The Witch (2015)

"A family in 1630s New England is torn apart by the forces of witchcraft, black magic and possession."

Agin my better reckoning, having travailed a vast ocean, I didst watcheth "The Witch". Hearken now, kindred, for the pure and faithful dispensation of mine own findings concerning this motion picture, if my conscience seeith fit to do so.

"The Witch" cannot be judged by false horror fanatics, as 'tis a work of the Devil himself to doeth so. 'Staid, thou must abandoneth prideful conceit to appreciate the lacketh of jump-scares, naked dugs, and blood herein this narrative which relieth on nothing save a thing called atmosphere. 'Tis not that such evils be not containeth in "The Witch", but blinketh and thou shalt miss them. Dost thou sayest contrarily, thou might be witched!

Verily, Colonnials wilt require subtitles to understandeth the strangeness of the Puritan accents. As anyone who doth hail from South of the Gap of Watford wilt testify, 'tis an ungodly language akin to the sounds of tupping beasts and 'twill be most unpleasant to thine ears. Shouldst thou walkest out of thy movie theatre with thy mind befuddled by gibberish, thou wilt assuredly not be the only one.

Fair Mistress Anya Taylor-Joy doth steal every scene.

If the deep Northern English tone of Master Ralph Ineson playing Master William dost not set thy nerves on edge, thou might be assuaged by the comeliness of Mistress Anya Taylor-Joy as Mistress Thomasin. Mistress Thomasin art a maiden who playeth on the Sabbath and breaketh all of God's commandments. She knoweth in her shame that she deserveth everlasting 'ellfire, yet has the fairest aspect and golden locks of an angel. Aye, there's the rub.

'Tis oft the case that a fair maiden dost hideth a secret evil, and verily, "The Witch" doth make much of this trope. Attempting to turneth it on its head to please the Warriors of Social Justice who would liken the subtext to a fallacious theorem called "feminism", doth not hold yet a pail of water carried on thy head. Such unmanly posturings haveth no place in this story which reinforceth the traditional superstitions of the patriarchy and doth not seek to quell them. Dost thou wish to oppose that contrarily with a gnashing of thy teeth? Soft now! Thou shouldst asketh thy goat!

Comely Mistress Sarah Stephens beest in it for nought but five minutes.

Mistress Sarah Stephens beest a more comely wench as the young seductive version of the evil witch in the woods, but her time on screen must be sparse. Nay, not as sparse as the complete lack of a witch in "The Blair Witch Project" (1999), but she dost not speak lest the vowels of her native Australian tongue giveth away that she be nought more than a Victoria's Secret model cast only for her titillating fairness. Thus, of all the maidens in "The Witch", Mistress Sarah beest the fairest to behold. 'Tis not only Master Harvey Scrimshaw as Master Caleb who wilt be fascinated by her countenance and come-hither bosom.

Adam's sin have been imputed to all, and a corrupt nature dwelling within, the cast doeth marvellous well with what they have to travail with. Likewise, the cinematography deserveth to be praised for its pridefulness but cannot be due to its oft-times darkness. Doeth the flaws outweigh the good? The opinion beeth by the sword divideth, and there be no consensus among them that art not afflicted by the pox. 'Tis God alone not Man who can tell thee.

Nay, there beest not cats in this film of witches.

Amidst blighted crops, addled eggs, goats bleeding instead of squirting milk from their teats, and with its grief-stricken protagonists in financial crisis, "The Witch" beest more akin to an analogy of modern life in the still recession-hit Colonies rather thanst the historical supernatural tale which it trieth so hard to tell. 'Tis hard to judge if that beest Master Robert Eggar's intent or not, since 'twas all filmed in Canada. There beest irony aplenty in that detail for thee if the Devil hold not fast thine eyelids.

Setteth in New England but filmeth in Ontario, "The Witch" looketh the part marvellous well yet falleth short on historical accuracy. Truly, 'tis most odd that in a story of witches, there beest no cats! Even a raven supping from a bloodied teat cannot be substitute for a feline familiar, and thou wouldst be smitten from the fermented juice of windfalls to suggest 'totherwise.

Master Robert Eggars hast been ambitious yet too pretentious, and "The Witch" cannot find favour in the eyes and ears of its target audience who didst squander over ninety minutes of their lives being bent out of grace by this arthouse drivel. Writers of Colonnial pulp horror fiction such as auld Master Stephen King ignoreth this problem, and 'tis clear that Master Brian Keene mayeth just be too stupid to understandeth anything.

How much wood doth a woodchop chop if a woodchop doth chop wood?

Here beest spoilers:

For thy scares, there art a stolen unbaptised baby who dost get killed to maketh an unguent for levitation, a dead dog dost get found, a bewitched pubescent boy falleth foul of the art of fascination, and there beest much communing of twin children with the Devil in the form of a goat named Black Phillip (voiced byeth Wahab Chaudhry). Everyone in the accursed family, save the fair Mistress Thomasin, dost dieth.

Although there beest blood hereth and thereth, "The Witch" hast no lashings of gore to speaketh of, and most audiences will be boredeth off their dugs.

Spoilers endeth.

Shouldst thou be looking to be afeared of a moving picture with nought but the talking of goats and wood-chopping Northerners, verily, "The Witch" beest the moving picture for thee.

I shall now take my leave and be glad on it.

The Good Witch Marathon

No exciting horror movie review today because I've been watching "The Good Witch" marathon on the Hallmark Channel instead.

The new one—"The Good Witch's Destiny" (2013)—is on at 9pm.

In case you wonder why I watch these TV movies, here are some lovely pictures of Catherine Bell.

4 days left until Hallowe'en!

Escape from Tomorrow (2013)

"In a world of fake castles and anthropomorphic rodents, an epic battle begins when an unemployed father's sanity is challenged by a chance encounter with two underage girls on holiday."

As someone who has never set foot inside a Disney theme park or watched any Disney cartoons in his life, I have no idea what the conspiracy theory fuss is about "Escape from Tomorrow". All I know is that Disney has made a couple of classic feature length cartoons to keep little kids quiet, and a few mediocre G-rated "family" movies for everyone else. I do remember a scandal about part of a castle on some VHS artwork looking like a dildo, back in the day, but I couldn't tell you the name of that movie without looking it up, or why it would even matter to anyone. Disney is nothing to me, never has been, and never will be. In fact, the only time I was ever in Orlando, Florida, I went to Universal Studios, Busch Gardens, Seaworld, and Gatorland instead.

Why am I telling you this? Well, it's because "Escape from Tomorrow" is set in a conflated, fantasy version of Disneyland and Disney World, and huge parts of the footage were filmed in both without Disney's consent. Thus, the novelty factor of this movie is for people who've never been to them and wonder what they look like inside. Although you could learn just as much by browsing YouTube videos, this is supposed to be better because it's in black and white, is all so subversive, and is likely to get sued, even though it isn't. No, I don't get that last part either.

There's also a lot of faux intellectual bullshit being spread about "Escape from Tomorrow" suggesting that it's like the works of David Lynch, but I didn't notice any similarities to "The Elephant Man", "Dune", "Blue Velvet" or "Wild at Heart". Some of the scenes were clearly filmed using greenscreens, but the overall effect isn't distracting. Is that what David Lynch does? Maybe they are talking about a different David Lynch who goes round theme parks with a handycam. Having said that, "Escape from Tomorrow" isn't a bad movie, but it's far from being a great one either.

SPOILERS!

"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?"

The crux of the story is that a henpecked, middle-aged man named Jim (Roy Abramsohn) is looking for a bit of the other on the final day of his vacation. Fired from his job, emasculated by his wife Emily (Elena Schuber), and with his mid-life crisis kicking in, he uses his kids (Jack Dalton and Katelynn Rodriguez) as a cover to clumsily stalk two teenage French girls who attract him by being so high on life (or whatever illegal substance it is that makes them unable to stop laughing). As clichéd and unoriginal as this rather neat borrowing from European-style dramas may be, this is the only bit of "Escape from Tomorrow" that's really good. The acting is decent, the stereotypical effects of a mid-life crisis are portrayed perfectly, and it's all quite believable.

A second "story arc" begins after Jim pervs on a nurse (Amy Lucas) who puts a bandaid on his daughter Sara's scraped knee, and then has an affair with a fairly attractive woman (Alison Lees-Taylor) of his own age instead of the Lolitas who, deep down, Jim knows that he doesn't stand a chance with anyway. Again, this is acceptable storytelling and nothing to strain your brain over. Maybe hooking-up with a stranger in a Disney park for a bit of kinky afternoon delight is far-fetched, but I'm sure stranger things have happened.

Later, although this is my interpretation rather than what is actually shown to happen, the two French girls (Danielle Safady and Annet Mahendru) and their boyfriends realise that Jim is a bit of a sad/creepy pervert, and send the plainer girl with braces on her teeth over to boldly spit in his face and end his little game. Everything else can be written off as Jim's fantasies, daydreams, his mind wandering, his "fever dreams" as he dies from flu, or whatever else you want to call it. Because, if you accept anything else as Jim's reality, the rest of the movie falls apart afterwards.

The trouble is that, for God knows what reason, writer/director Randy Moore decided to completely bollocks-up everything (after the "intermission" at the 61 minute mark) with a totally incongrous scene set inside a mini version of the Epcot dome, wherein it's revealed that Jim is some kind of "sleeper agent" who is being used by the Siemens company to monitor the effects which exposure to the Disney park at a young age would have on his adult life, and in particular, his imagination. So it's all a big experiment being run by the technologically advanced powers-that-be behind the scenes a la "The Cabin in the Woods"? Some might say that this is "intentional misdirection" or playing with the rules of filmmaking, but I call it a gyp! What a pile of horseshit!

"It's a giant testicle!" ...on his head!

The story would have played out better if Jim had been tasered by park security for being a creepy stalker, and he then had to explain to his wife how he lost track of their daughter. The events which follow, including how he works out that his daughter has been kidnapped by the woman who he had an affair with, would then have a more satisfying flow to them and a solvable mystery rather than creating a load of headscratching for the hard of understanding. Unfortunately, I'm sure somewhere out there, there's an original European movie with precisely that plot (I just can't remember the name of it right now, but trust me, I will!), and Randy Moore didn't want to get sued by those filmmakers for plagiarism instead of being non-sued by the Disney corporation who couldn't give a damn about him. Scandal will sell a movie, but only if it's the right kind of scandal, eh?

There's more hogwash at the end in the form of Jim coughing up hairballs because he has "cat flu" (WTF?), and a group of "men in black"—or rather "men in overalls"—who take Jim's dead body away, implant his son Elliot with false happy memories of the Buzz Lightyear ride which he never went on instead of the sadness he probably doesn't even feel over the death of his father (if Jim even was his father), and clean everything up as if nothing ever happened: because nothing bad ever happens at Disney. Oh, it's all so "meta" and pseudo-philosophical that it makes you want to puke!

After two days of thinking about the epilogue and wasting my time by writing out a ten page ecphrasis of the movie to see if I'd missed something which would tie it together better, I can now happily explain it as nothing more than "a tragic reminder of the real life ambitions which the evil Disney corporation stole from one man". Jim isn't reborn, it isn't the afterlife. It's just a flashback to the "real" Jim in the part of his imagination which he never used, i.e. it's what we saw earlier in the mini Siemens minidome, hence why the Epcot dome is shown again just before the epilogue scene happens.

Yup, that's the big intellectual message of the movie and, give or take insulting the Disney Princesses/cosplay girls for being hookers for Japanese businessmen, and saying that the turkey legs (which are sold in the theme parks, not just Disney!) are really made of emu, that's all "Escape from Tomorrow" has got: Disney's brainwashing will stop you being what you are meant to be.

So will making or watching overhyped, shitty independent horror movies. Jog on.

The Conjuring (2013)

"Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren work to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in their farmhouse. Forced to confront a powerful entity, the Warrens find themselves caught in the most terrifying case of their lives."

I've finally done it! I may be two weeks behind everyone else in the world, but I've now seen "The Conjuring"! I even managed to avoid all the spoilers on Twitter and Facebook beforehand, which wasn't easy considering how overhyped this movie has been.

Supposedly based on a previously unpublished case file from paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who I've never actually heard of before, "The Conjuring" starts off like an episode of "Friday the 13th: The Series", turns into a clone of "The Amityville Horror" for an hour, and ends up as a twenty minute version of "The Exorcist". As you can imagine, I was not impressed.

In fact, I was so disappointed with "The Conjuring" that I was tempted to only write the following for my review:

BORING CRAP!

If someone perusing the aisles next to me in a DVD store were to ask me what I thought of "The Conjuring", those two words would be the most honest initial reaction I could come up with other than adding whichever choice expletive I might deem appropriate to the situation. I'm not saying that this has happened, although it certainly has done with other James Wan movies in the past, and the response of the person asking has also been equally negative. I'm sure that similar conversations have transpired between other people in various locations.

Maybe I live in my own sheltered little bubble where everyone shares the same good taste, but I've never known of a director other than James Wan whose movies are so consistently underwhelming apart from Christopher Nolan. Even Zack Snyder has double the amount of good movies on his résumé. I'm not going to acknowledge Dario Argento, Uwe Boll, Lloyd Kaufman, or Ulli Lommel because, let's face it, all their movies are guaranteed to be crap from the get-go.

A metaphor just waiting to happen.

The reasons why "The Conjuring" is such boring crap are very easy to list. For a start, the story is unoriginal and clichéd, and it's a messy fusion of far better films that came out over 30 to 40 years ago. We've seen it all before ad nauseum. "The Conjuring" brings nothing new to the table and doesn't even present what it has got in an entertaining manner for adults.

Thus, the second huge problem with "The Conjuring" is that it might as well be a PG-13. How and why it got an R-rating is beyond my comprehension. There's no nudity, no swearing, no sex scenes, no gore, and it's not scary in any way. So how the Hell did it get rated as an R? "R for Rubbish" is my assessment although I'm betting on failed bait and switch shenanigans behind the scenes with the MPAA just to get asses on seats in the movie theatres.

The big giveaway that the target audience was initially meant to be braindead teenagers is the amount of grammatical errors in the script. Both Lorraine and Ed get away with saying "hung" instead of "hanged" without anyone correcting them, and if that's not bad enough, there's Ed's immortal triple-negative, "We ain't never seen nothing like this!" which you can see in the trailer along with all the other "good bits". The terrible dialogue is almost as bad as the "I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do" line in the shitty "Evil Dead" remake. No wonder the mumble-mouthed younger generation are the way they are!

Thirdly, there's no characterisation whatsoever. I couldn't tell you the names of any of the characters even though they were given, what they might be interested in other than ghost hunting or being the victims of a demonic haunting, or any details that would make them more than two-dimensional. The best I can come up with is that "The Conjuring" stars Patrick Wilson with sideburns, Vera Farmiga looking far more beautiful than I've ever seen her look before, the Peter guy from "Office Space", the plain-looking girl who played Nell in "The Haunting" remake whose name I always forget, and a bunch of other people who I've never heard of poncing about in a badly maintained American house. If you think I'm joking, try telling me the names of the family members without looking them up on the IMDb. While you are at it, what are the names of the cop or the Warren's assistant? No idea? Case proven.

Without characterisation, what's the point of a horror movie? If you can't identify with the protagonists, empathising with their situation and feeling the catharsis when it's resolved is completely lost, isn't it? Or is this something that kids today just don't care about? As much as anyone born after 1989 is likely to be a complete moron in my estimation anyway, there are exceptions who must have left the cinema as disappointed as us older guys. Even the ones who only went to see some scary effects must have felt cheated of their $10.

Vera Farmiga is so hot in her granny clothes!

I wish I could find something good to say about "The Conjuring", but it's a typical James Wan movie. There are a couple of overloud jump scares which don't work, the usual creepy dolls which aren't creepy at all, some guy in a latex witch mask which is supposed to be scary, horrible shaky camerawork (but with lots of zooming this time just to be very '70s!), irritating child actors, poor CGI effects, plotholes everywhere, no atmosphere, no tension, total chaos at the end with a lame resolution, and nothing original whatsoever. The tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of Blumhouse Productions' formulaic style of composition when the family mentions birds hitting their house (as in "Dark Skies") is realised when the birds repeat their kamikaze attack near the end, but you can't make in-jokes like that when you do the same damned thing yourself!!!

I suppose the period setting in 1970s America is well done, but that's not exactly a difficult thing to achieve. Apart from the cars, America looks much the same as it has done since the 1920s when it comes to the crappy wooden sheds which people jokingly refer to as houses. Every house in my town looks like the one in "The Conjuring" only in an even worse state of disrepair! Forget nostalgia, these firetraps need to be knocked down and replaced with some proper bricks and mortar! I'm sure that I've mentioned that several time before on this blog though.

I'm not happy about James Wan using a cover version of "Sleepwalk" with lyrics either. The original Santo & Johnny instrumental from 1959 which is such a signature feature of Stephen King's "Sleepwalkers" (1992) just doesn't belong anywhere else! The guitars in "Sleepwalk" even sound like cats meowing for God's sake! But, in spite of having a witch in the story, there are no cats in "The Conjuring"! There's a collie dog called Sadie who meets her maker off camera, but no cats! Oh, that makes me so angry!

The word on the street is that James Wan is giving up horror movies now to make the next homoerotic installment in "The Fast and the Furious" franchise. I wish him the best of luck, but after "The Conjuring", I can't say that he will be missed.

Lost Lake (2012)

"A young couple travels to a deserted town to try and find their mysterious uncle, only to discover that ghosts are real and very dangerous."

I'm a little bit flummoxed about how to review "Lost Lake". It's not that I've forgotten how to review movies to the extent that I need to MacDougall one from somebody else, but I can barely scrape together enough enthusiasm to put one word after another after watching this turd.

If I had my druthers (as they say round here), I'd be writing a review of "The Conjuring" right now instead of this one. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances and the heat, I still haven't gone to the movie theatre since "The Conjuring" started playing, and it's starting to annoy me that I've fallen behind everyone else this time. The worst case scenario will be that I wait for the DVD to be released. I'm bound to buy it based on the very positive buzz that's already flying around the internet, so it's not as if you actually need a review of "The Conjuring" from me anyway.

Just to tide everyone over until I'm back on track, I was looking for other ghostie movies to watch yesterday and came across "Lost Lake" on Amazon. Although I'm sure a lot of people have watched it, nobody seems to have had very much to say about it online. Thus, to redress the balance, I thought I'd give it a try. I thought, "It's only 80 minutes long, it's about ghosties, so what could be the harm in watching it?" Little did I know that it was going to be one of the longest 80 minutes of my life.

For a low-budget movie, "Lost Lake" starts off extremely well. I have to admit that the first jump scare is so well-timed that it actually got me. That rarely happens nowadays so I thought I was really going to enjoy everything which followed. As I was watching the movie "cold" with only a vague awareness of the subject matter and no idea about who was in it, it was all a case of "Thrill me!" and "Let's see what you can do!" rather than the predominantly negative way that I've been approaching "indie" dreck recently. After all the multipack reviews I did a few weeks ago, you can't blame me for being jaded, but I honestly wanted to like this movie.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, everything went downhill from the moment I saw the lead characters. It's not that they are the typical pretty teens in trouble, but bald-chested John Shartzer (who plays Jeff) looks about 12 years old, and I initially thought that his character was incestuously in bed with his older sister or something. When the next scene had him playing on the floor with a toy robotic arm, it took a while for it to sink in that he was supposed to be a nerdy student rather than a mentally retarded pervert. It was only when I scrutinized Katie Keene (who plays Tricia) more closely that I realised she was equally young. I doubt that she is more than 18 or 19, and it kind of made me feel like a dirty old man for ogling her as the story progressed. Katie Keene is very photogenic though.

The next thing which gave me pause was the intentional misdirection about Uncle Vern's identity which could have been good if it hadn't caused me a moment of total confusion and an unresolved question which remained with me for a few minutes after the movie ended. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but once you've seen "Lost Lake" for yourself, feel free let me know in the comments section if you get what I'm talking about. The motivation for a lot of things which happen in this movie is so poorly explained that I don't think there even is a good answer. The realisation of whatever clever ideas evidently went into the script sucks, and it's very frustrating.

A more outstanding example of ineptitude is when what should be a scary supernatural scene just isn't. As the leads investigate an abandoned grocery store, it's a time when some imaginative jump scares could make a lasting impression. For whatever reason, possibly budgetary, the gags aren't even set-up enough to fall flat, so ultimately, this botched non-event adds nothing but a decoy for possessed Uncle Vern (Ezra Buzzington) to do something important which we don't find out about until later. It's a plot contrivance for sure, but it could have been handled so much better.

While the camerawork and acting are fairly decent, it's not only the plot but the lack of horror action which really lets "Lost Lake" down. Apart from a severed finger and some realistic reactions to it, nothing much happens at all gore-wise. When it does, the bits you want to see are either off camera or too dark.

Contrarily, an unneccessary bit of animal cruelty involving a white mouse and a snake is something that I didn't want to see. Yes, I know that there are weirdo reptile owners who have to feed their pets as nature intended, but this scene is both gratuitous and superfluous. I may understand what writer/director Marcus Nash was trying to do, but I don't approve of it.

Filmed in Trona, California, a desolate place which I was intigued enough by to look up on Wikipedia, "Lost Lake" is all about a location which struggles to lift everything a couple of notches higher than the horrible storytelling will allow. Apart from a few tell-tale signs which give away that it isn't really a ghost town, including the electricity still being connected and a physical sign for "Free Wi-Fi" on one of the buildings, I wanted to believe that the setting was real. Well, the town is real, obviously, but you know what I mean.

I suppose that's all I really want to say about "Lost Lake". It wasn't the ghost story that I expected it to be, and I found the ending very disappointing. Suffice it to say that there's something about witchcraft to "Lost Lake" as well, so it's probably best to classify the movie as a below average "possession from beyond the grave" with slasher clichés and leave it at that.

I beat the Bewitched Kingdom!

It's taken me months to do it, but I finally beat "The Bewitched Kingdom" on Candy Dash just in time for Hallowe'en.

I obviously didn't get all of the stars - I got 86 out of 87 because level 5 was impossible to get more than 2 stars on even with a load of power-ups - but beating the final level is the only thing that really matters anyway.

Yeah, I know it's just a Facebook game, but it made me almost happy.

Pumpkinhead (1988)

"A man conjures up a gigantic vengeance demon called Pumpkinhead to destroy the teenagers who accidentally killed his son."

'Tis the season for all things pumpkin-like after all, so what better film to begin the final week before Hallowe'en than "Pumpkinhead"? Okay, so it was originally filmed in Springtime and given a January release back in the day which kind of killed it, but it's still as Hallowe'eny as you could ever want.

"Pumpkinhead" was, of course, the late Stan Winston's directorial debut following years of work in the industry as one of the most well known creators of make-up effects. His credits include "Edward Scissorhands", "Batman Returns", "Interview with the Vampire" and "Constantine". As a director, however, he was still a bit of an unknown quantity at this point which is probably why there were, allegedly, so many mixed reactions to "Pumpkinhead". I can't understand how it could possibly polarise any audience. From the first time I saw it, I thought it was awesome.

"Pumpkinhead" is quite simply an underrated classic. The quality of the full screen DVD (which is the only one available as far as I know) probably doesn't help matters much, but before all the HD and widescreen shenanigans started, it was perfectly acceptable. It's an '80s movie which was a "must rent" on VHS, and is one which most of us originally watched on a standard ratio TV anyway.

With its combination of pathos, tragedy, teenage cannon fodder, creepy hillbillies, a "big scary monster", and even a terrifying old witch, it goes far beyond a standard "cabin in the woods" slasher. It's a harrowing journey from point A to point B no matter how tired you may be of the same formulas.

Just look at the creature (below) for one thing. How great is that? It's about as monstrous as you could ever make Lance Henriksen look without actually being Lance Henriksen! Sometimes people are just really stupid when it comes to rating movies, and the 6.0 score on the IMDb just highlights the lack of taste of the 12-14 year olds who get all "click happy" on that site. "Pumpkinhead" deserves at least an 8.0 and maybe more, but it won't get it because there are too many idiots raised on "haha, it's so bad and so funny" horror movies that their tiny minds can't even cope with a decently made and totally serious one.

Every element needed for a horror movie is brilliantly put together in "Pumpkinhead". The storytelling, effects, camerawork, and acting are all far above what you would expect for $3,500,000. That was a reasonably good budget back in 1988 too, but only if you were making a TV episode.

There's even perfect casting with stereotypical "teenagers" who create just as much depth with how they look as anything they say or do. They may all be clichéd, but in which other horror movie could you look at the characters individually and know exactly what purpose they would have right from the beginning? The asshole/badboy looks like one, his brother looks as if he will be the half-way house between right and wrong, the good "preppy" guy and his girlfriend are realistic, and the actress who is "slightly plainer than the other girls" is so obviously going to be some kind of easily freaked-out Christian. Of course, they are predictable, the actions they take are going to be the wrong ones, and they are doomed, but this is one of the few times where their innocence makes any of them likeable.

The relationship between Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen) and his son is also so well acted that it's actually touching, and it makes the tragedy which follows even sadder. "Pumpkinhead" is a story about loss, grief, and not thinking clearly enough to avoid making some very bad decisions. There isn't a day that goes by when I wish that I'd understood the message of the film more and heeded it myself. There are no winners in this, no characters (except one) who deserves retribution, and the vengeance is excessive for the accidental crime.

"Pumpkinhead" is a good old-fashioned morality play which, unfortunately, is lost on the "popcorn crowd" by its reliance on spectacle. It's not a "creature feature" for dummies, but it appeals to the lowest common denominator who only want to see the monster and the kills. I can't blame them for it either. I like the monster too.

I highly recommend that you rewatch "Pumpkinhead" right now. I've even embedded the YouTube version at the top of this post so you don't have to go looking for your DVD. Don't bother with the straight-to-video or made-for-TV sequels unless you are a masochist, but just sit back and be amazed by an '80s horror movie which is actually good.

Dark Shadows (2012)

"An imprisoned vampire, Barnabas Collins, is set free and returns to his ancestral home, where his dysfunctional descendants are in need of his protection."

There are some films which you have to be bored out of your mind to watch, and, unfortunately, I was that bored enough today to see if I could find anything enjoyable in Tim Burton's version of "Dark Shadows".

I'm glad that I have no sense of humour because "Dark Shadows" failed completely as a comedy. It also failed to be anything other than an all-star cast playing dress-up. If the intention was simply to destroy any nostalgic admiration anyone could have for the original Dan Curtis series with a load of silliness and superficiality, it certainly succeeded there.

I've only ever seen a few episodes of the TV series and one of the films (I forget which one), but they were a lot more entertaining than this hack job. Although Johnny Depp was slightly comical, Eva Green was sexy as Hell, and I now know what happened to Jonny Lee Miller, it was just a lot of high production values layered over a weak script.

Having watched a lot of these over-produced and under-written movies this week, I'm beginning to wonder if this is the thing now. Nobody seems to care about providing any kind of engrossing or cohesive story as long as they can stick a few big name actors in costumes up on screen and grab some quick cash from the kids who don't know any better.

Even if I was the right age to be part of the targeted PG-13 audience, I'm sure I would still have been disappointed with "Dark Shadows". It started off too fast, then wasted a lot of time on unnecessary details and characters who didn't really do anything, while, at the same time, it badly mixed fish-out-of-water, "Austin Powers"-style humour with a feeble attempt at a Gothic love story.

After sitting through nearly two hours of this dreck, I really don't want to waste any more time talking about it. "Dark Shadows" looked extremely good, the 1970's music was better, the couple of surprise cameos were okay, but it was a whole load of nothing really.

Black Sunday (1960)

(AKA La maschera del demonio)



"A vengeful witch and her fiendish servant return from the grave and begin a bloody campaign to possess the body of the witch's beautiful look-alike descendant."

I remember when BBC2 first showed "Black Sunday" (or "The Mask of Satan" as it was known in Britain) back in the early '90s. I also remember how it was kind of a big deal for this film to actually be shown uncut on television since it had once been banned.

After the hyped-up introduction suggesting that this was the most terrifying movie ever made, I'm sure that I wasn't the only one who was a little bit disappointed by what really amounted to little more than a black and white Italian version of a Hammer horror.

I would like to say that my opinion of "Black Sunday" has changed over the years and through repeated viewings but, alas, it hasn't. As much as I can appreciate how controversial it must have been in 1960, it just doesn't have enough scares to satisfy me.

Also, as much as I've always wanted to find something attractive about Barbara Steele, I can't. Finding one still image where she looks pretty rather than harsh or intimidating seems to be impossible. The best I could come up with is the one below and, if you look at it long enough, she still looks as if she's crazy.

Of course, it was Barbara Steele's iconic looks which gave her such a successful career in Italian horror movies. She even proved that she could act in most of them although, outside of today's $1 bargain DVDs, none of the movies she starred in were ever as famous (or infamous) as "Black Sunday".

So what made "Black Sunday" so special? I'd guess that it was the level of violence in the opening scene which went way beyond what anyone was used to. Although people knew about all the horrific tortures and brutal deaths of witches in the history books, nobody until Mario Bava actually dared to show one in a theatrical experience that you could almost feel.

Possibly, it was a combination of the gruesome make-up effects and eroticism which also had the more timid audiences of the time complaining right, left and centre until some kind of action had to be taken. Seeing Christopher Lee bloodlessly biting pretty girls on the neck was one thing even in "technicolor" but letting re-animated female corpses do the same thing in monochrome was far too much.

Unfortunately, with the British laws about witchcraft having only been repealed in 1951, the overly moral "powers that were" must have found the rest of the film so Satanic and blasphemous that they banned it from cinemas until 1968. By this time, the make-up effects had become a little bit dated, and Hammer had beaten the vampire genre to death.

"Black Sunday" is a weird movie to place in a horror subgenre though because it's not a straightforward vampire story. To me, it's very much about the revenge of a witch, a family curse, and a lot of contrived coincidences designed to straddle as many other subgenres as possible. It has everything from gothic romance to zombies, and, to give it even more credit, it looks fantastic.

But, as I said at the beginning, where "Black Sunday" fails for a modern audience is that it just isn't scary anymore. In fact, it's so borderline "hammy" (because I loathe the word "cheesy") that it could almost be something that Elvira or the MST3K guys would have a great time tearing apart. I don't actually know if they did ever do a show about "Black Sunday", of course, because I've never had any interest in watching any of them.

For anyone watching the restored, uncut, super-duper, remastered DVD edition of "Black Sunday" alone in the dark with the wind and rain lashing at the windows, it might still have some life left in it. It doesn't work for me so I'm rating it as average.

Superstition (1982)

(AKA The Witch)



"A witch put to death in 1692 swears vengeance on her persecutors and returns to the present day to punish their descendants."

Although this was quite a popular video to rent back in the early '80s, I thought of it as just another Amityville clone with a clichéd story about a witch coming back from the dead. Having seen the far superior "Black Sunday" (1960), I was not impressed.

As you know, I've been looking at a lot of VHS collections recently to see what people are still into since new horror movies have dried-up completely. One of the titles which VHS fans all raved about was "Superstition" but I took it with the same huge pinch of salt that I usually reserve for anyone talking about crappy Dario Argento movies.

Having watched it again last night to see if I had been missing anything, "Superstition" was actually worse than I remembered. It's essentially little more than a predictable slasher film with laughable special effects as well.

The acting was particularly bad and the story served only as padding between the various gore scenes. I admit that the amusing gore was welcome but, as I've often said, if you don't care about the characters then it really has no value.

A lot of people moan about this film not being on DVD when in fact it has been out in the UK (uncut) for ages. I'm not sure about the Anchor Bay US release since I'm not part of the loop and they don't send me any free DVDs to review (unlike some of the even crappier review sites on the internet). I assume that it must be out of print again now like so many others.

I've actually reached the point where I'm so bored that I wouldn't mind a few screeners especially from Lionsgate who seem to be sitting on a huge back catalogue of crappy '80s horror movies. I'm sure they would go down really well as some kind of compilation set even in this age of people downloading everything for free and not buying as many films on physical media anymore.

If "Superstition" was part of a "4 horror movie multi-pack" along with "The Witch Who Came from the Sea" (1976) and a couple of other witchcraft-themed "video nasties" then I'd actually recommend it as cult viewing, but alas, on its own, it's just a bit too dated and average.

Wake the Witch (2010)

"One hundred years ago, an angry mob, intent on justice for their murdered children, hang the woman they believe is the murderer. They brand her a witch, wrap her body in chains and bury it deep in the woods. Flash forward to the present - when Deb and her friends play a childhood game on the witch's wooded grave, they open the door to death. As her friends and family begin to change into something less than human, Deb struggles to stop the witch's curse. But her search for the truth will reveal an evil beyond her imagination." (from IMDb)

As you can tell from the trailer, this low-budget nastiness isn't really worth anybody's time but I watched most of it just to have another "witch" film among this month's selection.

I didn't make it to the end of the film and it took me three nights of watching it in instalments to even get as far as I did before I gave up entirely. "Wake the Witch" was simply one of the worst low-budget abominations that I've ever seen and I'm not just saying that to be mean. At nearly two hours long, the only credit I can give it is that they obviously put more time into the story than it was worth.

The acting was non-existent and the three lead girls can only be described as Plain, Plainer and Plainest simply because they were. None of them stood out, all were irritating, and calling them "actresses" would be stretching things a little bit too far.

Rubbish like this makes me hate Netflix. Nobody in their right mind has the patience for amateur crap like this, least of all me, and they shouldn't even have it on the "Watch Instantly" stream.