The Thing - Lisa's Review

So tonight I finally managed to watch all of The Thing.  I have started to watch it many times in the past, as pretty much everyone and their aunt fanny rant about how good it is.  Sadly each and every time I've tried, I've grown so incredibly bored I've had to give up.  Tonight I was on a mission... I WILL WATCH THIS MOVIE!  So how did it go?  Well lets say I fell asleep more times than I was able to count in the end and I had to scan back my DVD over and over and over.  In the end I spent all damn evening watching it!!  Let me tell you, I can think of much better uses of my time on an evening.  Nope, I was indeed not wrong the first time I sat down to watch it, nor any of the others.  It just IS exceedingly boring!

I can hear the nay-sayers already.  How dare she?!! The Thing is an awesome movie!  Well I'm afraid I disagree.  For me the only saving grace was a perv at Kurt Russell, but even he wasn't enough to hold my interest after a while.  Let me put it to you like this.  I switched it off at one point and a program about the Manchester Midland Hotel was on the TV.  This woke me straight up and was riveting viewing in comparison!

The Innocents - Lisa's Review

So, we travel back in time again for 'The Innocents'.  Right back to the early 60's.  I will admit, since I started having to watch particular movies for review, there have been some old movies that I have enjoyed.  Movies that I otherwise would never have chosen to see.  This movie however is most definitely not in that category.

There isn't much to the movie plot wise.  A young attractive lady called Miss Giddens (played by Deborah Kerr no less) is hired to become governess to 2 young children.  They are orphans and are under the care of their uncle who doesn't want to be bothered by them.  He is a very affluent man so he basically throws money at the situation to make it go away.  He hires Miss Giddens, who admits to having no experience whatsoever, seemingly purely based on her looks.  When she arrives at the childrens home, she makes a friend in the housekeeper Mrs Grose and loves Flora, the little girl she is to care for.  The little boy Miles is at boarding school so we don't see him until a bit later in the movie.

Miss Giddens is under the impression she is going to love her job, but she starts to see people who then turn out not to be there.  When Miles arrives home from school, things start to take an unpleasant turn with more strange happenings and some very odd behaviour from the children.  Mrs Grose doesn't seem to want to answer the questions Miss Giddens puts to her and almost warns her not to delve any deeper.  She knows something is very wrong with the children and the house.  This is pretty much it apart from giving away what was going on.

The Tenant - Lisa's Review

*SPOILERS*

After last weeks offering of Hour of the Wolf, I really wanted something good to watch and review.  If not good, at least understandable.  After watching this Roman Polanski movie (directed and starred in) I have to say, they have maybe made it a teeny bit more understandable, but not much.

My viewpoints however on this weeks movie and last weeks is pretty much exactly the same. Although it had some dark, creepy imagery in places that made me feel a bit freaked out, on the whole, I found it quite difficult to get to the end of this one.  It was dull to watch (visually and mentally) and I pretty much didn't like anyone in the entire movie.  Kind of a difficult mix.

Hour of the Wolf (1968) - Lisa's Review

I've had a couple of attempts to watch this movie.   Viruses in the Davy household has made it difficult as it's not a movie to watch to pass time when you want to relax.  This is a swedish movie directed by infamous Ingmar Bergman.

I have had a great deal of difficulty with the movie, in understanding it, in working out what was going on and why.  In separating dream sequences from reality and in trying to understand what the movie was trying to tell me.

Carrie (2013) - Lisa's Review

I chose this movie to watch for Shocktober as it was one I hadn't seen as yet and as it was a remake of a favourite of mine, I thought I'd give it a go.

Growing up, I watched A LOT of horror movies.  My dad was a big Stephen King fan, so we had a lot of VHS copies of his movies.  Before school (secondary school), I would pass half an hour or so watching bits of the movies, until I had been through the collection time and time again.  Being of a certain age, Carrie really resonated with me and still today remains amongst my favourites.  So what of the remake?

I'm not going to talk about a premise, as if you haven't see the 1976 version of Carrie, what the hell are you doing reading a blog dedicated to horror movies?  Instead I'll discuss my feelings about this movie, which I'm afraid means inevitably I'll be comparing it to the original movie.

For the first 20 minutes or so, I was pleasantly surprised by the attention to detail with the scenes and how they replicated the original movie.  Even subtle hand gestures and specific strong sections of dialogue are kept identical.  Something I noticed early on though, was that Chloe Grace Moretz just wasn't going to portray the complex character of Carrie with enough depth.  The sweetness and frightening innocence is lost and replaced by a misfit that's a bit shy.

Night of the Demon - Lisa's Review

*** SPOILERS ***

Ok, this one took me several attempts, stops and rewinds.  Maybe I've got terrible concentration today and I'm very aware this is a late one from me, or maybe it was just that mind numbingly dull.  Sadly since anyone I know who has seen this movie seems to have enjoyed it, it seems it's my own personal taste this time.  So why didn't I enjoy it?

Kill Baby Kill - Lisa's Review

This weeks movie sends us scuttling back to 1966 (who knew something asides from football happened that year!!) and to this offering from Italian Mario Bava.   To start with, for me, I saw a lot of similarities to Dario Argento in the movie.  Although this may sound like a great thing, for me, it most certainly isn't.  I am not a fan at all.

The Night of the Hunter - Lisa's Review

So a 1955 movie set in the 1930s... wonderful.  I'm far from a fan of most older movies.  There are a few wonderful exceptions.  Is this movie amongst them?  In a word - no.

The movie follows a nasty, misogynistic preacher, Rev Harry Powell (played by Robert Mitchum) who just happened to be a murderer on the side.  He has managed to live his life so far completely unhindered as his ill deeds had never been discovered.  He was adored by women and revered by men for his god fearing sermons.  He had a real talent of getting people 'on side' and hiding his repugnant, repellent personality.

Eraserhead - Lisa's Review

I really don't want to waste much time reviewing this movie.  The time spent watching it is enough time wasted.

So you may have guessed that I didn't enjoy the movie.  Well, the fact that it is surrealism from start to finish should give you an idea of my viewpoint.  I HATE surrealism.  I hate arty farty movies.  Calling this a movie is a stretch of the imagination.  It reminded me of one of those repetitively played out arty farty clips you see at art galleries masquerading as art.  Something that no matter how hard you try (if indeed you can be bothered) you can't even begin to make sense of it.

The movie follows a man called Henry Spencer.  I couldn't work out if what occured in the film was reality or whether it was madness from the dreams of Henry.  From being a head in space to the singing woman in the radiator.  Henry and his girlfriend (who keeps having weird fits that everyone ignores) spawn a freaky, wierd mutant baby who cries through the whole damn movie before it transforms into something even more fucking obscene.

This is a movie which may make sense if you're under the influence of something mind altering, but watching it simply with a glass of 7UP and a Dairymilk, I'll be fucked if it made sense to me.

In conclusion and to sum up, I thought this movie was absolutely shite.  I hated every last minute of it and really struggle with trying to write a review which makes any sort of sense.  Avoid at all costs.

Phantasm - Lisa's Review

Where do I start?  Well at this point, anyone who is reading has probably a better idea than me.  I had watched Phantasm many years ago (probably as a child) and all I remembered from it is that it had killer silver balls.  Having given it a second viewing tonight, I'm surprised I retained that much information.

The first thing to be aware about with this movie is that it is very surreal and is full of dream-like sequences.  Scenes are suggested as being dreams, but which ones are and which ones are not?   Anyone who knows my kind of movies will know I hate surrealism and dream sequences.  This made it very difficult for me to enjoy this movie.

I did enjoy the soundtrack as it brought me right back to my childhood and could have been lifted off so many other horror movies.  I even liked the characters in the movie, but I just couldn't empathise at all.

There are some gory bits, nothing too shocking, but a couple of decent effects for the time.   The flying, silver, killing balls are probably one of the few things worth remembering about the movie in my opinion.  The problem is that it is full of dream-like scenes and is very surreal.  These are 2 things I really hate.  That wasn't the best start for the movie obviously.

I'm not going to give a blow by blow account of what happens, as to be honest I would have to sit and rewind this over and over and keep waking myself up to get an accurate representation of what was going on.  Then if you're not trying hard enough to keep up to date with the happenings through the movie, it ends in a manner which has you wondering why you bothered trying to fathom what was happening.

I know this is a popular movie.  A cult one I suppose, but I'm afraid I have very little positive to say about it. There is nothing entertaining about it for me.  In fact I'm pretty pissed I spent an hour and a half of my first night in alone in maybe a year watching it!

So, for an accurate plot and a more positive viewpoint of the movie, refer to Wills review.  I'm afraid, I've given as much as I can about this one.  AVOID!

Society - Lisa's Review

*** Contains Spoilers ***

As I finished this movie, I wondered how on earth I was supposed to review this.  Half an hour later as I type the beginnings of this review, I am still wondering.  So, here goes...

The movie starts getting to know our main character Bill, a privileged teenager living in Beverly Hills with his perfect parents and cute little sister Jenny.  He seems to be a decent enough lad, well liked and popular, but as we start the movie with Bill visiting his psychiatrist and having a rather weird hallucination, we know, not all is well.  Is this perhaps a clue that Bill is going to see some weird stuff as the movie progresses.

I have to admit that from very early on I was weirded out by Bills family.  There is such a thing as being a happy, loving family and being borderline incestuous and I felt we were almost crossing a line as the family got ready for Jennys coming party.  I actually had to google this.  I had no idea 'coming out parties' existed.  For anyone as culturally unaware as myself, this is where a young lady of high standing comes of age (usually 17 or 18) and is introduced to society.  Anyways, back to the movie.  While Jenny is getting ready for her party, there is a scene where Bill helps her with her dress.  It was here that I realised things were not as they seemed.  I think we're supposed to go with the idea that Bill is prone to hallucinate rather than think there is anything amiss with perfect Jenny and her picture perfect family.

We get some proof that Bills family are a bunch of wierdos when Jennys ex-boyfriend Blanchard keeps trying to get a cassette tape (yes, a cassette tape) to him.  He had his suspicions and had bugged Jenny.  This tape had an extremely odd recording on it with Jenny and her parents talking about her party and how she would 'do it' with someone her own age, followed by her parents and then the host.  It later progresses into rather lewd conversations with other women about what they all do together.  It sounds as like an orgy as you're likely to hear.

Sickened, Bill takes the recording to his psychiatrist, who later plays it back to him.  It is simply Jenny having fun at her party with all the lewd conversations removed.  When he tries to get another copy from Blanchard, he winds up dead before he can get the tape to Bill.  In fact, every time he tries to find out more, or reveal his growing suspicions to others, he comes up against a hurdle.

So, we sit through an hour or so of a banal American 80's style 'thriller' and then we cut to another style entirely, which is how I imagine the movie ended up on a horror list.  The following contains LOTS of spoilers so don't read if you don't want to know.

Earlier in the movie when Bill helped Jenny with her dress, I assumed that certain people (definately Jenny and her parents) were aliens.  The wierd skin thing also came up with a girl Bill got lucky with (Clarissa).   It turns out they are not actually aliens, but a different species to human who have lived alongside humans through the centuries.  Caeser and Genghis Khan are mentioned.

In the final reveal (which comes about half an hour before the films ends) we see Bill back at his house, which is full of high society friends of his family.  He is noosed with one of those loops on a pole used to catch aggressive dogs by his psychiatrist, who is also one of them... it's at the party we find out what 'they' are.  Blanchard is brought out and we see he is actually alive.  His death was staged earlier in the movie.  Everyone strips off to their underwear and the guests at the party start to eat Blanchard alive.  I say eat, but I should really say absorb. They refer to it as 'Shunting'.   I don't really know what to say to be honest.  His body becomes a gelatinous goo and everyone sucks parts out of him and puts fingers into him and through him.  At one point a hand is inserted where the sun don't shine and emerges from his head which is swiftly pulled apart.  While this sick orgy-like feeding is going on, all the participants have become pliable and gooey.  They all start to merge together, with peoples bodies turning into very odd shapes.

It is during this lengthy and very sick scene that Bill see's the woman who he thought was his mother who has a pair of mans arms instead of her legs.  We also see Jennys head pop from between her arms as if in some kind of vile adult birth.   If that wasn't gross enough, it's dad next.  His face is moulded onto an ass.  He utters the line "Who you calling Butthead now?".... My eyes are rolling out of my head by now.

I could probably give a lot more detail, but it's loads more of the same until Bill fights with one of the top gooeys - Ferguson.  Long story short, since Ferguson is all soft and pliable from the feeding frenzy on Blanchard, Bill inserts his arm into his stomach, pushes his way up to the head, his fingers out through the eyeball sockets and pulls Ferguson inside out.  He manages to beat a hasty retreat with a friend Milo, who is also human and the girl he slept with earlier Clarissa, who is actually one of 'them'.  Here the movie ends.

I suppose the effects were good for the time, but there was absolutely nothing horrific about it.  It definately has yuck factor, but it was all a bit skin crawly, embarrassing and silly for want of a better word.

Three quarters of the movie was dull, boring and too long.  The last quarter of the movie was just like something a teenage boy had dreamed up and handed to a producer.  I didn't see the point.  It was a mess as far as I was concerned.   I could see the last half hour ending up on one of those 'Tales from the Crypt' programs, but as a movie?  Seriously?  No.

I heartily advise to avoid.

Lets scare Jessica to death - Lisa's Review

I have watched 2 movies from our Time Out list very closely together and I have to say, I haven't been overly enamoured with either.  I really hope it's just not my mood, but this one was monumentally awful as well!  Who the hell is choosing these movies ffs?

This movie follows Jessica (Zohra Lambert) who has just got out of a mental institution having spend 6 months in there.  She leaves New York with her husband Duncan (Barton Heyman) and they head for a house in the much quieter, peaceful Connecticut.  They also take along a hippy friend Woody (Kevin O'Connor).

When they arrive at the house, they discover a drifter called Emily (Mariclare Costello) has been squatting there.  A usual reaction would be to call the police, or at the very least, tell her the get the **** out of there.  What do this couple do?  Invite her to stay with them of course!!  The hippy-dippy, arty-farty mood continues through the entire movie, which is most probably a front runner in why I wasn't impressed.  I hate movies like this.

Jessica hears voices and sees a woman in white regularly.  I get that it is suppose to be forboding and eerie, but the over emphasised whispering  "Jeeeeeeeeeeeesicaaaaaaaaaaaa" was nothing short of laughable.  I felt like I was watching a horror pantomime.



We are left to wonder if this woman is indeed real or is a figment of Jessicas already established fractured mind.  We do find out in due course, but I won't ruin it for any masochist  who actually wants to sit through this.

Emily turns out to be something of a harlot and has her way with any man in the general vicinity. We also become aware of all the men in the village bearing odd marks or scars.  Have these scars anything to do with Emily?  Hmmmmmmmm.

I won't give away the ending,but I felt like it petered out rather than went out with a bang, which is probably the worst way you can go.   The end scene is very similar to the opening scene of the movie.  I guess we're left to wonder if we've just watched the contents of Jessicas fractured mind or did it all really happen.

You know what?  I don't really care.  Avoid.

Martin (1978) Review - Lisa's Review

I've had a veritable plethora of emotions surrounding this movie.  First off, I read the title and the year and was resigned that we were back to the old days of dated, old rubbish.  I looked a bit closer and saw it was a Romero movie.  It also has a part for Tom Savini, which seems to be a given in Romero movies.  I thought it was maybe a good omen as most other movies which have similar statistics were quite good.

After I watched the movie I had a look at some reviews to see how my viewpoint rated.  Seems like I was watching something entirely different than the vast majority of reviewers.  I read everything from "It's my favourite vampire movie" to "A wonderful modern day vampire story" to "One of Romeros best".

So I come right out and say it, I thought this movie was terrible.  The lead actor who played Martin (John Amplas) was repugnant in his attitude, expressions, way he carried himself... he just felt repellant to me.  Surely this character should have had some kind of sexual pull on females given his role in the movie.

Our basic premise centers around Martin drugging young women and either slicing them with razors and drinking their blood (which is clearly portrayed as a sexual thing) or raping them.  Where the comparison to classic vampires is here, I have no idea.  The movie, to me just seemed like a poorly made excuse to show some young attractive flesh and a bit of blood.

I found the storyline lacking and the other actors in the farce to be laughable, especially a male relative of his who is convinced he is evil, a vampire who can be repelled by garlic, crucifixes and holy water.

Martin goes through the movie doing much of the same until he finally relents to the advances of a bored middle-aged housewife.  Yawn.....

Some may say the ending is a bit of a surprise, but to be honest, following the usual direction of these kind of movies, I saw it coming a mile off.

So in short, I am definately not a fan of this movie.  In actual fact, I would advise anyone to avoid it.  Maybe had Martin been cast as someone else and had he been a bit older, it would have been palatable, but in its current state - No Thankyou.

God told me to - Lisa's Review

*** SPOILERS ***

Simply reading the title of this weeks movie didn't fill me with much hope and sadly I was right in this case.

In 'God told me to' we follow a devout catholic (yet highly hypocritical) Detective as he investigates a number of murders which occur completely out of the blue by previously calm individuals.  The only thing that ties them together is that the perpetrators advise him that "God told me to do it.".  So there you have the premis in a nutshell.

I HATED this movie.  I hated everything about it.  The script, the actors, the feel, how dated it was, the soundtrack, the stunts, the pacing... As if all that wasn't enough, it seemed unable to stay within one genre, or even two.  It hoped about in and about so many genres I honestly lost count and lost any interest in counting.

This wasn't simply a cop movie, a thriller, a horror, a sci-fi movie, a drama.... it was a incompetant dalliance into each of these genres and not one I can imagine a fan of any of them would enjoy.

I just sat there willing something interesting to happen, but instead spent most of the movie confused and the rest of the time bored senseless.  Just when I thought I had lost the will to live and it couldn't get any more ridiculous and couldn't weaken the already impossibly weak storyline further, it proved me wrong again and again.

Did you get that I HATED this movie.  Don't waste your time.  I can't think of a good reason why anyone would put themselves through watching this by choice.  Big, Fat AVOID!!

The Trip - Lisa's Review

This weeks movie review is going to be very short as I could make sod all sense of it.

To me this movie is simply a string of weird, unrelated scenes all mashed together with really irritating 60's trippy music and psychedelic overlays.

The story here is one of a young guy called Paul Groves (played by Peter Fonda) who is rather depressed to be going through a divorce.  He makes a decision to embark on an LSD trip under the guidance of his friend John, an advocate of the drug.



What follows is basically an arty farty, trippy mess of a movie.  Think Austin Powers with no funny bits... that's pretty much what it looks like.   We have a plethora of 'names' in the movie as Dennis hopper also makes an appearance.  I was also amazed to hear Jack Nicholson is responsible for this pile of tosh.

There are the usual 60's staples of nudity, sex, flower power, garish colours, funky music and questionable fashion.

Some people may enjoy this and no doubt it was probably ground breaking in the 60's, but viewed today, it has absolutely no shock value and is just dull, dull, DULL!

I have to stick an 'avoid' tag on this one purely as I don't see its relevance these days.  Maybe worth watching for nostalgia purposes?

Anthropophagous 2000 - Lisa's Review

*** SPOILERS *** (for what it's worth)

There are sometimes weeks when the movie isn't that hot, sometimes it's awful and sometimes we are very tempted to write "This was absolute shite" and leave it at that.  Sadly, for me, this was the latter.

This movie is a remake of 1980 movie of the same name (removing the 2000).  While the original movie wasn't all that hot, this one is just absolute bollocks!  I suppose I should elaborate as to why I felt this was the case?

I'm not going to go into detail as to the premise, as I very much doubt anyone will want to see this movie on the strength of my review.  Man kills his wife when she refuses to let him eat their dead child to survive after an accident at sea.  He eats them both and then goes mad and kills and eats other people.  That should about sum it up for you.  Why didn't I enjoy it?

The acting was probably amongst the worst I have seen.  The gore looked like something a GSCE art student produced (that's probably an insult to GCSE art students).  Victims are replaced with what looks like a rubber model of themselves (that bears absolutely no resemblance to them) and then over the top, unrealistic, ridiculous gore is spattered upon us.


 In one specific scene I struggled to understand what actual body part is being tugged out of one victims mouth... it looked like intestines (much too long for the tongue), but since the killer put his hand to the back of the victims throat and pulled, it's anyones guess.

Arms and heads are forcibly pulled off simply by the sheer strength of our bad guy.  Various bits which should be anatomically there are not and vice versa.  Victims flail about and make no attempt whatsoever to run.  A pregnant woman flounders on her back and allows her stomach to be cut open and her unborn baby to be lifted out and bitten into, with nothing more than a few squeals.

The bad guy himself tugs out his own innards and chews on them after being shot multiple times and STILL has the strength to give chase to the last survivor and try to kill him!

If the gore scenes are laughable, then you have to see the sex scenes.  I have never seen such passionless love making in all my life.  The actors looked positively bored shitless!  On one positive point, nice to see tattoos, piercings and long haired dudes in movies.

I don't think there is much else I can say about this movie.  I HATED it.  I didn't even laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.  I didn't have to think twice about slapping a big fat AVOID on its ass!

Boogeyman 2 - Redux - Lisa's Review

Having now watched Boogeyman, Return of The Boogeyman, Revenge of The Boogeyman and now Boogeyman 2 - Redux, I'm not going to waste a lot of time on this review.  If you have any interest in The Boogeyman at all, just watch the first one.  The rest are basically a rehash of it anyway.

This movie is sadly no different.  Of the running time, about 90% is made up of footage of the original Boogeyman movie.  Believe it or not, they managed to get some footage from the second one in there too.  The only piece of footage that is new is an interspersed police interview with Ulli Lommel  (conducted 22 years after the event) that is being conducted.  He claims to have no proper recollection of the events, but manages to narrate the entire events that happen in the first movie.

I'm afraid folks, there is absolutely nothing more to it.  It seems Ulli Lommel wanted to create what he feels SHOULD have been the sequel to the original, so he completely ignored the fact Boogeyman 2 has already been made.

Sorry for the scant review, but really this movie should never have been released.  Big fat avoid obviously.

I spent the extra time tonight watching next weeks movie to review as I won't be available next week.

Nekromantik 2 - Lisa's Review

*** SPOILERS ***

I always feel the need to warn of spoilers, even though the chances of anyone reading this review, never mind wanting to watch this movie is virtually nil.

Sooooo, following last weeks offering of Nekromantik, this week we have its sequel.  Is it any better? I'm afraid not.  Is it any worse?  Thankfully not.

The storyline is pretty much the same... odd person who gets her kicks from having sex with a corpse.  There is the same cringeworthy tonguing of aforementioned corpse and wierd sex scenes.  This time we follow a woman (Monika) who ironically digs up the corpse of the fellow Nekrophiliac and star of the first installment (Rob), who we saw commit suicide at the end of the last movie.  As I was watching, I had to mentally rebuff myself for actually treating this dross like it was worth any consideration as I mused that Rob would actually be rather pleased to know what became of him.  The ultimate in erotic for him surely?

The scene where Monika transports Rob home and undresses him is painfully slow and long-winded.  I'm like "Come on already!".  Maybe it was worth the wait to see the awful moment when she removed his trousers and we could see the corpses 'rubber' feet.  Anyways....

Alongside her new beau Rob, Monika also meets Mark (who dubs porn movies) and they immediately hit it off.   Although odd as he is (the scenes of him 'working' are actually pretty funny), even he has problems dealing with just how odd his new girlfriend seems to be.  Granted wanting him to not move an inch during sex and taking photos of him that make him appear to be dead could be considered a bit odd.   You would think her little quirk would be obvious.
When she meets Mark, Monika somewhat reluctantly decides to end things with Rob by cutting him into pieces and storing him in her freezer.  The anatomical inaccuracy here is just astounding and awful.  When it comes down to it though, she is unable to do away with Rob in his entirety, so she decides to keep his decapitated head and genitals.  Amusingly she puts his genitals on a little saucer covered in clingfilm.  Mark actually discovers this little aperitif, yet continues to see Monika... weird man.

As with the first installment, we have another disturbing scene of animal visceration (a seal this time) which seems to have no place in the movie other than to illustrate to Mark, just how weird his new girlfriend is.

The above pretty much sums up the movie believe it or not.  Yup, theres nothing much else to it.  All we have to leave us with is a final sex scene between Monika and Mark, where yet again she is failing to reach any sort of satisfaction, so she decapitates Mark mid coitus (thanks Sheldon).  She then ties off his penis, just to make sure he maintains his erection as his body is in the throes of death spasms.  As if this isn't insulting enough, she replaces his head with the decomposing head of Rob, that she couldn't bear to part with.  Et voila!  Climax achieved!

Oh,  I almost forgot, the movie ends with a doctor walking down a corridor (very slowly) and informing Monika that she is pregnant.

This movie, like its predecessor is pretty awful.  The porn dubbing scenes are quite amusing and I will admit to the decapitation scene at the end being quite disturbing, but I think that's more due to me thinking about it too much, rather than any credit to the film maker.  I don't have a great deal positive to say, so as with Nekromantik, I slap a big fat 'Avoid' on its backside.

Nekromantik - Lisa's Review

***SPOILERS - if indeed you care***

Sometimes when I watch a movie, it takes me a while, sometimes a few days to decide whether I actually enjoyed the movie or not.  Strange maybe, but true.  A movie I thought was maybe just 'ok' in retrospect after a little bit of thought, I realise was actually quite good.

What has this got to do with this weeks movie I hear you ask?... well, this week that was not a problem at all.  I am in no doubt as to what I felt about Nekromantik.  If I didn't feel like a big, fat cheat for copying and pasting a dictionary definition for the word excrement as my review, that is exactly what you would be reading.

So why so bad?  Where do I start.  I'm not a person who is easily shocked.  Granted, I do have my limits.  I don't like watching any acts of cruelty which I know to be real.  There have been scenes of real animal deaths in some movies we have watched which I have found very difficult, but aside from that anything else is fair game really.  Don't get me wrong, there are staged scenes in movies, I find uncomfortable to watch, usually due to how they are portrayed, but gore generally doesn't offend me.

So to Nekromantik... I seem to be avoiding reviewing it thus far, for good reason really, I am struggling with the words to put together to give you any kind of idea as to how bad this movie actually is.

So, our premise here follows a young man (Rob) who works for a cleaning agency (by cleaning agency I mean a company who remove dead bodies).  He has a bit of a penchant for corpses and various body parts of corpses.  His job obviously provides the perfect opportunity for him to indulge in his pastime.  Luckily for him, his very attractive (how did he manage that?) girlfriend Betty seems to share in his hobby.

This movie follows Rob as he brings home a decomposing corpse to Betty and proceeds to indulge in a threesome.  For some reason the sex scenes in the movie are always shown with a 'shaky camera' style where everything seems out of focus. Small blessing I suppose.  Do I really want to watch a woman straddle a section of piping covered in a condom which she has attached to a corpse?  Or perhaps the face of a corpse shoved between a womans legs?  Maybe a bit of corpse eyeball sucking would be more to my taste?  I think not!  I'm still trying to figure out why on earth you would put a piece of metal THERE!! Ouch!

Aside from the theft of the corpse, which seems to be the focus, the movie seems to be attempting a serious message by showing us the other side to Robs life, where he is bullied and walked over; a perpetual doormat, perhaps corpses are the only people he feels on a level with?  He feels a bit more in control.  This is also illustrated by his need to kill a prostitute in order to get aroused to have sex with her.  For the record this scene is perhaps one of the lamest, worst acted scenes I have ever been witness to.  This is only topped by the scene which directly follows where a man who comes upon the scene is decapitated from the jaw upwards by a shovel.  So bad, its hilarious!

There isn't really much else to add about the movie.  There is little script to speak of.  The fact it is german probably doesn't matter, as you won't miss anything if you have no idea of anything that is being said.  Rob gets turned on by corpses, body parts, innards - particularly intestines, rabbit killing, skinning and gutting and death in general.  Betty dumps him as he loses his job and she is tried of being with a weak man who won't stand up for himself.  She does however take the corpse with her as a parting gift.  Rob ends up killing a prostitute, having sex with her, decapitating an old man before going home and stabbing himself to death whilst his enormous (but very fake looking) penis ejaculates all over the place.  Sounds pretty fucked up?  Well there you have it!

The movie ends with a shot of Robs grave and a female foot coming into shot with a spade ready to dig him up.

In case you were in any doubt as to what I thought of this movie.  It was crap.  A monumental waste of time.  Asides from the laugh that the decapitation gave me, it was complete and utter dross.  Big, fat AVOID slapped on its backside.

Evil Dead II - Lisa's Review

So, I finally check out the sequel (or remake with a bigger budget as some would have you believe) to Evil Dead, aptly named Evil Dead 2.

From the get go, I'll say I really didn't like this movie AT ALL.  I know that possibly seems like a complete contradiction given that I really enjoyed the first Evil Dead movie, but this one didn't grab me at all.  I hadn't seen it before tonight and I expected something akin to the first movie with better effects.  Speaking of effects, while you can clearly see there is a bigger budget with this movie, I felt the effects were needless and in places ridiculous.  Looks like Buffy looked here for some of its ideas.  All the charm of Evil Dead seems lost in the attempt to bring this one up to date for the time.  Ironically it manages to date this movie even more than the first Evil Dead installment.

We have the same premise, albeit without the group of teenagers this time round.  A recorded message, which was meant as a warning is played, which contains passages from the Necronomicon (Book of the Dead).  This unleashes a demon which sets to possessing various people and inanimate objects throughout the course of the movie.




Bruce Campbell is an iconic character but I found even him irritating in this movie.  Its the original Jim Carey of enthusiastic over acting.   Also the scream we hear over and over from the lead actress is probably the worst I've heard in any movie EVER.  No fear, trepidation, horror, nothing!  Just an attempt to be as loud as possible.  I didn't care about any of the cast, so any deaths were a bit meh for me.

There were a few slight chuckle moments ('A Farewell to Arms' for anyone who has seen the movie), but no belly laughs were I think they were intended.  I just didn't feel anything watching it at all.  All in all it seems a bit of a waste of time to attempt to improve the first movie with this offering.  The special effects are dated and lack the original charm of the crude effects in the first movie.  I was surprised to not see Ray Harryhausens name in the credits at the end given some of the effects in places, I'm thinking especially the dancing decapitated corpse near the start of the movie.

I don't know what else I can say really.  I didn't like the effects, especially what felt like overkill with the transformation of the old lady in the cellar under the trapdoor.  I didn't like the 'feel' of the movie.  I didn't like the characters.  In fact I found it quite hard to stay awake, which is saying something from a person who suffers from regular insomnia.

I would definately not recommend this one, but would say avoid and just enjoy the original Evil Dead instead.  This one adds absolutely nothing in my opinion and just feels like a waste of time to me.