New Reviews
Updated July 1st, 2010
Altered (2007)- This movie starts out pretty relentlessly and manages to keep that pace more or less throughout. It starts with some good ol’ boys huntin’ in the woods, it’s quickly apparent they ain’t huntin’ for deer. They bag their prey and take it over to an acquaintance’s house that seems to know more about this particular prey than most others do. As we go along we are let in on the back story; this group of guys were abducted by aliens (what they have been hunting) and experimented on, one of their group was killed, three others released, and the last one, the one who they are taking this captured alien to, was held longer than the others, and then, when released, promptly said the others were lying about being abducted, making the disappearance of the one killed hard to explain! Did you get all that? It’s easier to follow than my wrap up I promise. Suffice it to say these guys have bit off more than they can chew and this alien isn’t going down easy. I was iffy going in and still unconvinced after the first 15 minutes or so, but I hung in there and ended up liking this one. It doesn’t have a whole lot to offer but it is a tense well acted little horror/sci-fi. A-.
Versus (2000)- This movie has it all, zombies, violence, gore, comedy, scares, so what’s not to love? All of it! I know I know, lot’s of hardcore zombie fans, of which I consider myself one, love this flick, but I just hated it. Maybe it was just too much of a good thing but the terrible over the top acting (kind of a bad combination of Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns and The Matrix), horrible dialogue (I watched a dubbed version which was obviously a mistake), and cheese dripping slapstick just wore me out. Basically a bunch of gangsters have been dumping dead bodies in a forest which just happens to be one of the 666 portals to ‘the other side’, the dead rise up and attack the gangsters, but the gang’s leader actually has the whole thing planned to face off against his really old nemesis, or something like that. If you like the over the top Japanese zombie flicks then by all means, indulge, but I’m giving it a D.
House of the Devil, The (2009)- Like them 80s horrors? Not the violent slasher flicks but the more subtle ones? Then this is for you as this one looks and feels (except for a couple accidental clues) like it was actually made in the 80s (it is set in the 80s). It has an almost ‘made for TV’ feel too, for better or worse. Standard plot, a girl needs some jack to get out of her terrible dorm and into her own apartment, she takes a baby sitting job, which actually turns out to be a senior citizen sitting job, in a rich out of the way neighborhood for some eccentric folks on a night when there is going to be a lunar eclipse. This ain’t sounding good. Against her and her friend's better judgment she stays on and things rapidly go downhill, as the title of the flick implies. Not much blood, gore or violence until a quick and strange sequence near the end so if you are looking for that look elsewhere. This is no masterpiece by a long shot, and the predictable ending was a let down, but I have to say, this isn’t too bad. It held my interest and dammit I liked it well enough, I’ll give it a strong B.
Lifeboat (1944)- Hitch loved to put people in tight confines and play out what that would be like and what could be worse than bobbing in a small lifeboat in the Atlantic during WWII? A mixture of crew and passengers makes for an interesting setup, toss in the captain of the German u-boat that sank the ship and you have tension galore along with a debate about humanity, trust, and revenge. There is a little too much obvious propaganda but that aside Hitch makes this one-set flick work on a lot of levels, and not many directors could! Also, props for not making the black character a stereotypical step’n’fetch-it type, an A- for this one.
Last Winter, The (2007)- I’ve said before, I like a message with my horror, but damn, could we please keep it subtle. This is one ham-fisted ‘oil company bad/environmentalist good’ baseball bat to the skull. It starts off strong as an advance crew for an oil company heads to the Arctic to look at the feasibility of drilling there, we know something bad happened to a prior crew but aren’t offered any details, and we’re off on a pretty good start, but that doesn’t last long as nothing makes much sense from there on, like exactly what is driving people crazy? Why are the head environmentalist’s notebooks full of serial killer like ranting, even though he is fine? What happened to the original crew and how does it tie in? Are those ghosts of dinosaurs or just hallucinations? What made the plane crash? Etcetc. Simply put it just fails on pretty much all levels. Obvious comparisons to Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’ can be made but the cramped paranoia works on that one, here it just becomes an afterthought. Although it deserves an F, I will give it a D- since the first quarter or so worked, after that you’re on your own!
Third Man, The (1949)- Post WWII Vienna, black market, danger, rubble, and ruins; perfect backdrop for a Hitch flick. A writer from the US shows up for a job offered by a friend, who he learns just after arriving, has been killed. He does a little digging and the details just don’t seem to add up, stories don’t mesh, and the local authorities would really like to see the writer leave, but he is insistent and accepts a job as a lecturer in order to stay on. He keeps digging and definitely does not like what he finds, and what he finds is a scary and perfectly played Orson Welles! A must see for Hitch and or suspense flicks this pretty much has it all, check out Welles’ speech in the park, and the chase scene is one of the best ever filmed. A+
39 Steps, The (1935)- Twisty Hitch flick about a man in the wrong place at the wrong time, who can’t trust anyone, especially the cops! Yeah, this is Hitch’s most comfortable theme, and one of his earlier looks at the theme in the 1935 version of ’39 Steps’. Gunshots ring out at a nightclub and in the chaos outside a woman asks a man if she can come up to his apartment as she is scared. He says ‘yes’ and she tells him a story of spies, intrigue, and murder, which he doesn’t really believe, until she winds up with a knife in her back in his apartment, which he is promptly blamed for. He then must prove his innocence, but he isn’t sure who to trust, and might just make the wrong decision. His ability to escape bad situations is at times hilarious, but that was Hitch’s point, inept authorities were one of his favorite targets. A must see for Hitch fans as he develops what he would later explore more thoroughly in ‘Saboteur’ and ‘North by Northwest’. B+
Astro-Zombies, The (1969)- Oh my! An absolute must see for fans of the craptacular! Here we have dancing go-go girls, bubbling chemicals, save the day G-Men, scientists and their hotty assistants, mad scientist and his hunch-back assistant, solar powered remote controlled zombies (you read that right!), spies from ‘The East’, day for night shots, stock footage, etc. YES! A scientist figures out a way to control people with brain waves, the government thinks it would be a good idea to use for the space program, the scientist however experiments on military men and is fired, so he opens up his own lab where he gives long winded explanations as to exactly what he is doing to his hunchback assistant (thereby clueing us in on the plot, or what there is of one). Spies, intrigue, and painted dancing girls ensue! Toss in lots of stock footage of cops parking cars and you have suspense! Well not really but if you like ‘em bad you have GOT to catch this one. A+ on the craptacular scale, just for the rock’em, sock’em like robot intro!
Slaughter of the Vampires (1970)- A newly wed couple throws a party in their new castle and a mysterious stranger shows up and begins seducing the new bride. The husband is becoming concerned at his wife’s almost comatose behavior and winds up calling in a specialist, a specialist in vampires that is! Sound familiar? Yeah, it is basically Dracula without the whole moving to England sequence. Crazy over the top soliloquies make it fun as does the Euro-Goth atmosphere. If you like these slightly weird and subtle European horror flicks from this time (although this one gives the impression of being older than 1970, more like 1960) then you’ll like this, nothing new to offer, but not horrible. If you don’t like the bad dialogue and snail’s pacing then steer clear. I’m on the fence so I’ll give it a C-.
Number 17 (1932)- Early Hitch about a group of folks meeting up at an address, some by accident and some by design, after a jewel heist. A train that rides a ferry to mainland Europe runs under the house and the crooks want to be on that train. So who are the crooks and who are the cops? To tell you the truth I’m still not sure! This is old and the sound and lighting prove that and it is a very hard to follow confusing plot, made worse by the old look. There are some set pieces and some use of models (train sequence) that shows Hitch was ahead of his time even this early, but I can only recommend this for folks really interested in all things Hitch. C-.