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Reviews
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
Boring sequel with the worst title in film history
A few years back, when Halloween H20 was getting ready for release in Australia, I was ecstatic. I had waited a while for another sequel to come along after the cinematic travesty that was Halloween 6. Ads for H20 were all over TV and magazines and I was eager to see the finished product. I remember asking a friend if she wanted to see it with me and she laughed in my face. She said:
"Halloween H20!? What is that anyway, water? It looks really shi**y."
God, how I wish I had listened to her. But I went opening day anyway, paid my 10 dollars, sat back and waited to be scared. It never happened. I was disappointed, but I went back to see it again the next night with a group of new friends. Not only because I got in for free, but because I wanted to climb the social ladder. (mission accomplished!) I had been disappointed again by a truly bad movie. For me, it wasn't even bad in a good way. The story was played out almost dead-serious, not suitable for friendly ridicule, and not helped much by Jamie Lee Curtis' hyperactive performance. The gore factor was also shockingly low, one of the main reasons people go to see these things is to see some gruesome bloodletting.
All in all, one of the worst sequels in the series. The others were bad, yes, but they atleast had some interesting qualities, like Danielle Harris and Ellie Cornell, or some decent suspense. How many more horror series' are to be descecrated by Dimension Films? First Hellraiser, now this?
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
Better sequel
I didn't really like the first Gremlins movie. In some ways, it took itself way too seriously and ended up more horrific than funny. The sequel not only is much more exciting, but is pretty silly and more funny and enjoyable because of it. Setting this sequel in a skyscraper provides many oppertunities, and while not all of them are taken, the good ideas at times make up for it. The first movie, being set in a small town, did not really get too exciting. You don't even need to have seen the first to understand, and the special effects still hold up well after 10 years, unlike other movies of the time. A suggestion for Warner: when you get around to putting this film out on DVD, do something new with the break in the middle of the movie. Instead of a cinema or VCR breakdown, create some sort of DVD malfunction simulation. That would really be the icing on the cake.
...E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà (1981)
Interesting, but unpleasant.
I've only seen two of Lucio Fulci's films, this and House by the Cemetery. This is obviously the better of the two.
Even so, I still had a hard time watching this film because of the extremely over-the-top gore effects. Every single one of them is cringe worthy, from rotting corpse make-up to face meltings. And I have a very high tolerance for gore, but it depends on the circumstances in which gore appears. I loved Peter Jackson's Braindead (AKA Dead Alive), yes the gore was quite excessive, but it was presented with a tongue in cheek attitude that didn't make it offensive. It's what I like to call "fun" gore. But The Beyond has gore effects, while not the most realistic, are so dead serious that it's hard to enjoy the movie with them there.
But I think the biggest problem with this film is that it is, for the most part, not scary. The scares in the movie are too easily guessed before they actually happen, like when that girl is walking through the cemetery after her parent's funeral, and she has her eyes closed the whole time. The audience knows she was attacked before by the undead, so there's no surprise when she opens her eyes and has scary looking eyes.
But those things aside, I enjoyed the movie when gore effects weren't paraded over the screen. The ending is quite memorable and kinda spooky, a bit like House by the Cemetery's ending, if I remember it correctly. There are some beautiful looking scenes in here and there's an intriguing story, but at the end, I couldn't help but think why I had just sat through it. The movie seems quite pointless and there isn't much replay value.
And all this comes from watching a cut Australian video version that is missing around a minute and a half of gore. If I ever decide to watch an uncut version, I'll certainly be cautious.
Houseboat Horror (1989)
A sad day for Australian Horror....
Australian horror movies aren't very popular, but that doesn't mean that they're inferior. There have been some good ones, the very tongue in cheek "Cut", the bizarre "13th Floor" and the interesting "Out of the Body." Of course, there have been some really terrible ones, the worst of which is "Houseboat Horror." This movie was made in 1989, a time when horror films were running out of steam. Making a movie like "Houseboat Horror" was a mistake at this time. It recycled all the cliches used in 80's horror and recycled them badly. The movie looks to be extremely low budget, and seems to be shot on videotape. That doesn't matter though, a movie can still be low budget and be brilliant. But "Houseboat Horror" uses it's low budget for gore effects that look disastrous. You can't help but wonder if the money could have been used for something better, like a decent script. The story revolves around a film crew that travels to Lake Infinity to film a music video. But in the woods lurks a mad killer, who slaughters the film crew when they are stupid enough to split from the rest of the group. The killer's motive? Kill film crews because he was nearly burnt to death by a film crew some thirty years ago. Sound ridiculous? It is. Oh, and they're on houseboats, hence the title. The characters are not well written, I could hardly distinguish one from the other and I didn't even know their names. When they're murdered, am I supposed to care? Probably, but there's no emotional impact.
On the technical side of things, the photography was decent enough. But annoyingly, there are so many POV shots that it made my head spin. There is, on average, about one every five minutes. It gets tiring, and boring. The acting varies, some people are okay, I suppose. There are some funny one liners hidden in there. Some of the actors are really horrible, looking like they want to get out of there as fast as they can. But probably the most important part of a horror movie are the death scenes. For a movie that wants to be a gorefest, "Houseboat Horror" doesn't cut it (pardon the pun). Most of them have no suspense, and just cut away to a wall being splashed with blood. In my opinion, that is the weakest of murders in films.
So, if you can find a copy of this, watch it if you must, but don't expect to have fun. It's not even good in a 'so bad it's good' way. It's just bad.