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chassonknight
Reviews
Reel Zombies (2008)
An original zombie movie
I'm not keen on zombie movies. Zombies were a big thing for a short while when I was growing up, and I liked them then, but I think they had their day. Then they turned up again, with nothing very new to say, and this time they've stuck around. I suspect the low special effects budget they require is largely responsible for their current popularity among filmmakers, although there has been plenty of multi-million dollar additions to zombie cinema in recent years.
This movie is about filmmaking, particularly low budget filmmaking by egotistical, self-absorbed cretins who, as far as I can tell, are playing satirical versions of themselves.
In this movie, there is an ongoing zombie apocalypse, and the makers of (very real movies) Zombie Night and Zombie Night 2 are trying to make another zombie movie, this time with real 'wrangled' zombies. It's darkly funny, relentlessly self aware, and refreshing.
I still don't like zombie movies, but if Zombie Night or Zombie Night 2 swing by the free streamers some time, I'll check them out on the strength of this movie. It shows real (reel) innovation.
So I'm giving it 8 twinkly things.
After School Lunch Special (2019)
Insane fun!
This movie is just low budget fun. Okay, it's schlock, but I like schlock.
I enjoyed this because I had no idea what was going to happen, apart from in the segment titled 'Cannibalingus' or whatever it was that just broadcast its ending from the beginning. That was an outlier. Most of the stories here are unpredictable.
It is very gross, with runny defecation and vomit on full display. It aims to turn your stomach in many of the stories. But I love the chaos, the strange endings and mess of it all. I accept it's unadulterated anarchy will not be to everyone's tastes, but if you don't think you have a limit, try it for fun.
I've given it 7 stars. I had fun watching it.
The Quantum Devil (2023)
Lovecraft updated with even more hokey science than ever!
To start off, the horror in this movie is fairly tame. It could have done with a darker, more atmospheric setting, a greater emphasis on tension building, and just more of a sense of threat. That's something that needed to be baked into the script from the outset. The movie has horror elements, but it's a supernatural fantasy rather than a horror movie. If that's where the makers were aiming, mission accomplished.
I find this movie inventive and just good fun. I think you probably have to be acclimatised to cosmic horror to really feel it; the incomprehensible madness existing just beyond our world unleashed by the meddling of arrogant academics.
The scientific updating of this essentially (but not explicitly) lovecraftian tale involves some very hokey science. A bunch of discredited academics are provided with a substance called quantamine, apparently the greatest quantum breakthrough in two hundred years (you'd think the development of quantum theory about a century ago would probably have been more significant). With this they prepare to enter another dimension using strings of phrases from physics that have little context here. But, whatever, Lovecraft somehow thought there was something inherently spooky about non-euclidean geometry, so this movie continues a grand tradition.
Were I to have updated Lovecraft with modern science, this isn't how I'd have done it. But then, I have no skills required in filmmaking and these folks do, and I enjoyed what they did. Is Lovecraft in the public domain? Perhaps I'll write an interactive modern Lovecraft. But for now, this was a grand attempt that really reaches the insanity.
8 out of 10 for creativity, if not for effective horror.
Caress of the Vampire 2 (1996)
Don't carry across your expectations from the first movie
The first Caress of the Vampire was pretty poor. It was nothing but a bunch of lesbian erotica strung together with something resembling plot. But, frankly, you can string even bad lesbian erotica together and I'll watch.
This thing seems to share nothing with the first movie, apart from its dreadful video and sound quality, which I think is actually worse. When anything erotic begins to happen, it's interrupted for... the plot, I guess, which they think is funny, but is mostly just nothing. I don't know why this movie exists. It's neither arousing nor funny. If the first movie was at least trying to be a movie, this one is trying to be a bunch of students making their first film for their own entertainment. And it's not even that good.
1 out of 10 is generous, but IMDB doesn't allow ratings in negative figures.
The Witches of Sappho Salon (2003)
Not the best softcore, nor the best story, but it'll do.
Well, this movie has already been criticised for not being the best telling of women bathing in the blood of virgins to attain immortality. It's certainly a valid criticism. However, this is primarily a softcore lesbian themed movie. As someone who'd rather watch lesbian themed erotica than virtually anything else, I feel the story is just a backdrop for the erotic content. As such, it does a good enough job. If I were to criticise it, I would say it could have been more explicit. As I always think about my writing, if you can't bring the quality, bring the sex.
There are no great acting achievements here, but they all gave it heart. And I know nothing about film-making, but it's grainy and the sound isn't great. I assume those are budget problems. I've watched a variety of independent movies in recent years, and those problems are obviously common. However, this movie does have some inventive scenes and the premise strings the saucy content, which is the point of the movie, together satisfactorily. At times it genuinely feels dreamlike. That's not skillfully made dreamlike, as you'd find in the best eighties supernatural horrors, but it's effective enough.
Just don't expect too much and it'll do.