An experimental biological weapon is accidentally dropped into the water supply of a small city in Iowa. This deadly virus is code-named “Trixie,” and causes its’ victims to quickly become incurably insane and homicidal. The freshly infected townsfolk begin setting their homes and families on fire, interrupt softball games with rifles, and wander around randomly stabbing helpless people with pitchforks. The government quickly steps in to quarantine the town and cover up the mess that they created. The insanity of the situation is escalated when the soldiers begin shooting non-infected citizens who attempt to flee the town in cold blood.
Meanwhile, a small ragtag group of survivors including the town Sheriff (Timothy Olyphant) and his pregnant wife (Radha Mitchell) barely manage to escape into the now deserted outskirts of town. After killing a few soldiers and crazies along the way, the group makes their way out of town, but Trixie begins to infect them too. Why are all the good people dying?
Another year…another shitty remake. THE CRAZIES is the first in what I’m sure will be a long series of this year’s worthless horror remakes. And most disappointing of all is the fact that this remake had the most potential to be good. A remake of George A. Romero’s 1972 film The Crazies sounds like a good idea on paper. It’s a remake of a good film that was flawed. I am a big fan of Romero’s film, but I also think it clearly suffers from a low budget and bad acting. A big budget, modern remake of such a film could be a big winner, unlike a remake of a film that was already perfect (Psycho immediately comes to mind).
Continue reading ‘The Brain Hammer review of The Crazies (2010)’
Shutter Island is the best movie of 2010.
I realize that with competition like When in Rome, Valentine’s Day, Dear John, Book of Eli and Extraordinary Measures, that’s like being the least effeminate boy band member. But if Island were released in 2009 like it was supposed to be, there’s no doubt it would fill one of the 10 Best Picture Slots, taking the place of something idiotic like The Blind Side. As it stands, come next fall as Awards season rolls around, it’s almost a surety that Shutter Island will be forgotten. Too bad.
Combining traditional noir with esoteric horror themes, Rolfe Kanefsky’s latest thriller is a unique hall of funhouse mirrors that mixes the director’s signature dark humor with a nightmarish landscape that feels new for the prolific director.
Steven Man is Mickey Lewis, a down and out artist type who gets into a “cart accident” at the grocery store with the gorgeous Katrina Webb (Katherine Randolph) and she offers him a job painting her house. Of course, her invite is so laced with honey-burnished sexuality, Mickey would be a fool to pass it up. She’s unhappily married to Arthur (Steven Bauer) and as in any noir; Katrina becomes the femme fatale offering sex for murder.
After a long week of waiting, the miserable half of the audience that were forced to make Dear John the movie to finally, inexplicably knock Avatar off the #1 spot now have an avenue for cinematic payback. Hopefully after being browbeaten by your wives/girlfriends into seeing Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried express their virginal love as only a PG-13 movie can, you got rimmed or at least a handjob. You deserve that much, at least.
As an alternative, The Wolfman is no great furry shakes as a movie as it’s barely a couple of paws up from Jason Bateman’s Teen Wolf Too, but some decently graphic shots of gore should expunge some of the truly disgusting stuff you saw last week while Tatum and Seyfried were doing some hardcore nuzzling. Congratulations, Amanda Seyfried, something you’re in that’s actually worse than the $20 sets and Pierce Brosnan’s eerily accurate portrayal of a braying donkey in Mamma Mia!
The creators of Sculpture bring us Hypochondriac, a short horror comedy to be included in the upcoming horror anthology Psycho Street.
Hypochondriac stars Marv Blauvelt (Beef, Sculpture, The Green Monster, etc.) as Dr. Oliver Combs, a big city doctor who has moved from LA to a small town called Kronanburg (LOL!) to practice medicine at a small clinic. Hoping his start at the clinic will be a major departure from the crazy environment of the big city, he soon finds that not everyone who works and comes to the clinic is as normal as he hoped.
Moronic Mark is a big dumb animal. He’s not as smart as he think he is, and he has the grammatical skills of 7 year old. He may not be the best guy to go to in order to figure out if a film should be viewed or not viewed, but he does have the ability to watch anything. Yes, anything. He’s made it through 11 Todd Sheets movies, 2 porn flicks with Joanie Chynadoll Laurer, and has seen every Rob Schneider flick in the theater (well the ones that made it to the theater). Nothing on any screen can make him tap out, and sometimes this viewing endurance can make him find a diamond in the rough. He may ramble on about stuff that has nothing to do about the film he’s suppose to be talking about, but he means well. This is the Moronic Movie Review.
I have seen some bad movies. I’ve seen The Devil’s Rain. I’ve watched Don’t Answer the Phone. I even survived the Star Wars Holiday Special. Nothing could prepare me for The Caretaker. The film was completed in 2008 and has not been released until now. That was a big hint. It stars Andrew St. John and Kira Verrastro. Despite this fact, Judd Nelson (John “eat my shorts” Bender) and Jennifer Tilly (Bride of Chucky) recieve top billing on the dvd cover to get you in the door, even though they are collectively in this movie for less than thirty minutes.
Ronny Carlsson, head reviewer of the horror site FilmBizarro.com has made his short films Video Geisteskrank and My Monster available for download online and is working on a short run of DVD-R screeners and a limited VHS release of VG. Also set to be included as a bonus feature on the upcoming August Underground box set from Toe Tag Pictures, VG is a highly experimental and surreal short and nice fan tribute to Toe Tag’s AU films.
Serial: Amoral Uprising depicts the trauma and awakening of serial killer, Trenton Bracks (Howell). Right from the start the film states that this is a fictional account rather than trying to claim it’s “based on a true story” to try and make it scarier. Even though it’s a fictional account, it still resonates in a certain element of reality, taking it’s inspiration from several notable serial killers and creating an appalling yet completely enthralling character.
In the year 2019, a plague has transformed most every human into vampires. Faced with a dwindling blood supply, the fractured dominant race plots their survival; meanwhile, a researcher works with a covert band of vamps on a way to save humankind.
Earlier this year I reviewed Ghost Cat, a family friendly ghost story starring a young Ellen Page. It was cheesy and a very tame brand of horror; the supernatural element being the only thing that even allows it to qualify. Still the film was goofy and pretty fun in the end. Since I got a kick out of the friendly ghost cat saving the day, I decided to check out another family friendly ghost film starring an even younger Ellen Page, I Downloaded a Ghost. Once again we are given a friendly ghost who with the help of Page’s character helps track down the true criminals. The effects are pretty horrible, but in a campy way and it’s easy enough to not take much seriously and just have fun with the film.
Hard Love is a short film that ventures in to the relationship between murder and power and love and fear. The movie begins with Sarah greeting her boyfriend, Kevin, when he comes home from work only to turn the tables seconds later when she attacks him. Kevin wakes up tied up, having no clue what’s going on. He sees another dead body being dragged through the room when his supposed girlfriend claims “That will be you in a few days”. It turns out she secretly has a murderous husband, Jack, who is trusting her to do his dirty work for the first time. She is determined not to let him down and doesn’t know how to say no to him, but gleefully enjoys the work during her interrogation. Before too long she realizes that she needs more than intimidating language or even torture to do what is expected of her. Sarah has been around death, but she begins doubting whether she can end someone’s life herself. If she can’t she might be her “loving” husband’s next victim.
Have you ever had ultra hot mess drunk chick hit on you at the last call mark at a bar? I mean she’s really long in the tooth, probably a tad to a ton overweight, not attractive or coherent by any stretch of the imagination, but is desperate for any minuscule amount of attention or affection and has sunk to the most dire level to achieve a trace amount of fulfillment. Your heart in a strange way goes out to them and you hope that they can get what they need in a safe and hopefully compassionate way, but you can’t provide any of it because you know that it’s in so many ways WRONG. That’s the way I think about the movie, The Green Monster.
This movie is a hot mess. It’s definitely a style over substance feature and it desire to be clever and to cover a wide spectrum of topics on a bargain basement low budget is like trying run a buffet restaurant with one package of lomein noodles.
Gory greetings horroryearbook alumni! Welcome to another exciting edition of IT CAME FROM THE MAILBOX, a column where your old pal Brain Hammer reviews whatever random crap the good folks at horroryearbook decide to throw my way.
This time around I was contacted directly by my old chum Sonny Fernandez. Sonny is the hardworking mastermind behind Down Twisted Studios. He currently holds the record for being the director whose films I have reviewed the most. I’ve already reviewed five of his past efforts in previous ICFTMB columns. You can check out those reviews here: Bleed, Aborted/Cold Blooded, The Last Battleground.
Today’s current term for the word “zombie” is defined as a deceased individual who is brought back to life by supernatural forces. You could also toss in some Romero key words in there like cannibalism and apocalyptic. Most of my generation only knows this type of zombie and doesn’t realize that George A. Romero only re-innovated the undead. There were two vastly different groups of zombies pre-1968: the voodoo zombie and the automaton. The voodoo zombie, similar to that of the Romero zombie, still resurrects from death but only for objective purposes; in other words, the zombie will do the dirty work for the resurrecting practitioner. You’re shit out of luck on this review because we will be discussing the automaton zombie like that from the Zombies from the Stratosphere.
