Nightmare Maker - Will's Review

I watched this on a couple of days before penning the review, which I now realise was a mistake as it's a fairly forgettable movie, so we'll have to wait and see what comes back to me as I write.

Obviously, it's not Devil Hunter forgettable; I did at least manage to remember the beginning of the movie all the way to the end, just kind of generic and... Meh.


The thing is, in the beginning it felt like it might be fairly interesting: a young couple leave their baby with its aunt while they go on a trip, but die shortly after heading out, when their brakes fail. Cut forwards 15 years and baby Billy (now a young man on the brink of graduation) lives with the aunt, who's more than a little creepy:

Erm... That's your NEPHEW you freak!

Her creepiness goes into overdrive when Billy announces that he's about to win a basketball scholarship to an out if state college; to prove how needed her nephew is, she attempts to seduce the plumber in an effort to frame him for rape, but when he refuses her advances, she looses her rag and stabs him to death - just on time for Billy to come home and witness it.

She ticks to the rape story, claiming that she killed him in self defence, however the police are skeptical as a) there isn't a mark on her and b) the plumber is gay.

To make matters worse, the plumber was in a relationship with the (thus far closeted) gym teacher.

To round of a 'prefect' investigation, the officer in charge is massively homophobic, and instantly decides that Billy was having an affair with the gym teacher, and killed the plumber in a screaming queenly hissy-fit, and that his Aunt is covering.

From here though, it starts to flounder a bit; mainly because the aunt isn't the right type of crazy - you see, if the aunt had developed a taste for murder and went on a spree at this point; inadvertently causing more and more suspicion to fall on her Nephew; that may have made for a decent movie. Alas, not a lot happens in the films middle third. The coach gets shit for being gay, the aunt tries a few things to further sabotage her nephews chances of getting the scholarship, the policeman goes around using the word 'faggot' a lot.

Then things get out of hand, there are a couple more kills, a twist that really doesn't make any sense when you think about it, and the film abruptly ends, pausing before the credits roll to give us a true-story style 'what happened to the characters' text crawl.

Not an utterly terrible movie, but a very VERY dull one.

Body Count: 8
Boob Count: 1 Pair
Most Memorable Death:

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Death Trap - Will's Review

So, 2 "Before he was Freddy" Robert Englund staring movie in as many weeks! I didn't expect that!

In this one 'the man who would be Kruger' plays cowboy charmer Buck "...Ready to fuck" a guy so confident in his ability to pull the ladies, he pays for his hotel room in advance so he has somewhere to take 'em... Which begs the question "Why is he with a prostitute in the movie's opening scene?"
While we're on the subject - it's nice to remember that Englund used to be a promising character actor, but once he became Kruger he was, sadly, mostly hired in "Oooh look; it's a horror icon" joke cameos.

Anyway, the prostitute refuses to do bum sex (despite, or because of, Buck's attempted rape), gets sacked (he gets a 2 for 1 deal as compensation - odd lesson that...), and finds herself using the last of her (borrowed) money to get a room at the 'Starlight Hotel', a run down shithole with it's own cordoned off swamp (complete with Crocodile) - handy!

Insane hotelier, Judd, realises that our temporary heroin is from the whorehouse and kills her in a fit of rage Well, I say he kills her; technically, Judd doesn't kill anyone, although the injures he provides with archaic  gardening equipment would certainly lead to death, he tosses them in his croc pit - See?, I said that would be handy!

It isn't long before a distraught father comes to the hotel with one of his two adult daughters - the other is a runaway who he has come looking for.... That's right, little miss 'no rear entry! Judd has the good sense not to mention that she's been used as reptile bait, but does mansion that he's seen her working at the local bordello.

Our cast is rounded off by a rowing* couple who decide that the worlds filthiest  hotel would be a good place for stopover with a little girl - even after they see the crocodile consume their pet dog (a scene which is at once utterly unconvincing and oddly disturbing).

And so it continues with Judd finding more reasons to get into fights with people and feeding them to his crocodile, before meeting his own (inevitable) end.

Parts of this show the excellent discomforting atmosphere that Hooper played to the max in 'Texas Chainsaw', but sadly, more evident is the flat direction he would go on to show in films like "Spontaneous combustion" and  "The Mangler".

All in all, not too bad, but not great either, this could have been much better if Judd had actually killed ghis victims directly, and then delivered the bodies to his 'pet' for disposal - as it stands, every fight just becomes about Judd getting the latest fodder over to the balcony fence.


*as in arguing, not manually powering a boat.

Body Count: 5
Animal Body Count: 1
Boob Count: 3 Pairs (including 1 pair seen through very sheer clothing)
Most Memorable Death: Scythe Sporting dance of the dying Swan.

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The Boogeyman - Will's Review

RELATIVELY MINOR SPOILERS

John Carradine!!! An actual actor!

That's what when trough my head as the opening credits rolled.... unfortunately, it was a case of "lets book a 'name' for one day and film 3 scenes with him in an inconsequential roll, that way we can get his name on the poster without going over budget" a trick that rarely, if ever, indicates a great film...



The film opens with a couple of kids, Lacy and Willy, perving on their mum getting it on on the sofa with her latest boyfriend (who has one of her stockings placed over his head as part of their foreplay - whether this is because he is a foot fetishist, or she's a bank-robber fetishist is never explained), mum spots them and is complicit in (indeed, encouraging of) her partners selected punishment - the little girl is sent to bed scot free, while her brother is gagged and tied to his bed, while mum and her (still stocking faced) fella go of to finish what they started in the master bedroom.

The little girl decided to free her brother using the biggest fucking knife in the house, before her brother traets us to an 'Halloween' "homage" then stabs the abusive bastard who tied him up (sadly, he lets his mother get away with her part in events).

Instant 'Halloween': Just add eye-holes...

Years later, Lacy and Willy are all growed up, and live on their aunt and uncle's farm, along with Lacy's husband, Jack, and son, Kevin. Willy is mute, and both siblings seem to have issues with knives (which I get) and mirrors (because Lacy watched the murder in a mirror, and Willy.... was watched in a mirror... okay, so I don't know why Willy has mirror issues - but he does!).

Speaking of the farm, having used the above 'Halloween' POV shot, The film-makers obviously decided to cover their asses using the old adage "Steal from one and it's plagerism, steal from many and it's research", because this is the farmhouse:

The Boogymanville Horror.

Lacy and Willie get a letter from their mother requesting they visit, which never happens and is never mentioned again, and to make a long story short (and to break the pattern of  my reviews being little more than a cynical synopsis) Lacy's therapist (Carradine, badly underused as I mentioned) suggests that she goes to the house where she grew up - in order to form new memories of the house, which do not involve "that night".

Speaking of the shrink, the hypnosis session leads to another "better movie 'homage'" scene:

"Your mother sucks boogymen in hell!"

By the way - does anyone else think it odd that the slightly-perturbed sibling has a shrink, but the one who actually killed someone and hasn't spoken a word in the 20 years since is left to his own devices to collect knives?

Anyhoo, as luck would have it, the old house is up for sale, so Lacy and Jack go to see the place, where they encounter the (ahead of his time) brilliantly named "Timmy", who lives in the house with his 2 older siosters (and their parents, who are away). Why brilliantly named? well, this:

BOOGYTIMMEH!!!!

Thankfully, Timmy and his siblings are cannon fodder, and don't last long after our leads leave (although one of them is incredibly soft skulled, being killed my a tap on the noggin with a medicine cabinet door).

While they are there, Lacy visits her Mum's old bedroom (where Willy did in the asshat) and she is convinced she sees old stocking face in the mirror; this being a movie, she has no qualms whatsoever about picking up a chair in someone else's house and battering the mirror into pieces! Her husband pays for the damage, and takes the pieces of mirror home to glue back together (!) in an attempt to demonstrate to his wife that the mirror is safe (except for all of the sharp broken-glass edges, obviously) and jebus, is this guy good at puzzles?!

Willy admires his brother-in-law's mad jigsaw skillz.

All of which amounts to set-up as, finally, 45 minuets into the movie's 80 minuet run time, the haunted mirror and the traumatised duo are all where they need to be! Huzzah!

From here on in people get possessed, other people die, priests are called, a mirror fragment flies across the room and embed itself as a ghoulish monocle, and being stabbed in the back causes a certain character to bleed profusely... from the top of his head (!).

From a technical point of view, the film is reminiscent of John Carpenter; before you get too excited, I want to to remember that Carpenter is a very overrated film maker! There; I said it! yes, I know it's horror heresy, but lets remember that he didn't just bring us "Halloween", "Halloween II", "The Thing" and "In the mouth of Madness"; he also gave the world a dreadful segment "hair" from the movie "Body Bags", the gadawfull (and utterly unnecessary) "Village of the Damned" remake, the risible "Vampires" and the decidedly average "Prince of Darkness" (worth seeing mainly for the bit where Alice Cooper runs someone through with a bicycle), so when I say "reminiscent of John Carpenter", I mean "...but not on a good day".


All in all, it's not so bad, but it's not great either - I want to tell you that it's terrible and don't bother, but I think I'm just losing patience with these films, as I gave both Absurd and Anthropophagus a pass as forgiveable time-killers, and it's better than either of those!

Body Count: 8
Animal Body Count: 0
Boob Count: 1 pair
Most Memorable Death: French kiss kebab.

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Bloody Moon - Will's Review

Not great, but for all it's (many, many) flaws I found myself quite enjoying it. I Don't know if I was just in a receptive mood, or if last weeks monstrosity has lowered my expectations (or dulled my senses) enough to cope with anything, but I found myself ignoring certain aspects of this one and enjoy the ride.

The opening sequence is a Masked ball / 80's pool-side party, complete with a scarred pervert in the hedges (I say "scarred" he actually has a pot of silly putty blobbed all over one side of his face) watching people "make out". But he really hits the jackpot when the group stud engages in the most mutually verbally guided sex ever ("kiss me harder", "touch me there" etc.), not because he gets to watch, but because said man-bike is ordered to take his mask off (Mickey Mouse - Disney must love this!) allowing putty-features to pose as him.

Now, you may think I'm beings bit harsh calling him a man-bike for sleeping with one girl, but when or disfigured perve wanders into the party and immediately starts dancing with a girl, her reaction is basically "Oh, I though you were with [another girl], great - want to come back to my place?", he does and she fails to notice how silent he's being, on account that she's happy to have both sides of the conversation "I want you, and You want me too don't you, yes you do, I could tell", they're just about to bump uglies, when she knocks his mask off, and sees that it's not the guy she was after - oddly (!) she objects to this, and her screams are rewarded with a pair of scissors to the gut - repeatedly and unconvincingly.

Cut to 5 years later, and Scar-face's sister has come to pick him up from the asylum, the possibility of him having another 'Episode' is deemed unlikely, but she is told, never the less, to avoid upsetting situations, and in particular to 'never mention that night'.

So, attempted rape and a murder is 'an episode' now...

Anyway, on the way home on the train putty-features becomes slightly obsessed with some poor girl (hilariously, when the girl screams, blobby-chops' sisters' first question is "you didn't kill her did you?"

Over the next few scenes we are introduced to our (fairly sizeable) cast, all of whom either attend, run or own the 'International Youth-Club Boarding School of Langueges', which has newly opened in the privately owned complex of bungalows which houses the pool from the opening party. Our cast of characters consists of

• Miguel - The Aforementioned scared murderer / attempted rapist 
• Manuela - Miguel's Sister 
• Angela - Our obvious "Final Girl", remember the girl from the train? This is her, she also just happens to be attending the language school! 
• Countess Maria - Wheelchair bound Aunt of Miguel and Manuela - she owns the entire bungalow complex and the mansion above it, and is vocal in her dislike of Manuela and her intention to leave everything to her nephew. 
• Alvaro - Who, With Manuela, runs the school 
• Antonio - School janitor and groundskeepers, known for being a hit in the sack, and not afraid to offer his services as a willing piece of meat. Make the Man-Bike from the pool party look like a modest prude. 
• Bueno - Slightly retarded, bald grounds-staff member at the school 
• Eva / Rita / Inga / probably more - Interchangeable blonde students of the school, nubile cannon fodder. 

Our first death comes when the cantankerous Countess is woken by a blinding light, she begs for the light to be turned off, and it is - then someone sets her on fire (unconvincingly) with a flaming torch.

Which brings us to the first major plot-problem... The movie tries hard to keep us guessing not only who the killer is, but why, and who is 'in on it', but for the entire rest of the movie we will frequently see Manuella pushing her Aunt around in her wheelchair (always with her back to camera), and generally acting as though she is still alive (although she never speaks), so guessing her involvement is not the most challenging task...

We are told that Angela is staying in Bungalow 13, which has a bit of a reputation amongst the girls as it is the bungalow in which a girl was stabbed to death with scissors 5 years ago (that the murder was committed by the landowner's nephew apparently isn't known to them). Brilliantly / Awfully, although it is never mentioned on screen, Bungalow 13 still has the same furniture now, as a boarding room in a school, as it had then, as a private residence and murder-scene.

Angela has a bit of a rought time of it on her first day in the bungellow - first she catches Bueno perving through her window, then she (imagines she?) catches sight of Miguel in her mirror, then a looming figure approaches her door - luckily this traumatic time is brought to an when the figure turns out to be an underage door-to-door ceramic elephant seller... No, Really!

Would I lie to you?

At one point, Manuela is pottering around her room in the mansion in a see-through nightie when there is a knock at the door; it's her brother. At this point, I have written in my notes "He seems very relaxed chatting to his sister while her boobs are vis.... Ohhhh, Ewwwwww" As at this point, they start making out, while Miguel begs her to "love him again like [she] did before"... It is truly the most desturbing consentual (thankfully not quite) sex scene I have ever seen! Thankfully, she calls it off befor things get, well even worse, Remiding him that it would be wrong as people would judge them, she (rather stupidly) says to him that they could be together if they "Could just get rid of everyone arround [them]" doubletripplecringe!

Later, at the Campus "Disco Club", Antonio, dispite having every interchangeable blond in the place virtually begging him for sex, decides to walk Angela home. Literally walk her home. He doesn't even ask to come in!

Some time later, the killer stalks Angela in her room - and he has mad vanishing skills! I know ALL slasher villains have super stealth, but check this guy out:

Actually, I'm glad that clip contained musak - I'm quite certain the score on this one will have driven Lisa nuts, containing as it does 2 themes; There's the one from the trailer (which is usally source music - playing over the radio, on whatever) and the one in the clip above, which for some reason puts me in mind of a bad cover of G'n'R's version of "Live and Let Die".

Anyway, the knock at the door is one of the interchangeables, who comes over to borrow a sweater from Angela, but instead gets stabbed (from behind) through the tit - ouch! unfortunately for Angela, the body vanishes before she has time to tell anyone, and general consensus is that she imagined the whole thing.

Angela (perhaps understandably) does start to loose it at this point; she imagines that the language lab (remember those?) in her class is threatening her.

Later, she goes for a walk down by the harbour to look for her murdered friend (The harbour is stunning by the way) where she sees Manuela hasteling Antonio, and then nearly gets crushed by a falling rock - which she thinks is a matter for the police...

I'd verb her nouns out!

And so it continues, there a a couple more (fake looking) murders (including an "I'll be right back"), more scenes of Manuela wheeling around her (unmoving) aunt, Shots of Bueno being creepy and retarded, and a fun aside where Antonio "saves" Angela by cutting a Snake with some shears, but all she knows is that she turns around to see him holding up the bloody shears at her.

Eventually, 3 of the bodies turn up in Angela's bungalow, She is confronted by the masked killer, and rescued by Miguel, leaving the 2 to fight, she runs to the mansion where she is drugged, and the plot revealed.

In true slasher fashion, everyone present (but final girl) gets killed, just in time for the police to arrive.

As I saw, I quite enjoyed it, but now I come to describe the film, I can't for the life of me see why...

But there's enough potential here IMO to warrant a remake (I never got the point of remaking films which ether never had anything going for them - "Prom Night", or were already pretty much perfect "Nightmare on Elm Street" - lets remake the films with wasted potential!) - a bit more back story about what caused Miguel's "episode" in the first place could set him up as a much more sympathetic character (while at the same time developing the sister) and not actually showing us the Aunt's murder would help the mystery along no-end.

Over-all (like the first 2 films on our list) I can't openly recommend this one, but if it happens to be on, and you happen to have nothing to do, I've sat through worse (at least twice in the last 4 weeks).

Human Body Count: 7
Animal Body Count: 1
Boobs: 6 pairs
Most memorable death: Stabbed trough the boob.

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Bloody Moon - Lisa's Review

*** CONTAINS SPOILERS ***

This movie is IMHO one of the biggest wastes of anyones time who puts it on. I'm a stickler for doing things when I say I'm going to and hey I want to be able to say I have seen all the movies on this list in their entirety but jesus christ! I wish I could have switched this one off before the end!

It reminds me that the 80's is well and truely the decade that taste forgot. Everything here is bloody awful! The hair, the clothes, the music.... well just everything.

We start this movie being introduced to Miguel, a young man at the centre of this movie with a facial disfigurement (which looks like a child had has fun with some play putty). He attends a masquerade ball, convenient that with his face an' all. I looked more like a tacky 80's pool part to me, but there you go....

He ends up having sex with a young lady who has no idea who he is... when she finds out, she is less than enamoured to continue. Not happy with this he stabs her to death with a pair of scissors. The blood is crap, the special effects are crap.

The movie continues by Miguel being institutionalised and then released into the care of his sister Manuela (who he is having an incestuous relationship with). They travel home on the train and Miguel sets eyes on Angela, who he quickly becomes obsessed with and follows everywhere.

We see a cringeworthy scene with Miguel and his sister almost getting it on, where she stops and says its wrong and she's his sister. Bit late for that now lovey! She utters the immortal line "If only we could get rid of everyone"... cue the motive for the rest of the movie. Simple really.

Manuela runs a language school with her grumpy arsed Aunt Maria Contessa which is conveniently full of nubile, young, pretty, perfect breasted females (there are also a few young arrogant men for good measure to patronise the woman who tried to convince everyone else about the murderer).

We have several shit death scenes with bad makeup. Firstly we lose old grumpy auntie (I think with a burning torch), A knife through the boob (well they were getting them out an awful lot, it was bound to happen) a garotting type pincher thingy, a circular saw (that was monumentally awful when the actress turned into a very bad mannequin).

Of course we're meant to blame all this carnage on poor old mental pervert Miguel, but in actual fact, Manuela and her real life boyfriend are to blame (oh quelle surprise!!) Unfortunately as they discuss their devilish plans, everything they have done and as she expresses her disgust for Miguels face, he overhears everything from the door.

Manuela then in her greed to inherit her aunts estate, turns on her stupid-arsed donkey-boy boyfriend, who did all the killings for her and tells him to sod off.

Miguel then runs upstairs where Angela (the only survivor) is resting and jumps on top of her expressing his love. She stabs him through the neck with what looks like a poker and that's that then!!! She dashes downstairs to see Manuela fighting with her boyfriend on the floor about who is getting what and hot foots it into a lounge where she see's auntie dearests burnt remains on a seat. Rather the shock when she's asking for help really....

As Manuela's boyfriend tries to kill Angela, Manuela rushes in and kills him with hedge trimmers!!! *yawn* but DU-DU-DUUUUUHHHH Miguel appears (complete with poker still through his neck - yup he's still alive!) and takes out his sister Manuela, by choking.....

Cue good guy turnng up with police to save Angela. Miguel dies on floor beside Manuela... THE END!! Complete pile of bollocks!!!

Too poor to score. I feel the worst one yet.

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