Don't Go In The House (2005 review)

I thought this movie was gonna be bad. You know, B-Movie bad. It was released in 1980 and it has one of those cautionary "Don't do this or that" titles.... Boy, was I wrong. This is some fucked up shit right here, my friends. A guy who lives with his mother (Ed Gein, anyone) comes home to find her dead in her chair. She abused him since childhood, often holding his arms over the open flames of the stove. Evil voices tell him that since she's gone now, he can do whatever he wants. Apparently, what he wants is to turn a room of the house into an incinerator, kidnap bitchy women, and burn them alive. He does just that, all the while spiraling further into madness. There are some really twisted scenes in this movie. Perhaps it's a misogynist retaliation on women's lib, but I think it's more of a warning to potentially abusive mothers. Be nice to your kids, or else they're going to leave your dead body in a room and torture and kill young women just like you tortured them!

The Devil's Rejects (2005 review)

Sorry it's taken so long. I went to see it on May 12th, and here it is a week later. Truth be told, after watching it, I didn't want to write anything. It's not being released until mid July, and the preview I went to was more than likely uncut. So the version that you all who are waiting until it's national release to see it may well get a slightly different film than what I saw. It seemed pretty brutal for an R-rated film, but who am I to question the ways of the MPAA?
As I write this, I still am unsure as to what I want to reveal to you about this film. It is a sequel (to House Of 1000 Corpses, for those of you who didn't know) and so therefore it is highly anticipated by fans of that film. At any rate, here goes. I'll do my best to leave out any spoilers.

This film picks up about two weeks after the last one left off. Although how Otis (played once again, brilliantly, by Bill Moseley) grew so much dark facial hair in two weeks is beyond me. I thought he was an albino? Anyway... The Firefly clan sleeps peacefully amongst the evidence of all the brutality they've unleashed over the years, only to have an assload of cops show up for a shootout. Baby and Otis escape - but Mother Firefly stays behind and gets taken in by the sheriff. His brother was the sheriff who got blown away in HO1KC. So, you know, he's got revenge on the brain even more than he does justice. Everything spirals out of control with Baby. Otis, and Captain Spaulding on the run from the cops. Trouble never stopped them none, however - as they proceed to go about doing what they do best - gettin' fucked up and doin' fucked up shit. The longer it takes for Sheriff Wydell to get to them, the more insane he becomes; and when he finally catches up to them, he's got a taste of their own medicine to administer.

I'm not gonna tell you anything else... the end is pretty dramatic (and probably would have benefited from being a little less drawn out) and I don't wanna give anything away for ya.

What I will say is that this film is very different than HO1KC. Where that was following the same template as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, The Devil's Rejects has more of a Western feel.... criminals on the run from the cops. Except the criminals are the Firefly folks, and we all know, they's real crazy-like.
Baby does not once deliver her obnoxious cackling in this film, making her far more tolerable. Otis is just as dark and evil as ever, and in some scenes, even more so than before. We get to see some sides of Spaulding that we haven't seen before (and maybe we don't want to now, but it is pretty funny, at least.)
Zombie has improved as a director, and achieves what he set out to do with House and failed: this film really has a believable 70's feel. There's no Zombie music, no weird hyper-edit music video garbage - its the real deal. There's some areas that could use improvement, but jeeze - it's his second film. Not bad, all things considered. I have high hopes for his next feature, whatever and whenever that will be.

There's more, but really, that's enough. If you are a fan of HO1KC because of the characters, you will enjoy this movie as well.

A Bell From Hell (aka LA CAMPANA DEL INFIERNO) (review from 2005)

A Bell From Hell (aka LA CAMPANA DEL INFIERNO)
A young man is discharged from a mental institute, and goes forth to unleash strange practical jokes on people, specifically his aunt and three hottie cousins. All kinds of madness ensues.

This film was pretty intense. Shocktacular, if you will. It'll make you wonder about the crazies in your family.

Pretty much a step above the rest in the genre, I thought... just because it's got a more realistic (but at the same time, surreal) sense about it than other films of that time period - no supernatural baddies in this one. Reviews I read around the net described it as Art-horror. *shrug* I guess. When I think of "art-horror", I think of Suspiria. This was arty in a more cerebral way. Where Suspiria was pretty colored lights and a bangin soundtrack, A Bell From Hell had weird camera angles and even weirder situations - but not necessarily out of the ordinary, if you get my drift. If not, you'll get it if you watch it, so go. Watch it. You'll probably like it better than Boogeyman or whatever drecky J-Horror remake they're churning out these days. Cuz, you know, this is better than all that. I think so, anyway.

Aftermath/High Tension (updated review from 2005)

  (original review written in 2005, updated and added to because dammit, I can...)

I first saw this 30 minute film several years back on a crappy video dub. It has finally made its way here on DVD, along with two other short films by director Nacho Cerda. Quite possibly one of the most disturbing films about necrophilia, (as if there's such a thing as a film about necrophilia that isn't disturbing...) this film will dig deep under your skin. Not much disturbs me, dear readers, but this one made me feel more than a little dirty watching it. Highly recommended for those of you who are losing faith in the horror genre - this is absolutely not for the squeamish, and it may make you want to reconsider how your body is disposed of after your death!

I'm not going to tell you too much about it, 30 minutes is not a long running time and I know you folks dislike your spoilers. I would like to add, however, that the DVD release of this comes with another of Cerda's short films called Genesis, which is very strange and creepy but not quite as visceral and disturbing as Aftermath.

Next up is a movie that I'm sure most of you have seen already given the extreme hype that surrounded it upon its release - High Tension (aka Haute Tension).

 

I had been hearing rave reviews about this film since it was first released, however, I heard many people speaking of cut versions, and being the purist I am, I decided to wait to see it until I could get a definitive uncut version to watch. Oh, and not to mention free - I work at a video store, and that equals free rental city, baby. I'm done taking $20 chances on films that may or may not rule. In the case of High Tension it would have been worth it. Despite a couple of unrealistic deaths (suspension of disbelief is definitely necessary to fully enjoy this film) I thought it was excellent. From beginning to end, there is, just like the title implies, high tension. This film has tons of suspense, and an equal amount of gore, with a twist ending that I truthfully did not see coming. Considering that this is one of the first horror films to come out of France (at least, according to the writers/directors of this film) it's really quite impressive, and it comes highly recommended... Though I know lots of you probably saw this long before it got it's much overdue release in the US, just go rent it and watch it again - especially if you have not watched the original, uncut director's cut version.

old reviews

I started Fright Skool as a MySpace page ages ago. I've forgotten the login information, and I've come to despise MySpace anyway, so I am about to transfer some of my old reviews onto this blog, for posterity.

Enjoy!

Terror On Tape!

Remember the Mom and Pop video store that you used to go to back in the day? I had a few of them because my family moved to a new town sometime around 1989 when I was 13. This particular video compilation, Terror On Tape, was on the wooden shelves of Hennessy News in Scituate MA. These days, Hennessy doesn't have much of a video section anymore, but when I was growing up, they were the place to go for your horror flicks - the other video rental store up the road got rid of their horror section and beefed up their kids section, but the lady who owned it was great and I would often rent non horror movies from her, just because I enjoyed stopping by and chatting with her now and then. Anyway, I'm getting off track here.
VHS is pretty much long gone at this point, and "Big Box" covers like the one Terror On Tape came in are valuable, desired collector's items for fans of the genre. All the movies showcased in this awesomely trashy compilation were those flicks! So you can imagine how I wish I had rented this one back when I had the chance - it's not an easy one to find, and I don't even have a VCR anymore anyway! I remember there was a picture on the back of a girl sitting in a chair, and I think she might have been dead, but it's been so many years I don't remember too well - but I remember it freaked me out a little! As an adult, I've actively searched out stuff like this that bothered me as a kid, it never bothers me now, in fact I enjoy finally seeing them because it's amusing how much more active my imagination is compared to how cheesy these movies end up being! Well, someone out there was kind enough to rip it and upload it to the internet, and I watched it this afternoon.
Terror On Tape is a hilarious video compilation of some of the goriest scenes from Continental Video's distribution collection from back in the early-mid 80's. Hosted by Cameron Mitchell, who plays a creepy video store clerk. He shows 3 different customers scenes from these schlockfests, often with amusing results!
Lots of outrageous gore and sex scenes are highlighted from various titles: (cut from Imdb.com)
Blood Feast (1963)
Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964)
Color Me Blood Red (1965)
Ghost Story (1974)
L'ossessa (1974)
Frozen Scream (1975)
Suicide Cult (1975)
To the Devil a Daughter (1976)
Ruby (1977)
Cauchemares (1977)
Prey (1978)
Vampire Hookers (1978)
The Kidnapping of the President (1980)
Incubo sulla città contaminata (1980)
Nightmare (1981)
Blood Tide (1982)
The Slayer (1982)
The Deadly Spawn (1983)
Scalps (1983)

Needless to say, good times! Now I just have to run down this list and see how many of these I can find to watch. I've already seen the Herschell Gordon Lewis titles, along with Nightmare and Cathy's Curse (aka Cauchemares - wtf is that?) Those are worth a revisit, anyway.

So... who's up for a movie night?

Nightmare On Elm Street... zzzzzzzz

My sentiments exactly.

I'm not anti remake, generally speaking. See, I love watching horror movies so much that I'm willing to give them all a chance. As a life long fan of the Elm Street series - and especially of the first movie, I was looking forward to the remake, hoping that they would make it even more visceral and nightmarish than was possible back in 1984. What I got was a snoozefest of biblical proportions.

None of the actors - NONE of them, not even Jackie Earle Haley, gave a performance worth looking at. The "kids" were boring and predictable and I didn't care if they lived or died, in fact, I was glad to see them go, when they did go. The death scenes were dull compared to the original! The Kris death scene was so lame I almost wanted to cry. What was burned into my memory as a child and still freaks me out a little to this day was dumbed down and had almost no blood in it. And the way it screeched to an abrupt halt was so anticlimactic! They did it better in Wes Craven's New Nightmare, to be completely honest!

Freddy had a couple of minorly creepy moments, but nothing compared to the original, yet again. I hate to compare this to the original, but since they attempted to borrow from it's script so many times and fell flat with everything they took, it's hard not to. The exception was the body bag scene, but even that was kinda lame, especially Nancy's reaction to it. I'm sorry, but if I ever saw my dead friend, bloody in a bag standing in front of me and screaming with blood pouring from her mouth, I think I'd be a lot more shook up than she was!

Probably the freakiest shot in the whole flick.

At any rate, I did go into this with an open mind, I really hoped I would like it, but it just plain bored the crap out of me. I will probably watch it again when it's released on DVD, more or less to see what they cut out of it, since the deleted stuff actually looks like it could have made the movie a little more frightening. But again, the characters were played so dull that it was hard to give a shit about any of them. Nancy was especially disappointing - she's a far cry from the heroine Nancy of the original series. She doesn't grow a pair until the very end, and even then... Blah.