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June 2010 ~ October 2010
Director: Darin Scott
Haunted house attractions are loads of fun to visit and even more fun to work for. Being a veteran of the haunted attractions, I enjoyed scaring the hell, and on occasion the piss and shit, of many a patron who dared to think they were brave enough to meet my wrath of terror. Many are wise that its all just an attraction and not real. This happened quite a bit, much to my dismay. However, the ones that I did put a good scare into, never left the same way they came in. And for that, just made me enjoy the work that much more. Now Fangoria Frightfest and director Darin Scott brings ideas about just how far a haunted house attraction can really go in Dark House.
Eccentric haunted house entrepreneur Walston (the incredible Jeffery Combs) has haunted houses open to the public all over the country. His newest plans involve the Darrode house, a house 14 years ago was the location of 7 murdered children by their caretaker Mrs. Darrode (Diane Salinger). Walston needs serious actors to perform in the house along with the most recent holographic technology, to give the public the scare of their lives. However, one of the actors is Claire (Meghan Ory), who was there the day of the murders. To promote what Walston has in store, he allows the press to walk through the house in what he hopes to be is incredible publicity. Instead what he receives is literally death's door.
Combs is an amazing actor, bar none. And anyone (or at least anyone reading this review) who has seen Re-Animator as the wonderfully deranged Herbert West or The Frighteners as the completely fucked up Agent Milton Dammers knows what Combs can do. And he brings his style up to speed here......almost. As engaging as the Walston character is, I felt a bit of lightening up by Combs. Everyone wants what Combs does best and that is to bring his characters to extremely colorful life. And its something he does very well. But the man can also tone it down if he needs to. Not every character he plays needs to be at the height of craziness. And even though the wasn't completely over the top, I found it to be refreshing. The performances are pretty solid throughout and look for a couple horror notables in R. A. Mihailoff as The Mad Butcher and Tom Gulager as The Mad Scientist. Also look for former That 70's Show veteran Tom Stark in a cameo as a detective. The monsters are pretty tight with one particularly noticeable, The Fingernail Wraith (Gillian Foreman). An unnerving creature that trumps the rest of the freaks. If a sequel happens, I hope she returns for another appearance.
The DVD is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen with Dolby sound 5.1. The color is decent, but some lighting issues do occur. Extras include a commentary and trailers.
Fangoria Frightfest is trying to rebound Fangoria Magazine from Tony Timpone's blasphemous ass-kissing of the Hollywood horror film. He single-handedly brought down the empire of Fango by telling horror fans that films like Twilight are considered horror. Since his departure, Chris Alexander has taken over and has done an admirable job.....so far. Let's hope for the best for all involved. Having a library of horror titles and calling it Fangoria Frightfest is a nice start. No sparkling vamps here, just good ol' horror. Does Dark House deliver on this? Sure, in a fun nostalgic way of visiting those haunted houses for a real good scare. I just hope Fangoria magazine can do the same.
B- -Rich Caron
Director: Ray
Etheridge
Now depending who you're hanging with, farting can
be a very big deal. With the wide spectrum of people around you, its the polar
opposites of people you don't want to smell, let alone hear, someone's farts.
The fat, slobbery bastard with the snot stuck in his moustache while trying to
convince everyone that pro wrestling is a sport to that leggy, big
titted redhead you've been wanting to fuck that works at Burger King. Those two
kinds are an immediate turn off. Everyone else in the middle is fair game, and
that's where this film kicks in. In conjunction with SRS Cinema and director Ray
Etheridge, I give you Fart: The Movie.
Russell (Joel Weiss) is a farter. Farts on the bus,
farts when he can cuss. Farts in the car, farts in a bar. Farts watching TV,
farts when he's sleepy. His wife Heather (Shenandoah Sorin) can't stand it and
won't be around to welcome in the New Year with Russell if he can't keep down
his mighty wind. Unfortunately for Russell, he can't help it. Though his lack of
trying might have a hand in it as he just loves the release it
gives.
As you can probably tell by now, this is not Ingmar
Bergman's The Virgin Spring. This is low grade comedy at its most
desperate. Filmed in 1991 and shot on video, this shitheap is barely
gassable...um, I mean passable to even be a rainy day time waster. Its boring,
poorly acted (even having the legendary Conrad Brooks in this may have taken his
career right in the toilet), poorly lit, and just plain dumb. Is it a horror
movie? No. Ahhhhh, but is it a comedy? No. Even the farting sound FX sound very
post production. Lame to even the simplest of humans.
The DVD is presented in 2.35:1 Cinemascope with 5.1
Dolby Digital Surround Sound. Extras include 4 (!) commentaries, 10 featurettes,
trailers, bonus footage deemed too smelly for the original release, and a
preview of their upcoming sequel Fart 2: Flatulent Boogaloo. Plus a neato
booklet containing added interviews with the stars!
Who am I kidding? Its got a 1:33.1 full frame
presentation and trailers. That's it.
Fart :The Movie is a dumb, boring, vapid
mess of a film. I should become more litigious and sue these people for stealing
my life.! This film belongs exactly where it should've stayed....in the
toilet.
F -Rich Caron
Director: Jaume Balaguero
Director Jaume Balaguero has taken the horror world by storm with his and co-director Paco Plaza's [REC], [REC] 2, and soon to be [REC] 3. So powerful and successful are these films that the U.S.A. needed to capitalize on this and created their own remade version called Quarantine. Surprisingly enough, Quarantine was a very well made, despite shot for shot, remake of the original. But to look beyond that franchise is to look at one of Balaguero's earlier efforts called Fragile, released by Fangoria Frightfest.
Amy Nicholls (Calista Flockhart) portrays a nurse to help assist the closure of a run down children's hospital. Naturally, a spirit called "The Mechanical Girl" lives somewhere in the hospital. Also naturally, those who have worked there either ignore the problems the spirit has created among its patients or think the problems are psychosomatic.
Balaguero's run in this ghostly feature is hit and miss. Flockhart turns in a decent performance, but falls into hamming it up every now and then. Elena Anaya as Helen Perez is sadly overshadowed by Flockhart's popularity though she gives the film's best performance. Grisly scenes of leg surgery are shown to mix up the blood and ghost genre's.
The DVD is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen and in Dolby 5.1 sound. Extras include behind-the-scenes, making of visual effects and trailers. Sharp colors and good sound make for a might good ambience throughout the film.
Fragile is an okay film at best with nothing really holding it up. Released in 2005, one has to wonder why it took so long for this flick to get a DVD release in the states. At the very least, see it to see the rise of one of horror best young directors.
C -Rich Caron
Director: Elio Quiroga
Spanish films, in some regard or other, always seems to delve in the world of religion or the supernatural. Nothing wrong with that. Hell, José Mojica Marins, better known to us horror geeks as Coffin Joe gave Spanish horror a place on the map in dealings with death cults, soultakers and the like. Same with legendary filmmaker Armando de Ossorio, best known for his Blind Dead trilogy. Some good, some bad over the years. Now Fangoria Frightfest dispatches Their own Spanish release of The Haunting (not to be confused with the 1963 original or the ugly 1999 remake), directed by Elio Quiroga.
Young pediatrician Francesca (Ana Torrent), along with her physician husband Pedro (Francisco Boira) attempt to gather their lives after their daughter died due to crib death. Fast forward 10 years later, Francesca suffers postpartum depression after having another child, while moving into a old house that carries a dark secret. This secret also makes Francesca somewhat of a clairvoyant as she can actually see her dead daughter warning her of the dangers of the house. Father Miguel (Hector Colome) is hunted down by Francesca to help rid of the demons that haunt her mind and the house.
This film desperately wants to be its own version of William Friedkin's The Exorcist as well as wanting to be the next The Orphanage (also a splendid Spanish horror directed in 2007). But it falls short on many a conceivable level. The story gets hard to follow after a while and just becomes convoluted. The CGI is dreadful and makes things hard to see with plenty of smoke or mist mixed with the apparitions. The acting is okay at best with Colome giving the film's best performance as a second rate Father Karras. I don't know...because despite all of that, its always cool to see someone battling a demon. Maybe its the atheist in me that sees these battles (brief as it is in this film) as an equal playing ground; not giving hopes to who wins. And by the by, how many more films do we need called The Haunting? Should've been released under its original title, No-Do.
The DVD is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen with 5.1 Dolby sound. The colors are strikingly bland. You'd think more thought would be given to the clarity of a film like this. Extras include a making of featurette and trailers.
If you want The Exorcist, see it. If you want The Orphanage, see that. If you want a combination of the two, see The Haunting. But you won't like what you'll see. Sometimes putting two great things together doesn't mean success.
D+ -Rich Caron
Director: Steven Kastrissios
You know, revenge flicks are normally brutal,
violent, with an unabashed glee of the victim getting even with those who have
totally fucked up his/her life. Nothing brings up a cheer from a true horror fan
than seeing some lowlife get the worst of the worst! Many come to mind. Jennifer
Hills committing bathtub castration in I Spit On Your Grave (not to be
outdone by Mary Collingwood's mother's oral castration in Last House on the
Left), or even the machine gun massacre by Heidi the Hippo in the Peter
Jackson classic Meet the Feebles. Point is, revenge is the best way to
get even. And director Steven Kastrissios along with Screen Media Films add to
the barbarity of revenge with The Horseman.
Pest controller Christian (Peter Marshall) is in
dire straits of finding the story behind his daughter's death. Coming upon a
video of her in a vicious pornographic film through the mail, Christian goes up
the chain of command, starting with the video's distributor and working his way
to discover the reality he is hell bent on finding. And his need for the
absolute truth comes at a high cost. Yet befriending Alice (Caroline Marohasy),
a young, pregnant hitchhiker meeting with her boyfriend.
This Aussie production is, at times, a high
velocity barrage of fists, kicks, and various weaponry. Other times, it becomes
a very tender and endearing story of a father's need to find the truth. But it
is overall all about revenge. Gory and bloody revenge. And Marshall as Christian
is very overpowering and gives an epic realism as a grieving parent living his
worst nightmare. The camerawork is nothing new, using shutterspeed for the
battle scenes and handheld motions giving the viewer the impression that a great
deal more is happening. Director Kastrissios delivers on the goods of torture,
yet not going overboard just to placate a gorehounds taste buds. Not absolutely
a horror film, per se, unless you've gone through this sort of thing yourself.
For his first feature, Kastrissios does an admirable job sustaining suspense,
exploding action, and moments of sorrow (brief as they may be).
The DVD is presented in 1.78:1 letterbox with 5.1
surround sound. Special features include 2 commentaries.
Kastrissios does a fine job in this freshman
effort. Sooner or later, Australia is going to be noticed for its cinema, and I
for one will be looking forward to it. Check it out.
B+ -Rich Caron
Director: Tim Reaper
Everyone wants to hop on the horror bandwagon
nowadays. Everyone. Its the "in" thing. Particularly zombies. But hey,
if people can get themselves in a mild psychological thriller, they'll do it.
can't blame them. Horror is the hottest ticket next to those shitty 3D films
that have been flooding the Cineplex's. But the independent filmmaker always
feels to step it up a notch in the hopes that their little opus gets noticed. In Lights Camera Dead, directed by Tim Reaper and distributed by SRS
Cinema, that theory gets put to the test.
Indie horror filmmaker Ryan Black (Wes Reid) is
auditioning actors/actresses for his new horror film "The Music Box". With a
bitchy actress named Melanie (for obvious reasons played by Monica Moehring),
and an obnoxious, tit happy slate operator Ted (Coldon Martin). Everything is
shaky at first, then gets worse when the cast and crew walk out on the project
when Ryan degrades them too much for too long. The film is finished, though not
in the way Black would've wanted it. Filming is not complete, as Black and his
producer Steven (J.C. Lira) finish the film using the actual deaths of his cast
and crew, mixing their new footage with the finished film.
Interesting premise, though nothing new. Its got
good pacing throughout and shows some of the trials and tribulations that an
indie filmmaker and his crew go through to create a project. The problem here is
that everyone here so angry and obscene, that it would be difficult to have any
strong emotion for the characters. Short tempers and heavy attitudes drown the
cast in an attempt to make them look and sound tough. I'm not sure why everyone
in a film like this has to be a badass all the time, but it gets annoying quick.
Another aspect is the music. With a looping piano score that's overplayed the
dialogue when things start getting bloody so loudly, you can't make heads or
tails of what they're saying. But given the script at this point, chances are
high they're hurling insults at each other. Best performance is given to Lira.
Believable, sarcastic, yet downplayed enough to make him likable. Nice twist
ending.
DVD is presented 1.85:1 widescreen in stereo.
Extras include 2 audio commentaries, "The Music Box" short film, and trailers.
The colors are pretty sharp and the sound heavy with the score, thus drowning
out the dialogue at times.
Light Camera Dead is not going to make
anyone's top ten list. Pretty standard fare that could been something if not for
the odious characters. But there's still a charm about it that makes it fun.
Though I'd be damned if I knew what it was. Recommended, but just
barely.
C+ -Rich Caron
Director: Mike Schneider
What? Not another rendition of the world's greatest zombie flick coming from the mastermind of George A Romero known as Night of the Living Dead! Can't be! We've seen it all before! Remakes, three dimensional rendering, spoofs, musicals, and even (gak!) colorized versions of Romero's opus being treated like moldy bag of tangerines. Frankly, it kills this purist of horror and many more around the world. No matter how well received it is, there's that underlying fact of knowing that Romero would never be able to cash in due to those damn copyright laws. But what's done is done and we all must march forth into that black sunset of the living dead.
However, there is a little light at the end of that bloodstained tunnel. Not a remake, but a re-imagining. And not the kind of re-imagining that Rob Zombie had in store for the incredible Halloween (I guess this destroys the aforementioned "purist" in me, eh?). Nay I say! Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated takes the visuals of the story into unchartered territory thanks to the ideas of Mike Schneider, close to 150 illustrators, and Wild Eye Video.
In the outskirts of Pittsburgh, seven people are trapped in a........oh screw it! You KNOW the story!
What makes this film enticing is the use of artists and illustrators to tell the story visually. Comic book style panels, sock puppets, 3D animation, stop motion animation, claymation, and many, many, many other contributors tell the story in their own unique way. Some are serious, some are rugged, some terrifying, some funny, some abstract, some are extreme, and some simple. But they all have one goal in mind. To have you watch the original NOLTD like you have never seen it before. They use the original audio and it all adds up to pure fun. I had to rewind a few times because my eyes would leave the screen for a few seconds and I would miss a new contribution to the film. So keep dem eyes peeled!
The DVD is presented in 1.33:1 full frame. The audio isn't the greatest as they probably got it from one of the many shitty copies out there for retail. Using the audio from one of the better Romero supervised DVD's would've been better, but not only are there laws against using the cleaned up audio, but also for artistic merit. Keeping the audio gloomy for nostalgic's sake. Plenty of extras abound this DVD. Special intro by Count Gore De Vol, commentaries, alternate and deleted scenes, behind the scenes, and a whole bunch more stuff on how this project came to life.
The only sad part, and it is worth mentioning, is that Romero won't see a dime for this. Fucking shame too. Too many people have screwed over this man to literally steal the film that put him on the map. But in this case, I have to make an exception. Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated is a fresh and interesting look at the first modern zombie film. Whether Romero agrees with this is a separate story. But I think that if he just puts the frustration aside for 90 minutes, he will see this more as a real fan tribute than people stealing his work.
A -Rich Caron
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