The story takes place after the events of the first film, as we follow a young female war-criminal investigator that’s hot on the trail of a man long-believed dead named Klausener. Accompanied by a veteran war-criminal hunter, the duo make their way past enemy lines and through a forest where there’s a hidden war between US and local military against seemingly unstoppable Nazi zombies. With the help of a special forces team, they must fight their way back to the underground bunker that started it all.

I liked the movie to an extent. It kept me interested from the start and offered a fairly solid pace throughout. I just wasn’t really into the new characters (mostly because we’re given zero development) and found a lot of what made the first movie good, lacking in this sequel. As stated above, there’s no tension or foreboding atmosphere like in the first and there’s no development as far as the characters and story goes. We run into quite a few plot-holes along the way, but nothing too distracting, especially since things move along fast, so they’re either ignored or forgotten.

The film made some good use of POV camera work during a couple scenes when we see things through the military’s perspective as they fight off the zombies. Some of it was actually a bit creepy, but I’m glad they didn’t overuse it, since it definitely would’ve gotten old very fast. As expected from a zombie flick, we’re given a decent amount of blood and gore. Sadly, we’re also given a silly climax, especially when the outcome of one of the characters is revealed, who plays a key part in the seemingly half-assed final sequence. In the end, the film is a rather mixed bag, offering good and bad aspects.

Fans of the first film may find this sequel a bit disappointing, as we’re essentially given more action and mayhem at the cost of proper atmosphere, tension, and character/story development. Though, it does manage to deliver some decent action and Nazi-zombie carnage, which may be all that some viewers are looking for. Either way, if you can ignore the plot-holes and silly climax, it’s a pretty decent action-horror pic, especially if you enjoyed the first. Just don’t go in expecting everything that made its predecessor good.

Courtesy of upcominghorrormovies.com

There’s loads of violence, blood, and terror but the real story is a mom desperately trying to redeem herself by frantically becoming responsible and loving as she makes every effort to get to her daughter while terror strikes from all corners.

Although the film does initially have a vaguely similar feel to recent paranoia thriller “At Your Door”, it moves quickly from building unease into inexplicable chaos and murder as violence erupts. The film rattles along at a good pace, and the frequent scare scenes help to keep the viewer entertained and engaged.

The cinematography, with dark colors and flashes of gore, definitely remind me of George Romero, as does the opening scene with the ill fated paperboy (Kyle Ward), and definitely the somewhat unexpected closing scene. I believe the acting by everyone, especially Neve McIntosh, is excellent – you can really feel the tension and terror these people are experiencing as the horror develops. To me, this is one of those movies that seems too short and could easily have been maybe half hour longer with even more character development subplots.

All and all, this is a brilliantly fun little film from the UK that I seriously hope gains a great following here in the states. So…if you’re looking for a really good suspense/horror movie,with great performances, good plot and some gore…this is definitely a MUST see.

What I’m reviewing is the 40th Anniversary Edition released by Shameless on Blu-Ray. The regular DVD of this version is a UK Import so it won’t play on American DVD players unless you have a PAL/NTSC converter but even though this is a UK release, because it is “All Region” Blu-Ray it will play in American Blu-Ray players. The picture is, in my opinion stunning and so is the sound. You will however notice the difference between the extra scenes that were added due to loss of quality in those scenes. There is a few other options. Amazon.com has an NTSC release but I cannot speak of the quality or if it is really uncut for I have not seen it.

Michael Brandon plays the protagonist Roberto Tobias and Mimsy Farmer (you might recognize her from Autopsy ‘1975′ and Il profumo della signora in nero‘1974′) plays his wife Nina Tobias. Roberto is a rock musician , a drummer and some strange man is following him. One day he confronts this man and accidentally kills him with this mans own knife. From then on things really start to go down hill. Someone is taunting him with photographs and threats. For there was some stranger in a mask taking photos. Is the man really dead? Is it a set-up?

Luigi Cozzi who was a co-writer said that this film really wanted to add a little cinema fanstique to it so they devised a plot turner which is how the film got its title. It is said that the last image a person sees remains in their retina for awhile so they contacted one of my favorite special effects men Carlo Rambaldi who was to create a laser contraption that would give the effect that would allow us to see the remaining image on the victims retina (Of course this is impossible in real life). When they used this laser what they saw were four flies.

He hires a private investigator who of course meets his end as does a number of other people. One thing I will say is that this film is riddled with interesting characters including Bud Spencer as Godfrey ‘God’, Roberto’s friend and confidant. There isn’t a whole lot of blood like his previous films in the trilogy but there is definitely some impressive camera work and visual narrative. One of the more interesting things is a repeating dream that Roberto keeps having. Someone at a party brought up something about executions. From then on Roberto has these dreams about a man being ceremonially decapitated by a man with a sword. Each time he has this dream it gets more and more explicit. Until finally we see the man decapitated.

—–Spoiler—–

Things escalate when Roberto discovers that the man he killed isn’t really dead, it was a set up. While talking to Nina and notices her necklace and what he sees is a fly. What happens next is a paranoid and violent frenzy on the part of Nina as we discover the truth behind her madness and her marriage. She was born a girl but her father always wanted a boy so he dressed her up as boy(Giving reason for tom boyishness). She chose Roberto to marry and seek revenge because he reminded her of her father. She , in a delirium, shoots Roberto, not fatally, and tries to escape leading to one of the interesting deaths in any cannon.

She gets in her car and gets crushed by a truck in front of her in slow motion resulting in her decapitation. They (the crew) worked very hard to get the effect to work. Finding the right camera. Finally they found the right camera but what they didn’t realize is that the camera was designed for black and white film and they were using colour so they had a few miss-steps. But they got it and I think it’s awesome.

—–Spoiler End—–

All in all, it is not his best work and my least favorite of his “Animal Trilogy” but the score by veteran composer Ennio Morricone is strong. I would call it (in comparison to his other work) a middle of the road thriller but still effective. Not as strong as say Profondo Rosso (1975) but definitely worth seeing. And on this Blu-Ray it has never looked or sounded better.

Extras include an exclusive interview with writer and assistant Luigi Cozzi, restored film rebuilt with prior missing footage, New English audio re-mastered from original vault materials, Optional Italian audio+English subtitles, trailers and Photo gallery.

Directed by and co-starring Bill Gunn (of stage and Cosby show fame) this film tells the story of an Anthropologist, Dr. Hess (Duane Jones-Night of the living dead) who is ritualistically stabbed multiple time while traveling in Africa and becomes what could be considered a modern day vampire. Honestly, the only similarity is the craving for blood, which is explained in the bonus material to be more of an addiction. It’s explained that the studios wanted a horror/vampire flick and the director wanted a film that was an in-depth look at addiction. The median was “Ganja & Hess”. The main conflict transpires when an overly jumpy and philosophical assistant George (Bill Gunn) commits suicide at the doctor’s estate.  The event leaves the doctor with the unfortunate job of hiding the body, which in turns leads George’s wife Ganja (Marlene Clark-Night of the Cobra Woman) calling upon the doctor to find her husband.

Though their first meeting is a bit bumpy, Dr. Hess & Ganja become instant friends and later lovers.  Ms. Clark’s performance is honest, funny and refreshingly real. While Duane Jones is mesmerizing and intense with few words. And though Gunn plays the jester in this trio, he lays out raw philosophical dread and existentialism that is no joking matter. In addition to the main plot is the inclusion of Dr. Hess’s driver who is also a minister (as well as the narrator and composer of the title song). He is a glue or moral compass of sorts and helps the viewer contextualize some of the main characters inner conflicts.

What makes this film special (and for some difficult) is the slow and purposefully philosophical look at relationships and addiction. There are so many more layers to this film than being just a vampire flick with black people. It’s like beat poetry for the soul with visceral undertones.  A MUST SEE AGAIN-Director’s Cut ONLY!!

Ganja & Hess (1973) USA

Written/Directed by Bill Gunn

Starring Duane Jones, Marlene Clark, Bill Gunn, Sam Waymon & Mabel King

That night, Elizabeth (Sarah Habel), the sister of Sam’s murdered girlfriend Rebecca (Mia Serafino), arrives at Sam’s apartment. She believes that the man about to be executed for her sister’s murder, Lonnie Flennons (Richard Wilkinson), is innocent, and she offers to pay Sam to find the real murderer. Sam turns her down, but goes to speak with the man who tutored him on time travel, Goldburg (Kevin Yon), who reminds him of the cardinal rules: he’s not to alter his own personal past, nor travel in time with his body left unsupervised. We learn that when Sam was 15, a house fire claimed Jenna’s life, but Sam altered time so that Jenna survives. However, Sam’s interference with events resulted in the fire killing his parents instead. After Goldburg’s departure, their buxom bartender Vicki (Melissa Jones) seductively offers Sam a buttery nipple; he and Vicki have sex, but upon seeing Rebecca’s photo, he cannot continue.

Sam changes his mind and agrees to help Elizabeth out. He tries to help Lonnie without time-traveling, but Lonnie refuses the help, believing Sam to be the culprit. Frustrated, Sam travels back to June 1998. He first runs into a drunk Elizabeth, and tells her to stay in her locked car. He goes into Rebecca’s bedroom to find her already dead; while there, Elizabeth is attacked from behind and killed. Sam returns to the present, to learn he no longer owns a car, is renting his couch to a roommate named Paco (Ulysses Hernandez), and no longer works for the police, instead being a discarded suspect for Rebecca’s murder who has repeatedly asked for the case file. In 1998 Lonnie had seen Elizabeth and Sam talking, and did not stop this time: as he was not at the murder scene, in this new present he is a wheelchair-bound lawyer. Sam visits Goldburg, who suggests he go back to the scene of the third murder and this time only observe. Sam also visits Jenna, who is significantly better off and living more cleanly; she refuses to help him.

Sam travels back to September 2000 and witnesses the third victim, Anita Barnes (Chantel Giacalone), being attacked, only to learn it is her boyfriend attempting to cater to her rape fetish. He is discovered and her boyfriend’s punch sends him back to the present, where now Sam is renting a couch from Paco, who is about to evict him for non-payment. Goldburg is missing, and Lonnie is now the third victim, while Anita remains alive, pepper-spraying Sam in the face after he approaches her in the street. At her apartment, Jenna tells Sam that Goldburg was about to implicate him in the murders, and furthermore tells him she fears a future Sam is the murderer. Sam complains he is now “too stupid” to fix things; Jenna pinky-swears him to not time-travel anymore. Drunk at the bar, Sam propositions Vicki, who is engaged in this timeline. After Sam leaves, the killer shows up and murders Vicki; her body is found by the police near a car body plant. As Sam left his bar receipt behind, he is hauled in by the police. Jenna extricates him; the police put a tail on him as he leaves. As he leaves, he takes Det. Glenn’s (Lynch Travis) evidence notebook, which he uses to look at the scene of the crime and travel back to September 2004, before the bodies were found by the police.

He returns to the present to find himself on Jenna’s couch as she leaves for work, reminding him to clean up after himself and have dinner ready for her return; their positions now effectively reversed from the beginning of the film. Sam returns to the auto plant, where the police lie in wait to arrest him. Sam convinces Det. Glenn to release him by telling him how his wife (Andrea Foster) mistook Glenn for M.C. Hammer on their first meeting. Returning home, Sam accidentally inhales some burundanga flowers, sent from Goldburg’s greenhouse, and can barely haul himself into the bathtub, before time-traveling back to the abandoned auto plant, where he finds a severely injured Goldburg. Running for help, Sam is felled by a foothold trap.

The killer approaches the trapped Sam, removing his mask as he does so, to reveal that the killer is actually Sam’s sister Jenna, who can also time travel. She has an incestuous love for her brother, having killed the women, either because she perceived them as rivals for Sam’s affections, or because they were new witnesses, introduced by Sam’s rescue attempts. Sam travels back in time to the day of the fire that killed his parents; instead of saving Jenna, he traps her in her burning room. He awakes in a new timeline where he has married Elizabeth (not Rebecca), and he, Elizabeth and their daughter Jenna (named after his now-dead sister) (Alexis Sturr) are pulling up to a family barbecue, where he is greeted by his parents and a perfectly healthy Goldburg.

The film closes as Sam’s daughter Jenna puts her fashion doll on the grill and smiles as it begins to melt.

The movie was filmed in Michigan and concluded filming in October 2008. It debuted as part of the lineup for After Dark Horrorfest III, a horror film festival held in January 2009. The film was released on DVD on March 31, 2009.

There is plenty of gore in the movie to entertained those who are seeking a movie like that. Over all I enjoy it very much.

What’s that lurking beneath the surface? It’s a synopsis:

The story follows two groups of people — one, a group of students, the other, a group of criminals — who are shipwrecked on an island by a giant shark. The island was once used for illegal drilling, and the oil company inadvertently released the giant shark from its slumber.

Emanuelle Carriere, Celine Filion, Christine Emes, Kala Gray, Sara Mosher, Kyle Martellacci, Phil Dukarsky, Duncan Milloy, and Angela Parent lend their talents to the flick, which, I’m sure, will find its way onto one format or another later this year. The trailer for “Jurassic Shark” lies below.

Radcliffe stars as Arthur Kipps, a London solicitor who’s still not yet over his wife’s death in childbirth 4 years earlier.  Given one last chance to prove he can still be an asset to his firm, he gets sent out to the coast to finish disposing of the estate of one Alice Drablow.  Upon arriving, Arthur receives a curiously chilly welcome – the hotel has no reservation from him, the local solicitor insists that he return to London immediately, and everyone ushers their children indoors when he walks by.  In fact, there’s only two people not trying to get him out of town as soon as possible, the Dailys (Ciaran Hinds and Janet McTeer), a nice wealthy couple who still mourn the loss of their son several years earlier .  Undeterred by the locals’ inhospitable behavior, Arthur heads out to Mrs. Drablow’s home, Eel Marsh House, to sort through her papers.  His attempts to work are frequently interrupted by strange noises and fleeting glimpses of other people in the supposedly empty house, though.  Arthur soon discovers that Eel Marsh House is believed to be haunted by the titular ghost, whose every appearance foretells the death of another local child.  Although he doesn’t believe in ghosts, Arthur sets aside his duties to solve the mystery of the woman in black, and break the curse over the town.

For a long time, The Woman in Black gets by almost purely on atmosphere – the town is frequently covered in fog, and Eel Marsh House itself is a magnificently spooky place, with its many rooms, overgrown garden (complete with family burial plot), and the fact that it gets cut off from the mainland at high tide.  Any sane person, regardless of their feelings on the supernatural, would be reluctant to spend even a few minutes there.  There’s even a child’s room filled with windup toys that look just plain creepy in daylight, and downright nightmare-inducing in candlelight.

It’s a shame, then, that the movie starts resorting to cheaper scares, like having a ghost suddenly fill the empty space behind Radcliffe, accompanied by a ‘you’re supposed to be scared’ sound effect.  It gets a bit tiresome, and it really wastes such a nice setup.  More egregious is pretty much every character in the movie does dumb things for no reason: instead of gathering up all of Mrs. Drablow’s papers and working in town, Arthur insists on going back to the creepy house where he sees things that aren’t there every day.  This extends to the townspeople, too – there’s never any indication that anyone tried to escape the curse by moving out of town (or if it’s not possible), so we’re left with the impression that for over 30 years, every family simply stayed put and accepted that their children were doomed.

And speaking of the curse, it doesn’t make much sense: since the woman in black is angry at Mr. and Mrs. Drablow, she takes her revenge on all the families in town because…why?  The Drablows didn’t have any children for her to kill, so as far as we can see, she’s focusing her rage on all the people who did nothing to her.  The ghost is supposed to be a bit sympathetic, given what happened to her, but this makes her just seem like a vindictive bitch instead of a victim.  So, good job there, folks – your creepy, atmospheric, old-fashioned English ghost story is instead the much less-interesting tale of an angry ghost who drives children to suicide for something their parents didn’t do.  I like a back-to-basics haunted house movie as much as anyone, but it needs more than just a specter flying at you, screaming, to make a lasting impression.

Kashiwada’s intention is to create chaos in the world by bringing back Sadako and the power of her curse. Now Akane has to fight against Sadako and Kashiwada to save the lives of herself and Takanori.

RELEASE DATE
May 12, 2012 (Japan)

PROJECT DETAILS

I have to say, now that I got my Kindle I’m reading more often than before.  Since I got this wonderful device I have read 7 books.  This is my second (out of three) werewolf books.  My first one I haven’t finished reading it yet but this one caught my eye right away.

In a world overpopulated with sparkling vampire novels and teen supernatural books, this was fresh take on an old tale.  Absolutely compelling and gory.

Brandon was hated from the minute he arrived town.  He was called weirdo, queer, tonto, redskin among other names.  At first you’re feeling sorry for the central character who’s been abused, betrayed, and tormented, by life in general, classmates and worst of all his own family. Then when he’s turned by someone you won’t see coming is when the story really takes off rapidly down a dark and blood soaked path.  His best friend and mom along with a girl new in town that Brandon likes, are the center of the story.  There are other characters that populated the book but you can imaging what will happen to them.

For anyone who likes werewolf tales and doesn’t mind some bloody scenes, this one is sure to fascinate you.

Get the book today!

- By George