Nine people with no apparent connection are drugged, kidnapped, and put in a house with no way out. There are seventy-five cameras and just as many hidden microphones all over the house. It seems that an eccentric lunatic is behind everything and he will offer five million dollars to the person who walks out alive.

Blah. Blah. Blah. That's pretty much the plot. There have been better "group-trapped-in-inescapable-situations-and-have-to-kill-each-other" movies. Cube and Saw II come to mind. What sets this movie apart from those is that the accents are among the WORST I have ever heard. Did you ever want to hear Dennis Hopper use a fake Irish accent? Me either. Speaking of Dennis Hopper, he's totally out of place in this movie. Out of everything they could have gotten him to play, he plays...a priest. Yeah, Dennis Hopper as a priest works about as well as Keanu Reeves as an English Aristocrat. Dennis Hopper seems to be at his best when he's playing a dickhead in some capacity. They should have captialized on that.

Before I go any farther, the nine people that are kidnapped are: a priest; a dancer; a designer; an aspiring rapper; a former tennis pro; a woman on probation; an unsuccessful composer and his wife; and a detective. This could have been GREAT if it was actually a character study. Sadly we get to know the characters for all of ONE SCENE. After that we're supposed to relate to them I guess. Oh well, after that scene they're all disposable anyway.

In between the Universal horror films of the 1930’s and the Lions Gate era of horror we’re in now, there was Hammer Studios, a film company that began in the early 50’s but didn’t achieve great success until 1957 when it released The Curse of Frankenstein, and with that film a new era of horror was ushered in that would last until 1975 and would forever leave a mark on the history of the horror genre, a history of flesh and blood.

Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror is an amazing in depth look at one of the most prolific and profitable movie studios of all time and one that supplied a lifetime of thrills and chills to it’s unwavering legions of fans, that is still growing to this day. If you ‘re a fan of modern day horror, then you owe it to yourself to take a stroll back into time and gain a greater appreciation of the horror that came before and to pay respect to the horror elders.

Narrated by Hammer icons Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, Flesh and Blood takes you deep into the studios beginnings and let’s you be privy to all of the events that lead to the studios incredible rise and to it’s eventual fall. And by the time it’s over you will feel as if you have taken a lifetime tour of a horror museum.

Writer Stephen Mark Rainey has done it again with this brilliantly scary short story collection. Forgoing my usual sit down and read the whole book method I decided to read one or two stories a night before bed. Needless to say my dreams/nightmares were quite something for a while there. A few times I even had to get up and find something innocuous to read in order to scrub my brain out after a particularly scary tale so I could relax enough to fall asleep. This didn’t always work.

The stories and tone of the book put me in mind of Stephen King’s early short story collections. While I didn’t love every single one, most of them kept me sufficiently chilled; definitely worth the price of admission. A few highlights:

Fugue Devil: My favorite in the collection. I hesitate to tell you too much about this one because if you know about the fugue devil, well, then it knows about YOU. And you don’t want that, at all.

People are dying in Central Park in New York City. They are trying to kill themselves as quickly as they can, however they can. Initially it is believed that terrorists are the culprits behind it all, but this is quickly ruled out. Soon, it’s not just happening in the park, it’s happening in the entire city, and it’s spreading! What is causing this? Is Mother Nature up to her old dirty tricks again? Aliens? Is Humanity doomed? This, my friends, is The Happening.

The Happening is a movie from M. Night Shymamanlayaan. You may know him from such gems as Signs and The Sixth Sense, or from such not-so-gems as The Village and Lady in the Water. Love him or hate him, he always causes a stir when he releases a movie. This movie is no different. After doing a little research beforehand (the life of a horror movie reviewer is NOT all fun and games), I found that most critics (and humans in general) totally threw this movie under the bus. The wild unpopularity of this movie is enigmatic to me, because I think it’s a fucking beauty of a movie.

The movie moves well, its VERY intriguing, and it’s also entertaining. It’s also brutal. The kills made me cringe. I think that was due to several things. They were realistic, they were graphic, and once you knew that somebody was affected (or "happening-ed"), you knew the end result, you just had to wait for "how".

The Happening
Diary of the Dead
Cloverfield
I Am Legend
Hatchet
The Mist
Saw IV
Shutter
Species 4
Inside
Daemon
Doomed
Dracula III
One Missed Call
Fair Haired Child
Severance
AVP:R
Ju-On 2
Black Sheep
Silence of the Lambs
Clown
Wishing Stairs
Night of the Living Dorks
HeartSick
5ive Girls
Fido
Judge Dredd vs Aliens
Zodiac
Are You Scared?
Magic
The Washingtonians

Carrie White is a shy young girl in her senior year of high school. Carrie is also a bit of a social misfit and outcast. Most of her classmates either make fun of her or don’t even know that she exists. But at the senior prom, Carrie White will break out of her shell and all will finally notice the quiet young lady, when a power that she has been hiding inside of her will finally be let loose for all to see.

In 1976 Carrie, directed by Brian DePalma, stormed onto the big screen and introduced the world to Stephen King’s first published novel. In 2002 it was remade as a television miniseries, but is it as good as the original or does it just get a bucket of pig blood dumped over it?

This is going to be a pretty simple review folks so here it goes; If you have read the novel and never seen the '76 version, then you will really like this film. If you have seen the '76 version, then this film will suck. If you have seen the '76 version and read the novel, you will probably like both versions for different reasons. See I told you this was a simple review.

On the box in the video store, Shrooms had a critic from Zoo Magazine raving “Blair Witch on acid!” After some extensive research (read: Google and Wikipedia) I discovered that this is in fact a real magazine, but it’s German so I have no idea if the review is real. I just can’t imagine anyone watching Shrooms and thinking it was in any way similar to The Blair Witch Project, let alone Blair Witch on acid. I’m guessing the reviewer has never done acid, or shrooms for that matter. I’d also venture to guess that the reviewer figured that a horror movie set in the woods makes it similar to Blair Witch. And finally, I’m guessing said reviewer knew that if she said something nice about Shrooms she’d finally get her words on a movie box, because there’s not much nice to say about it.

I’m not saying this is the worst of the worst. There were a select few things I enjoyed in the movie, and I’ll start with them. The camera work is pretty slick. The color and style is different than most low budget horror, and I’m guessing most of their money went to this. The movie doesn’t look low budget at first glance. The acting is pretty decent, but nothing to write home about. There’s a scene with a talking cow that I enjoyed. And finally, the premise of the movie is pretty awesome. When you go out in the woods and do shrooms with your friends and bad things start happening, what do you do? Is it the trip or is it real?

For centuries the demons known as Thunder and Lightning have been imprisoned in an ancient scroll, but when a curious professor sets them free, all of mankind may become the slaves of these ancient evils. But luckily for us there is something out there that is specially tailored to handle these types of situations it’s The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense and they are sending in their top three agents to handle the situation. It’s time for a road trip as Liz, Abe and Hellboy are heading to the Orient in a quest to find the sacred Sword of Storms and to stop the ancient evil once again.

The Right Hand of Doom and crew are back, but not in the flesh this time around, because this time it’s the animated version of the those that bump back when something goes bump in the night in. Written by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola Sword of Storms is a fantastic journey into the world of Hellboy and the mythos of the exotic east.

With betrayed loves, demons, lone samurai warriors, trippy adventure sequences and a huge honking- red skinned- horned headed-trench coat wearing, hero, how can you go wrong? Answer? You can’t. Sword of Storms is a slick, stylish production from start to finish and with it’s excellent animation it looks like it has been ripped right off of Mignola’s drawing board. Also the voice acting is top notch as well, thanks to the return of Ron Perlman as Hellboy, Selma Blair as Liz Sherman and Doug Jones, the man in the suit in the Hellboy movie, gets to add his voice to the character he brought to life on the big screen.

Ethel Janowski is crazy. Crazy and fat. Ethel has just been released from a mental institution into the care of her Grandmother with the promise of outpatient shock therapy. Ethel really doesn’t seem too crazy, that is, until Granny locks up the food. Oh Granny, we hardly knew ye. Luckily for Ethel the local market delivers. Except Ethel doesn’t have any money…

“That’ll be $80”
“I ONLY HAVE FOUR FIFTY!”
*stabstabstab*

You get the picture. People get in between Ethel and her food and they have to die. Ethel’s really not that bad of a person, girlfriend just wants to be left alone with her Nilla Wafers, is that really so wrong?

Criminally Insane (aka Crazy Fat Ethel) was written and directed by porn director Nick Millard. Millard also made Criminally Insane 2 (ahem, Crazy Fat Ethel 2) and Death Nurse (supposedly part three but there is also Death Nurse 2 which I guess would be Crazy Fat Ethel 4? Or maybe I just like typing Crazy Fat Ethel.)

This is a pretty fun movie, surprisingly.