I thought, as a fan of the horror genre - and as a person who has mentioned Zone Horror (formerly The Horror Channel) half a dozen times in my Digibox write-up - that I should review some of their offerings.

The 'ratings' shown (i.e. 15, 18, etc) are the ratings given by Zone Horror (in the EPG).
Indented blocks are comments relating to "Jason's reviews" on the channel's website.

I have scored the films 'out of ten', aka "The Rick 'VideoFiend' rating":

• 8-9: Forget just taping it... Take the phone off the hook and watch it. Then buy the DVD!
• 6.75-7: Tape it, watch it later.
• 5-6.5: Tape it. If you don't get to watch it, no big loss.
• 2-4: Don't bother.
•   1: Life's too short...

	Wa-hey!, real home-grown material!
	Small-town America bites back!
	A movie made "Down Under".
	Made "Down Under and right a bit". :-)
	Un film d'horreur, normalement en français et avec des sous-titres.
	Un film dell'orrore da Italia, normalmente in italiano e con il sottotitolos.
	Sumimasen - eigo-ga wakarimas ka?

Quick links (131 reviews, 16 favourites (and 125 pictures ; with links to 19 larger pictures)):

Altered Species  −   Asylum Night   −   BackSlash  −   Berserker: Hell's Warrior  −   Black Magic Rites   −   Blood Reaper   −   Bloody Birthday   −   Bloody Murder  −   Bloody Murder 2  −   Breaking Dawn  −   Caged Terror  −   Charade   −   Children of the Corn II   −   Dark Shadows  −   Deadbolt  −   Dead Scared  −   Death Valley: The Revenge Of Bloody Bill   −   Demon Wind   −   Descendant   −   Deuces   −   Devil's Prey  −   Dolly Dearest  −   Do You Wanna Know A Secret  −   Eegah  −   Elvira - Mistress of the Dark  −   Fair Game   −   Flowers In The Attic  −   Ghost Game  −   Ghost Lake   −   Goth  −   Grim Weekend   −   Guardian  −   Headhunter  −   Hellblock 13  −   Hell's Highway   −   Humanoids From The Deep  −   Hunting Humans  −   I Am The Ripper   −   Ice Cream Man  −   Inferno  −   Insecticidal  −   Invader  −   It Waits  −   Killing Car  −   Kolobos   −   Laboratory   −   Left In Darkness  −   Leprechaun   −   Leprechaun 2  −   Lover's Lane  −   Lycanthrope   −   Malevolence  −   Maniac Nurses  −   May  −   Mommy  −   Mommy 2 - Mommy's Day  −   Monster In The Closet  −   Night Hunter  −   Nightmare Man  −   Night Orchid  −   Night Skies  −   Nude For Satan  −   Party Crasher  −   Penetration Angst  −   Progeny  −   Pulse   −   Pumpkinhead  −   Raven's Ridge   −   Raiders of The Damned  −   Reign In Darkness  −   Requiem For A Vampire (Vierges et Vampires)   −   Revenge of the Psychotronic Man   −   Satan's Little Helper  −   Second Sight   −   Serial Killer   −   Shades of Darkness   −   Shower Of Blood  −   Shredder  −   Shriek (aka The Shriek)  −   Sight Unseen  −   Sleepaway Camp 2 (Unhappy Campers)   −   Sleepaway Camp 3 (Teenage Wasteland)  −   Slugs  −   Slumber Party Massacre III  −   Snapped  −   Snapshot   −   Sometimes They Come Back...Again  −   Sorority Girls And The Creature From Hell   −   Soundman   −   Spider Baby   −   Stalked  −   Stealing Candy  −   Strange Behaviour (Dead Kids)  −   Subhuman  −   The Bone Snatcher  −   The Choke  −   The Brink  −   The Dark Dealer  −   The Dead Of Night   −   The Dentist    −   The Dreaded   −   The Evil Below  −   The Grapes of Death (Les Raisins de la Mort)  −   The Greenskeeper  −   The Haunting Of Morella  −   The Horror Story  −   The Hunt  −   The Invisible Maniac  −   The Iron Rose (Le Rose de Fer)   −   The Living Dead Girl (La Morte Vivante)   −   The Lonely Ones   −   The Nude Vampire (La Vampire Nue)   −   The Red Right Hand  −   The Risen  −   The Scarecrow  −   The Source   −   The Tooth Fairy  −   The Two Orphan Vampires (Les Deux Orphelines Vampires)   −   The Unborn 2  −   The Wisher   −   They Are Among Us  −   Torment  −   Through The Fire  −   Trauma   −   Trees 2 (The Roots Of All Evil)  −   Turkey Shoot   −   Unknown Origin  −   Vampires Anonymous  −   Vampire High (series)   −   Zipperface Zombie Lake  −  

Foreign title quick links:

I Am The Ripper   −   La Morte Vivante (The Living Dead Girl)   −   La Vampire Nue (The Nude Vampire)   −   Le Lac des Morts Vivants (Zombie Lake)  −   Le Rose de Fer (The Iron Rose)   −   Les Deux Orphelines Vampires (The Two Orphan Vampires)   −   Les Raisins de la Mort (The Grapes of Death)  −   Vierges et Vampires / Requiem Pour Un Vampire (Requiem For A Vampire) 

My favourites (8/10 or more) quick links:

Asylum Night {9¾/10}   −   Breaking Dawn {8/10}  −   Ghost Lake {8¾/10}   −   I Am The Ripper {9/10}   −   It Waits {8¼/10}  −   Kolobos {8/10}   −   La Morte Vivante (The Living Dead Girl) {9¼/10}   −   Left In Darkness {8/10} Le Rose de Fer (The Iron Rose) {8/10}   −   Les Raisins de la Mort (The Grapes of Death) {8/10}  −   Pulse   −   Serial Killer {8½/10}   −   Shades of Darkness {8/10}   −   Soundman {8/10}   −   Spider Baby {8½/10}   −   The Risen {8/10}

Altered Species [15] (5¾/10)

   Sombody:       She is trash, man.
   Somebody else: You're talkin' about my girlfriend, man.
   Somebody:      Get outta my face, man!

Asylum Night [18] (9¾/10)

   

Without the slightest hint of a doubt, this was Zone Horror's best acquisition. I said this when the channel was called "The Horror Channel", and years later under the name of "Zone Horror" it still holds true.

Ellen Cole is an agency nurse. She goes to work a shift at a mental facility. The staff are not interested in knowing her, referring to her as "the agency" (well observed - that happened to me too!).
In actuality, she is an undercover reporter. Her brother is in the facility for the murder of their parents - something Ellen believes him to be innocent of. Somehow she must find a way to expose the abuse and get her brother out; for he never should have been sent to that facility in the first place.
Ellen gets more than she bargained for. Sexy female doctors, blood, sultry nurses, blood, the 'nice bloke' who happens to turn a bit 'odd' when he is holding a machete, blood, and the Christmas party.
Oh yes, and vampires.
Lots of vampires.

This is a new (in 2004...) British film, made by a new company called Revolt Films who promises more of the same in the future. I cannot wait!
As you watch this film, it is really difficult to believe that this is a debut feature for the new Revolt Films company - even in its best moments, Hammer Horror isn't a patch on this!

It is quite clear that the creators of this film are avid horror fans. This is certainly no "cash in on the trend" type of horror flick, nor another "let's put a bunch of teenagers in a forest..." film. Oh no. This film has been written by horror fans so it contains all the things that horror fans would want in a movie. Some great characters, great situations, and considering the low budget - the special effects were okay too.
It is really nice to have the humour played subtle, rather than several recent 'big' horror movies that were mainly funny because of stupid things they said or other movies they ripped off. Asylum Night is not like this at all. It assumes we viewers have a brain. It is a thinking man's horror movie.

In fact my only complaint with Asylum Night is the finalé, however this didn't put me off the movie - everything up until that point was near genius.
(I think I'll just have to shrug and say 'artistic differences')
I won't spoil it for you by telling you what I didn't like. Watch the movie, perhaps you can guess... If you really really cannot wait, open the 'source' of this web page and read the comment.

Ellen Cole is well played by Adrienne Carlyle; and David Horton puts in a brilliant performance as the sanest person in the asylum.
This is definitely a not to be missed film, and congratulations to Revolt Films for such an entertaining and intelligent horror movie...

Some behind-the-scenes pictures: Adrienne Carlyle (Ellen Cole) gets the giggles; filming the Happy Hacker scene; and the leading ladies at the film's premiere...

   

Backslash [18] (6½/10)

Berserker: Hell's Warrior [18] (6/10)

Black Magic Rites [18] (5½/10)

 

In Italian with English subtitles.
The odd screen format is space for the subtitles!

Imagine a Jean Rollin film given a slice of Italian style. The result? This movie. Black Magic Rites.

The story concerns a group of people in an old castle, following an uneasy shift of perspective forward and backward in time. A girl is captured and sacrificed to a creepy-looking statue. In the dark ages, a 'witch' was burned at a stake. The statue is, I think, a representation of this witch and it needs hearts and eyes and blood from virgins to bring it alive.
The group gathered in the castle are enjoying a song and dance; but they are, not entirely coincidentally, the descendants of the ones that were originally involved in the witch burning.
Lots of attractive girls will scream, and lots of people will act really badly. But somehow you don't mind as the sets are colourful in a way that perhaps only the Italians can manage (a horror film verging on ever-so-slightly-tacky cartoon qualities). And, being a film made by somebody other than Dario Argento, it contains all of the colours of the rainbow.

I'll tell you what, guys... Grab a beer, watch this movie, and see if you can tell me what the exact plot is supposed to be. There's a basic premise which could be written in one paragraph, and there's everything else which makes little sense and is full of logic faults!

Never mind. It is nice to look at. :-)
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Blood Reaper [18] (6/10)

   

A low budget movie, and it shows! A bunch of people camp in the woods. Some weird guy with a guitar sings a creepy tale and... well... The gory effects are amazingly fake and the acting is so hammy...
That's why I liked this film, to be honest. It is a great one to share with a few friends and a couple of cans. You can all shout at the TV, like: Hey, moody dark-haired girl! You're scared, right? You're looking for your boyfriend, right? So WHY ARE YOU WALKING AROUND THE FOREST ALONE???
But it gets better, you can all shout NO! Don't go into that dark cave, you stupid girl!!!
Yup, this film has 'em all. Horror story clichés pile up relentlessly, like a motorway crash in thick fog. It just doesn't stop!

Oh, the plot? Well there's this bunch of people (supposedly teens, but a little bit too old) in the forest. And there's this guy with an axe and his face obscured by a gas mask. Just like in Dr. Giggles, they run and he walks and he still catches them. Who is he? We never find out. Why is he killing? We never really know. Why don't these kids run the moment one of them disappears? That'd make a crappy movie. Who is the weird old person? Local colour, I presume. Why is GasMaskGuy's shack missing most of it's walls? Better visuals?
To be honest, the plot is little more than "young adults vs deranged killer"... But it's a fun ride all the same...
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Bloody Birthday [??] (3/10)

Three babies, all born at the same time during a solar eclipse...
That's the sci-fi rubbish that prefixes this film that looks as if it is from the late '70s or early '80s. We catch up with the three children about ten years into their lives. And, suddenly, as if it is some sort of born destiny, they start killing people.
This is one of those movies where you watch and have to ask "how stupid ARE those adults?"...
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Bloody Murder [18] (6/10)

You can download the script from the Bloody Murder Films website (direct link (incomplete?)).
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Bloody Murder 2 [18] (6½/10)

You can download the script from the Bloody Murder Films website (direct link (incomplete?)).
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Bone Snatcher, The [click to redirect]

Breaking Dawn [18] (8/10)

The movie, basically, is an attractive female med student is assigned a particularly difficult case in an asylum as part of her thesis work. To pass her course, she has to communicate with him and learn enough about him in order to be able to write up about him.
But he has a few surprises up his sleeve - including warnings about the shadowy creepy dude called Molokai.

This is a movie that you need to watch without disturbances. Take the phone off the hook, lock the doors, close the curtains, turn the lights out. Then watch this film, while taping it. When the twist in the tale is revealed, suddenly everything that has gone before will take on a slightly different context, a 'paradigm shift' if you will. Rewind the tape, watch it again to see how everything falls into place.

I cannot say anything else, I don't want to spoil it for you!
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Brink, The [click to redirect]

Caged Terror [??] (2/10)

Now you might be thinking that this doesn't sound so bad, right? The sad fact is that the above paragraph covers fifty four minutes of the film, which really should have been edited down to around ten minutes so that something interesting can happen.

So, now that we have the extra characters, the films picks up, right?

Yes and no. I mean, stuff happens but you are waiting for the big climax (if nothing else) and it never arrives. I found the film's ending to be badly structured and just as you are hoping for the film to really get going, the credits roll...

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Charade [12] (6/10)

 

Audrey Hepburn on The Horror Channel? Say it isn't so!

Actually, it is so. This gentle film follows a woman's discovery that her husband had a whole secret life that she didn't know about. And following his death, there's a whole lot of money that a number of unpleasant characters want.
This film isn't scary, but it provides plenty of opportunities for the well-dressed Ms. Hepburn to scream and be scared; including her enduring a rather innovative torture in a phone booth.

Set in Paris. There's no flag as I'm not sure (right now) if this is an American or British production.

You can download the script from the Classic Movie Scripts website (direct link).
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Children of the Corn II [18] (6/10)

Following on from Children of the Corn, this film takes up the story, but it is perhaps bizarre in that it continues exactly where the original left off - no 'year later' or anything like that.

We, essentially, follow the story of a jaded newspaper reporter and the son that doesn't think much of him. And along the way they encounter a woman running a B&B and a young girl on a moped, respectively.

What to say? Well as a lot of material written by, or based upon, Stephen King - the undertones of the story are the religious weirdness that exists in some parts of America. We have the priest banging on about 'fornication' and 'sinning most vigorously', while the evil children are evidently led by an entity referred to as 'He Who Walks Behind The Rows'.
You'll notice through much of the early part of the film there is a boy dressed entirely in black, black hair, and his eyes are weirdly black as well. This should have been a bit of a clue to... like... everybody.

This won't win awards for being a great horror film, and it probably won't even go into a 'classics' category. But it is worth watching, in a Bloody Murder kind of way - don't take it seriously, it is actually sorta funny...
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Choke, The [click to redirect]

Dark Dealer, The [click to redirect]

Dark Shadows [??] (6¾/10)

When she was a little girl and televisions had not yet discovered the delights of colour or video editing, my mother would run home from school to watch a series that has attained a cult status. A series called "Dark Shadows".
This, showing on Zone Horror is a late eighties remake. Actually it is copyright 1991 however the clothing and especially the hairstyles seem late-'80s, unless California clung on to that decade a little longer than the rest of us. In any case, a remake was inevitable given that the original was recorded on to videotape in the days before proper tape editing (so fluffed lines and accidents remain); the whole concept was actually quite a good one, perhaps just a little before its time.

It is hard to explain what exactly "Dark Shadows" actually is. A woman goes to a spooky old house called Collinwood, in Maine (filmed in California), to be a nanny to a very young Joseph Gordon-Levitt who you may know from "Third Rock From The Sun". There is crossing and double-crossing, a vampire called Barnabus, a fairly convincing French accent in a girl going by the name of Angelique (which, incidently, is the 'name' of my laptop - no relation)...

I find it a little bit cheesy in a "Dallas" sort of way, however mom says it is fairly faithful to the original series. One thing we cannot deny is that it is extremely complex. If you are faithfully following the story, you'll find it sucking you in regardless of the cheese or the ham.
This is truly one of this series where you miss an episode and you won't know what the heck is going on - and God help anybody stumbling in part-way into the story! Unfortunately this may have been its ultimate downfall, for only around 12 episodes were made...

Maybe Zone Horror could try to secure the rights to show the original b/w series? That would be most cool...
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Deadbolt [15] (7/10)

Dead Of Night, The [click to redirect]

Dead Scared [??] (7/10)

This is a funny, witty, and sharp story with some memorable characters - especially the dumb (or is she?) blonde in the bunny outfit. There's a name that ought to be familiar - Tiffany Shepis.

If you wish to look this up on IMDb, I should point out that the end credits say this movie is called The Hazing. The "Dead Scared" title is probably an English version because we Brits don't have the tradition of 'hazing' ceremonies.
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Death Valley: The Revenge Of Bloody Bill [??] (7/10)

 

A bunch of teenagers travelling down a lonely road in a posh minibus, en route to some sort of competition that they will take part in. They think they hit somebody. It turns out to be a gun-toting drug-pushing black man with a bad attitude (this unfortunate cultural stereotype is, really, the only let-down of the film).
The man directs them, at gunpoint, to a ghost town where it is always sunset - hence the name Sunset Vallet - in order to track down the man's accomplice who just ripped him off. Sadly for them, the ghost town isn't just a ghost town. Time stands still, and as if that isn't enough, it is full of zombies!

Chelsea Jean, pictured above, makes a suitably quirky and fiesty lead character, even if it does appear as if she is trying hard not to giggle in a few scenes. She plays it this side of calm and collected, which is a touch creepy in itself. Bus hijacked? Oh, okaaay. Zombies gonna get you? Oh, okaaay. Sure, she gets upset once or twice. She even screams once. But nothing seems to get her down. I wish she'd be my girlfriend if I ended up in a horror flick!
I think we need a 'heroine' who isn't going to lose it as soon as things start to turn bad, who is suitably girly for a girl, without being all Gung-Ho Ripley. She's cute too.

This is obviously a low-budget affair, and it shows (the logic of the plot frequently defies itself and indeed the very definition of logic), but the sheer enthusiasm of the cast glosses over the various (numerous) deficiencies - you know, like the guys walking and the zombies running and they still get away, despite the place having some sort of weird circular thing going and it being about the size of a postage stamp...

As I check this review in MSIE, I notice that either my digitiser's idea of colour is seriously messed up (over-yellowification aside), or Chelsea's top is kinda blue in one picture and kinda green in the other! Oh, and with such an open-neck garment, you can also play "spot the bra straps" which appear to come and go.
But hey, the girl isn't too freaked about the living dead, so I guess vanishing bras and tops that change colour aren't going to faze her either. Just so long as she has the bra when she needs to leg it, right? ☺

Bottom line? The photography is decent, and provided you don't attempt to take the plot seriously, this film is well worth a watch. For "artistic reasons", okay? To check out the rich lush and vibrant perpetu-sunset photography...

The ending credits has this to say:

Demon Wind [18] (6/10)

   

A young man called Cory (Eric Larson) wants to go and discover his roots after having weird dreams. He takes his sweet (in a librarian sort of way) girlfriend Elaine with him (Francine Lapensée). Despite warnings from 'the locals', he carries on going. And, along the way, a bunch of friends turn up for a party.
The first thing that isn't right is the house is a ruin. You can walk all around it. But go inside the front door, it's a house. Intact.
From here we have gore, grizzle, and all sorts of Evil Dead-style hijinks; in fact this is pretty much a rehash of The Evil Dead, only with a lower budget.
Much about this movie doesn't make sense, some of the acting is awful, and the effects are obviously effects (such as the oatmeal-puking zombies), but through it all it is so silly it is pretty funny...
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Dentist, The [click to redirect]

Descendant [15] (6½/10)

   

Two descendants of Poe meet each other and all sorts of chaos is unleashed as one of them has a bit of murder in mind, which is presided over by the ghost of Poe looking somewhat like a hammed-up John Cleese. You almost expect to see Manuel appear with his "I know nah-thing!" catchphrase.
There are a some action bits in this movie, not so many scares, but loads to giggle at.
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Deuces [??] (6/10)

 

Twenty years ago, a crazy old man was arrested for murdering... himself, apparently. Thus he was never sent to jail.
Fast-forward twenty years and this man knows something. You can't go in that room. The room protected with a really silly little lock. The police come to take him away, again, as he is refusing to let anybody near that room even though the old theatre has been closed a long while and foreclosed just then.
Our intrepid reporter has a feeling so she goes to find out what all the fuss is about. Along the way, being 'intrepid', she unlocks the room and walks in. But there's nothing in there!

Can't you just see the clichés piling up? Well here's the sci-fi part. Every twenty years there is some sort of... I don't know, cross-dimensional alignment or something. By this time my brain was more interested in eating spaghetti in the dark without spilling it than the flimsy science. Anyway, stepping into that room would, somehow, cause your 'double' to arrive on earth. Your double, of course, being the exact opposite of you (but looking pretty much the same, same hair colour etc). So for our intrepid reporter, her double was a good journalist that dished dirt, popular with the guys, and into kinky sex. In short, everything our original isn't.
This film does quite a good job of following the reporter's confusion ('but I didn't write this!?'), though one might suspect this had more to do with the cost and logistics of getting the same person on-screen twice rather than any major character development.

Hokey ending, but an enjoyable enough way to waste some idle time provided you don't try picking holes in the plot!
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Devil's Prey [15] (6½/10)

You may find that one of the cast looks really familiar but something isn't quite right. Given the face, and given the name (Charlie O'Connell), it is pretty obvious to me now that he's the younger brother of Jerry O'Connell (you may know him from Sliders, Joe's Apartment, etc).
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Dolly Dearest [18] (5/10)

...you guessed it. A possessed doll. This time the doll is female, and the child is female. But it doesn't really matter. The amusingly-named Rip Torn as the father of the family, his wife, the two children, and the religious Spanish-speaking housekeeper are basically not given enough decent material here. Nothing is scream-worthy. Hell, the possessed children aren't even scary when they've got their game faces on. In fact, I'd reckon anybody older than the young girl (usually wearing a puke-making "little girl" dress with frilly lace and such) in this film would probably find the dolls amusing rather than creepy.

I hope and I pray one day for a film to take up this genre and do something new an interesting (as Asylum Night was for the well-worn vampire genre), but, alas... this is much a by-the-numbers sort of film.

That isn't to say it is unwatchable - it is quite okay for watching while eating your ready meal, just don't have too many expectations. In fact, don't have any expectations at all...
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Do You Wanna Know A Secret [15] (6/10)

Dreaded, The [click to redirect]

Eegah [18] (?/10)

Elvira - Mistress of the Dark [15] (6½/10)

The story? Erm, there isn't one exactly. Elvira is this bizarre combination of Kelly Osbourne and Gonzo (yes, the muppet), and she is a witch who has just inherited a haunted house. No, not a clichéd warts and cackle sort of witch, and definitely not a Neve Campbell sexy-leather-look witch. She's the sort of witch that you might expect to find in a Leslie Nielsen movie.

No, I'm not going to tell you how the film goes. It is unbelievably silly. But trust me on one thing - next time you feel 'down', pop open a beer (this movie is best experienced when you are not entirely sober) and if it doesn't at least make you giggle, you'd have to be a tax inspector...
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Evil Below, The [click to redirect]

Fair Game [18?] (6/10)

An amusingly kooky woman is an artist. Living alone in a rather cool apartment with her artwork and her adopted cat (not exactly a clever mix, I speak from experience!) after breaking up with her boyfriend.
Only, her boyfriend - a computer programmer according to the EPG description, but not really mentioned in the film - doesn't take nicely to her new-found independence. So he keeps close tabs on her (by that I mean ridiculously close) and looks for innovative ways to ensure her life doesn't continue for much longer, unknown to her. But when the penny finally drops thanks to a chance video diary segment... well, what next? Watch to find out!
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Flowers In The Attic [18] (6½/10)

The first problem in the arrangement is the lady of the manor, the children's grandmother. She has decided that things would be better all around if the grandfather doesn't know of the existence of the children - apparently conceived in sin between a woman and her brother (though all looking rather normal for such inbreeding). The woman decides to lock the children in an upstairs room and give them the run of the attic, but since the children are 'unholy', she will never show them affection.

They are helplessly trapped and - slowly they come to realise - forgotten. But what can be done with four children that no longer exist?

Starring a young Kristy Swanson (later to be seen as the movie version of Buffy, as well as other sort-of-action roles), and based upon a novel by Virginia Andrews, this is an interesting tale of what people are capable of when all that matters is money...
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Grapes of Death, The [click to redirect]

Greenskeeper, The [click to redirect]

Ghost Game [15] (7½/10)

Seen in the credits - thanks to: "Rami's Mom for her awesome meatball recipe", plus some other amusing stuff. So don't turn over as soon as you see the credits roll.
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Ghost Lake [18?] (8¾/10)

   
   

Let's start with the lead actress. Tatum Adair. Looks to be mid-twenties to thirties. Blonde, round face. And - especially important - a little on the heavy side. Not 'fat', but not the fickle waif-like 'hip chicks' that often feature in horror movies (and are usually sex-obsessed and get slaughted before the first advert break). While this film has all the elements of a horror film, Tatum - playing the part of Rebecca (Becky) - made this film both watchable and believable. This is very important. And that is why some films score lower than you might expect.
I give high points to films with artistic merit or good stories or to a story you feel you can believe in, where you actually care about what happens to the lead characters. Compare this with, say, Hell's Highway where you watch to see how the girls will get dispatched and if any will beat The Big Bad - but if you are really honest with yourself, asides from perhaps picking a 'favourite', you can't say you really care which ones live and which ones die.
Not so with Ghost Lake.

And before I describe the premise of the film, I feel I must mention that the little girl is called (in real life) Azure Sky Decker. Azure Sky? Come on! Still, a flick through Google ought to find kids given far worse names than that...

Becky is prompted by her parents to go out, to enjoy herself. She wants to be back by ten (ahhh, isn't that sweet?) but they tell her she can stay out until eleven at the earliest. Well, she meets a bloke with one of the cheesiest chat-up lines ever and she belies her niceness by getting into her car and getting her brains porked out before even a first date. She returns after this blast of insane promiscuity to find her parents dead. For those watching, bear with me as this part of the story is intercut with the funeral. When she starts seeing ghosts in the house, she leaves. Runs, a long way, to a little house by the lake - the only place she ever felt 'safe'. Only, there's something in the lake. One might imagine the title of the film could be a bit of a clue! Knowing about it is no real use really. Doing something about it. That's the key. And that, as always, is the hard part.

Overall, this was an extremely enjoyable film, and one with quite a long running time (around 1h55ish!). Because it was filmed on the border of a lake, and sometimes in the rain, it seemed Becky had to get herself soaked at practically every opportunity - sometimes for reasons bordering on the illogical - and all the while those around her not believing the things she said she saw, all adding up to the idea that perhaps Becky is more than a little bit unhinged; the whole time she was wrestling with the fact that she indirectly killed her parents (had she returned at 11pm, they'd not have died).
As you can tell from my score, I liked this film a lot. While I could nit-pick (as you could with anything), I found this film to be enjoyable, believable, entertaining, and well-presented.

Having looked this film up on IMDb, I was pleased to see that it was either adored or hated - no middle ground. This sort of situation usually arises because a certain demographic of the horror film fans watch this but expect something else. Sadly for them, the 'hook' of Tatum Adair's breasts at the start of the movie was about all they found worth watching. Perhaps they are emotionally incapable of relating too this sort of movie? It is all about the story and the atmosphere. There is no gore, no screaming zombies, no explosions, and not a lot of action... This has dead people coming back to life, but it is not a George A. Romero production.
And for some reason people slag off the cheapness of the special effects and the quality of the acting and then make comparisons to Lord Of The Rings (LOTR), which is perhaps the most asinine reasoning I've ever heard. Even if I was making a movie with a couple of million from a lottery win (I should be so lucky!), I doubt my effects and actors will rival those of LOTR - and I doubt my production would be anything like the scale of that movie. It was a huge investment with huge hype looking for a huge return. So totally out of the realms of most movies to even think of drawing a comparison.
So, okay, the effects could have been better. What do you expect for a more budget movie? I've seen worse, and some budget movies get around this problem by avoiding effects altogether.
So, okay, the acting could have been better. On the other hand, I've seen good actors ruin a film (and nearly their careers) by acting in the wrong sort of movies - what was Alyson Hannigan thinking when she agreed to be in Date Movie!?!?! The acting in this film is actually not as bad as some people wish to portray.
I feel both the acting and the special effects are actually above par for the low-budget category - compare with Raiders of The Damned which is low budget and pretty bad. Compare with a plethora of Troma Team movies that are low budget and range from 'so-bad-its-good' to 'absolutely appalling'.
Finally, it is sad that people expect to find a little something 'new' and 'different' in a movie, and when it occurs they would prefer to complain about it instead of saying "that was new". In Ghost Lake we see several scenes, at the beginning, that are presented in a split-screen style. Sadly the split-screen is showing the same thing (unlike the series 24 where the splits showed parallel action) so the effect was not as good as it could have been. What could have been a stronger idea is to have Becky dancing in one half of the screen, while her parents are dying in the other half; instead of the more usual cutting to and from the two parallel threads. But, never mind, it was an experiment. Not one that I feel worked, but I'm not going to mark the film down for it.
To sum it up, the IMDb reviews actually fall into two categories: those that 'got it' and liked it, and those that didn't get it.
I got Ghost Lake. As a bit of a fan of Jean Rollin (Le Rose De Fer / The Iron Rose), I understand this pace of film-making and, hence, I found this film worthy of 8¾ out of 10. It could have been better (I'd have dropped the slutty sex scene for sure), but then again I could probably nit-pick every single film in this review! Oh, wait... That's why I am doing! :-)

Goth [18] (7/10)

Grim Weekend [18] (7/10)

   

A bunch of people take a weekend off work to go up to an old house in the woods. The male lead entices a workmate by telling her that there will be an orgy and then she'll be fed to the monster (woo! can't hardly wait, huh?).
Barely into the journey, the females pick up another female and then this entourage make it to the house.

As you can imagine, people die. Well, actually it starts with decapitated dolls and moves on to people, along with a slightly distracting music track and a unnecessary psycho clown (Stephen King's It anyone???).

For much of this movie, I would have rated it maybe a five or six out of ten. That was until the denouement which was unexpected, amusing, and wrapped up the film nicely.
Grim Weekend isn't an award winner, but it is worth watching...

...unless you happen to be Jason Jones of The Horror Channel. His thoughts are:

But it is a horror in the other sense of the word too. It is, quite simply, horrific that a group of people, who are so completely without talent as the makers of Grim Weekend, were ever let loose with a camera.

and, amusingly:

DIRECTOR: Ed Hunt
STARRING: Oh who cares, we’ll never hear from them again.

I think Jason is being a bit harsh with this movie. Yes, the plot is crap. Yes, it is a pile of stupid clichés, and yes... okay, many (most?) of the so-called plot twists are gibberish. I would like to think that I am capable of writing a better story.
 
Sadly, though, if our criteria for 'good' horror movies required a completely plausible plot and good acting... well, that would probably wipe out a huge chunk of channel's playlist in one swoop. What did Jason think of Demon Wind? Did he score it only 1/10 and not bother listing the cast, because the plot was illogical, the acting worse, the special effects worse still, and all of it would seem spookily familiar to anybody who has watched "The Evil Dead"...
There is just something about the horror genre that lends itself to cheesy badly scripted movies with poor special effects (do they even deserve to be called 'special'? perhaps so - in the 'special ed.' sense of the word!). The vampire movie and the zombie movie are entire sub-genres that are so full of cheese that it is something really exciting (yes, I have no life!) to find a movie of said genre that is written by somebody with a brain.
 
This, of course, isn't an ideal situation. As a fan of many horror movies, I would like to think that the genre produces solid watchable movies. Every genre has its turkeys, it is just ours... well, we have more than our fair share.
 
Perhaps Jason should be forced to sit down and endure "The Class of Nuke Em High part 3" (one of the few cult/horror movies I actually abandoned, it was SO bad - and that is saying something given that I watched "The Psychotronic Man" from end to end... once).
On the other hand, it is kinda novel that Jason writes a review on the channel's official website that suggests, basically, the film is crap and don't watch it. I wonder how he got that past his superiors? At least we can't say he isn't honest! :-)

Guardian [15] (5½/10)

My main problem with the movie is that just as it actually starts to get moving, it offers a three-shots-ring-out ending, and then the credits roll.
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Haunting of Morella, The [click to redirect]

Headhunter [18] (6/10)

It is hard to imagine why this film has an 18 cert as it doesn't pass as a horror. It is more a slightly creepy detective flick - and there's plenty of character-building here to take place between the incomprehensible beheadings. There's a reasonably attractive female detective (who has a somewhat bizarre dress sense), and the old cliché befuddled male cop who smokes and drinks too much and doesn't have a clue really. The twist this time is that his wife found love in the arms of another woman, so at least that's a small diversion from the norm.

Now the problem is that this demon thing will decapitate anything that gets in its way, and this includes the two detectives lumbered with the task of trying to put everything together. This film, on the whole, was quite likeable - but by this point we introduce the fact that the demon can assume people's identities (like it can become your mother, kind of thing - like the T-1000 in Terminator 2). As of this point, the film just seemed to become a little bit formulaic, by the numbers. It was obvious for the last twenty or so minutes roughly how it'd turn out.
The characterisations aren't bad, the location shooting around Miami isn't bad (we do get beyond the dark-alley zones of some other movies), and the whole voodoo demon thing is absolute garbage, but enjoyable garbage, if you've nothing better planned for your evening...
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Hellblock 13 [18] (4/10)

Sadly, the stories are ludicrous rather than scary, and the obviously-fake prosthetic effects make the dead people look more like a mouldy version of that big marshmallow guy from Ghostbusters than anything actually... you know... dead. (cue excited moans and whimpers from the prisoner!)

If you dubbed over some of the bad language (à la ITV), then you could probably show this in the afternoon... on ITV perhaps?... for kids to smirk at. I think Nickelodeon's Are You Afraid Of The Dark has more spook-potential than Hellblock 13.
Furthermore, to be pedantically picky - the female prisoner says that the block is known to the inmates (living and dead) as 'hellblock six, six, six' so why is this film titled something else?
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Hell's Highway [18] (7¾/10)

Let's get the complaint out of the way first. The EPG description says:

Friends on a road trip pick up sexy hitchhiker Lucinda, who turns out to be a homicidal maniac. It's time to kill or be killed, but Lucinda refuses to die.

The film... Well, a group of young adults go on a road trip. In a big-ass motor home. They are crossing... somewhere. It looks like Thelma & Louise country, so perhaps Arizona or New Mexico? The driver suggests a little detour to a location where some seriously weird drugs grow, could be some cash in it, right? The creepy weird dude at the run-down gas station tells them to leave in no uncertain terms. It isn't safe, you see. Crazy people, away on the drugs, roam the lands. Of course, it is a horror movie so they completely ignore the warnings and plough headlong into a desolate hell.

The characters. Let's see: there's the goth girl, partial to black, called Cashie (yes, cash-ee, not Casey). A gay homey - if you can imagine it. A lovey-dovey-make-us-pukey couple. Two more girls, the first (the blonde) is rather clueless. She has a fuzzy-teddy shaped backpack. The other (with the horrible blue (?) hair) is like a big sister. Both of them enjoy sucking on pacifier-shaped lollipops. Tell me, are Harmony and Tara New-Millennium Valley Girl names, or is the writer of this film perhaps aware of the creations of Joss Whedon? :-) Actually, Harmony (the blonde) does a pretty good job of sounding like Kermit in parts. I wonder if she was originally from Baltimore? Anyway, that leaves the driver. He is dorky in a cool sort of way. Like Riley. Or what's-his-name from Dawson's Creek (no, so totally not Dawson!). Oh yes, and nobody called Lucinda.

The dialogue is snappy, and amusing. The characters are rounded enough that everything just 'flows' nicely, even if the Big Bad of the film is a little illogical (what's the weird floaty-cam business all about?). And in some parts the cinematography belies the fact that this is a budget horror flick. And one of the best bits? The evil in the film makes sense. I'm not going to give it away, but there is a definite reason and sequence of events.
Nothing is so depressing as a manifestation of evil that just 'is', with no rhyme or reason. Refer to The Evil Below for an example of how to make evil suck...

As usual, as a film viewer (and some-day-writer) I have some ideas for alterations, but these are more personal 'tweaks' than anything else. That, for me, is one of the signs of a good movie (perfect movies would need no tweaks; crap movies I wouldn't entertain the thought). Certainly, I'm glad I have it on videotape. I can watch it again when my Digibox isn't working... like maybe tomorrow night?!
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Horror Story, The [click to redirect]

Humanoids From The Deep [18] (5/10)

Hunt, The [click to redirect]

Hunting Humans [18] (4/10)

The reality? The first flaw is the god-awful narration. It is like one of those private-eye movies, only the narration is spoken with the sort of smug self-assurance I'd hoped was left to die in the late '80s.
The second flaw, and this is a very critical one, is "so bloody what?". Do we have a cute girl in peril? No. Do we have a decent guy fighting for his life? No. Do we have... actually, I'll tell you what we have - we have a killer with no positive attributes what-so-bloody-ever. None. Not a one. Even Hannibal Lector (as in Silence Of The Lambs) has attributes that made him likeable, and a whole mind-play with Clarice Starling.
The critical importance of this is revealed when you start to examine the movie's plot. If you don't like, empathise, or at least have some sort of feeling for the main character then you are not going to care if he has met his match. If he lives. If he dies.
Worse still - spoiler alert - his match is another smug self-assured prat that thinks of himself as a serious killer. Or something. By this time the cynical crap spewing out of Aric's mind (but not his mouth) was really starting to annoy me.

I suggest you watch this movie once. Then while the credits roll you can let your mind float and give to you all sorts of cool ideas that would improve the movie. It's a shame that the writers didn't do this in the beginning...
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I Am The Ripper [18] (9/10)

   

In French with English subtitles.

This is a rather interesting French movie. The video quality is grainy and fuzzy. To be honest, it looks like something I could have made with my HandyCam. So you begin watching and think "mmm, it'll be a half hour shortie". In fact, this movie goes on and on and on. Two hours of it. And along the way we are treated to an amazing array of post-production effects and things that - if really filmed with a HandyCam - must have been pretty difficult. Some of the scenes are quite frenetic, and somewhat low-bitrate MPEG starts to break down and everything gets a bit blocky. Amazingly, I felt that this actually added to the film!

Anyway, enough of the nerdy crap. A bunch of young adults are in a flat in Paris. Having a bit of a party, discussing comics and horror videos and so forth. Suddenly this cloaked weirdo starts bumping off the cute girls and anybody else who gets in the way. It is death. He'll take you out in whatever way best suits him, the more overkill, the better!
The story is more involved than that, involving dead people doing Death's work for him, and Death getting to like his work a little too much, but I don't want to give too much away.
All in all, once I became accustomed to the somewhat distracting camera style (and bizarre bizarre editing that made me keep thinking my Digibox was losing signal), I found this to be a very enjoyable and blood-soaked film.

In the French way of speaking, the 'i' is said like an 'ee', so the title would be spoken as I am the reaper (Je suis le moissoneur), which makes more sense than 'ripper'.
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Ice Cream Man [18] (6½/10)

Here, the man is not interested in having sex with children. Film censors and general morality is rather touchy about that sort of thing, so instead we'll make the ice cream man your regular loner-slash-murdering-nutcase. I think it speaks volumes about society's so-called morals when raping kids is way beyond taboo but murdering them is fine.

Anyway, he's mad. As expected. Everybody around him isn't much saner, and those working in the mental health facility are so beyond help. And he is an ice cream man. A figure of many communities that is just begging to be a person in a horror flick.

As I write this on my PocketBook II (Psion) organiser, I am sitting in the dentist's waiting room. They made a horror movie about a Dentist. I think the star of that movie is busy drilling inside somebody's mouth eight metres away... and it is my turn next.
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Inferno [18] (6/10)

The plot of this film from 1980 is less confused than some Argento creations. Basically there's a story of three woman (described variously as 'the three mothers' and 'the three sisters'). This story passes from New York to Rome, and back again, and everybody who encounters the story dies in some manner. It's a fairly nifty idea for a horror movie and a lot has been done with it (such as The Ring bringing the cursed object into the video era).
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Insecticidal [??] (6/10)

Mere hours later, the bugs have escaped and mutated into gigantic form - a praying mantis that stands twice the height of a human, a beetle bigger than an armadillo.

As much as I might have wanted to like this film, I just found it to be a little bit... well... dull... The jock was thick, the nerdy girl was a picked-on nerd, the look-at-me-I'm-wonderful Cordelia-type was exactly that (though she did at least get her come-uppance). The large blonde (Cami's sister?) was a lesbian, the Asian girl worked out with lethal-looking knives (surely against security policy to have those on campus?), the male security guard sat in the tree and masturbated over watching the Asian girl work out... and apart from geeky-girl they were all more interested in sex than anything else. This made the characters somewhat predictable, and when coupled with the CGI bugs that where quite well done but still CGI, and a story-line that went along more or less as expected.....

I don't know. It was a pleasant way to pass a few hours and I also used this film as a test (the computer recording directly to harddisc, never tried it for the duration of an entire film, I now have to look to XviD'ing a 4Gb file on a 450MHz machine, ouch!); but all in all there is nothing special. It's just a by-the-numbers soro-house horror with big-ass bugs being the Big Lurking Evil, and that synopsis is about all you need to know.
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Invader [15] (7¾/10)

You might be inclined to compare it to a latter-day War of the Worlds; but this is only true in a very general sense. The big point here is that it could have gone two ways, and the military decided to shoot to kill. In a way, the title of the film - Invader - prejudices you. From the outset you are lead to think of this alien as an invader, when 'visitor' could equally have been valid.

Perhaps on a repeated viewing this will be elevated to the eight-point-zero necessary to make it a "favourite". For now, it loses just a tad because I'm not entirely certain about the ending. There are good characters (especially the subtle change in viewpoint of the male as he starts to let fear lead him to the military conclusion - shoot and then think), and a good premise.
All in all, a quite satisfying sci-fi movie!
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Invisible Maniac, The [click to redirect]

Iron Rose, The [click to redirect]

It Waits [18] (8¼/10) [Canadian]

This is obviously a budget film, pretty much all of the action takes place at a ranger hut in the woods, and the surrounding (fairly generic) woodland. However this film could be used as an example of when a budget movie works.
What I think lifts it out of the ordinary is the ambiance. There is plenty of it, along with a good dose of creepiness, and an appropriately chosen soundtrack.
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Killing Car [15] (6/10)

A Jean Rollin film where an Asian-looking woman (picture Lucy Liu) driving a big old American car goes around killing people and leaving a little model car at each murder scene.
The story is one of Rollin's more logical, it makes sense and there isn't a vampire or demon in sight. The let-down is the obviously low budget production values and some of the hammiest acting outside of an Italian horror flick... I can sort of imagine this working with a few more psychological games (instead of the "victims" remembering too easily something they shouldn't recall that quickly). Jean Rollin does quite well with his budget that must have stretched to four figures including both sides of the decimal point. Hats off to him, also, for keeping the camerawork relevant (instead of his usual penchant for long shots of trivia) and, for him, what would pass as tight editing. This film doesn't linger, it moves. That's why I've scored it 6 instead of the 5 the plot would deserve.
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Kolobos [18] (8/10)

   

The film begins with a girl, running, hit by a car. She is taken to hospital, and there she recounts her story as a series of discussions with the nurse and flashbacks. It started with an advert - freeloaders wanted. A bunch of young adults would be selected and stuck in a house together. There would be TV cameras all over the place. It would be a Big Brother sort of deal. Only it all goes very wrong when it turns out the house is booby-trapped and whoever is running the show has mass homicide in mind.
Perhaps one of the most critical points of this movie, and the one that has critics and viewers inventing all sorts of theories, is the ending. As before, you can read the HTML comments for more, or you can watch the movie...

The title, Kolobos, is loosely explained in the movie - something Greek and something about self-mutilation.

However, Jason was more than a little disturbed by the title of this movie. Actually the title "Kolobos" is what enticed me to watch this film in the first place. It wasn't "House of Horror Live" and "Evil Dude Three - Slasher House" or any of the run-of-the-mill 'dumb' names that horror movies get saddled with.
Kolobos was a unique name. Kolobos was a different name.

Jason, poor bloke, then goes and Googles and reads up on the biblical mythology and spends a lot of time to discover uncanny parallels between Armageddon and the happenings in this movie. While his efforts are very much appreciated (n