What Big Teeth You Have: “Cursed” Review

Slasher StudiosCursed

Going into Wes Craven’s new horror thriller “Cursed” I had very low expectations. First of all, the movie had been cut fairly severely from an R to a PG-13 and the movie had been retooled for the past two years (Thankfully the DVD is the unrated cut). Not only this but “Cursed” also wasn’t screened for critics. All signs point to “Terrible Movie.”

The film begins when two friends, Jenny Tate (Mýa) and Becky Morton (Shannon Elizabeth), are at a pier and decide to get their fortune told by Zela (Portia de Rossi). She foretells that they will suffer a horrible fate, but they don’t believe her and walk away laughing. A little while later, Becky realizes Jenny has disappeared and can’t find her on the pier; Becky was driving. One night, while in a car together, Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg) and his sister Ellie (Christina Ricci) hit an animal and another car. They attempt to rescue the other driver, Becky Morton, but she is suddenly dragged and eaten by an unknown creature. Jimmy and Ellie are both slashed by the creature’s claws. Jimmy starts to believe that the creature was a werewolf, but no one will believe him. He and his sister start to exhibit wolfish tendencies (such as both of them eating raw bacon, Ellie catching a fly in her bare hand, and being attracted to the smell of blood) but Ellie denies it, apparently proving her point by touching a silver picture frame and not getting burned. Jimmy becomes much stronger, as exampled when a bully named Bo (Milo Ventimiglia) forces him to join the wrestling team. He easily defeats three wrestlers, including Bo.

Meanwhile, Jenny is torn apart in a parking garage by a wolf-like creature. Zela’s prediction for Jenny and Becky comes true. Eventually, Ellie starts to believe the werewolf idea, and Jimmy proves it when he holds a silver cake server and gets burned (he then discovers that the picture frame Ellie touched was actually stainless steel). He goes to warn Ellie with the help of Bo, who shows up at their house to say he’s gay and apparently likes Jimmy. Bo and Jimmy race to where Ellie is, and in the meantime she figures out that her boyfriend, Jake (Joshua Jackson), is a werewolf. He confirms that, but claims it wasn’t him that attacked her and Jimmy. Another werewolf attacks, seemingly proving his story. Bo and Jimmy try to help, but Bo is knocked out. But…..who is the werewolf?

Surprisingly, this movie ain’t half bad. In fact, it’s actually really quite good. What we have here is a fun little werewolf thriller about a brother and sister that get attacked by a mysterious creature and are forced to deal with what they have become. There are some good scares (gotta love the Mya scene in the parking lot) and some surprisingly solid laughs (I loved Christina Ricci’s bitchy coworker and the “gay” subplot involving the head of the wrestling team). Not everything works in the film–the ending is a bit overkill and some of the effects are a bit iffy–but overall, I’d say it’s definitely at least worth a rental. It isn’t a bad way to spend two hours of good, solid creature feature entertainment. Just don’t expect an Oscar worthy movie and you’ll be fine.

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Wax? Paris Hilton? What’s the Difference? “House of Wax” Review

Slasher StudiosHouse of Wax

In 1974, a woman is making a wax head in the kitchen while her son eats cereal in his highchair. Her husband enters carrying a young boy who is shouting and kicking. The boy is forced into a highchair and strapped in place by his father. After being strapped and taped to his chair by his mother, he scratches her hand. She then slaps her child across the face.

In 2005, Carly (Elisha Cuthbert) and her boyfriend Wade (Jared Padalecki) with her friend Paige (Paris Hilton) and Paige’s boyfriend Blake (Robert Ri’chard) are on their way to a highly anticipated football game in Louisiana. Eventually, Carly’s delinquent twin brother, Nick (Chad Michael Murray) and his friend Dalton (Jon Abrahams) also join them. Night falls and the group decides to set up camp for the night. The campsite is later visited by a stranger in a pickup truck who shines his lights at the campsite, but refuses to leave or address them until Nick smashes a headlight with a bottle. The next morning, Carly and Paige go exploring, Carly falls down a cliff and lands in deer remains and sees a fake hand. Wade’s car’s fan belt is found to be damaged. The group meets a disheveled, rural man named Lester (Damon Herriman), who offers to drive Carly and Wade to the nearby town of Ambrose to get a new fan belt, while the rest of them go to the football game.

The two arrive at Ambrose, which is virtually a ghost town. Unable to find an attendant at the auto mechanics shop, they wander into the church, disrupting a funeral. There, they meet a mechanic named Bo (Brian Van Holt), who offers to sell them a fan belt after the funeral. While waiting for the services to end, Carly and Wade visit the wax museum, which itself is made of wax and is the central feature of the town. Afterward, they follow Bo to his house to find a proper fan belt. While there, Wade is crippled and stabbed by a long-haired man with a wax facemask named Vincent. Bo grabs Carly, super glues her lips shut and locks her in a cellar. Dalton and Nick arrive in Ambrose to look for Carly and Wade. Vincent meanwhile strips and shaves Wade, then puts him in a chair with a metal contraption on his head which pins his eyes open. Vincent pulls a couple of levers which showers the immobile Wade with hot wax.

Can Wade escape? Will Paris die? Are any of them safe? Oh please…House of Wax isn’t really big on plot. It’s got your normal set-up that deals with extremely attractive boys and girls ending up in a bad situation. Some live, some die. If you’ve seen a horror film in the last 30 years, you know how it goes. The movie is slow going and a bit choppy at the beginning but still with it. Even after watching countless horror films over the last few years, I’ve gotta admit that I’ve become jaded and can smell things coming a mile away.

So the production team decided to go with that idea and jack it up a notch and tell the audience, OK, you know what’s going to happen next, but we’re going to make it ugly so you’ll jump out of your seat. And casting Paris Hilton was a stroke of genius because for the first time that I can recall a hot female character that people still wanted to see die. And, she did a nice striptease down to her underwear before the bad stuff happened to her. When things get bad, it gets really bad in a hurry. In fact, all the death sequences were quite horrible to watch, yet I couldn’t help but feel that the horror movie geek inside of me was very, very satisfied.

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Never Sleep Again: “A Nightmare on Elm Street” Review

Slasher StudiosNightmare on Elm Street

Wes Craven’s definitive classic. Bet you can’t guess what it is. A Nightmare on Elm Street is an unbelievably original, terrifingly realistic, and overall terrifying that, despite a weak ending, is one of the best horror flicks of the quarter of a century. The film deals with a deceased child molester who now lives only through the dreams of the children of those who burned him alive. Robert Englund is truly frightening as Freddy Krueger. Wes Craven delivers a surprising amount of tension that still holds up today.

Nancy is having nightmares about a frightening, badly-scarred figure who wears a glove with razor-sharp “finger knives”. She soon discovers that her friends are having similar dreams. When the kids begin to die, Nancy realizes that she must stay awake to survive. Uncovering the secret identity of the dream killer and his connection with the children of Elm Street, the girl plots to draw him out into the real world.

The film goes for suspense, drama, and gore and delivers for the most part. Heather Langenkamp gives a very solid performance as Nancy Thompson, the young woman is the “leader” among her friends and the only one who may get out alive. Forget about Jamie Lee Curtis’ whimpering performance in “Halloween”. Here Langenkamp is the real deal and she kicks ass. A great horror film that still delivers today. Look for a young Johnny Depp who, arguably, has the best death scene in the flick.

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When the Devil Won’t Take You: “The Devil’s Rejects” Review

Slasher StudiosDevil's Rejects

On May 18, 1978, Texas Sheriff John Quincey Wydell (William Forsythe), and a large posse of State Troopers issue an S and D mission on the Firefly family for over seventy-five homicides and disappearances over the past several years. They begin a full-scale attack when the Firefly family fires on them. During the firefight, the family kills four troopers and Tiny (Matthew McGrory) goes missing, Rufus (Tyler Mane) is killed, and Mother Firefly (Leslie Easterbrook, in a thankless role replacing the wonderful Karen Black) is taken into custody while Otis (Bill Moseley) and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie, once again the star of the show) escape. Once out of their property, Baby pretends to be hurt in the middle of the road. When a nurse in travel stops to see what is the matter, Otis comes from behind and kills her with a knife. The two escape in her car and drive towards their specified meeting spot if all hell broke loose with the law at their home.

They head to Kahiki Palms motel, a run down desert beaten place to seek refuge from the law and huge media coverage. While at the motel Baby seduces Roy, part of the Banjo and Sullivan singing group. While he is off guard due to Baby’s sexual innuendos, Otis sneaks up behind him, holds him at gun-point and demands he take them back to his room where the rest of the band is resting minus their roadie, who is at the gas station getting beef jerky. Otis and Baby takes the band hostage in the hotel room and Otis shoots Jimmy the roadie when he returns.

Meanwhile, Baby’s father Captain Spaulding, after being alerted by Baby about the raid, hits the road to come to the hotel to meet Baby and Otis. His car runs out of gas and Spaulding assaults a woman and scares her son taking their car in the process. Back at the hotel, Otis sexually assaults Roy’s wife Gloria and Otis demands Adam and Roy to come with him on an errand.

Otis drives his two prisoners to a place where he buried some guns. While walking to the location, the two prisoners put up a struggle and hit Otis in the head with a large tree branch. This knocks him down, but Otis soon regains control of the situation, shooting one of them and killing Roy while he is on the ground praying to God. Back at the motel, Adam’s wife Wendy tries to escape by going to the bathroom. Gloria attempts to rebel only to be killed by Baby. Wendy runs out of the motel only to be caught by Captain Spaulding who knocks her out. Otis returns, and all three leave the motel together in the band’s van. All hell is literally about to break loose.

Going into the horror sequel “The Devil’s Rejects” I had no idea what to expect. Not really being a fan of Rob Zombie’s first film “House of a 1000 Corpses” I really wasn’t expecting much besides some cool deaths and a lot of gore. Well….I got that and a lot more. “The Devil’s Rejects” is repellent, evil, disgusting, disturbing, and, most shockingly, one of the best movies so far this year. Taking place mere days after the first flick, this movie has the Firefly family stalking another group of victims in a seedy hotel.

Things don’t go as planned however when one of their original victim’s brother decides to get revenge. Words alone cannot describe what all happens on screen. Let’s see: A knife to the heart, bullets grazing flesh, a face peeling, a gutted, fully naked young woman, a bashed in head, pieces of a young girl strung along a highway. This is S & M for horror fans. This isn’t for all tastes but if you miss the old school horror days of “Last House on the Left” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, you won’t be disappointed.

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“Final Destination 3”: Dead on Arrival

Slasher StudiosFinal Destination 3

When Wendy Christensen has a vision of an accident on the roller coaster, resulting in her and her friends’ deaths, she instantly begins to panic, causing more of her friends to be left of the ride. The remaining friends, including Wendy’s boyfriend, are stuck on the roller coaster and find themselves involved in the accident. With death waiting around the corner, Wendy and Kevin Fischer must try and work out death’s plan, before they and the remaining survivors end up dead. Ahh, gotta love the Final Destination movies. As stupid as some of the stories sound, they manage to get the job done in bloody, inventive ways. Final Destination 3 opens with said rollercoaster accident in what may be the best opening act for a horror movie since, well, Final Destination 2’s freeway accident.

The acting is bad, the story borderline, but it doesn’t really matter. The deaths (nail gun, tanning bed, cherry picker) are ingenious in their design and that ending is one of the better ones of the series. Nonetheless, in all honesty, this is probably my least favorite of the franchise. The characters are pretty annoying and movie feels strangely padded. After the wonderful “Final Destination 2”, this feels a bit like a let down. That being sad, there is enough carnage candy to go around for those who love their bodies extra bloody. This isn’t high art by any means but it gets the job done.

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Just Hang Up: “When a Stranger Calls” (2005) Review

Slasher StudiosWhen a Stranger Calls (2005)

On one side of town, a babysitter and the kids she is watching are brutally murdered. The police are disgusted as it is implied that the murderer used his bare hands to rip them to shreds. The film then changes to teenager Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle). She is going through average teenage crises, having her boyfriend, Bobby (Brian Geraghty), cheat on her with her best friend Tiffany (Katie Cassidy), and going over 800 minutes on her cell phone, for which her dad, Ben (Clark Gregg), is making her babysit for a rich family to pay the debt. This causes her to miss a school bonfire, which her friend, Scarlett (Tessa Thompson), is attending. She arrives at the exquisite and elaborate Mandrakis House, perched upon a lake with a maid and a greenhouse built in the center.

The parents (Derek de Lint and Kate Jennings Grant) show her around and tell her their numbers, stating that they won’t be back until midnight. The kids are upstairs asleep and it should be an easy night for Jill. Jill begins the night by snooping and trying on Mrs. Mandrakis’ jewelry, in other words, being a bitchy teenage brat. She then starts receiving anonymous phone calls; she first dismisses them. The calls soon to be too much and poor Jill is threatened with her life. Will she make it out of the night alive?

Once in a great while I will watch a movie that completely surprises me. One that comes out of nowhere to be a bit of rousing entertainment. One that is pure fun from beginning to end. Well folks, “When A Stranger Calls” is NOT that movie. It is an unbelievably stupid and far fetched remake of the much better 1979 horror camp classic. Our lead heroine Jill is forced to babysit after going over her cell phone minutes and is harassed by telephone calls from a mysterious caller. Every cliche in the world is used here from the stupid cat-jumping-out-of-a-hidden-spot to the car that won’t start. This movie is bad…not even bad in a “so bad it’s good way” more in a “so bad it’s boring way.” Skip this godawful film and save your movie for something else. You’ll thank me later, trust me on this.

Buy it here…if you dare: When a Stranger Calls

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