Into the Blu

Remember Lost Boys? The cult teen horror film directed by Joel Shumacher… Of course it’s a seminal work that is a staple of the 80’s teen horror genre. How about the sequel, Lost Boys: The Tribe? If you haven’t then it may be a surprise to you that there’s a third film, The Lost Boys: The Thirst filling in the trilogy. How does it hold up against the classic?  Continue Reading

King Kong was a groundbreaking achievement in special effects using stop motion and animatronics and it captured audiences’ attention around the world for its unique filmmaking techniques and thus held records for selling out for four days in a row. For the time King Kong was piquing peoples’ interests, but in a world where we have a truck turn into a robot and dinosaurs roam our streets; how well does a film which based a lot of its appeal on its special effects hold up?  Continue Reading

In this day and age remakes are common place; with original thoughts receding from our imaginations like a glacier. Most of the time these remakes do little to no justice in regards to the original, especially to classics. Well sometimes re-imaginations give us an opportunity to enjoy characters in a whole new light (i.e. The Dark Knight or Casino Royale), so while the characters are the same it’s a whole new plot and direction. Then there are remakes like The Amityville Horror that initially have me feeling sceptical. I ask myself how can you take a plot that simply revolves around a house and its horrific effects on a family, and keep its original intensity while offering something new to bring viewers in.    Continue Reading

Yet another remake hits the shelves, based upon the 1964 movie titled 2000 Maniacs! This doesn’t quite seem like the type of movie worth replicating, but I’ve been surprised before and I’m hoping to be surprised again. Really the only recognizable name in the cast is Robert Englund of A Nightmare on Elm Street fame, but includes a couple recognizable faces in Lin Shaye and Giuseppe Andrews.  Continue Reading

 Around 2003 marked a change for the horror genre, a new wave was hitting the scene and it wasn’t coming from Hollywood. France’s horror scene was blooming and one of the most talked about films was “High Tension” with its relentless storytelling and pure terror it was said to impose upon its viewers. Was the hype true or was this simply the opening of the floodgates of over-gory cookie-cutter horror films that would infest the market for the next 7 years?  Continue Reading

Remember back in the day when having Samuel L. Jackson’s name in the credits instantly legitimized a movie?  Before he was fighting snakes on a plane and dawning an eye path and playing Nick Fury, Sam Jackson was enjoying small roles in a variety of films to expand his horizons… Does Deep Blue Sea showcase a prime example of a fanciful premise that is enhanced by having “the man” in it… or is this the beginning of the end for Sammy?

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Having a significant other who’s obsessed with True Blood, made this flick an easy sell when it came down to review time. Out of all the fans of the show out there, who can resist seeing both Anna Paquin AND Stephen Moyer on the cover of a semi-legitimate horror film and not go crazy and rush home to watch it? Does Open House deliver to the obvious target audience or does it stay on the market?

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With the new Predators film in theatres now trying to reboot the franchise and bring the series into a more respectable light after the AVP failure, we are given the film that started it all on Blu-ray. Does it hold up well after all these years or do we need to wait for Predators to come out in order to see our favorite Stan Winston monster in all its Blu-ray glory? Continue Reading

We’re given two very different horror films in this double feature, one is a nineties slasher film that seems to emulate the formulas of the many slasher films of its time, whereas Otis seems to be an indie film that tries to be as different as possible. Unfortunately as it happens so many times, do these films’ reach exceeds their grasps?

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When The Relic originally came out in theaters I was too young to go and see it at my local multiplex. I wanted to see it desperately because I had been a very big fan of the book on which it was based.  I don’t remember how, but I eventually ended up getting a VHS copy of it about a year later from a friend. It was obviously poorly copied because the sound was distorted and the picture was wavy. In fact, sometimes the picture was so completely warped at all you couldn`t tell what was happening at all. It was more like listening to an old radio show than watching a movie, but no word of a lie I probably watched that VHS five or six times.  Peter Hyams did the book justice and directs a very exciting contemporary monster movie, and even though I heard more of it than I saw, when I was 14 I though this movie was awesome. After all of these years, getting a chance to go back and review this movie on Blu-ray was a very pleasant surprise.

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Horror movies have never been my cup of tea and if my memory serves me correctly, I believe the original Friday the 13^th was my first exposure to the genre.  It scared the hell out of me as I was somewhere around 6 or 7 years old.  My parents would never let me watch that kind of movie (with good reason), so I would go over the neighbor kid’s house who must have had really liberal parents.  Somehow, as scary as the movie was, I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.  It was a year or so later when he had a VHS copy of A Nightmare on Elm Street that a bunch of us kids watched, and holy crap, the terror factor went through the ceiling for me.  Despite my lack of horror film viewing these days, that film sits atop the list of horror movies I can actually say I enjoy.  Here we are in 2010 and the film is now available once again, this time in the beauty that only Blu-ray can offer. Continue Reading

The original The Stepfather was an early favorite of mine, featuring an amazing performance by Terry O’ Quinn as a man struggling to find the perfect family. He is so determined in his quest that he has no problem killing anyone who stands in his way. I heard news of a remake awhile ago and was rather discouraged by the news, especially after I heard it was being made by the same people, director Nelson McCormick and writer J.S. Cardone, who brought us last year’s unremarkable and ultimately forgettable Prom Night remake. Still, I decided to watch it with an open mind.

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