Reviews

Straight to video crap is generally pretty worthless. I got "7 Nights of Darkness" in an 8 movie horror pack at Wal Mart for $5, so my expectations were pretty low (one of the other titles, "Evidence of a Haunting" is bottom drawer junk).

Anyhow, "7 Nights of Darkness" is an SOV horror film done entirely in the format of reality TV show with the actors handling the cameras while they wander through a "spooky" abandoned asylum (for 7 dark nights) in hopes of winning a million dollars. It's a post-"Ghost Hunters" version of "House on Haunted Hill". For plot and such there's nothing especially original, but somehow the actors bring it to life.

A cast of nobodies left alone with the cameras manage to create honest banter and what sounds like improvised dialogue. This doesn't really turn the movie into a horror classic of any description, but it does make the characters feel real, which is a rare thing.

Having seen this, I hope director Allen Kellogg gets more work, there's some potential there. I personally prefer the kind of horror guys like Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento created, but this little cheapie was a nice surprise.

See if any of this makes sense: Marty Rackham is a screenwriter/undersea-treasure-hunter who goes diving with his father- in-law to be Dick Van Patten, gets attacked by sharks, left for dead, become a New York City stand up comic, meets with his brother/narrator, incurs the wrath of The Riddler, goes to the Caribbean, is seduced by Priscilla Barnes (ewwwww) etc.

"Body Trouble" is an inept crapfest with no comic timing. It's one of those comedies that decides sex equals humor. The plot is all madcap nonsense which is not rare for a comedy but even a comedy can't get away with it if it isn't funny.

There is nothing believable here, nothing seems real, so really there's no basis for any of the weak jokes. For example, the viewer is expected to believe that the characters find Priscilla Barnes sexy. Who the hell would even dare to kiss that creature? An ugly blonde in a red dress and lipstick is still ugly. By the same token, Rackham is no good as a stand up comic, his timing sucks. The movie sucks, if I haven't made that clear yet. The production quality is fitting for softcore porn, but the sex isn't much better than the jokes, so this movie can't work on that score either.

There are twists and such as well, and a murder plot, but it's all just part of the mess.

This movie was a real surprise. It's not everyday that you find a movie that manages to fail in nearly every possible way. "Ground Zero" could almost be a cult film for its amazing level of weird dated badness.

The plot concern some gangsters being on trial and a man holding the city hostage with an atomic bomb in the golden gate bridge to blackmail the gangsters release. Our heroes are a ugly secret service guy who talks like he's in a bad radio show from the 30s and his wuss of a partner who hates violence but at least acts better than most of the cast. They shoot people, drive around San Francisco, fight, and exchange terrible dialogue.

The only real strength "Ground Zero" displays is wide angle shots from the top of the Golden Gate bridge. It is neat to see those dizzying angles from way up there. All the bridge location stuff looks pretty good. The atomic bomb that's there waiting to go off looks terrible and the script is useless, but that bridge still looks fine.

Also, this thing is slow. It's only about 80 minutes, but they drag so badly. While we were watching it my friend and I just found ourselves talking about way better movies like "It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World" and such. So, yes, please don't watch this unless you're drunk or something.

I'd never heard of zero budget "auteur" Neil Johnson before seeing "Battlespace" on DVD at Hollywood Video. A few minutes into the movie I realize this isn't a bad thing. Like many straight to video Sci-Fi movies, this is a film dominated largely by overused bad special effects and a constant parade of pretentious sci-fi concepts that fail to create a story.

Viewers are tortured with a religious sounding text introduction, then a spoken introduction followed by a narration by the main character's daughter. To me this seemed like a smoke screen to mask a film with militantly ugly visuals and zero character emphasis. Some people on here seem all too ready to take this film seriously and swallowed it's seemingly new age messages hook line and sinker. These favorable reviews must come from the same kind of people who can delude themselves into thinking that things like "Battlefield Earth" was a brilliant movie, or that Shasta is just as good as Coke.

Those who were lured in by the cheesy cover art can look forward to lousy acting (in small doses, spaced with long blocks of people not talking), rotten computer animated effects (in extra large doses), and irritating talking computers. What you won't get is excitement, emotional stimulation, memorable dialogue, or a good story.

"Battlespace" is impenetrable bull and the constant irritant of the narration proves it. Real science fiction, hell, real film-making, is about characters and their dialogue, not special effects and dull predictions. This is right down there with similar direct to video sci-fi like "Cl.One" and "Recon 2022". If the boredom of "Strange Horizons" and "Alien Visitor" is something you seek out, by all means, watch the crap out of this. If you enjoy good storytelling and hate fake lens flares, you're better off with a real movie.

My friend and her brother played extras in this movie so we watched it today just to see their parts. It sure wasn't worth our trouble. I understand this was a low budget movie, but even for that it was some cheap crap. "Carnival of the Damned" (which has a total of zero carnivals) is a zombie movie in which the viewer is treated to about thirty minutes of badly re-dubbed dialog while waiting for poorly photographed and sometimes topless zombies.

The cast of nobodies included a deeply irritating woman the director insists is "this generation's Audrey Hepburn" who plays a "fun" waitress who gives police exposition about the occult before getting kidnapped by cult guys who want to sacrifice her to their god. Talentless lead males portray unlikeable cops, reporters and assassins. We're unlikely to ever hear from any of these "actors" again, but Chris Thompson may soon gain reputation for being worse that Uwe Boll or Ulli Lommell, who previously held the record for making the worst zombie movies ever.

There's also a cherry on top of this fecal sundae of a movie: it's "neo grindhouse" cinema so computer generated film scratches run over the whole movie and trailers for 70s style exploitation occupy the first ten minutes. Musically a lot of copyrights appear to have been infringed on, so the filmmakers might be getting some unpleasant phonecalls soon.

Luckily this monstrosity isn't available in stores so you'll probably never suffer through it, unless you were foolish enough to give out your hard earned dollars and order it on amazon.

By the way, I am the only negative review of this movie and also the only review made by someone who reviews other movies. I think all other comments were made by the filmmakers and their overly loyal friends.

"Circadian Rhythm" is (cheaply) packaged to look like some high tech action thriller in the style of "The Matrix". There are dozens of straight to video films that make the same claim, but at least those movies actually reflect it in some way. "Circadian Rhythm" is actually just a low budget embarrassment that never would have made it to video if the actors hadn't later wound up in popular TV shows.

The viewer is treated to a blank screen followed by a lengthy text prologue about the CIA's MK-ULTRA program and its history. Supposedly this will explain how the mousy hero, Rachel Miner, wakes up in strange places and kills people without thinking about it. Mostly what she does is stand around outside deserted buildings and run beside railroad tracks. The complex web of this movie's "plot" seems only to involve enough characters to fill a small elevator. Since there aren't any extras, these characters may well be the only inhabitants of the planet.

The action consists of a handful of badly photographed one on one fight scenes staged in (empty) public places. The low grade video the movie was shot on is just as cheap as it can be and the high contrast and color saturation make it look worse yet.

There are twists and chases, but I severely doubt you'll care. By the time you've finished "Circadian Rhythm"'s dismal 71 minutes you won't care about much of anything, except perhaps the promise of never having to sit through it again.

Every character in Richard Linklater's "Fast Food Nation" is a 2 dimensional stereotype. Out of all these characters and their stories the only one I found a common bond with was the one played by Bruce Willis in his single, eat-on, scene. I never read the book, but from what I know it is a non-fiction account of the darker side of the fast food industry. It sounded like it'd be a good subject for a documentary, investigative report, or some other form of legitimate journalism. When I saw trailers for Linklater's fictionalized film of this book I couldn't help but view it as a misstep. But, before I alienate too many people, allow me to flesh out the movie a little.

The story follows Greg Kinnear, an executive at a fictional fast food chain called Mickey's, from an optimistic meeting to the source of the meat he's just learned is tainted with fecal traces. In the town in Colorado where the questioned slaughterhouse is we meet illegal immigrants toiling in it, corrupt supervisors, grizzled ranchers, and lastly disillusioned teens working at the local Mickey's. The story jumps back and forth between each character bringing us all towards a conclusion few would be surprised by.

Early in watching this I labeled it a burger version of Soderbergh's "Traffic". Later as the film failed to hold interest I settled on it being the burger version of "Syriana". A multiple focus film such as this one rarely works because the ambition of telling so many stories usually results in television quality writing. "Fast Food Nation" is almost worse than that because rather than being a large scope drama it's muckraking passing for one sold by a parade of cameos.

I don't want to make this a political review, but it's hard to avoid when critiquing a film that decided for itself to make a single sided statement rather than tell a story. The closest this came to objectivity was the voice of Bruce Willis's cameo which told us something true: as long as food is within legal health limits and cooked properly it's fit to eat in spite of what may have been a disgusting origin. I'm no "neo-con" or even conservative, but the plain truth is that the world is imperfect and there's nothing wrong with growing up and facing certain truths. And to anyone who thinks I'm cruelly smearing a righteous message can read a highly recommended book on the same subject: Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle". It touches on all the same things, the meat industry being tough unfair work, the world embracing mediocrity, and unsavory things being in our food, but it remains interesting throughout.

This whole story is about people becoming disillusioned. Was any information in this movie really a surprise? The only characters I'd really believe it with are the immigrant workers. It was hard to feel much for these characters anyhow since the only way to get a fair shake anywhere is to become a citizen and these characters didn't bother with that. Life may suck and fast food may be mediocre but this is not news.

Apologies to have ranted a little here but "Fast Food Nation" inspires it. The movie wants "love it or hate it" status and on its own terms I hated it. Those who love it can have it, I'll have a burger instead.

You've probably all figured out by now that this is the straight-to-video knock-off of the much anticipated "Cloverfield". I was pretty curious about this, partly because it comes from The Asylum (their stuff is just addictively bad!) and because the trailer for it looked nearly competent. So naturally I rented it as soon as I had the chance.

The plot (ha!) concerns two women, a documentary crew, who fly to Tokyo to interview an official about global warming. Everything in the movie is filmed vacation-video style from the girls' hand-held camera (just like "Cloverfield"). During the interview the monster attacks and the city becomes a disaster area. Our heroes are forced to run for cover and try to find people who speak English while still documenting the monster's rampage.

I expected weak CGI effects and bad dialogue, but I was also disappointed to find that the hand-held camera wasn't hand-held looking at all (the making-of feature on the DVD betrayed their real techniques) and the down-time that fills out most of the movie happens in spots that look more like L.A. than Tokyo. Transitions are accomplished with unconvincing video distortion, an attempt to sell us on the gimmick that we are watching found footage. There's an attempt at explanation for the monster too, which was perhaps the worst aspect of this mess.

"Monster" may be The Asylum's worst. In spite of a good trailer, this will be forgotten especially because they chose a title already used for a Charlize Theron movie. "Cloverfield" has nothing to fear from this.

Over the course of the last 12 years I have, despite much resistance, become a David Fincher fan. My faith in him wavered in 2002 when he directed Koepp's less than stellar "Panic Room". In the five year gap following the release of that film I came to believe that I'd lost Fincher as a reliable director and that he'd lost his career. "Zodiac" restored my faith.

This film is shot on high grade digital video and it is the only time I've ever seen video look like anything but video. Fincher's eye has transcended the boundaries of a once limiting medium. The color and motion are perfect. The word gorgeous would suffice. The three central performances are perfect as well, which is surprising because Gyllenhaal and Ruffalo really had something to prove for me. As with Brad Pitt in "Se7en", Fincher has given credibility to another couple of heartthrobs. The supporting cast (which includes the under-appreciated Elias Koteas) is awesome as well.

Everything worked and this is proved by the fact that it kept me in my theater seat all 157 minutes in spite my bladder being stretched ever larger by an extra large coke. True crime is a popular subject for film and the story of the zodiac killer of the 1970s was made 3 other times within 2 years of this movie. Trailing behind failures like "Hollywoodland" and De Palma's "The Black Dahlia", "Zodiac" arrived at an opportune time. All these films concerned real life crimes. This is the only success among them, bladder or no bladder.

"Zodiac" is neither a dramatization or a documentary, it is a movie. The focus, apart from the actual murders played as they happened, is confined to three men (Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo) who were stricken with the obsession to stop the zodiac's reign of terror. This theme was also present in "The Black Dahlia", but as an over-dramatized b-movie. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I'll also say that it's a movie that takes an intelligent and honest look at how we react to and deal with mass murderers.

The fact that nobody knows who this killer is and never will know for certain presents an interesting problem dramatically. Perhaps accidentally, the solution is like a "Citizen Kane" in which we never meet Charles Foster Kane. As Rosebud was a ruse in that film, the killers identity proves equally to be a ruse because the journey is more important. This is the story of people in the wake of a madman.

Naturally more focus goes to Gyllenhaal's Graysmith since this is the character of the book's author. His personal story of raising a child and having a girlfriend all being pushed to the back burner by his obsession might seem trivial at first, but it is played very well here. Fincher's good sense for drama and the proportion thereof is key here. Downey Jr. chews his scenes very successfully as a quirked, self centered reporter who perhaps best embodies the frustration at a mystery with no answer. Ruffalo is the cop who still believes in justice and is worn on by the publicity phenomenon that serial killers create (highlighted by a scenes where he sits down to watch "Dirty Harry" only to find it mirrors the case he's stumped on). All their characters feel fresh again because the viewer gets wrapped up in the story and forgets they're watching a movie.

My least favorite words to find in the promotion of any movie "Based on a true story" followed closely by "Inspired by actual events". With a lot of films this device (and it's often no more than a device) is a crutch, an excuse to tell an uninteresting story badly and have all its failings of script etc. by ignored by an audience who keep telling themselves that what they're watching is in some way "real". This pretty much puts me off true stories, including true crime stories. "Zodiac" is one hell of an exception.

With "Curse of the Zodiac" director Ulli Lommell rips off David Fincher's "Zodiac" a second time. Like Lommell's other recent horror efforts this is incompetently gory and exploitive. It has all his usual trademarks: shot on cheap video, highly repetitive, over-edited with tons of after-effects to cover up a budget of $0. The opening titles aren't bad though and in the previously stated categories it's not as bad as Lommell's "Black Dahlia", but that's like saying getting shot isn't as bad as burning to death.

This movie focuses on a girl who suffers from psychic episodes which show her the crimes of the Zodiac killer as they happen. Lommell's Zodiac killer is a bald white guy with tattoos on his neck, overdubbed with an annoying German voice. He taunts a writer over the phone who he only called "Fat F***" and mentally taunts the physic which he called "Pretty Girl". The soundtrack is flooded with Zodiac irritating voice, mocking the poorly defined "heroes" with what could be bad poetry.

The movie falls into a pattern of killings spaced by reactions to killings. The victims are almost exclusively women and they are always killed after having an argument with their man. It's as if this is a relationship movie edited together with a slasher movie. In the commentary Lommell claims this is meant to represent tension over women's liberation in the 70s. Until I heard this I didn't realize this was supposed to be set in the 70s, and assumed this was about the killer returning in present day or something equally stupid (Lommell's previous movie "Zodiac Killer" was about a present day copycat to the Zodiac).

Apart from the more puzzling aspects it is never less than obvious that is this is a cheapie. The sound even messes up a couple times during one of the killer's monologues. Many of these are peppered with what feels like hundreds of cuts back to the same couple of shots of the Golden Gate bridge. While it is impressive that they actually shot on location for this piece of crap, the poor use of the locations doesn't help. The acting sucks, of course, and the facts of the case are clumsily passed over in favor of endless boring murders. It feels like this script never had more than one draft.

In the end all I really have to say is Ulli Lommell. This idiot directs crap and only crap. He made "Zombie Nation". He makes fellow countryman Uwe Boll look good! His movies, like this one, were all made to confuse unobservant people in video stores to rent them thinking they're something else. But, honestly, if you're really dumb enough to rent this thinking it's a movie as good as the David Fincher "Zodiac" then you deserve to watch a movie as bad as Ulli Lommell's "Curse of the Zodiac".

Because Sci-Fi's "Showdown at Area 51" wasn't enough, The Asylum brings us another exciting rip-off in anticipation of "AVP R". Since the "Alien vs. Predator" sequel is set in a small American town, "Alien vs. Hunter" is set in a small American town. After some helicopter shots we're treated to a middle-aged man jogging, completely oblivious to a huge smoking object crashing behind him. From there we are introduced to an alien and a "hunter" and people die and run around and shoot at stuff.

This particular effort is punctuated by some nice derivative designs. The alien resembles Giger's "Alien" (except for the whole spider thing) and the hunter is a safe re-imagining of the "Predator". In this respect The Asylum have really outdone themselves. This kind of production design could really have helped them on movies like "Alien Abduction". A couple scenes, particularly the tunnel scene, make pretty good use of lighting and the wide aspect ratio. This scene suitably rips off "Alien 3".

The characters are a real low point, though. Our heroes have a few very superficial clichés that pass for character and they are played off one another in a way that makes you wish the monsters would win. There is some solace in watching people get killed off, but it was never the ones I really wanted dead. My favorite line is "Guys, we're on the ship and that totally sucks".

I'm almost used to these quirks by now, even the worst one of never quite getting everything in frame. It's odd watching these because the little flashes of competence give you the feeling that it would have been a solid movie if only they bothered to get the coverage. But down to brass tax, this thing advertises itself on its special effects and there really isn't anything wrong with those. Plus the film wisely avoids much reference to "Alien vs. Predator" and instead liberally rips off the original "Alien", "Predator" and "Aliens".

Without giving anything away, I do have to say the final twist is really irritating. Apart from this, "Alien vs. Hunter" is an essential for any fan of The Asylum.

Behold the inevitable straight to video incarnation of Matheson's now thrice adapted "I Am Legend" which effectively combines the titles of the two latest ("Omega Man" and "I Am Legend") into one that will fool the unsuspecting movie renter/buyer. As with most knock-offs available from The Asylum, the much labored over box art promises a far more interesting and far more expensive film (it may be a tragedy that these are some of the last examples of good movie-related graphics). But since this is from The Asylum I'll assume you all also know what sort of inexpensive film to expect.

Trashing the straight-to-DVD industry aside, it is hardly the worst movie of its kind (that honor belongs to "Forsaken" with turns the story into a vampire road movie). "I Am Omega" has pretty good location use and competent production value. The editing is fairly stellar and the zombies weren't that laughable (although they were no substitute for the cloaked mutants of "The Omega Man"). And mercifully there are no bad video after effects like a lot of these low budget movies do.

The main problem is the slowness. The flashbacks in this version of the story (which cause the first 30 minutes to drag badly) choose to explain Dacascos' character as a tortured soul rather than unfold the explanations for the world being near over. The decision to use mindless zombies rather than intelligent mutants makes the action a little repetitive and doesn't actually help much with the horror. Red necks and the token female are added to give our heroes someone else to deal with. Director Furst and writer Meed add an explosion count down to move things along as well.

It won't hurt you too much if you keep your expectations low. If you're new to The Asylum, this is perhaps one of the better examples you'll find.

I'm not sure how, but this is supposed to be a sequel to a movie I've never seen called "The Boy Who Cried B*tch". I suppose that's what the mother character's spoken prologue was supposed to be about. That doesn't really matter much because this movie is essentially plot-less.

A friend of mine got this DVD handed to him free at Ozfest so at least I don't have the embarrassment of having picked out this awful movie to see. We both went into it cold, expecting nothing (there was no description on the box). Bad sound and static shots delivered us the makings of a story about a wealthy family troubled with the problem of an oldest son burdened with "borderline multiple personality disorder". What this disorder means for the movie is that the son, Stephen, acts like a jerk all the time, is violent, and blames his mother for everything.

The movie soon falls into a predictable pattern of showing Stephen abuse his mother (and women in general) and being put into institutions, occasionally escaping them, until he turns 18 and is dropped on his unprepared family again. The actor playing the lead is 26 at the time and looks it, and even if we believe he is 18 the title "Adolescent Years" seems a bit off the mark. His two younger brothers, both in their teens (I think they were supposed to be anyway) are 2 dimensional and only serve to pad out the time. The younger one is an apologist for Stephen and the older is a cocaine addicted art student.

The boredom is broken up by occasional unintentional stretches of humor (particularly when Stephen is messing up his mother's room and tries to knock things off the top of the dresser). The dialog is mostly dull repetitive swearing. The attempts at making things dramatic or interesting all fell flat. The humorous title turns out to be the best part and even then it's appropriate considering how often Stephen says the "b" word. Either way it wasn't worth the long slow 90 minute sit.

Don't watch this.

It's the future again and the world is screwed up again. It seems acid rain is mutating people and a company called DNA 21 is staging a cover-up, but none of that is really much in focus as the plot concerns an unattractive guy falling in love/lust with an unattractive girl. He lives in an apartment in NYC and become his new roommate. I've only just finished watching the movie and already I find it hard to talk about the plot because there pretty much isn't one. In short, "Red Cockroaches" is a zero budget sci-fi dystopian incest movie.

People have been making a lot of noise over the visuals in this film. What they actually added up to were a few futuristic aircraft tossed into shots of the city and a few badly staged shots of the mutated red cockroaches of the title. Special effects included the movie looked like crap. The fact that the film had no budget does not change the fact that the movie is ugly. I'll admit it looks a trifle better than a zero budget movie, but that's the same as saying the CG looks bad enough for an expensive movie of ten years earlier.

There is little to be said. The two leads are ugly and their characters behave in ugly ways. It isn't a profound tragedy and it doesn't really have any good dark humor. The "story"'s unpleasant resolution doesn't teach us anything new. Come to think of it I haven't been this hard up to say something nice about a movie since I saw Brian Yuzna's "Faust". Both are thorough-going cinematic sadism.

The DVD featured another short film from the director, Miguel Coyula. The short film is also poorly paced, unpleasant and pointless. Why this guy is making movies is beyond me. The package says this film is the winner of "20 film festival awards worldwide", which makes me wonder is that many film festivals give out a last place award. This whole review has sounded cruel and negative so I'll close on the same note and say I'd have been happier watching an Uwe Boll movie.

A guy named Cade voice over narrates to us about his dead dad while heading back to his home town of Civility, AZ for the funeral. Of course we soon discover that dad's suicide was a murder and that everyone in town all suspicious acting. There is a reading of the last will, killings, a throw away love interest, twists, interested parties, etc.

The film wants to be part of the 90s cool crime/violence genre which requires gun toting characters to discus random cultural points between shootings. This is also the supposed excuse for William Forsythe to be dressed as a plantation owner and carry a parasol. The worst thing about watching a movie like this one is that you've already seen all the good movies it is longing to be and you can't help but kill it with the comparison.

My subject line is one of the many weak lines from Cavaricci's bland script. Black and white flashbacks of the father in life are just an introduction to all the painful reminders that this was directed by a lightweight of a first time director. On top of this are a few hundred poorly framed shots and bad cuts. There's a scene where our hero walks into a bar (that might have actually been someone's house) where a stripper dances in front of the fire exit to see random old girlfriend who stares at him just long enough for me to doubt whether she'd forgotten a line before (surprise!) punching him in the face. Tom Arnold merely exists in this movie, completely subdued, and although he usually annoys me I couldn't help but think his usual ad libbed comedy would have added some much needed entertainment value to this picture.

The DVD I saw it on was titled "Malicious Intent" which is cheesy, but better than "Civility". The film comes complete with (3) performances by real actors in supporting roles, including the under-appreciated Clarence Williams III. Brad Segal provides a disposable score which drones uninterestingly alongside dully recorded dialog. The film is equally disposable and I probably never would have rented it if my job at Hollywood Video didn't provide free rentals.

As if it wasn't bad enough that Wes Craven decided to smear the name of his good original 1977 horror film last year, he has done the unthinkable and remade it's worthless 1985 sequel. Like most remakes, it's nothing new, but this one still manages to miss elements that even the dumbest horror remake/sequels usually include.

Enough about obvious criticism of remakes, though, let's examine the actual content. In "2" the killer cannibal mine dwellers are still there (it seems what was left of them at the end of the first one were fruitful and multiplied) and are hot and ready when the army decided to re-enter the former nuclear testing zone. We are introduced to 7+ soldiers who arrive at the site to find the technicians already slaughtered. From there it's pretty much exactly what happened in the trailer with an hour's worth of filler put in.

There's one key difference between the villains in the sequel and those in the 2006 remake: these monsters want to breed. The film opens on a bare chested girl, tied up, giving birth to a mutant baby. Pretty much the only reason the females in the military unit are in the movie is so that they can be raped or threatened with rape.

To risk sounding like a tool, I'll bring up a comparison. Roger Ebert included in his review for the recent "Wolf Creek" a definition of misogyny and asserted that the violence towards women in that film made it a misogynist movie. For this he gave it a rating of zero. He didn't bother to review this movie, but his review of the 2006 remake gave a rating of 1 1/2. While rape doesn't seem to bother Ebert, I'm going to step in here and assert that it's inclusion here makes this film the misogynist one. In fact, as an element in a horror film, a villain needing to "breed" is an outright pornographic concept.

Apart from that we've got the same excessive gore and intentional gross-out factor as the first remake. Killers pop out from off screen and plunge things into their victims. Very good photography illuminates very badly acted, poorly scripted scenes. Oh, and the killers pop up often enough so that you can be assured there'll be no pesky suspense to ruin your viewing experience.

It's pretty much "Hills Have Eyes" meets "Southern Comfort", a far more realistic film about soldiers on training exercises in the deep south massacred by backwoods locals. In this movie the characters are paper thin so it never matters much what happens to them. Funny how a film meant to inspire horror can simply bring indifference.

I wish I was joking when I say you'd be better off watching "See No Evil".

The title "Future Murder" and the weak package design for the VHS don't really lead one to expect much, but it still doesn't prepare the viewer for the poor excuse for a thriller that lies within. I found it in the science fiction section of my video store, so I'll tell you now what I didn't know then: it is not set in the future.

A surgeon living with his wife in some unspecified part of the USA is having nightmares about being murdered by two people he's never seen before. He becomes paranoid and can no longer perform the duties at his job. His speedy downward spiral leads to him finding two people who look like the ones from his dream. He gets out his gun and it's all downhill from there.

Someone on here commented that the script was impressive and I can't say I agree. The idea's not really bad, but this bare-bones script does not make it into a good movie. The characters really have no distinction beyond a few trivial reactions to the situations they're in. The dialog is limited to "what are we going to do?" and "are you okay?" exchanges. Had this been a short film I could at least admire the premise.

I've got nothing against independent film-making, in many cases I admire it, but this film shows the downside. "Future Murder" is inept, even in the technical sense. An often bad musical score squeaks over poorly recorded sound which isn't easily forgivable with the director's uneven visual sense (think Colman Francis trying to do Fritz Lang) and the poor picture quality.

It's no surprise the writer and director never really went anywhere. If you want an independent film that showcases good storytelling over production value, watch "Blood Guts Bullets and Octane" or "Pi". If you want poorly written stuff that still looks great, watch "Darkness Falls" or "They". Only watch "Future Murder" only if you're an independent filmmaker looking for an example of what not to do.

The second star is for the handful of decent shots in the movie and for the wasted premise.

43 year old Jason Connery plays a "ghost squad" agent who must fight his old friend Daniel Goddard who has turned into a snake man named Python. Connery gets trapped in a collapsing building and then irradiated at the hospital which gives him the power to run in fast forward. His costume is a bunch of crap from a sporting goods store. Python has an awesome makeup job and a plot to destroy the government for non-specific revenge, but he's equally silly.

The quality of this production is so crude that it makes most low budget TV movies look good. It's full of choppy slow motion, unnecessary dissolves, and ultra cheap CG special effects. Things blur and ghost a lot in an attempt to hide the unprofessional shooting, even though it just makes it look worse. The camera work is mindless and the score is canned. Not to mention the acting, which is typical of TV movies and straight to video junk. Python is especially bad since the guy under the makeup is trying to do the villain voice the whole time.

Connery never looks like anything but a middle aged loser in a jogging suit. This seems careless as all they really needed to do was put a girdle and a hairpiece on him. Apart from this, his performance makes it obvious he never would have been in movies in the first place if his father hadn't been Sean Connery.

Connery's character, Daniel Leight (leight, light, Lightspeed! Get it?) has a girlfriend played by Nicole Eggert. She's also part of the "ghost squad" (which is supposed to be a kind of special forces meet SWAT team) which is a pretty laughable concept as she is just another disposable Baywatch bimbo. Naturally she winds up as bait later in the film.

It's weak and predictable every step of the way. More than anything it feels like a knockoff of "Black Mask 2" which was worthless anyhow. It's 88 minutes are an eternity for any halfway discerning movie viewer. Oh, and Lee Majors is in it. Enough said.

*During the scene where the rocket launches in "The Astronaut's Wife" it cuts from stock footage of a space launch to a very artificial shot of the Earth accompanied by a several children's voices shouting the word "pineapples". It turns out to be a transition to a classroom full of schoolchildren naming fruit from around the country to tie in with Johnny Depp calling Charlize Theron a peach. This is the most unintentionally funny and memorable part of the entire film.

This movie was made in 1999 when Charlize Theron's acting career was starting to takeoff and Jonny Depp's was still coming out of a deep freeze. Together they are the Armacosts, he is a southern sounding pilot turned astronaut and she is the mild mannered school teacher and of course "The Astronaut's Wife". They have the exact same haircut. Jillian Armacost likes to watch "Penny Serenade" with her husband to get in the mood. Oh, and she has a sister. Now you know everything about the lead characters that a person who watched the movie would know.

As anyone who watched the preview that played constantly on TV in the summer of 1999 will remember, the plot concerns Johnny Depp coming back from a space shuttle mission infected with an alien parasite and nobody believes in and impregnates Charlize Theron with alien twins who watches a video tape of Joe Morton saying he may have been killed by Depp. In the trailer it took about a minute to tell, but in the movie some of these things are supposed to be a surprise. The result is a very boring drawn out "suspense" during which we are supposed to keep "guessing" whether Depp is or isn't infected with an alien parasite. Just like with "Double Jeopardy" (also 1999) the trailer blew all the plot twists so there's no reason to watch the movie.

I only watched because I'm terminally curious and as usually I got what I paid for. The story is (as was it was popular to point out at the time) as rip-off of "Rosemary's Baby" (minus the funny satanic cult) as was Theron's much better 1997 thriller "The Devil's Advocate" (with funny satanists). The idea of impending motherhood never really seems concrete just like the "change" in Depp's character doesn't either. The trailer hyped up the idea that Jillian is the only one who notices a change in her husband upon his return but in the actual film there isn't a change to notice. Depp's character is underwritten, hardly 2 dimensional. He's the same until Theron suddenly accuses him of being different. The idea that Depp is an astronaut is equally abstract as the only space footage is a dream sequence and as far as I remember they didn't even spend the money to show him in a space suit.

Rand Ravich is a weak writer at best and his directing in this film thoroughly justifies it being his only feature length movie. Ravich posed one interesting visual idea with Theron standing in front of a screen showing a video from Depp's landing shuttle after the space accident. It would have been worthy of Nicolas Roeg if it hadn't been ruined by clumsy cutting. In keeping with this all the photography is slapdash and the color is universally hideous. I think the only reason anyone called it "stylish" is because the apartment where the Armacosts live is a sterile glass lined set that few of us could actually afford to live in and that none of us are obsessive enough to keep clean.

You can skip this one without feeling at all bad about it. The only reason there are two stars instead of one is because I laughed when the kids said pineapples.

The first sign of trouble for "Flesh for the Beast" is that the DVD case (which is otherwise very nice) advertises most prominently music by Buckethead. Nothing against Buckethead, but since when do people watch horror films for their music? Good or bad (I honestly can't remember), the music does nothing to save this poor excuse for a horror film, which is in fact porn. Sure, there's blood, zombies, and cannibalism, but the central focus of the film is sex and female nudity.

The plot concerns a crew of ghost busters hired by a rich man to investigate his haunted mansion. A video crew accompanies them for what I guess was supposed to be comic relief. Soon succubi show up and promptly take their clothes off to bed down with the male cast members before killing them. Each killing is preceded by a different succubus related sex fantasy. After the killings we are "treated" to a loooong sequence of the unfettered girl-monsters playing around in the blood. Anybody who sits this far into the movie won't be able to call it horror with a straight face.

And no, it isn't at least funny instead of being scary. This movie is a thorough going piece of crap that expects you to take each pointless scene seriously. It's all especially disappointing because the first scene makes it look like "Flesh for the Beast" might be a real horror film. Unfortunately, like the stud arriving to fix the cable, this is only a set-up.

There are a couple of twists that render the plot ridiculous just to reminder the renter/buyer of this film they've been cheated. I wasn't expecting a masterpiece here or even in interesting failure, but if I'd known this was a movie exclusively about hetero-porn I'd never have bothered with it. I wish distributors (this means you Shriek Show) would mark movies like this with a soft-core tag accompanying whichever genre their movie is pretending to be. The scariest thing about this movie is the DVD art which successfully hides nearly any trace of the film's pornographic content.

Of all the things that can make a movie good or bad, the budget is usually the least of them. Aronofsky made a near perfect movie on thousands of dollars while Verhoven and Sommers have made pathetic ones on hundreds of millions. What it really depends on is how good the story and storyteller are and whether or not the filmmakers know how to work within their means. "Strange Horizons" (which I watched on video as "Project: Genesis") has a modest budget and is very modest about using it. There are about five characters (including a talking computer) and two extras.

I tried to view this as a b-movie (and later as a serious one) and it didn't work out so well. All it has for b science fiction fans is a bad talking computer, an extremely weak space battle, and some female nudity. Unfortunately this movie aspires to be more than a b-movie and fails. Probably the best part of the movie is the lead actor's continuous Mickey Rourke impression.

A previous poster said this film is what science fiction is supposed to be. I didn't find the small story in "Strange Horizons" to be strictly science fiction. More than anything, it is a play. It's a story of a burned out ex-military man who blew the whistle on his drug-smuggling superior and winds up a drunken Robinson Crusoe... until this "alien" woman shows up. There's nothing wrong with a movie that talks a lot, but this movie really does nothing else. Other filmmakers might have found a way to create something of the future world that is continually described (or at least show more of the planet our hero crashes on than his wrecked spaceship), but in this case we get a closely cropped play shot on two obvious sets. This thing might have been passable on stage, but not in the movies.

The filmmakers tried to tell a good story, but they wrote a short play and not a movie. In either case re-writing would be necessary. My advice to them is to show a little more imagination in the future and perhaps suggest to an audience that horizon isn't just an imaginary drug.

And yet, with "Ultra Warrior" and a couple dozen other movies, Roger Corman has done just that. Ever since he invested a couple million dollars in "Battle Beyond the Stars" he's been making zero budget sci-fi and action movies re-using the same footage. "Ultra Warrior" is particularly bad, though, because the plot and all the exposition exists simply to hold together bits of other movies.

It is amusing, though. The plot involves this dude working for some big brother corporation in the future investigating mining a miracle mineral in an area controlled by mutants (and of course, evil mutant hunters) who eventually becomes "the chosen one". Every time two characters talk the film cuts away to "Lords of the Deep" or "Battle Beyond the Stars" to show us this giant fantastical plot that's supposedly going on at the same time. It's ridiculous, but that's why it's entertaining.

There are also two pretty good action sequences that were actually originally filmed for this movie, so it's worth watching even if you have seen all the source material.

*quote from Welles's "The Other Side of the Wind"

It's pretty obvious that Lionsgate only released Ulli Lommel's "Black Dahlia" so that they could cash in on Brian De Palma's "The Black Dahlia" (much like other recent sound alike ripoffs "War of the Planets", "When a Killer Calls", and "Flight 93"). Like many of those, this hit DVD before the big movie it imitates in the preemptive rip-off tradition started by Roger Corman. In short, people are supposed to see this DVD on the shelf and mistake it for the De Palma movie. Working at a video store I have encountered the intentional confusion these ripoffs create time and time again.

Anyway, let's talk about the movie already. Rather than re-telling the story of the actual Black Dahlia murder there is simply a brief prologue about it complete with a black and white filter and fake film grain over what is obviously low grade video footage. Then the movie drops us in LA of the 21st century (now) where two plain clothes cops make a drug bust. These are supposed to be our heroes. Then we meet the Satan worshiping killers who lure girls to auditions to play the Black Dahlia and then get murdered. In between looking at bodies and drinking with his partner, the younger drug cop, the rookie whose name I can't remember, looks up the original 40s murder online and dreams about it. That's pretty much it.

The killers kill in very long slow boring scenes before leaving body parts for the police. The police investigate, the killers kill some more ad infinitum. The acting sucks all around. All the murder scenes are very slow and boring and each killing is nearly identical the the last. There's also a lot of unnecessary after effects like rewinding and white flashes. Shots of a graveyard and the 40s reenactment are cut into weird places too. Footage is re-used so often I got to thinking they probably only shot an hour of video before beefing it up to 80 minutes in the editing room (and the credits are already rolling by 78 minutes).

Apart from those confused into thinking it's something else, who is this movie really for? It's not for mystery fans because everything is spelled out to the point where you wonder why the police haven't solved it. It's not for action fans because the action is rare and pathetic. It could only be for very patient low-brow perverts and ultra-low-brow gore hounds, and those people could easily find better somewhere else. I've been renting straight to video crap all year and this is the worst movie I've found so far. For your own sake, stay far away.

Alright, I'm admitting a couple things to start: It looks good. The cinematographer did just fine. Some of the action works very well. Mobsters and dirty cops blow the crap out of each other and its fairly exciting. The fact that morality is pretty much absent for much of the film was also somewhat refreshing. BUT, then come plot, acting, tone, plot, casting, plot...

Anyone who's seen the previews knows that Walker plays a basically good dude who's in the mafia, has a family, and has to get rid of a gun used to kill a cop, but loses it "Tommy used it to burn a dirty cop. If they find it, I'm dead." The gun has been stolen by Walker's son's best friend Oleg (played by the wooden and ever irritating Cameron Bright of "Godsend" and "Ultraviolet" who I think is only in films because he has creepy eyes) who tries to kill his abusive daddy with it and then takes off. So, everybody's after the kid with the gun and there's complications involving the Russian mafia. From there we have young Oleg getting mixed up in every corner of the world of crime and sleaze. Meanwhile Paul Walker has to try and enlist the help of his son while avoiding arrest/death.

Sounds like it could be a pretty good flick, right? It's not. For starters, despite the absurdity of some of what Walker and Bright get into, the film never recognizes any of the humor of its situations. Emotional manipulation will only carry you so far. After pushing the viewer through all kinds of agonies and suspenses, for two hours without much pause, what is meant to be terror just starts to become hilarity. So much happens in the last half that one starts to forget the core plot exists in the first place. The ending is all Hollywood with a twist that renders the whole movie pointless (much like the twists in {"The Life of David Gale" and "Basic") and more sap than Canada. If they realized how silly it all was they could have had something not unlike "Pulp Fiction" on their hands, but because they expect you to stay perched at the edge of your seat for two hours, long after you've tired of the characters, it comes closer to something you'd find in the straight-to-video action section back around 1996.

The movie is jumpy. It frequently rewinds to make sure the slower viewers (I'm guessing there are more and more of those nowadays) don't miss details that were obvious to start with. Much of the jumpiness seems to be for its own sake, best displayed in a closeup on a "Caution: Wet Floor" sign which shakes and cuts three times on the same image. Oleg's adventures continue not for the sake of drama, but seemingly for that of filmmakers ADD. When it seems they've run out of suspenseful things to do with him, the boy is suddenly abducted by a couple of child molesters who have nothing to do with the mob, the gun, or believable reality. Yes, there are child rapists/murderers in the world, but with ultra-secure nursery/fantasy apartments? Not too many, I'm guessing.

On top of all this, the writers must have felt their picture wasn't dirty enough, because the gratuitous language really crosses a line. I don't have any problem with a film having swearing in it, but "Running Scared" has a bunch of white gangsters calling each other the "f-word" (not the four letter one) and the "n-word"? There's something basically wrong with that.

If ever you watch it, stick around for the incredibly over-the-top end titles sequence. It is literally a cartoon parody of the film, albeit unconsciously.