*I know this isn’t the original poster but I kinda really dig this UK quad one, so deal with it!

SYNOPSIS

After the treehouse tree is torn down leaving a big hole in the backyard, two suburban kids accidentally unleash a horde of demons from this gateway to the domain of evil gods.

REVIEW

Having just watched this on the big screen with a double featuring pairing (with “The Monster Squad“) I simply HAD to do a review for it. What I realized during this screening is that this movie is essentially “Evil Dead” with kids.

Don’t you hate when your asshole dad cuts down the only tree in your yard that just so happens to be the support structure for your kick ass tree house? Doesn’t it suck even more when the leftover hole is really a gateway to a domain of evil gods that manifest n the form of tiny demons that terrorize you and your friend during your sleepover? Well then “The Gate” was custom made for you, my friend!

Now let’s be clear the titular aperture is actually more of a hole than a physical gate (and actually Joe Dante did a similar style movie in 2009 called “The Hole” tho I doubt it was as intense as this film). This flick is definitely one I’d add to F-ed up kids movies category. Let’s take a look at some of the films finer points shall we? It’s got a dead mom returning from the grave and then actually end up being a dead dog, living parents turned evil with an amazing face crushing/oozing scene, the story of a dead construction worker buried in the wall that makes a return, boy-stalking moths, Satanic rock music, gemology, model rockets, Ray Harryhausen style effects and very wimpy Stephen Dorff. Yet this movie was somehow made for kids?

The pacing of the film can be really slow at times, but overall it delivers in the scares, especially when I was watching it as a kid. There’s definitely not enough movies like this being made today, but hopefully that will change.

Overall, I say, when life cuts down your lemon tree, open a gateful of demons on it ass!

RATING: 555 out of 666 purple geodes 

BEHIND THE SCENES: Check out this behind the scenes pics to see how the did one of the most awesome shots in the movie! There’s some more info about this shot HERE.

*BONUS: Watch the full movie HERE*

SYNOPSIS

While backpacking through England, two American college students wander out onto the foggy London moors where they are attacked by a wild beast, killing one and biting the other. The surviving friend is soon haunted by apparitions of his dead best friend who informs him that he is a werewolf and will change on the next full moon, but does he believe this to be true or just a manifestation of his survior’s guilt…?

REVIEW

1981 was the pinnacle of werewolf transformation special effects. Between “An American Werewolf in London” and “The Howling” you had more than any non-lycanthrope can chew! There’s actually a great backstory about the FX crews of these two movies in “Fantastic Flesh“, a special I highly recommend any horror FX fan to watch (available on Netflix).

This movie has the quintessential werewolf transformation scene to date! Rick Baker and his team pulled out all the stops in this one and it shows in the final product that still remains to be the bar set for all werewolf movies that followed, and none have acheived.

Amazing special effects aside, this movie also have a large number of awesome elements, such as the Mutant Nazi Nightmare sequence, the morbid humorous visits from our lead’s ever decaying dead best friend who continually tries to convince him to commit suicide, and an amazingly choreographed (and executed in production) disaster scene in Piccadilly Circus in the vein of John Landis‘ earlier film “The Blues Brothers.” Oh and did I mention that this film is pretty much the inspiration for the Michael Jackson, Landis directed video “Thriller?” Yeah. Exactly.

Basically, if you’re looking for a movie with ridiculously good special effects, dark, dark, humor, and oh yeah werewolves, then this movie will steal your balloons like a naked American man!

RATING: 12 out of 13 full moons 

Truly Trivial: All the songs in this film have the word “moon” in their titles. The legal disclaimer in the closing credits reads, “Any resemblance to any persons living, dead, or undead, is coincidental.” This was also placed at the end of another John Landis project: Thriller. This is the first film to earn the Academy Award for Best Makeup. That category was created in 1981 AND the final look of the werewolf beast was based on make-up creator Rick Baker‘s dog Bosko.

*BONUS: Watch the full movie HERE*

From Down in the Basement to You, Dear Reader! Be safe and have a SPOOKtacular Halloween!

*There’s some cool alternate posters out there like THIS weird (Spanish?) one and THIS very accurate and somewhat inexplicable (what’s the 2 all about?) Arab one. Enjoy.

SYNOPSIS

After Dr. Pretorious’ inter-dimensional experiment works, resulting in his gruesome beheading, the police suspect fowl play by his lab assistant, Crawford Tillinghast. That’s when they bring in Dr. Katherine McMichaels to see if his crazy story is true or not, and she begins re-creating Pretorious’ experiment to see if it truly works.

REVIEW

If “Videodrome“, “Re-Animator“, and “The Fly” had a baby, you would name the child “From Beyond.” This movie takes awesome Lovecracftian Sci-Fi and blends it together with gross, Cronenbergian effects resulting in an awesome Stuart Gordon margarita.

The creatures that come FROM the BEYOND look awesome! There’s flying eels and jellyfish (careful, they bite!), a crazy monster that looks like a cross between a lamprey and the Graboids from Tremors, and most impressively the ever morphing physicalized body of Crawford’s scientist boss, Dr. Pretorious, which grows more grotesque with every new incarnation.

The movie has very prevalent sexual overtones, which eventually leads to Dr. Katherine McMichaels donning some very kinky leather bondage gear. Now the movie doesn’t have as much nudity as Re-Animator, but what it lacks in nudity it more than makes up for in drastic magenta lighting.

“From Beyond” is one movie that will tingle your pineal gland! I say take a bite out of this movie like the delicious headless gingerbread man of awesomeness that it is!

WHAT’S IN A NAME?: Dr. Pretorious’s character is named after Dr. Septimus Pretorius, Henry Frankenstein’s former teacher, who seduces Henry to the dark side. And Dr. Bloch is named after Robert Bloch, the author of the novel upon which Psycho was based and a friend of writer H.P. Lovecraft.

RATING: 9 out of 10 flying inter-dimensional brain sucking eels! 

*BONUS: Watch the full movie HERE*

SYNOPSIS

When Dracula and his monster friends come to town looking for an ancient amulet to open a portal to Limbo, it’s up to a group of local monster movie loving kids to stop them.

REVIEW

We all know a stake through the heart kills vampires and silver bullet kill werewolves, but it wasn’t until “Monster Squad” that we knew Wolfman has nards!

This movie has all the things they don’t put in kids movies anymore: smoking, swearing, and fat kids named Fat Kid. It’s a very fun mash up of classic Universal movie monsters; you got Dracula, The Mummy, Frankenstein’s monster and The Creature From the Black Lagoon (though for legal reasons they credit him as Gillman). And they have some very clever updates on classic monster lore, like Fat Kid whipping out some garlic bread to burn Dracula or the aforementioned Wolfman nards scene.

“Monster Squad” has awesome creature effects and some great kills and resurrections (the one involving dynamite comes to mind). What’s great about it above all is that it doesn’t dumb itself down for kids and has very believable characters and dialogue.

The only thing that really stands out as weird with the movie is how it opens with a text prologue but then proceeds to show you what you were just told verbatim. Why they kept the text in there is beyond me.

Though some say “Monster Squad” doesn’t hold up from our childhood, I think it’s still a pretty damn good kick in the nards!

FUN READ: The Monster Squad script by Shane Black is really fun read. Shane Black writes some pretty hilariously colorful and creative descriptions. Download the script pdf HERE. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about…

CRANE UP… TO THE CEILING of this dank chamber and there, in the cobwebbed shadows, are a million glittering lights, like diamonds, except what they actually are is a million EYES, because the ceiling is covered with disgusting BATS, all suspended upside down, and don’t ask WHAT KIND of bats, because you know better than that, now don’t you?

RATING: 17 out of 20 vampire bats 

*BONUS: Watch the full movie HERE*

Yes this movie is from the early 90s, but as the * clearly footnoted on the About page, we will from time to time review movies on the cusp.

*This poster doesn’t really capture the essence of the movie at all… this Alternate Braindead one is a little closer but not really. This limited edition Adam Haynes one is the closest I’ve seen.

SYNOPSIS

When Lionel Cosgrove’s crazy, over-protective mother is bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey at the zoo, she soon turns into a ravenous zombie.

REVIEW

What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever seen in a horror movie? If you answered the “communal puke drinking scene in”Bad Taste” then you clearly haven’t seen “Dead Alive” yet!

This movie has every gross an disgusting thing you could possibly think, of and most that you could’ve never imagined if it were on screen in front of you spewing oozy grossness so visceral that the Swedish rental of this film came with complimentary barf bags! Just to give you an idea of what I mean, here a short cliff notes list of what you should expect from this film: awesome nasty rat-monkey stop motion, dog eating, mutant baby punching, face rip-offing, rib cage removal, zombie coitus, zombie head jack-o-lanterns, a Nazi veterinarian, semi-successful decapitations, a dual duel with two halves of a severed body while being blond sided by the internal organs in what can only be described as a velociraptor styled attack strategy, a severed head in a blender, zombie tooth removal, pissing on gravestones, and a pile of severed body parts stacked higher than a triceratops turd. And if you think I just gave away everything in this movie, you’ couldn’t be farther from the truth!

Now some of you might be thinking that the movie is strictly a gross out gore fest, and you’re partially right. But it’s also got a fun self aware slapstick comedy element to it as well. Top that with some really cool innovative shots, a brilliantly thought out scene where it cross cuts (whoa metaphor alert!) between our love interest cutting up body parts in a Cusinart and our hero cutting up a bajillion zombies with a shoulder mounted lawnmower! Note that while “Night of the Creeps” already did the “lawnmower as a weapon” gag, but this movie makes it an olympic sport!

The movie also has “the mother” of all Act III baddies, that has our protagonist literally fighting his way out of the womb. Talk about metaphors, similes, and gerunds! Oh My!

The only thing this movie will leave you wondering is how the hell they gave Peter Jackson the “Lord of the Rings” series after making THIS (and also, when is he going to go back and do another awesome horror movie?!).

This movie is touted as “the goriest movie of all time” and one I recommend you see, because in the semi-altered words of the priest character in the film “This movie kicks ass for the Lord!”

“Singuya!”

RATING: 9.9 out of 10 bad ass sling mounted lawnmowers 

DID YOU KNOW: Fake blood was pumped at five gallons per second during the lawnmower scene! The Spanish title of the film, “Tu madre se ha comido a mi perro”, translates to “Your mother ate my dog”, a line from the film. Peter Jackson finished the movie $45,000 (NZD) under budget and used that money for a two day shoot of the zombie baby in the park scene, which he states is his favorite scene.

*BONUS: Watch the full movie HERE*

Continuing with the theme of “Night of the ____” I present to you…

SYNOPSIS

When Earth through the tail of a comet, it wipes out all the people turning them to dust, except for two Valley girls who are left to fight the mutant survivors.

REVIEW

The “Night of the Comet” DVD cover (two Valley girls holding uzis and shopping bags) suggested the movie would be sot of a Buffy the Mutant Alien Slayer, but what it delivered was ham, pineapple, and a whole lot of cheese. It’s sad when the coolest part of your movie is when people are shooting the shit out of an empty car. Though these girls do raid a mall in a quirky “shopping” montage that I guess kinda relates to the DVD cover. It’s worth noting that I think this is the same mall used in EVERY 80s horror movie that takes place in or has a scene in a mall (SEE: Chopping Mall). Their mall-scapades get cut short by zombie stock boys, which could’ve have been cool had they been more cleverly written and not just watered down Warriors wanna-bes.

The movie has crappy make-up effects that half the time look like the actors went bobbing for apples in a barrel of puke or over the counter rubber latex Halloween Woochie FX with no effort made for realism. And the kills, which are very, very few, are minimal and uninspired. They must have spent all their money on the car explosion scene and the numbers Magenta filters that litter the movie’s post-comet skyline.

The one thing the movie has going for it is two 80s-hot leads, but fails to get them any on screen skin time. Tho one comes close, but no cigar. Oh and did I mention the movie’s rather long for an 80s horror piece, especially when nothing interesting is really happening.

I’d say, based off the DVD cover this movie was “The last thing on Earth I ever expected.” Skip it and head to the mall instead.

RATING: 14 out of 75 deadly comet years 

TRULY TRIVIAL: The original working title for the film was “Teenage Mutant Horror Comet Zombies”.

*BONUS: Watch the full movie HERE*

*Alternate foreign poster HERE. Very reminiscent of the House poster, which is interesting since director Fred Dekker and his friend Ethan Wiley wrote House (and Wiley directed House II).

SYNOPSIS

When an alien experiment winds up crash landing on Earth in sorority row, a pair of college teens and a grisly detective  team up to fight off these slug-like creeps before they infect the whole town.

REVIEW

So I’m doing this review after a midnight showing of “Night of the Creeps” that had Fred Dekker in person. It’s really been a treat seeing these last few movies in the theater. I’ll include some cool little tidbits Fred revealed in the trivia section of this review. It was also very interesting to hear his take on how filmmaking was much different back then than it is now. He said when they sent out the script for Creeps there were no notes, the producer loved it, and they shot it as it was. He noted that today that would never happen as movies are mainly greenlit by a committee rather than the producer and most of the time that committee now is the Marketing Dept. Anyways, on with the review… THRILL ME!

This movie is the potpourri of 80s horror movies, it’s got it all: aliens, zombies (human and animal), killer brain infesting slugs, and even an axe murderer. But what’s really 80s about this film, and what I love about it, is that the protagonists are the most unlikely duo a dorky ginger college kid and his crippled best friend. You’d never see that in this day and age.

This movie is part “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” part “Night of the Living Dead” with gorier effects and some amazing one liners, mostly delivered by Detective Cameron played perfectly by Tom Atkins! There’s no shortage of exploding heads or slimey, slithery creeps in this film. It’s got shotguns, flamethrowers, and even a lawnmower (6 years before Dead Alive mind you) as the weapons of choice. But most of all, it’s got a staple of what every good 80s movie should have: Dick Miller. Oh and of course boobs. There’s also gruesome effects of the zombies, cryogenically frozen and recently thawed bodies, living corpses, dead zombie cats and dogs and let’s not forget the little alien gastropod mollusks being dragged around on fishing line. Though what might be the creepiest thing in the whole film is the bleach blonde hair of the douchey fraternity leader, the Bradster (and his minion of lackie frat buddies with classic 80s mustaches). Like I said, this movie is like potpourri, it’s got it all!

So if you’re looking for a movie tonight, that’ll have you running away at 40mph screaming like a banshee, then make tonight the “Night of the Creeps”!

RATING: 29 out of 36 brain infesting slugs 

TRIVIA: Director Fred Dekker never got into film school, so instead he majored in English and worked on films with his friends Ethan Wiley and Shane Black (who wrote Monster Squad, also directed by Dekker) amongst others. All the characters (and the college) are named after famous horror and sci-fi directors. Special Effects artists Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero have play zombie extras and Shane Black can be seen as a cop in the police station.

ALTERNATE ENDING: The original ending, viewable here, is sometimes show on TV broadcasts of the film and some VHSes but it is also available as a special feature on the DVD and BluRay.

*BONUS: Watch the full movie HERE or HERE depending on what ending you want*

Here’s a cool foreign Evil Dead II poster I found online recently.

SYNOPSIS

After surviving one deadly night in a remote cabin, Ash still stranded there, must once again battles the evil forces that have awoken and lurk in the woods around him.

REVIEW

Having just went to a theatrical screening of all three Evil Dead films, I figured this review is very appropriate. Now bear in mind, just so we have full disclosure,  the Evil Dead trilogy are some of my favorite horror movies of all time. That being said, on with the review!

Let’s clear something up first. Most people misconceive this film as a remake while others as an all out sequel i.e. the back of the DVD case says Ash returns to the cabin, when in fact he never gets a chance to leave. What really happens is the first few minutes of the movie is sort of a slimmed down retelling of the first film, not Ash returning to that same cabin expecting different results. To my understanding it was due to some sort of rights issues to using footage from the first film. The sequel portion actually starts when we see Ash taken by the evil force and possessed and fights it off then the day passes very quickly and he soon finds himself stuck there for another night. Now that that’s out of the way…

This movie contains not only some of the best one liners, amazing make-up effects, creative cinematography but also some hilarious gags – not to mention amazing hand acting by Mr. Bruce Campbell.  First off the effects by the every amazing Greg Nicotero, Howard Berger, Robert Kurtzman and co are spectacularly disgusting, artful, and believable yet comical when need be (i.e. blood oozing…err gushing from a wall).

The movie is at it’s best when it’s just Ash alone in the cabin. This portion of the film contains some of the best scenes and bits. I absolutely love the mirror gag, which is simplistically brilliant and beautifully executed as well as a nice throw back to the equally creative mirror/water shot from the first film. Again, this sequence as well as the others during this section of the film play with Ash’s sanity and our perception as an audience in a very inventive and innovative way.

This film is also the origin of the iconic chainsaw hand Ash in what can only be described as one of the best A-Team like building montages ever!

You know what, this movie is so good, if you haven’t seen it just go out and watch it now. In fact, have a marathon and watch all three. It’s pointless to review it, just go enjoy the awesomeness and see it for yourself!

RATING:  10 of 10 decapitated heads 

TRIVIA: Stephen King was a big fan of Evil Dead and while working on Maximum Overdrive he told Dino DeLaurentiis he should have his company finance a sequel.

*BONUS: Watch the full movie HERE*

SYNOPSIS

As signs of the Apocalypse begin showing up around the world, a young woman thinks there’s a connection between them, a stranger that just moved into her guest house, and her unborn baby.

REVIEW

Now granted the “The Seventh Sign” is more of a main stream drama/horror film as opposed to the straight up B horror movies I usually review. I mean it’s stars Demi Moore after all. But in the recent wake up all this Rapture stuff I figured I’d give it a go.

The movie itself if pretty cool. It’s actually got a lot of cool doomsday type religious references that upon Wiipediaing, I found were based on real biblical stuff and not just made up. Which was pretty cool. The unfortunate thing is some of the specificity of it isn’t explained as clearly in the film as they are on the movie’s Wikipedia page. I def recommend reading it after you watch the movie.

The opening of this film is great, a creepy ass dude in different random parts of the world cracking these little clay seal things and then bad shit happening. These are some of the more interesting parts of the film, which we discover as we follow Father Lucci, a Vatican priest, who was sent to investigate these “signs.”

There’s not many scares or crazy kills or anything, it’s got more of that creepiness scary thing going on. And the fact that it involves real bible stuff that you may or may not have heard of makes it even creepier i.e. The Guff. The film also features the awesome Michael Biehn, in what’s probably his most normal and non-Bad Ass role that I’ve seen. Which was a total bummer. He plays the kinda normal husband/lawyer who doesn’t believe his wife when she thinks her baby is part of the approaching Apocalypse. The guy that plays the creepy stranger was awesome and definitely creepy as shit, which is great when the movie give you some unexpected info and flips shit on you. I also liked the performance by the little Jewish kid who helps her translate the creepy dude’s sign letter. Oh and there’s a regular priest played by the dad from “Home Alone” but that kind of took me out of that scene a bit.

Overall, it’s not a bad movie to check out, but I wouldn’t rush out to see it. If the Rapture did happen and you were left behind here on Earth then maybe pick it up, you might learn a thing or two about why you weren’t “saved.”

RATING: 4.5 out of 7 apocalyptic signs 

TRIVIA: Ellen DeGeneres filmed a small role, but it was cut from the film before release. Had it not been cut, it would be Ellen DeGeneres first film role. Watch it HERE.

*BONUS: Watch the full movie HERE*