Reviews

The words "Stephen King" and "Sequel" usually make the skin crawl, but The Rage: Carrie 2 isn't all bad.

Question: does everyone in movies have to be so pretty? In this film we are asked to believe that Emily Bergl and Mena Suvari are ugly, just as Rachel Leigh Cook was supposedly plain Jane in "She's All That". Please! I thought Bergl was beautiful, but I have a soft spot for girls with a dark side. On the other hand, the leader of the jocks who ostensibly got all the chicks looked like Ethan Hawke's redneck cousin. These guys are such misogynistic pricks that you can't wait for them to die. The scariest thing about this movie is the knowledge that jocks like that exist, thinkng they are entitled to everything thy want because they can throw a ball.

Zacherle introduces clips from some classic cheesy horror films, as well as rare TV stuff. Watching this, my brother and I found some of the footage to be so weird that it was almost disturbing, particularly the god-awful Electro.

Two complaints: Zacherle's bits really try your patience after a while (that fast-forward button WILL come in handy); and the inclusion of Night of the Living Dead, a great film that doesn't belong alongside such side-splitting crap as Robot Monster, Bride of the Monster, et al.

After the disappointment of The Crazies, director George A. Romero returns to top form with this masterpiece. John Amplas gives a nicely understated performance as a psychotic teenager who believes he is a vampire, a belief that is reinforced by his superstitious uncle Tata Cuda.

Although I make a point of watching every zombie movie I can, this one really tested my patience. Much has been made of the infuriating ending (I won't go into it, but you might kick in your TV set after viewing it). This movie features the worst zombie makeup EVER devised. The actors playing zombies look like they have had a large lump of latex, mud, and excrement thrown at their heads (their hands and bodies are not made up).

Let me start off by saying that I do consider myself a Lucio Fulci fan. I own copies of The Beyond, Zombie, and this movie. I wish I could say The Gates of Hell is a good movie, but I cannot lie. It's pretty awful. Even if you can accept the usual bad dubbing and nonexistent plot that characterize these movies, you may still be disappointed by this film. The plot revolves around a medium who witnesses the suicide of a priest in Dunwich, MA, which opens the gates of hell and allows the dead to take over the world. This ghastly vision (the invasion of the dead suggested by the sight of one barely visible corpse rising from its grave) causes the medium, Mary (Katherine MacColl) to die of fright. Without an autopsy or embalming procedure, she is buried (or at least lodged in a grave by particularly lazy union gravediggers) and reawakens. Luckily, a reporter is there at that exact moment to rescue her by hacking through the coffin with a pickaxe. This entire scene is more a matter of style than sense. After all, if a person is not actually dead, he or she certainly is by the time of burial, since embalming is required by law. The medium and the reporter travel to Dunwich, which we hear was the site of Colonial witch-burning. A nice little detail, but actually a stupid mistake since witches were not burned in America; they were hanged. Various supernatural (that is, senseless) occurrences, uh...occur, such as cats attacking their owners, mirris and walls breaking, and a bizarre vertical rain of maggots. Instead of revealing the rest of the "story", I'll just voice a few of my other complaints with the movie.

The eyes! Nearly every scene has long and pointless zooms in on people's eyes, probably so that we don't see their lips not matching the dialogue (although it appears the movie was made in English; the New York scenes even seem to have direct sound).

The score. Annoyingly repetitive (and shamelessly derivative of Dawn of the Dead), the entire score seems to be based around approximately four minutes of music, repeated ad nauseum.

The lack of logic. The world is 48 hours from ending, and Mary wants to stop for a snack? Pack a lunch, woman!

The ending, one of the stupidest in history (apparently it was Fulci's attempt to salvage the end of the film after the real ending was accidentally destroyed in the lab).

The cinematography. There's a difference between "Wow, this movie is atmospheric and scary", and "Wow, this movie is so dark I can't see a damn thing."

The zombies. About five of them, in laughably poor make-up, even by Italian zombie standards. They kill a few people, always in the same repetitive way (grabbing the back of a victim's head and squishing out the brain). They also have the power to disappear and reappear at will. Lame as hell.

I wanted to like this movie, I really did. But I was expecting something much, much more than Fulci was up to. I suggest you skip this and see Zombie instead. Sure, it has its faults, but it's an action-packed, thrill-a-minute zombie epic compared to this.

This is one of the lamest, tackiest, ugliest horror movies it has ever been my misfortune to see. Populated by some of cinema's most unattractive nobodies dressed in K-mart fashions, this movie plods on and on with some nonsense about some Lovecraftian menace name Yog-Kothag.

Avoid at all costs. It's not even amusing in that so-bad-it's-good way Ed Wood movies are. It's just painful and depressing to sit through this shot-on-video mess.

Even if you liked the first Mortal Kombat, like I did, don't bother with this witless and boring sequel. Many of the first film's stars (Christopher Lambert, Bridgette Wilson) have been replaced with nobodies. The entire movie has the distinct feel of a lame knockoff direct-to-video sequel, yet it inexplicably got a theatrical release. You will forget the entire "plot" by the time this seemingly endless movie is finally over. Avoid it. The characters lack personality, and many, especially Motaro, are laughably lame compared to their video-game counterparts.

This film, a precursor to The Running Man, depicts a futuristic game show in which contestants are stalked and killed. Bad special effects and dubbing throughout. Only for Lucio Fulci completists, this is even lacking in the gratuitous gore and nudity that usually characterizes Fulci's work.

The Burning is one of many gory slasher flicks released after the success of Halloween and Friday the 13th. The special effects (by Tom Savini of Friday the 13th) are the only saving grace of this uninteresting, badly-acted and sloppily-scripted piece of junk.

One scene in particular stands out in my mind: the counselors (yes, this movie takes place at a summer camp; original isn't it?) are discussing the legend of the movie's killer. As one tells his story, everyone grows tense, and then---someone jumps out at them! But, wait, it's just some goofball wearing a mask to scare them. The thing that infuriates me is that this scene is an exact, almost word-for-word copy of a scene in Friday the 13th Part 2!

Look for Jason Alexander (with hair) in a supporting role.