A new challenge begins!

Yes, it's the first "Woeful Wednesday" of 2013, so it's time to start another crappy "indie horror" challenge over at "The Pit of the Pendulum".

This month (and a bit), I will be working my way through the companion box set to "Tomb of Terrors" which came in the "Bloody Nightmares" 100 movie pack: "Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares".

If you've never heard of any of the following titles, it's no big deal. Nobody else has ever heard of them either. This is all the amateur junk that's supposed to be so liberating for filmmakers and actors... although you'd be hard pressed to use either of those terms to describe anyone involved.

Before I Die The Bewitching Blood Sucking Babes from Burbank Burning Dead A Candle in the Dark Catholic Ghoulgirls The Crate The Crawlspace Dead 7 Dead Body Man Dead is Dead The Dead Live Demon Slaughter Dominion Edgar Allan Poe's Madhouse Goblin Goth Hell's Highway Hellbound: Book of the Dead High Desert Hip Hop Locos Hollywood Vampyr I Dream of Dracula I Hate You Invitation

Las Vegas Blood Bath Matthew Mayhem Motel Nightmare Asylum Off the Beaten Path Prehistoric Bimbos in Armageddon City The River: Legend of La Llorona Scarlet Fry's Junkfood Horrorfest Serial Killer The Shunned House Slasher Suburban Sasquatch The Summer of the Massacre Tales of Terror Terror Toons Thirteen This Darkness Toe Tags Up For Rent Vampire Hunter The Veil When Heaven Comes Down Wishbone The Witching Zombie Rampage

If you aren't into this crap, I'll still be reviewing movies on "Dr Blood's Video Vault". Keep checking-in because I'm all about the best horror movies here.

I finally made it through "Tomb of Terrors"!

For the last two months, I've been watching one of these awful movies every day for my other blog - The Pit of the Pendulum - and I'm now pleased to say that I've finished the first box. Just in time for the world ending too! Yeah, like that's really going to happen.

It wasn't the first time that I've watched these movies as I skimmed through them when I first bought "Tomb of Terrors" back in 2008. A lot of the movies were also shown by Zone Horror in the UK before I moved so I've unfavourably reviewed a couple of them before.

I thought that, given a few years, some of these movies might improve a bit, but I was wrong. As entertaining as they are due to their ineptness, they are all amateur drivel which you have to have something mentally wrong with you to prefer over real mainstream horror. I gave each one a fair chance and tried to be objective, but a bad movie will always be a bad movie even when you are looking for something positive to say about it to redress the balance.

Some of the standouts which are sort of okay are the comedies. For a horror pack, "Tomb of Terrors" has an abundance of comedies with no less than 14 actual comedies and several more which qualify unintentionally. The best of these is "So Mort It Be" (2004) although "Reanimator Academy" (2002) also tickled me. I'm not a big fan of comedy except for "Laurel and Hardy" anyway since I have no sense of humour.

There are also a lot of "crime" movies in the pack which don't contain any horror whatsoever. The ratio isn't as bad as Mill Creek's "250 Horror Movies" pack which has less than 100 horror movies in it once you ignore all the sci-fi, sword and sandals, and ancient serial plays, but it's still annoying even for the original $5. Now that "Tomb of Terrors" costs over $30 in some places, it's really not worth the money if you are a horror fan.

Out of the "real" horror movies, the best ones (in order) are "Siege of Evil" (2005), "Soul of the Demon" (1991), "The Traveler" (2005), and "Inexchange" (2003). The final one barely qualifies, but it's quite a struggle to find any that do.

For those with slightly less discernment and a lot of patience, "Abberdine County Conjuror" (2005), "Massacre" (2002), "Strange Things Happen at Sundown" (2003), "The Vulture's Eye" (2004), and even "Gorno" (2003) aren't entirely awful for no-budget nasties, but they're still pretty bad.

There's no innovation or originality in this pack so "indie horror" fanatics can suck those stupid claims right up. Most of these movies borrow the formulas from more famous movies and then completely wreck everything by not having the talent to do anything with them. Homages and blatant rip-offs abound.

Some to just skip straight over are "Flesh Eating Ghouls from Outer Space" (2004), "Kill Them and Eat Them" (2004), "The Lunar Pack" (2004), "Nightmare Museum" (2006), and "The Woodland Haunting 2" (2005) unless you really like infantile YouTube videos.

As for the rest of the titles, it's all down to how many "pretty" girls you want to fast forward to see. In some cases, checking out the insides of other people's houses which are on show is even more fun than looking for "girl next door" types. Bear in mind that sub-porn movie acting and very softcore porn scenes abound depending on what you allow yourself to be sucked into.

I don't recommend "Tomb of Terrors" unless you can get it for the bargain price that I did. Even then, I still don't really recommend it.

The Bay (2012)

"Chaos breaks out in a small Maryland town after an ecological disaster occurs."

I didn't even manage to get through ten minutes of "The Bay" so you can make of that what you will. Just know that I've watched some truly terrible movies in my time and made it through to the end of all of them, but this was beyond my tolerance levels.

Cheap and nasty faux found footage movies are one of my least favourite parts of the horror genre so, in fairness to anyone who can make it through this, "The Bay" was never going to get much of a rating. Even if I'd had the patience to endure the horrible shakycams, the monotonous, nasal, whining voice of the girl narrating the story, the pathetic, low-budget effects and make-up, and the obvious lack of acting ability shown by anyone involved, I still would have written it off as crap.

The fact that it's another "From the producers of Paranormal Activity and Insidious" product designed to make a quick buck (from a subgenre that wore out its welcome back in 1999) should tell you all you really need to know. I've hated everything they've done so far and despised every "found footage" movie including "The Blair Witch Project". Apart from "Trollhunter", which was more of a parody, I've never understood the appeal or alleged popularity of this style of filmmaking.

Based on under ten minutes of this awfulness, I can't tell you if there's even a story to "The Bay" other than a bunch of non-actors eating contaminated fish and dying, who the characters are (or who plays them), or if it's worth investing the time to watch the rest of it. It just wasn't for me.

Paranormal Craptivity 2 (2010)

"After experiencing what they think are a series of break-ins, a family sets up security cameras around their home, only to realize that the events unfolding before them are more sinister than they seem."

SPOILERS

Basically, there are five cameras which alternate like a poor man's version of "Big Brother"...

Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... nothing.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... dog barks.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... nothing.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... frying pan drops.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... nothing.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... baby cries and gets lifted up by an invisible ghostie.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... nothing.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... cupboards burst open.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... nothing.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... dog barks and baby cries.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... nothing.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... fat older girl gets dragged by an invisible ghostie (using the same effects as the first film).
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... nothing.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... closet door opens, fat older girl is seen walking into the living room and back out again.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... nothing.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... slim girl finds scratches on closet door.
Kitchen, hallway, living room, nursery, pool... nothing.

I think you get the idea. Nothing interesting even happens for an hour and five minutes. There is one of the shortest attempts ever at an exorcism (which fails) and the fat girl grabs the baby and heads down to the basement.

Then for the last ten minutes with a shaky handycam just so you can't see what is going on...

Light, dark, light, dark... growling.
Light, dark, light, dark... swearing.
Light, dark, light, dark... baby is found.
Light, dark, light, dark... lots of screws bouncing up and down with loud noise.

Since this is a prequel, everything skips forward three weeks with some scenes to tie it into the first film followed by some written words about found footage and it ends.

I don't know the names of any of the characters or actors in either of these films and I don't really care. It's also supposed to be improvised to make it look more real so I can't say if anybody was acting or not. One of the girls has enormous boobs but you don't get to see them even when she takes a bath.

Yeah, I know this isn't much of a review but "Paranormal Activity 2" isn't much of a film.

Don't waste your time or money on this utter crap! Watch "Saw 3D" instead.

Let Me In (2010)

"A bullied young boy befriends a young female vampire who lives in secrecy with her guardian."

No, I haven't seen this. It isn't even released until October 1st. I'm not ever going to watch it either.

When I first heard that there was going to be a remake of "Let the Right One In", I honestly thought it was a joke. Unfortunately, it has now become a reality and it disgusts me.

Why would anyone feel the need to remake one of the most perfect Swedish vampire movies ever apart from the slightly dodgy CGI cat scene? And now it seems that Eli really will be a girl rather than a castrato just to completely dumb things down for the masses.

Honestly, if subtitles are that much of an effort to read then do yourselves a huge favour and learn how to read and write in the first place rather than whining about it until some other moron has to remake every foreign movie for the hard of understanding. What next? Remakes of the entire collection of Jean-Luc Godard or Ingmar Bergman classics?

For those of you who loved "Let the Right One In", just watch the trailer and weep over the terrible casting and piss poor hack job that the director of the equally crappy "Cloverfield" has made. I wonder how many hundreds of times the characters will shriek and cry, "Oh My God!" in this travesty?

I suggest you boycott this film at the movie theatres and then let it rot in the bargain DVD bins in 6 months time alongside all those copies of "The Fog" and "Psycho" remakes that nobody in their right mind will ever buy.

The Aristocats (1970)

Want to know what really scares me? DISNEY! I've only ever seen a few Disney films back when I was a really little kid and didn't know any better plus a couple of episodes of "The Wonderful World of Disney" from the '70s neither of which I can remember apart from one of them starring Jaclyn Smith from "Charlie's Angels". I only remember that one because I was so surprised to see the most beautiful woman on the planet at that time in something so childish.

So with great trepidation I recently bought "The Aristocats" on VHS from a yard sale for $1 and tried to watch it. IT WAS CRAP! Even for little kids, stuff like this is insipid, tedious and boring with no entertainment value whatsoever.

I'm not a parent except of two cats (only one of which sings) and I found the whole thing to be totally unrealistic. For the love of all that's furry, do not let your children watch rubbish like this! No wonder the world is as messed up as it is if there have been generations of parents forcing their children to watch this tripe. They'd have been better off letting them watch Dario Argento movies and that's saying something.

For a start, cats do not speak English even to each other nor do any of them wear clothes on a regular basis. I've certainly never seen any of them play a musical instrument either except by accidentally walking across a piano keyboard. What lies are Disney telling your children with this? They should be ashamed.

The animation is pretty bad even for the time period. I once watched parts of Disney's "Robin Hood" and even that was better. The soundtrack was terrible too. You can't even call anything by Maurice Chevalier music and the rest of the "songs" were instantly forgettable and just horrible.

Of course, if you really want a good animated cat movie you have to get "Gay Purr-ee" from 1962. Even though it has Judy Garland in it, the story is far more satisfying and, as you can see from the trailer below, it is much more realistic.



If you really wanted to torture somebody, you don't need to use waterboarding or pulling fingernails out, just make your victim watch "The Aristocats" over and over again. This is without doubt the worst movie ever made.