someone else hated her grammar too.

But having suffered through another hour and a quarter of even poorer dialogue and lazier acting, I don't have anything good to say about this lacklustre slasher. The attack scenes are some of the worst that have ever been filmed, the jump scares aren't scary, and I really wish that I had switched "Followed Home" off when I initially wanted to. Five minutes showing one of the girls running round a park with terrible background music tested my patience beyond human endurance, and that's really saying something considering how drawn-out and tedious the rest of the movie is.

Apart from the first girl who makes a second appearance before allegedly dying in the hospital, there aren't even any pretty actresses (or actors, if you are that way inclined) to ogle in this. If I wanted to see girl-next-door types with highstreet tans, I could do that by going to McDonald's or sticking my head out of the window for free rather than buying a camcorder movie starring them.

There's an extra scene during the credits which will satisfy anyone who hates YouTubers (and an "outtake" at the very end), but frustratingly for anyone who cares, the identity and motivation of the killer is never revealed.


The Killing Mind (1991)

"A psychological profiler attempts to solve a case she witnessed as a child—the graphic murder of a woman dressed as a ballerina."

As much as I used to lust over Stephanie Zimbalist, this old PG-13 TV movie of hers isn't her finest hour. To be fair, nothing could ever compare with the level of fame she achieved during "Remington Steele" although I think she was at her most beautiful in "The Awakening" (1980).

While there's nothing fundamentally wrong with "The Killing Mind", and it's a chance to see Danielle Harris and Lee Tergesen in earlier roles, it's a cop movie not a horror. As far as TV movies go though, I found it dated but quite enjoyable.


One minor gripe about this collection is that the order of the titles printed from top to bottom on the two DVDs doesn't match up to their order from left to right on the menus. Since the movies are still on the same disc that they are meant to be, it doesn't make a lot of difference unless you are writing a review, but it's sloppy work.

From my most recent visit to Wal-mart, I can confirm that the $5 bargain bin has quite a few of these packs in it. Amazon, however, claims to only have one left in stock so be quick if you want a new one. You'd have to be very silly indeed to buy that with the best price for a second-hand one being only a penny (plus shipping), but some people are odd like that.

Not to be too negative about Echo Bridge Home Entertainment multipacks, but you do get what you pay for. If all you want is some below average horror entertainment, I wholeheartedly recommend "Hatchets & Cleavers" as the perfect example. The link is above if you need it. As usual, fans of good horror movies should look elsewhere.