Filmmakers, Jose and Eduardo Quiroz’s latest flick Deliverance From Evil brings us the tale of a young couple and their son moving into a new house in San Francisco that holds dark secrets. When their son drowns in the bathtub, the couple is left to deal with the intense heartbreak of losing a child on top of an evil presence that becomes prevalent after their son’s demise. The couple are then forced to deal with the presence and get to the bottom of the strange events before the entity claims them as well.
Story-wise, Deliverance From Evil follows the standard haunted house movie formula pretty closely. There is hardly, if any, surprises to be had in terms of plot. The son getting killed was an interesting concept and probably would have been surprising if it wasn’t announced in the synopsis. If the son had more of a prominent role and it showed him actually trying to cope with the malevolent entity in the house before it had killed him, I think it would have worked out better for the story and suspense. And speaking of suspense; the movie fails to have any. With most of the scenes taking place during the day or heavily lighted, all chances to gain any suspense from this ghost story was thwarted. However, gripes aside, the story does pick up a little after the halfway point and there are some moments that are borderline creepy.
Continue reading ‘Reader Review: Deliverance From Evil (2012)’
The Horror Homo has been on a sabbatical for a while, setting up some new digs half way around the country. There hasn’t been a whole lot of gay-themed Horror hitting my mailbox lately, and that’s why I was surprised when this Hustler porn arrived the other day. The Horror Homo isn’t a huge fan of porn films, but the combination of Horror, Porn and 3-D definitely got my attention.
PRIMITIVE begins with an introduction to a man named Martin Blaine, played by Matt O’Neil. Blaine is a special effects artist who specializes in making monsters. He’s toiling away on his next flick, playing the monster, but it’s obvious he’s got problems. To begin with, the quality of his work is slipping and he doesn’t like the director. His girlfriend is in the movie business too, and she is working with him on this gig. Things finally take a turn for the worse when he spots the director getting too cozy with his chick. He takes his anger out on the director later on during an argument, decking the guy outright.
Filmmaker Mike O’Mahony of Maniac Films, whose last movie Deadly Detour has been picked up for distribution, brings us his latest offering which is another crazy slasher gorefest with its sick and twisted moments.
THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS is the best adaptation that I have ever seen of an H.P. Lovecraft tale! There, I’ve said it, and I’m sure some of you are glad I did. But, as usual, I’m getting way ahead of myself. Before I prove that statement with some evidence, let’s back this review up and start at the beginning.
I first became aware of Carlos Atanes’ third feature film Maximum Shame because its cast included, among others, the British scream queen Eleanor James, whom I really enjoyed in films such as Colour From The Dark and Forest of the Damned. I was even fortunate enough to meet her on the sets of Unrated – The Movie and Karl The Butcher Vs. Axe. Elle’s scene in Atanes’ movie, however, is rather short and weird… and to be honest it didn’t help much to aid my viewing pleasure of what’s most likely one of the strangest, most fucked up and unfortunately least entertaining flicks I’ve seen in quite some time.
Indie horror director, Patrick Rea, has shown great promise through his darkly dramatic collection of short films. They have style and substance, slowly built up to explore an unexpected yet all encompassing personal horror. His feature, Nailbater, shows much of this same promise. It has great atmosphere, production values, and performances. Still, it felt like it fell short of the potential it held.
SHRIEK OF THE SASQUATCH is about a couple, Julie and Nick, who are on some kind of road trip and run afoul of good ol’ sasquatch. The film starts out with a photographer taking pictures of this hot chick in the woods when he suddenly spots something hairy and humanoid off in the distance.
After releasing his magnum opus Mutilation Mile last year, underground auteur Ron Atkins now gives us the release of his long awaited The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell, a story of two psychopaths who meet up in a post-apocalyptic world.
In 2011, there have been very few horror films that have actually delivered the goods. In fact, over the last decade, it has seemed that the best films have been coming from across the pond, most notably from Spain, France, and jolly old England. The English has been exporting plenty of quality programs to American audiences over the last few years spanning from The Mighty Boosh, both versions of the Office and an American remake of Shameless on Showtime to miniseries/films such as Dead Set, Colin, and the new film Panic Button which has definitely lived up to the hype it has had before this review.
If you’ve been a horror fan for longer than the last five minutes, the title THE THING should be very familiar to you. It’s John Carpenter’s aliens-in-the-arctic masterpiece, one of the best horror films ever made. And now there’s a different The Thing in theaters. Yet, Universal has been insisting this is not a remake, but a prequel to Carpenter’s Thing.
A couple years ago on a Wednesday morning, I sat down in a tiny, almost empty theater, on the highest floor of the IFC Center in New York City. I was there to have an experience I had been looking forward to for months, after relishing in the promo images, the rants of sickened critics, and most of all, the online film community’s obsession with the mad scientist who stitches his victims ass to mouth.
Eric Stanze has been one of the indie horror scene’s most prominent and influential filmmakers for at least 20 years. His production company Wicked Pixel Cinema has given us low budget wonders such as the 1994 shot-on-video demonic possession picture Savage Harvest, the 1998 Super 8 surreal, experimental art house horror film Ice From the Sun, one of the most disturbing and graphically brutal serial killer movies, Scrapbook, released in 2000 and introducing viewers to frequent Wicked Pixel leading lady Emily Haack, the Severed Head Network short films compilations, and the chilling psychological horror outing Deadwood Park in 2007.
Do you still remember the heighday of the drive-in cinemas, when hundreds of thousands of American teenagers sneaked out of their bedroom windows at night, short-circuited their daddy’s factory-new Buick convertibles and took their high school sweethearts to the local drive-in, where the two love birds made out on the leather-upholstered backseats while trashy terror flicks like Humanoids From The Deep, Sadomania and I Drink Your Blood flickered across the giant screen in front of them? Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t recall that time at all, because not only was I born too late but also on the wrong side of the ocean to ever have been able to take part in this wonderful era. Thus, I’m always more than happy when I stumble upon a movie such as Chillerama which lives and breathes the reckless exploitation spirit of yesteryear throughout each and every second of its playing time.
For as long as he can remember, life’s not been kind to Frank D’Arbo (Rainn Wilson). Beaten by his father, harassed by bullies at school and ignored by just about every girl he’s ever had a crush on, he ekes out a dreary existence as a cook in a run-down, barely frequented diner. The only shining light in his otherwise depressing life is his beautiful wife Sarah (Liv Tyler), whom he loves more than anything else in the world. When she leaves him for an arrogant strip club owner Jock (Kevin Bacon), Frank is crushed beyond repair and willing to let go of whatever tiny bit of self-respect he had left.
