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Reviews
Scrapbook (2000)
Worth a watch but....
How do you write a review without spoilers.....who knows? Certainly not me so I guess this is your warning to read no further!
The films starts with a terrified woman's voice in the darkness, she appears to be talking to another woman but when the light comes on she's sitting in the back of a van next to the mutilated corpse of another woman. She is taken into a house, in the middle of nowhere, an held captive by the psychopathic killer.
****MAJOR SPOILER ALERT*****
During the girls captivity a man visits, hoping to store his horses in the empty barn next to the house, and our unfriendly psycho precedes to bludgeon him to death for his audacity. The girl is subjected to numerous beatings and degradations including anal rape, being p***ed on, put into a barrel in the blazing sun and having some of her toes chopped off. Eventually she manages to bring out submissive tendencies in the lunatic and he allows her to tie him to the bed where she extracts her revenge. The only thing that surprises me about this is that she only wants to stick a knife through his feet! You'd have thought that the least she would have done was castrate him! Oh well.
Overall this is a low budget movie that sets out to shock and manages that quite well, but it could have been so much better. I thought the acting was poor and we only see 3 characters and one corpse throughout the film. I gave this 5 out of 10, worth a watch but not that good.
Evil Dead II (1987)
Poor follow up
After watching Evil Dead and loving it I was really looking forward to Evil Dead 2, unfortunately I found this film to be a complete waste of time. Where the first film was based on shocks the director tried to make this one into a black comedy and for me it didn't work, I didn't find it either funny or scary....just weird.
The Evil Dead (1981)
Still one of the best
When I first watched this film, way back in 1982, at the Cinema I was on the edge of my seat and totally engrossed. I found it quite scary, even more so than The Exorcist and, at the time, it was the best horror film I'd seen. I've just bought the DVD and even after all this time it's still one of my all time favourites. If only the follow ups had lived up to this one!
Tesis (1996)
Very good
I read about this film in the top 50 horror movies and then was amazed when Film Four Extreme showed it the very next day!
I didn't want to like this film because it wasn't in English and I usually hate looking at subtitles but it is an extremely good plot and is very tense throughout. You are kept guessing until the end as to who the killer is.
The plot revolves around a girl who is doing a thesis on violence and who befriends the school weirdo in order to obtain study materials. During her quest she discovers a snuff movie starring a girl who disappeared from her college a couple of years previously and decides to find out who produced it. Along the way she realises that this wasn't the only such film and that the killer is thinking of making another......starring her. Who is the killer and who can she trust?
Scary stuff and probably the best foreign film that I've seen.
Return of the Living Dead III (1993)
Better than average
I found this better than the average Zombie film. The acting was good and the storyline believable, well up to a point. OK so it's a bit strange that, after seeing how someone brought back from the dead behaves, that our hero would choose this fate for his girlfriend, who he's just killed in a motorbike accident and it's also odd that someone could manage to get into a top secret army building so easily but hey not many films are perfect. As for that gang of shop robbers, could anyone be that stupid?
However the special effects are good and overall this is not a bad film. I certainly enjoyed it and would recommend it as worth a look.
Phenomena (1985)
Great stuff
I'm just re-discovering Dario Argento's films, I think I watched some of them a long time ago but why are they never on TV? This was the second one I've watched recently, Deep Red being the first, and I found this to be much superior. One of the most striking things about this film is the excellent soundtrack, moody rock tracks by groups such as Iron Maiden......great stuff.
The acting is fairly good and the story is interesting and believable revolving around a young American girl, who has the ability to communicate with insects, sent to a boarding school in Switzerland at the same time a killer is committing grizzly murders. There's plenty of gore and overall this is a very atmospheric film that grips you till the end. Donald Pleasance plays a crippled Entomologist who encourages the girl to try and track down the killer with the help of insects, shame on you Donald, this was the one bit of the film I couldn't believe.....why would a supposedly responsible adult encourage a young girl to put herself in such danger?
Flaws aside this is a very good film with some surprises and shocks.
Profondo rosso (1975)
OK but....
Maybe it was something to do with seeing the subtitled version but I never really thought this film lived up to some of the praise it's received here. Watching David Hemmings mouth move in English but with Italian words coming out was just too weird.
There wasn't as much gore as I'd expected, although the bath scene was quite scary, and I didn't really find the plot that interesting, to be honest I can't remember much of it and I only watched it a couple of days ago. I certainly can't remember why the killer was killing people.
I think I'd watch this again if I could get hold of the English version just to see if I found it any more interesting, somehow I doubt it though.
The Last House on the Left (1972)
Rubbish
Watching this it is hard to believe that the same Wes Craven went on to make such a classic as A Nightmare On Elm Street, this is absolutely awful. The acting is so bad it's almost funny....but not quite. I guess films made at this time were just out to shock but this one didn't even manage that because the plot is so unbelievable and the acting so bad. Don't waste 90 mins of your life watching this.