Category Archives: Chilly Thrilly

Darabont’s TV Evil! Buried Alive review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Being a nostalgia fiend has some advantages.  I’m not just rehashing old material you’ve probably seen or read a billion times before, spewing the muck and bile that’s been regurgitated and swallowed down again only to be regurgitated once more.  Hardly do you see another, run-of-the-mill review about Scream, Friday the 13 VIII: Jason Takes Manhatten or Bride of Chucky.  Most horror fans are familiar with the bodies of these works; my realm of interest scratches at the indie circuit and those lesser known films that, perhaps, folks are aware of but never seen, or have witnessed them in the past and their minds can’t piece together what that film was in the present.  The latter happened to me with an old Frank Darabont TV movie Buried Alive.  You know Darabont, right?  He only did some of the most prolific work of the last decade and half adapting works from Stephen King and kicking off the hit AMC TV show The Walking Dead!

Clint Goodman lives a humble town with his high maintenance wife Joanna.  Her love for Clint has been long gone ever since he constructed, what he thought, was their two story dream home in his home town.  Joanna strings along an affair with a city doctor; they plot to kill Clint with a fish secretion that causes a fatal heart attack.  When Joanna pulls off the caper, she collects what she thinks is her dues:  sells the house, sells the business and is ready to leave town to start her new life.  However, Clint awakens.  Trapped inside his own coffin, he manages dig himself out, discover Joanna’s dastardly doings and plans his own revenge against his wife and her lover.

Continue reading →

Is Your Home this Evil? House (Hausu) review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Japanese horror isn’t something I pride myself on having a lot of knowledge of or contain much material about, but I do find enjoyment in what I come across even if the resemblance to an anime style becomes apparent in the storytelling.  I’ll be straight forward with you right here and now, I’m not a fan of Japanese anime.  No, sir.  Can’t say that I am.  However, my latest venture into the J-horror sends me back in time to the groovy year of 1977.  The film is called House and no, not the Steve Miner feature from ’86.  Also known by it’s Japanese name Hausu, House is a simple ghost tale with ambitious and groundbreaking special effects that dared much of the decade to catch up with the times.

Continue reading →

Evil all around! I Saw the Devil review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Every so often, a hole must be filled.  This hole is the deepest, darkness, most horrifying and brutally stricken hole  a single person would imagine if they had the fortitude to ever do so.  The reason this hole needs to be filled lies majorly with curiosity and morbidness.  Human nature is quirky and our senses need to be overloaded with fear and shock when the time calls for it.  Jee-woon Kim’s I Saw the Devil fills that hole and exceeds to overflow it with unmerciful loathing which will haunt you long after the credits roll.

A solitary man rapes and dismembers young women in order to appease his appetite for human suffering, but when when one of his victims turns out to be the pregnant fiance of a secret service agent and a former police chief’s daughter, he may have made a big mistake.  The agent devises a plan to find his fiance’s killer and play a capture and release torture game in order to inflict as much as pain as the killer has caused the agent’s fiance.  What the agent doesn’t realize is that this killer is relentless when it comes to getting even and nothing will stop his destructive path.

Continue reading →

Hidden evils will be your undoing! Death’s Door review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Remember those 80’s and early 90’s demonic films that had the camera pretend to be a floating spirit like in Evil Dead or the original Night of the Demons?  Exposing women’s breasts were a mere exploitive stunt as the well endowed ladies’ shirts just happen to fall off because of a single, light and accidental touch.  The blood waved in like a killer tsunami and the body count was as high as Mount Fuji!  Those were the good ole days of demonic horror with the clarity of the hero and, sometimes, villains was not so black and white.  This melancholy brings me to George Schileppi’s 2008 killer specter and possession film Death’s Door where he skims the surface of all that glory said above and never really sinks his teeth into something that has been, at least to me, long lost in the world of horror.

Television psychic Madame Camille uses smoke and mirrors to make her guest believe they’re actually speaking to their loved ones.  When an aggressive religious driven radio evangelist is invited to face his accusations of murder, Madame Camille’s psuedo-powers become a reality and she has to tap into the evil possessing the evangelist that has trapped the frightened cast and crew inside the station.  One by one people die a gruesome, horrifying death and the survivors are running out of time in finding a way out of their tomb.

Continue reading →

King’s adapted 70’s film gets a makeover! Carrie remake news!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

In 1976, Brian DePalma directed Sissy Spacek and John Travolta in Carrie which is about a young high school girl who is constantly tormented by her peers.  Carrie discovers she has telekinetic powers and uses them gruesomely against her tormenters, and the rest of the school, when they play a disgusting prank on her at prom involving pig blood.  The film was a major hit for not only DePalma, but it damn well jump started the careers of Spacek and Travolta.

Now there is talk of a remake being composed by MGM and Song Screen Gems (Resident Evil franchise) who want to have a fresh take on the Stephen King novel.  This retake is being penned by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa who had wrote the stage play Spider-Man:  Turn off the Dark.  Aguirre-Sacasa was brought in to write a more novel faithful version of Carrie.

Here’s hoping for the best.