Marathon of Madness

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GIVE RATINGS YOU N00b

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The Omen

Religious techno-garble about the end of times and satan's kid is the main idea behind this really, really old movie. The only possible props I can give it is having a spooky sound track and building up some tense atmosphere now and then but only to have it fall face first once Gregory Peck opens his mouth, or to show that stupid looking kid. Its a horrid concept but the movie isn't 100% bad. One of the more enjoyable drama's on this list, but not even close to horror or the top of the list. It has its moments but its too long, and too boring.

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The Burning

Really, really campy B-movie slasher with no budget that rips off Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday, and Halloween. Its about a guy who gets burned half to death by a bunch of drunk teenagers and then stalks a summer camp with lawn sheers to get his revenge 40 years later--Somehow he's still alive, and not really old cause he was 50 when he was burned. There are only a couple on screen kills. Four to be exact and its an hour and fourty minutes. An extremely long movie thats mostly akin to Animal House in its humor until the lawn sheer's guy shows up. There's gratious nudity however, but its too bad all the girls are emaciated and flat.

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Trick 'r Treat


I was told over and over, and over, that this was an excellent horror movie montage oozing with atmosphere and suspense. What I got was a black comedy about lots of little kids, including a minature version of pumpkin head. I must have seen a different movie than everyone else because it had no suspense or a creeping atmosphere. All it provided were cheap kills and jump scares along the lines of The Omen where the maid jumps on his back. By the time werewolves show up, Trick 'r Treat loses the last drop of B-movie charm it intended to keep the whole way through.

I can imagine the director's inspiration was this:

"Okay, what if we rip off Tales from the Crypt but made it even campier. Lets remove the Crypt Keeper and make the humor even more subtle instead of funny. Lets make it straight to dvd, and have two on screen kills. Lets have a bunch of hot chicks transform into werewolves, then never show the wolves again. Also we need Pumpkin Head jr."

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Happy Birthday to Me


A truly convoluted and boring slasher that tries to be more intelligent than it is gory or scary and it fails badly at this premise. You slowly find out a girl who has had mental surgery on her is becoming self aware and coming out of some kind of amensia. While this is happening a leather clad person is killing off high school kids with really, really silly contraptions or weapons. It drags on for an hour and fourty minutes before an extremely odd twist out of left field.

The motivation of the killer is only revealed five minutes before the twist so it doesn't have you guessing until the end, it has you clueless until the motivation is revealed--and then the twist based on the motivation, like its supposed to be some kind of shock when you only just learned the other half of it. No scares, no good kills, all garbage.


The Fog review up next

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The Fog

I'm a fan of John Carpenter. I'm a fan of his style, his atmosphere, his musical score, the writing he picks--He's a horror director that clicks with me. He often encorperates subtle scares and a rich atmosphere. He has achieved brilliance in my book with The Thing, Halloween and In the Mouth of Madness. All three are excellent movies in their own right and the former two revolutionized the genre twice in a row. He has shown he can create overbearing atmosphere without jump scares or cheap gags, and he has also shown he can be one of the worst directors in the business at the same time.

Let me introduce the Fog. A B-movie on the lowest B scale, delivering one of the worst premises in movie history that an unearthly fog houses a bright light and also killer zombie pirates that nobody can seem to out run. The MO of these guys is to get their gold back from a rich upscale yuppie township by the coast. The Fog is portrayed as the enemy, as the arch evil. Dramatic music will boom and thunder as a Fog rolls from the side of the camera and the characters *scream* and run away from it in laughable ways. Once the fog absorbs a building, the pirates show up in full gear and scallywag and often kill the people off screen with hooks or sabers or even canes.

The movie has horrible cliches thrown in, zero atmosphere, no scares--Its one of the silliest, most pretentious B-movie's I've ever seen this side of The Blob.

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The Descent


This movie sits on the fence for me. I'll be blunt: It doesn't do anything for exactly 58 minutes in a 1:30 run time besides build up an almost palpable atmosphere and loneliness in the cave system, forests and cabins. Over nearly an hour an uneasiness builds up as we're introduced to the girls before they go cave diving. I'm a strong fan of atmospheric build up but its overdone to the point of not even NEEDING the last half hour. It could have been made as a full drama, romance and mystery movie for fifty eight minutes and released on sci fi and it would get mixed reviews. The Crawlers as they're called feel tacked on. A last minute thought from the director like he double checked his screenplay and remembered "Oh, shit, this is a horror movie!"

The monsters are intelligently portrayed and use echolocation and look really gross, but they resemble their fantasty counterpart "Goblins" way, way too much. Realism and believability is a direct concern from the director and, as such, nothing is beyond belief. Well, sometimes. The girl's fight the monsters back, the monsters hunt accurately, the combat is primal and feral and its really an intense twenty minutes. Yeah, the crawlers show up twenty minutes before it ends. 3:1 Build Up and Actual Horror ratio. I'm reminded of Session 9 here.

It has a cool atmosphere but annoying characters. Cool monsters but they're gone in a second. Horror is an after thought, and the main idea was paranoia and immersion. This is The Thing without any people or monsters.

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Cronos

This appears to be the first Del Toro movie. I have mixed feelings about this director from his use of overly symbolic imagery in obvious siutations, black comedy in serious moments, and his overuse of dark fantasy out of the left field. Overall he has a style I don't like or admire in the slightest. His excuse for the black comedy and fantasty elements was given in an extremely odd manner during Pan's Labyrinth interviews. "I do it to keep myself alive during directing."


Anyway, Cronos takes a comedic and odd spin on the basic vampire tale with surprisingly little vampires. Rather it treats the whole thing like a disease, or curse with benefits. A 16th century alchemist is convinced to find a way to make himself immortal. He makes the Cronos Device, which is a scarab-like golden instrument that claws and then injects a solution into the wearer's hand or chest. The movie flashes 400 years later to show it works, which was a little un-nescessary. I'd rather have some suspense. For the next hour we're treated to an einstein-like antique collector who stumbles upon the cronos device and uses it. As he decomposes, dies twice only to come back, and so on we're drip-fed pounds of black comedy and off humor about the whole situation rather than building up any atmosphere or suspense whatsoever.

Nothing happens. Thats what I'm getting at. No suspense or mystery surrounds the cronos device. There is no explaination for it. There is no intensity as the main character transforms. Its just "Blah" mixed in with comedy. Didn't enjoy the movie.

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Prince of Darkness

As mentioned, John Carpenter is one of my favorite horror directors. He has a very particular atmosphere and style that appeals to me. He has filmed plenty of misfire movies that only bored me to tears (Vampire, The Fog, etc) but also has some of the best Lovecraftian style horror movies. In particular I'd name The Thing, In the Mouth of Madness and Prince of Darkness as his three best movies in that order.

Prince of Darkness takes a simple approach: The route of all evil is locked in a canister that is starting to leak. A Priest (The ever-creepy Donald Pleasance) hires a team of students and professors to monitor it and find out what it is. In the mean time, the "real" Bible is being decoded by some students in the same church. What we watch is a slow-drip cosmic horror story that takes some interesting looks at basic christian mythology without turning into techno garble like The Omen. Carpenter works upon a very good atmosphere and score to provide slowly building tension until the twist and conclusion which work very well to keep the feeling of doom alive even after the supposedly happy ending.

What I'm getting at is Carpenter knows how to turn odd concepts or short stories into very compelling movies without the slightest hint at professionalism or even a large budget. He reuses actors to the point of some appearing in 70% of his movies. Its the same cast doing a new thing, and its a style that works in his own charm. Prince of Darkness is not a horror movie, but it is a creepy and odd tale thats somehow oddly compelling.  Its full of out of place black comedy which keeps it far off my top ten, or even twenty, horror movies but I cannot say the same for some of his other movies.

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CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER: THIS WAS WATCHED BEFORE THE DESCENT, FORGOT REVIEW

Jacob's Ladder

In short this is one of the best psychological horror movies made. Jacob Singer is a vietnam war veteran whom experiences odd things during his tour. His entire unit suffers from some sort of panic attack and starts going insane, dying, and running around. He is wounded but survives a bayonet stab from an attacker in the woods. After this dramatic opening the movie starts to become more nightmarish and slow paced. Relying heavily on psychological torture, nightmare fuel scenes and subtle and odd monsters here and there. Jacob's Ladder was made famous for launching Tim Robbins into the limelight, and also for basically inventing the odd monster designs that went on to silent hill and carpenter films. One scene in particular has Singer walking down a subway where the train goes by, and in the windows are screaming souls with heads shaking violently beyond human capability.

Never have I seen a "town with the secret" engine work so well in a movie. Piece by piece it becomes more and more aware whats going on and what is happening to Singer. He starts going crazy, switching between realities and seeing weirder and weirder things. One scene in particular stands among my favorites: Jacob is wheeled to a hospital with no name or ID and is being pushed down an abandoned and disgusting hospital which turns into an insane asylum, and then into a slaughter house. The reluctant "people" pushing him begin to leak secrets about who they really are, or where he is. It just gets worse and worse.

Its the epitome of psychological horror and sublime use of mind games, and in my top ten favorite horror movies.

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The Tenant

Polanski is a director I respect most of the time. His epitome of horror and imagery can be found in the movie Rosemary's Baby which is also my favorite from his. Its a very weird tale delivered in a dream like state with some really creepy imagery. The Tenant, however, ranks among one of his worst movies for some very few reasons:

The movie has absolutely no direction or consistency and plays similar to locking someone in a room for a week and filming the results. The main character slowly goes crazy in his life, his apartment, around friends and becomes paranoid. This is not how it starts though. It plays off rather innocently as him moving into an apartment who's previous tenant commited suicide. Soon he fits in, makes friends, etc. Its rather uneventful with only one actual horror themed scene. One where he's in a church and the Priest's message starts to get distorted in his mind and an eerie violin starts building in the background. Its the kind of "rev up" scenes you would expect in a psychological horror movie but it never goes anywhere.

Its a two hour film of pretty poor acting (Polanski cannot act, and it was a very poor idea for him to star himself.). The subtle imagery becomes absurd to the point of the last fourty minutes being some of the funniest I've witnessed. One scene in particular strikes out: Polanski is dressed in a dress, has a wig and has makeup on and is running around his apartment convinced people are trying to get in. An arm busts through the window and he begins stabbing at it while screaming "Murderers!" in a woman's voice. Its seriously funny.

This is a ridiculous movie that makes no sense beyond some obvious hints at guilt and depression. There is no twist, he's just crazy out of no where and starts seeing things and its never explained why. Its just... bam. There. And then it ends really. An hour and thirty minutes of boring writing and acting, and a finale that makes absolutely no sense.

Weak, weak movie. No atmosphere or scares at all

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Frailty


A dark thriller focusing around a serial killer who is deranged and truly believes that he is doing God's will. The movie details the struggle of a son who does not believe, and one who does and is brainwashed. Its a highly religious film discussing the very, very dark side of faith and religious murders no doubt inspired by Jones Town among other real life incidents. Anyway, Bill Paxton delivers a very well portrayed role in this movie as the troubled and emotional father who is given visions from "Angels" and eventually gets a list of names of demon's he must kill. The concept is done without too much cheese and the movie is on the fence about whether its real or not. At least, up until the god awful ending.


It's a silly idea, and not horror, but somehow I can't bring myself to hate the movie even though Matthew Mcoungahay, Bill Paxton, AND Powers Boothe are in it. The narration and atmosphere is done quite well for a dark religious murder mystery and some of the scenes and dialog are pretty striking. Not great, not bad. A passable movie with a convincing narrative, decent--but expected--twist and a dark atmosphere that keeps you immersed.

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Ringu


Perhaps for budget reasons and the extremely low production quality, or maybe its because of the terrible script and the hilarious premise but somehow, in some way, Ringu delivers less scares and less atmosphere than the Americanized remake. The story is simple: A chain letter/creepy pasta esque video tape, when watched, kills the viewers in seven days. The story follows two media-ists and researchers who try to find the source of the tape, the girl in the video, and also the hidden meanings in it to try and save themselves.

The whole movie is extremely short and predictable with no twist ending. It drip feeds answers to you and never leaves you wondering whats going on. Its a simpletons horror movie with only three actual scare scenes and the rest of it is atrociously written and acted dialog. Much more of a mystery movie than it is a horror movie, and its not good at either.

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Splinter


This is an extremely low budget horror which can be described as a mix between Cabin Fever, The Hitcher and The Thing. It borrows limbs from all three of these movies as we watch a tale of a young couple who get carjack'd and then kidnapped by a mysterious man and his pale and sickly lover. We soon learn of the enemy; a parasitic mold that infects the host and then uses it to feed on guts. Most of the movie takes place with the hitcher and the star couple locked away in a gas station trying to survive from the monster. And this works for a while as the atmosphere is built up and the intensity/realism of the movie kicks in. All too soon things become run of the mill and cliche though as one of them becomes infected and doesn't say anything and we start to "see" the monster and see exactly how low the budget was.

The premise is contrived from Cabin Fever, the monster is from The Thing and the atmosphere is from the hitcher. Although an enjoyable movie this could have worked way, way better if the budget weren't two nickles. The last act of the movie is absolutely terrible and I rolled my eyes at more than one occasion. Solid buildup, decent atmosphere, terrible filming and premise.

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Nosferatu

A really, really old silent movie that still delivers on some excellent shots and scenes and moreso...one hell of an atmosphere. The story is essentially Dracula: A salesman goes to the castle of a count who is a vampire and goes crazy while in there, and also beings a vampire. Dracula, or in this case, Orlok, leaves the castle to find his wife and new blood.

The acting is as melodramatic as you'd expect from a silent movie and it needs to be to convey emotion. There still exist some seriously good scenes: Orlok's Shadow on the wall multiple times, rising out of the wooden coffin, and the ending. Orlok is one hell of a creepy looking dude and is still one of my favorite "monsters" in film.

By modern standards its a melodramatic and cheesy horror film, but if you look a little deeper you'll find a technically brilliant film visually for the time that still holds up today in some regards

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Chopping Mall

A hilariously cheesy and fun 80's horror movie about three security bots who go crazy after lightning strikes their computer controller. Its the nerds version of Dawn of the Dead: Eight teens got trapped in a mall with future technology going crazy as everyone thought it would then. It really plays on the cliches of the era quite well, moreso for taking place in the era rather than having hindsight. The one liners in this movie are so bad they're good. After every kill the robot will say "Thank you have a nice day" in the nerdiest, happiest voice possible.

The kill's are pretty terrible though, espescially for an uncut splatter movie. Usually just minor wounds or small sprinkles of blood. The only real gore kill is a super-fast head explosion when a laser hits a girl. Anyway the acting is hilarious, the robots rule, and its just a fun 80's movie and will always stand as one of my favorite B movie horrors

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Phantasm

A mysterious, bizarre and just plain interesting movie that still stands as one of my favorite "what the hell" movies. A young boy spots a tall grave robber and soon weirder and weirder things start happening that revolve around him, his brother, the "tall man" villain and two worlds begin to merge and inbetween this lonely collapse into insanity and the bizarre just plain weird scenes are cut in. The guitar scene, "girl in the forest", the dwarves, etc.


A very symbolic movie that plays off as a black comedy on first glance but if you look deep enough you'll spot a well layered and just plain odd horror movie with a bleak atmosphere. Tall Man is a great villain, one of my favorites. Really odd and enjoyable movie.

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Castle Freak

Full Moon productions usually sucks. They make shock and gore based movies that are only designed to spray blood on as much of everything with budget actors, black comedy and no horror. But Castle Freak is a different movie: A remarkably creepy and atmospheric tale of a tragic monster locked inside a Castle. The main family that inherits the castle has a cheesy backstory explained through tragic flashbacks and lots of screaming between the two parents of a blind daughter.

The Freak gets found and what unfolds is really creepy and disturbing in some scenes as the Freak simply tries to fit in and watch from a distance. It is not innocent, however, and some really gross murders unfold. Nipple bite scene and "eating out" scene, anyone?

It shouldn't be a film I like, but I do. It "works" for me and I think the atmospheric and tragic monster make this movie watchable and creepy at times.

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The Changeling

George C. Scott stars in one of the best haunting stories on film in my opinion. The acting, directing, pacing and writing--Its all top tier for a Scott film and once it gets rolling there are some legitimately creepy scenes strung across a bleak and lonely atmosphere. The psychic scene in particular strikes me as one of the top five ghost horror scenes of all time, portraying an extremely simple and horrifying scare.

The story for the ghost and the pacing is well done too, taking no taboo avenues or cliches to move the story along. It is a tragic tale and done greatly with the help of Scott and Trish Van Devere. Its rare when a ghost based horror movie comes along and delivers on a great atmosphere, and legitimate scares without relying on cat out of the bag tricks or turning off the lights or a reflection in the mirror. No, this movie is in a league of its own--Delivering some brutally effective imagery more than a dozen times before the sad ending.

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Psycho

This horror classic delivers on a few points, but fails on so many others. The actor who plays Norman Mates is still one of the best in horror movies, delivering an innocent--yet evil--character this side of Vincent Price. Hitchcock's ability to slowly build tension is at best here. There are little hints at the conclusion, hints serious reviewers can see, but most people are completely shocked by the ending delivery as it is one of Alfred's best.

The acting, the pacing, the writing--Its fluid and natural and what we've come to expect from him. Two major points, however, bring this entire movie to its knees when it comes to horror. First off, killing the main character less than half way in is entirely un-needed and actually spoiled the entire thing for me when I was a kid. I knew it was no woman killing her, even with the dress, and because of the "hermit" conversation before I knew he was nuts.

Secondly the finale in the house is more than pathetic and is surprising for Hitchcock. He resorts to a cat out of the bag scare with the skeletonized wife, and then Norman actually shows himself in the ridiculous dress. Without showing him this would have been a powerful ending and the police explaination finale would have worked. But because we see him in the dress it spoils the... mystery, the oddness of Bates and he just looks like an idiot.

My last complaint with this movie is the ending dialog from Bate's "mother" with him sitting in a chair. Talking villain syndrome hurts a lot of movies and it canned my suspension of disbelief.