Showing category "Movie Reviews" (Show all posts)
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 21, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 21, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Some time after the events of Dawn of the Dead,
zombies have overrun the world. A woman named Sara sits in a white
room, featureless save for a calendar on the opposite wall. As she
approaches it, hundreds of undead hands burst out and lunge for her
before she wakes up in the seat of a helicopter, revealing the event as
a nightmare. She and three other survivors, John, Bill and Miguel, land
the chopper in deserted streets of Fort Myers, Florida
to search for other possible survivors. They try...
Posted by Horror's Not Dead on Tuesday, June 21, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 The Film
Human Experiments is immediately noteworthy for two reasons. First, it stars Linda Haynes of Rolling Thunder
fame in one of her last roles before she seemingly vanished off the
face of the Earth. Secondly, the second lead is played by Geoffery
Lewis, whose name you’ll never remember but whose good-natured face
will be immediately recognizable to anyone who saw a movie in the 1970s.
The casting of an extremely talented leading lady and one of the
most underrated character actors of ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 21, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 A nearly-invincible martial arts expert faces an unusual adversary when
he must take on the living dead in this bizarre action comedy. Kung Fu
warrior Pang (Billy Chong) finds himself in deep danger when an
assassin comes to town; it seems Pang had wronged the killer in the
past, and he is intent upon revenge. Rather than rely on his own
fighting skills, the assassin hires a wizard to raise warriors from the
dead to take down Pang, but the killer becomes the victim of his own
plot. The furiou... Continue reading ...
Posted by Classic Horror on Saturday, June 11, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Before Regan MacNeil, Damien Thorn, and Louis Cyphre,
there was Mephisto, short for Mephistopheles, Satan’s most notorious
alter ego. Satan and his sentinels have captivated creative souls’
imaginations for centuries, but few artists have manifested those
visions as powerfully as F.W. Murnau did in 1926. After a staggering six
months of production and two million marks, Murnau’s Faust
is one of horror’s most visually stunning cinematic nightmares, an
archetypal tale of love, po... Continue reading ...
Posted by Classic Horror on Saturday, June 11, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 It's amazing the difference 50 years makes. In 1950, Edison's Frankenstein
was on the "Films Lost Forever" list. In 2003, it became
available for the first time on DVD. I had the opportunity
to view it on the big screen at Monsterbash 2003, and I can say
from the very bottom of my dark, scabied heart, it is a must
have for any monster or silent film fan. The film
stars Charles Ogle (Monster) and Augustus Phillips ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Classic Horror on Saturday, June 11, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 When Abbott and Costello don’t give you snickers, Boris Karloff doesn’t give you chills, and Universal doesn’t give you a good monster movie you know you’re in for trouble. After the greatness of Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, the “Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters” series took a nosedive. Not only that, but with Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(1953), it sl... Continue reading ...
Posted by Classic Horror on Saturday, June 11, 2011,
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Movie Reviews
 The central thread of Edgar Allan Poe's
1841 short story Murders in the Rue Morgue is one of mystery.
Two bodies are found, so degraded that investigators can only imagine
a killer with a "grotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from
humanity". Poe's novel is cerebral, focusing on analytical
observation and the calculating power of the mind. It laid the
groundwork for Arthur Conan Doyle's great detective and moved
police work into the 20th century. Robert Florey's film
adaptation however, ho... Continue reading ...
Posted by Horror Film History on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 From
the very first seconds of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974),
where we are exposed to flashed images of decomposing flesh,
to the subsequent news report detailing grave-robbing in rural Texas,
followed by the oozing red sunspots of the title sequence, and the opening
narrative shot of armadillo roadkill, the viewer is transported to a nightmare
zone where usual moral parameters are null and void. That's just the first
five mi... Continue reading ...
Posted by The Horror Review on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Selected in 2001
to be included in the National Film Registry, Charles Barton’s Bud
Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein is a rare breed of horror
comedy: Unlike latter-day movies of the same ilk, the filmmakers
pay their due respects in that they abstain from ridiculing the
monsters, permitting them to retain their image while issuing the
pratfalls to the comedic duo, thus accounting for much of the film’... Continue reading ...
Posted by Horror Film History on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 The
casual viewer of the first hour or so of Brian De Palma's Carrie(1976)
might be forgiven for thinking they are watching some variation of the
'teen makeover romance' subgenre, where the ugliest girl in the school
only needs a new dress and a visit to the beauty salon to suddenly date
the prom king and find out her high school isn't such a bad place after
all ("She's All That" and "The Princess Diaries" being
recent entries). A... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Carnival of Blood is so beautifully original in composition
and execution that it reminds you what an art form
filmmaking is. This isn't to suggest that some films are
not art or that most are not quality art. Rather, Carnival of Blood
suggests what it does through pointing out the well-worn
grooves of the filmmaking norm by not following most of
them. Cinema is, in many ways, still one of the more conservative
... Continue reading ...
Posted by Classic Horror on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 It's possible to make a good film involving mad scientists, South
American revolutionaries, and Hitler. If one doubts that,
then watch The Boys from Brazil. It may well to
be possible to make a good film containing all the above,
plus maggots. That question is left unresolved at the
end of Flesh Feast (1970), a minuscule-budget shocker written and directed by Florida auteur Brad F. Grinter (Blood Fr... Continue reading ...
Posted by Classic Horror on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Between 1965 and 1980, Amicus Productions made nine horror anthology films, of which Roy Ward Baker directed three: Asylum, The Vault of Horror, and The Monster Club. Of Baker's treasuries of terror, Asylum
is probably the best. With help from a solid screenplay by author
Robert Bloch ("Psycho," the novel) and a top-notch cast (including Herbert Lom and Peter Cushing), Baker works a good mix of thrills, chills, and fun into the 88-minute runtime. Dr.
Martin (Robert Powell) arrives at Duns... Continue reading ...
Posted by Classic Horror on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 When Roger Corman completed filming The Raven in 1963, it turned out that star Boris Karloff
still had two days left to go on his contract for the picture. Not
wishing to waste those two days, Corman, and four other uncredited
directors, improvised a script and filmed a new film; thus was born The Terror. Corman used sets, crewmembers, and cast members from The Raven. The
film itself is an interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying, trip
through the familiar ideas of Corman’s Edgar Alla... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Hammer, perhaps in response to The Fearless Vampire Killers (Roman Polanski's spoof of their bloodsucker flicks), sends itself up in this black comedy remake of Curse of Frankenstein.
They replace Peter Cushing with the then up-and-coming horror star
Ralph Bates and inject the tale with more sex, more violent death, and a
wicked sense of irreverence. After knocking up the headmaster's daughter, the Baron leaves the University with his friend Wilhelm (an empty-headed clone of Curse's
Paul... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Editor’s Note: This review covers the public domain Horror of the Zombies version, which is formatted to fit a standard television and features minor cuts for violence. Although Horror of the Zombies
is the third installment in Spanish writer-director Amando de Ossorio’s
“blind dead” series, it doesn’t really appear that these zombies are
actually blind. Never mind. His work is fairly well known among die-hard
horror fanatics, but this movie is simply awful. From the production... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Fury of the Wolfman never knows quite what it wants to
be. It starts out with the aftermath of a Tibetan mountain
adventure, turns into a werewolf movie for a few minutes,
changes course to become Dangerous Liaisons
without the charm, adds a bit of a detective and
investigative journalism theme for spice, then devolves
into a cross between a mad-scientist film and an S & M dungeon,
PG-exploitation... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 What a glorious mish-mash this is!
Dracula vs. Frankenstein began life as Satan's Bloody
Freaks, a standard mad science flick featuring J. Carrol Naish as
a mad scientist and Lon Chaney, Jr as his faithful servant. However,
the completed film was not to the liking of producer/co-writer Samuel
M. Sherman, and the movie went back into production to add new scenes
with Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster. However, the new ending
didn't have the "punch" that Sherman wanted, so a new one
was shot... Continue reading ...
Posted by Classic Horror on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 All
the right pieces are in place for Cannibal
Girls to be a
schlocky, comedic gem: a pre-Ghostbusters
Ivan Reitman at the helm, the fresh-faced tandem of Eugene Levy and
Andrea Martin in the lead roles working with a mostly impromptu
script, and a cheesy "warning bell" gimmick that alerts viewers
of a particularly gruesome death sequence. Yet the potential wallop
that Cannibal Girls
packs with its one-two punch of dark comedy and B-movie cheese never
quite hits the intended mark. Despite the... Continue reading ...
Posted by Classic Horror on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Although there are still more films of his that I haven't seen
than I have as of this writing (I'm catching up, though), when
someone mentions Italian horror, the first name that I
usually think of is Mario Bava. I've consistently enjoyed Bava's films more than his Italian competitors - Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Ruggero Deodato, etc. - and Baron Blood
is no exception. Although I like his competitor... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 With all the revolutions in the film industry in the late 1960s and
early 1970s, many of the older film monsters were starting to appear
cliché, even trite. Dracula, long the enemy of Victorian standards,
needed to be updated for a time when such standards had long passed.
Leave it to pop artist/film producer Andy Warhol and director Paul
Morrissey to do this by flipping the rules around and making Dracula the
pathetic victim of permissive social mores. Dracula (Udo Kier),
low on virg... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Originally titled Macchie Solari (Sunspots), and retitled Autopsy
by its American distributors, Armando Crispino's giallo
has long been available on video, but little seen by the
American audience. Anchor Bay's recent restoration and re-release
on DVD and video has again brought this film to back into the
spotlight, revealing a taught, beautiful, and grisly
giallo. A wave of solar activity (hence the Italian titl... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 This very low budget German zombie movie, although not a Troma movie, combines elements of my two favorite Troma videos. It takes the cheese and over the top gore of Redneck Zombies and pairs it with the side-splitting dubbing style of Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters. What results is a fun, cheap, intensely gory and sophomorically hilarious zombie romp. The
story, well sir, I guess there was a story. Okay, a military
... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 If you're
familiar with the works of Edgar Allan Poe, you know that amongst his most
prominent themes is that of the past's ability to terrorize you. The three
loosely adapted Poe stories in Spirits of the Dead - "Metzengerstein," "William
Wilson," and "Never Bet the Devil your Head" - are about exactly that.
Though they are each helmed by a different director, the continuity and quality
that flow through them are perfectly consistent, creating an experience that is
well-told, layered, and ... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 In an era of mainstream PG-13 horror, it's thrilling to delve back
into the European erotic horror films of the 60s and 70s - films that
gained their reputations by offering highly provocative images, if often
at the expense of story. One of the most controversial filmmakers in
this vein is Jean Rollin, best known for a series of surrealist vampire
films that began with Le Viol du vampire (The Rape of the Vampire,
1968). In their best moments, these films offer images and scenarios
w... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Anthologies, movies that are composed of a series of short films, are
always hard to characterize. If the film is considered as a whole, does
a particularly bad sequence besmirch the merit of the others? Or does a
well-shot segment bolster one that's floundering? Considering each
segment individually also presents certain challenges, particularly if
each segment was directed by the same person, or starred the same
actors. How do you explain trends in performances or cinematography, or
... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 It’s impossible to get a bead on Juan Lopez Moctezuma’s Alucarda.
There are no clear-cut heroes or villains; nearly every character seems
monstrous at one point or another. The film hops from one protagonist
to the next, condemning each in turn. A dichotomy between reason and the
supernatural, standard to many horror films, is established, and then
banished. Scenes that would seem to be filtered through the subjective
viewpoints of the characters are then presented as objective even... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 "Nine killed her; nine shall die! Eight have died, soon to be nine.
Nine eternities in doom!" If that sort of beautifully over-the-top line
doesn't bring warmth to your heart, you might as well turn back now. You
will not enjoy The Abominable Dr. Phibes, a brilliant piece of moody, camp horror from 1971. You will not bask in the glory of Phibes's
twisted wonderland of murder and revenge. However, if you can feel
the cockles of your heart stirring with anticipation, you are in for a
beau... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Baron Victor Frankenstein was the archetypal aristocrat, well-read,
cultured and arrogant. Beyond the sophisticated veneer existed a cruel,
utterly unscrupulous man, obsessed with ambition. Determined to realise
his greatest dream to create life, he had assembled a creature from
organs gathered from various unwilling donors. The creature is
successful brought to life but the instability of the brain, damaged
during surgery, causes uncontrollable violent spasms that result in
indiscrimi... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 When several young girls are found dead, left hideously aged and void of
blood, Dr Marcus suspects vampirism. He enlists the help of the Vampire
Hunter. Mysterious and powerful, Kronos has dedicated his life to
destroying the evil pestilence. Once a victim of its diabolical
depravity he knows the vampire's strengths and weaknesses as well as the
extreme dangers attached to confronting the potent forces of darkness. Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 After a series of scientific experiments directed
towards freeing the inner man and controlling human
personalities, the kindly, generous Dr Henry Jekyll
(Massie) succeeds in freeing his own alter ego, Edward
Hyde, a sadistic, evil creature whose pleasure is murder.
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Set in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II, the film
focuses on the brutality and horror that the allied prisoners were
exposed to as the Japanese metered out subjugation and punishment to a
disgraced and defeated enemy. This harrowing drama concentrates on the
deviations of legal and moral definitions when two opposing cultures
clash. Although fictional, this was one of the earliest films to deal
realistically with life and death in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp
duri... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Opening narration to The Brides of Dracula:
Transylvania, land of dark forests, dread mountains and black,
unfathomed lakes, still the home of magic and devilry as the nineteenth
century draws to its close. Count Dracula, monarch of all vampire
s, is dead. But his disciples live on, to spread the cult and corrupt the world...Towards
the end of the last century, somewhere in Eastern Europe, young and
beautiful Paris schoolteacher Marianne Danielle is on her way by coach
to take up a post... Continue reading ...
Posted by willy pratiwiharja on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
In :
Movie Reviews
 Two Egyptologists, Professor Fuchs (Keir) and Corbeck (Villiers), are
instrumental in unleashing unmitigated horror by bringing back to
England the mummified body of Tara, the Egyptian Queen of Darkness.
Fuchs’s daughter, Margaret (Leon), becomes involved in a series of
macabre and terrifying incidents, powerless against the forces of
darkness, directed by Corbeck, that are taking possession of her body
and soul to fulfil the ancient prophesy that Queen Tara will be
resurrected to co... Continue reading ...
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