Horror movies to avoid - extensive spoilers throughout

[Neil W]

Silent Bloodnight

I have a feeling that this slasher/revenge movie was made with some European Union dosh. There is something about the EU on the end credits, but I wasn't concentrating too carefully at that point.

But this film is worth catching if only for the truly bizarre experience of a group of native-German speakers declaiming the entire film in heavily-accented English which appears to have been learnt phonetically, so devoid is the delivery of any connection with the meaning of what's being said. I don't know if any of them could act in German, but they certainly can't act in English.

One star for sheer unintentional hilarity, and a second for boobage.

 

[Neil W]

...thanks man, now I have a catalog schlock to keep my rainy afternoons entertained...

Aaargh! That was exactly the opposite of my intentions! I can do a separate thread for bad films which I recommend, if felt helpful.

 

[GNTLGNT]

Aaargh! That was exactly the opposite of my intentions! I can do a separate thread for bad films which I recommend, if felt helpful.

...no!...don't be irritated....I'm a rare bird, I really LIKE bad films like that...to me, it's comedy and the "good" bad ones are even better...

 

[Neil W]

Seriously, most of these are bad bad, not good bad!

 

[Neil W]

Monster

If I say "Cloverfield in Tokyo, only with no monster, boring characters, and highly unconvincing and far too frequent video effects employed to signify tape breaks," then I have just given you a complete review of this film.

What else can I tell you? Let me add that the two main girls are pretty but anodyne, there is a lot of night vision green tinted footage, and, um...

Did I mention that it's boring?

I must say that anyone with any experience of cheap knock-offs (of whatever type) knows that the cheap knock-off, by and large, isn't worth bothering with - designer shirts, high-end perfume, wrist watches...

Movies are no exception. This is a cheap knock-off of Cloverfield, and isn't worth bothering with.

 

[Neil W]

Bad Biology

Don't get me wrong - I have nothing a against a movie telling the story of a woman with multiple clitorises which cause her to murder her sexual partners and then give birth to mutant babies two hours later, who gets together with a fellow who has a mutant penis. Really I don't. I'm under no illusions that it's great art (and this movie does make it clear that you're not expected to take it on board as great art, so thank you for that, at least), but I'm quite open to such a movie.

However, I would ask that it be interesting or amusing, and well written and well acted, and it is not any of those things. Despite the enticing storyline (I am not being totally serious), this is not a rewarding viewing experience - it is trashy, it is intended to be trashy, but it is also complete rubbish.

And I couldn't give a stuff about what the director might or might not have done in the past, I'm solely concerned with this movie. And it's rubbish.

 

[Neil W]

Martyrs

Anna and Lucie embark on a revenge movie in respect of childhood abuses. In the course of this a ghost story briefly pops up before the movie sinks into a pit of graphic torture and unremitting extreme sadism. I normally synopsise, but I really don't want to, and you really don't want me to, believe me.

This film is very well made, and features excellent makeup effects and some brilliant performances. But it is unremittingly nasty, has minimal redemption for any of its nastiness and, while it doesn't exactly revel in its sadism, it clearly believes it is saying something important. The fact that it is not clear what it is saying (or that what it is saying is inconsequential) means that the unpleasantness which precedes it has been of no value.

 

[Neil W]

Raging Sharks

What do you get if you cross Jaws with Alien? Not Raging Sharks, that's for sure, even if that's what the producers hoped. No, this is a fairly rubbishy story of utter predictability, acted half-heartedly by a batch of nobodies headed up by a couple of has-beens, and enhanced by a vast number of stock shots - explosions, locations, and sharks. Oh yes, sharks. Lots and lots of 'em: so many, in fact, that the stock shots seldom match what is going on around them. Or each other.

The original footage is fairly well shot - well-lit, in focus, camera firmly on tripod where relevant, hand-held where relevant.

But a little bit of technical competence doesn't make this a good film. And it doesn't make it a so-bad-it's-enjoyable film, either.

And I still don't know what you get if you cross Jaws with Alien.

 

[no bounce no play]

lol Neil... Are you related to Joe Bob Briggs?


(I enjoyed reading your reviews )

 

[not_nadine]

I have not seen any of these (or heard of them)

 

[Neil W]

Pearblossom (aka Life Blood)

Two beautiful lesbian best friends are fleeing down a deserted road (one of them having murdered a Hollywood star) when God arrives (in the persona of another hot lesbian), does away with the murdering one and appoints the other one - the one who has been snivelling "I don't understand!" since the film started - to be an angel. After reconstituting the bad lesbian in response to requests from the good lesbian, God sets them off 40 years later, at which point they are now vampires, and the bad one kills lots of people and they end up holed up in a store in the desert with a tubby shop assistant while a midget deputy pursues them.

I think you will agree from the synopsis that this dog's breakfast of a movie could never be anything other than utterly dreadful, and so it proves to be. The female leads - hotties both - remain resolutely clothed throughout, thus doing away with any conceivable reason for watching this twaddle.

 

[Neil W]

lol Neil... Are you related to Joe Bob Briggs?


(I enjoyed reading your reviews )

Who is Joe Bob Briggs?

 

[Neil W]

I have not seen any of these (or heard of them)

If you value your sanity, try to let it remain that way!

 

[Neil W]

Basket Case

A young man lugs around a hamper which turns out to have his homicidal (separated) conjoined twin in it. Said twin commits multiple murders, very bloodily.

The large number of reviews on IMDb tend to acknowledge that this film is poorly made trash, but then praise it highly for having some originality (fair enough) and a lot of blood.

Neither of these is sufficient, in my view, to make up for a bad script, worse acting by the unknown cast, and a monster which manages to be hilariously unconvincing, appallingly badly constructed (necessarily, given a budget which appears to be too small to cover the average week's shopping), and arguably incapable of life, let alone multiple homicides, in the anatomical form designed for the film.

A half decent idea and fountains of blood are insufficient to compensate for the sheer amateurishness of the production.

 

[Neil W]

Camel Spiders

The three phases of C Thomas Howell's career are interesting - he started off as a promising juvenile lead. When that fizzled out, you would find him in steamy would-be erotic romps, usually with Joan Severance. And the third (and ongoing) phase finds him in a never-ending succession of truly ropy science fiction movies. Camel Spiders is one such, also featuring Brian Krause, and thereby answers the question "What happens to actors from TV series when the series ends and they don't get another offer?".

At one point, after someone suggests a creature is a spider, an expert suggests reprovingly that he should count the number of appendages. "Six" comes the shame-faced reply as the audience counts 8 legs and a pair of pincers.

This is poor.

 

[Neil W]

Rites Of Spring

Some teens beset by a mad slasher encounter kidnapping crooks, and all have trouble staying alive.

This movie comprises Cabin In The Woods syndrome crossed with a routine kidnapping plot, and does neither very well. While it is relatively professional technically, it is woefully inept artistically. Here are the main flaws:
1. Nothing is explained:
2. None of the victims is even slightly sympathetic;
3. Far too much tearful snivelling, screaming etc.;
4. The usual idiotic behaviour (having downed the assailant, let's just run away, leaving him to get up and pursue us);
5. A non-ending - the film just stops in the middle of a victim running away.

This is one to be avoided.

 

[Neil W]

Frontier(s)

You know you're having a bad day when you fall foul of that very worst of groups to live in a remote farmhouse, Nazi cannibals.

This French entry in the cabin in the woods / last man standing / slasher / torture porn stakes has everything you need to know about it in the sentence above. The endless wide bomb-shelter tunnels beneath the farmhouse are an interesting, if improbable, location. There is some decent acting among some of the victims, albeit of the endless snivelling kind, and it is good to see one of the characters having a "worm turned" moment. And if endless gratuitous and explicit violence is your thing, then you are going to really enjoy it.

Personally, I found it grubby, unpleasant, one-note, derivative, misogynistic, exploitative, unbelievable, and just plain nasty.

 

[Neil W]

Demoni 2... l'incubo ritorna

Demons take over an apartment block.

Spreading like zombies (in fact, they might as well be zombies), these creatures inhabit an Italian horror film which is badly dubbed, badly voice cast (the chief black bloke from the gym gets an especially duff vocal performance), poorly scripted, badly acted, and populated by monsters in poor makeup with a particularly preposterous mini-monster - this is so bad as to be hilarious. Except it isn't.

I give it a couple of marks for having some visual style and some decently realised action with some good stunt work. Otherwise, this is pretty dreadful stuff.

 

[Neil W]

Dead Time

A rock band go to a deserted industrial warehouse to shoot a promotional video: a slasher in a sack mask proceeds to kill people one by one.

This British slasher/last man standing film features soap star Leslie Grantham in a brief cameo, and buckets of fake blood. Those are the only reasons for seeing it (if, indeed, they are reasons for seeing it).

And they pale into insignificance next to the reasons for not seeing it which include - but are not limited to - bad script, worse acting, unconvincing killings (the only reason for the film to exist) and poor image quality and cinematography.

This is one to be avoided.

 

[Neil W]

Train

A group of Americans students are guided onto a train which turns out to be for the purpose of harvesting their organs.

If one puts to one side the host of criticisms which can be levelled at the practicalities of the story on screen (lack of medical hygiene, cliché behaviour etc. etc. and unending etc.), there remains one overriding criticism.

I have no problem with violence and gore in films - Eden Lake, for instance, featured some savage violence and was an excellent film. The thing which concerns me is when a film takes the glee which this one does in parading, for its audience's delectation, gratuitous sadism just for the sake of it. The deeply unpleasant and graphically sadistic violence shown here has little justification in narrative terms, it is there solely to appeal to the gorehounds.

Deplorable.