Oh look! Danielle Harris is in a new movie! . . . not. I’m getting pissed that filmmakers cast people like Danielle Harris, Kane Hodder, Tony Todd, Tiffany Shepis, and many others to act for five minutes and then kill them off or turn them into needless characters just so they can put their name on the front cover.
Camp Dread is a new movie that does not star Danielle Harris. It does star Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp) but they, of course, don’t put that on the cover. Felissa Rose is iconic and deserves a shout out on the cover of the film she is in. This isn’t the first time (and it won’t be the last) that a production company and distributor have done this. It’s a cheap selling point and it’s disgusting and insulting to everyone. I understand that the director can’t afford these actors and actresses during the whole production but it is still a cheap move and tiresome to see over and over.
Back in the 1970s, films with gratuitous nudity were usually rated X during their initial release. Now, these types of films will, at most, be rated NC-17, but we don’t see that rating much these days. Vinegar Syndrome releases many films of this nature with an X rating but that doesn’t mean they’re hardcore pornography. Sure, Vinegar Syndrome does release some vintage hardcore features but they also dabble in the non-hardcore stuff as well. That is where The Telephone Book comes in.
I, along with many others, have been pleased with Scream Factory’s colossal catalogue for the past year and a half, as well as some of the astonishing releases they have planned for the near future. Along with their old-school horror/sci fi lineup, they are also acquiring new films and setting them up with the Scream Factory treatment.
Dead Shadows is one of the films that they have recently added to their roster of releases, after picking them up post-festival screenings. They first brought us Dead Souls, Cockneys Vs. Zombies, Chilling Visions (short film collection), and Beneath. Now they have released their first foreign language film, Dead Shadows.
It’s hard to believe that there are three films in the Outpost series. It does generate a small but loyal audience so that these Nazi zombie films can continue to be made, though. The Nazi zombie subgenre started back in the 1970s and is still around to this day. I’m not sure how or why it caught on but a handful of films were made. Now, there is a sort of renaissance going on with these Third Reich meat-eaters. Outpost: Rise Of The Spetsnaz is the latest and the second strongest in the series.
Religious horror films are truly terrifying. We have our slashers, monsters, and alien horror, but we know those can be easily dismissed. Sure, there are accounts of people dressing up and killing people and there are serial killers, but we are not surrounded by that. We hear about these things on TV and the Internet but it doesn’t hit close to home. Probably the only things that hit close to home are school shootings because that could literally happen anywhere, at any time, by anyone.
Kathleen Hanna was my dream girl growing up. It all started when I went to a record store and found a copy of Reject All American by Bikini Kill. I had no clue what it was but the cover intrigued me. I gave it a shot because it only had a 99-cent price tag.
I left the store with a few CDs that day (mostly punk) and listened to them throughout the rest of the week, but that night I popped that one in and it did a number on me. First, it sounded completely badass. It was raw and ferocious. The lyrics were well thought out and this girl singer was not fucking around. Between “Rebel Girl” and “Statement of Vindication,” this was the best album that I’d heard in years. I immediately found out who Kathleen Hanna was and tracked down everything she put her hands into.
How do people normally feel about made-for-TV horror? I’m not speaking about direct-to-video flicks, I’m talking about the ones that go straight to television and then are put on DVD and buried almost instantly. These movies are easily dismissed and frowned upon. I give them a chance when I can because every once in a while you find a gem. Sorority Horror House is one of those films.
Sigh . . . What can I really say about Troma? Let me start off by saying I’m not really a fan of Troma films. By this I mean the films that are produced by the Troma team of Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Hertz, not the films they have distributed in the past that they don’t have any input into. There is an audience for these films but I’m not part of that audience at all. I find their films crude, mean-spirited, and disgusting on a level of just being disgusting for the sake of it. Sure, there are some films that are OK but most of them are exactly the same and follow the same formula and never veer away from that.
All film fans should explore movies made during the “Ozploitation” era of Australian low budget filmmaking. Just about every film that came out during this time is fantastic. Many people have probably seen these films and are just unaware of the term Ozploitation or what movies fit this description.
I’ve always thought Odd Thomas was a fun book and when I heard it was being made into a film, I was both intrigued and scared. How in the hell were they going to pull something like this off? If you know anything about the story of Odd Thomas then you know where I’m coming from. It’s a good story but a little out there and hard to fathom seeing on the screen. Also, when I heard Stephen Sommers was directing it I admit that I did frown a little because I’m not a fan of his work aside from Deep Rising.
Upon viewing it I was pleasantly surprised and very happy with the direction it took. The CGI isn’t all that bad aside from a couple of scenes that look a little wonky, but everything is else is pretty solid. Anton Yelchin and Willem Dafoe both do a superb job and give everything they have to bring some of their best work to this kickass flick.