Category Archives: Creature Features

Found Footage of Mockumentary Evil! Black Water Vampire review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Prior to my viewing of Black Water Vampire, the conclusion that I’ve succumb to will tell that I’m one reviewer who thinks found footage horror has been well used and abused through the valleys of independent film to the hills of the Hollywood mainstream market. Though the technique has been ridden hard through the past decade, the touch of realism can still be felt. Black Water Vampire doesn’t stray too far from it’s found footage ancestors as far as horror elements in these types of movies go, but what Black Water Vampire may be weak on, their strength lies with in the producing of bone-chilling and fear-inducing effects that turn your perspective on vampire films to a whole different direction.

Over numerous decades, four women went missing on December 21st and found several days later, dead and drained of blood, near the Black Water Creek. An aspiring journalist enlists three of her friends to create a documentary on the killings and to prove to the world that suspected killer and death row inmate Raymond Banks has been unjustly locked up for the four murders. Their investigation leads them into more than what they expected – a more dangerous and darker path has been set at the stake of their lives.
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Freshman director Evan Tramel sets up Black Water Vampire nicely as a true documentary, interviewing friends and families of the victims, asking retired case workers about the investigation of the past victims, having a one-on-one chat with inmate Raymond Banks, and even trekking to the snowing hills of Black Water to capture the essence of Banks’ isolated cabin. This set up takes about a good portion of the film and though typically this might be the dullest part of the movie, the beginning is a good set up for these characters: Danielle – a passionate journalist looking for the truth, Andrea – a producer who feels compelled about the unfair persecution of Raymond Banks, Anthony – a camera man looking to get paid, and Robin – a friend helping out a friend. Funny enough is that all the characters’ names are actually the names of the actors too: Danielle Lozeau, Andrea Adams, Anthony Russell, and Robin Allen.

When all hell goes loose and things get berserk, the investigators discover a true vampire, bat-like humanoid, hunting them down for more than just to feed. The cat and mouse game between predator and prey had me going, but when the bat creature feels the need to reproduce is where I get a little weary about the story. An atomically frightening atmosphere being isolated in a snow-filled forest, but when you start introducing a horny vampire and a conspiracy notions, a viewer will tend to forget what they’re watching and start to wonder what the hell and why the hell their watching. This feeling succumbs at the movie’s end and though I found solace in an original ending, I couldn’t help to think the pain other viewers, especially red blooded horror fans, would think about this ending.

The acting was par for the course and the actors did a good enough to job to pass for scared shitless, but I found the vampire to be the real star. Brandon DeSpain‘s performance as the creature of the night could scare the pants off Van Helsing himself. DeSpain’s vampire was relentless, none compassionate, visceral, and animalistic. I had a hard to time trying to piece together the relation between the specific date of December 21st and the vampire’s killings. Why the first day of solstice? The acting becomes a little drowned out by other plot mysteries such as a homeless woman wondering the woods and doesn’t speak to the investigators. Her presence and the “oh geez” ending are never explained and there were no breadcrumbs given to help explain.
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Image Entertainment brings this unique take of vampire horror to UK DVD on March 24. Check it out and come to a conclusion yourself, but be forewarned that you’ve never experienced a vampire film like this one. Don’t let the Image Entertainment cover fool you with a big breasted woman being covered in blood as there lies nothing similar to that at all in the film.

Trailer Trash: Zombeavers and Lucky Bastard!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Trailer Trash will bring you the hottest, latest horror trash ready to hit the silver and big screens. While I agree with most that trailers spoil mostly the good scenes, I can’t shun my excitement and my passion to share upcoming horror with my (lack of) audience.

Zombeavers

A cabin trip with high hopes of sexual and booze debauchery is turned into a nightmare for survival with the local beaver population is actually an undead horde of deadly beavers that will stop at nothing to taste that sweet, luscious flesh upon their two front teeth.

Lucky Bastard

“Lucky Bastard” porn website searches for the ultimate fan to have sex with his favorite porn star. Within a vacant house filled with CTV cameras, one lucky bastard will have sex dreams fulfilled, but the producers might have bitten more off than they chew with their fan as his fantasies involve more than just sex.

World War Evil! Frankenstein’s Army Review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Amaray Wrap.EPS
Wolfenstein has come to life! What seemingly looks like a video game turns into a motion picture unlike any other. Other filmmakers have only half-assed an attempt to take the Nazi industrialization and combine it into cybernetic top secret warfare. A reconnaissance company of Soviet solders receive an S.O.S. transmission from an abandoned mining facility in the middle of nowhere behind enemy lines. The squad finds themselves in the middle of hell where soldiers are took apart and sewn together with machine parts creating a killer, monstrous army. These abominations are the work of the grandson of Viktor Frankenstein. What’s worse is that the soldiers are a part of a secret mission that will put their lives in more danger than the hell they’ve stepped into with Herr Doctor Frankenstein!

I was once in e-mail contact with the film’s director Richard Raaphorst many years back when he was trying to fund an on screen production for Worst Case Scenario. A project I couldn’t wait until the dream came true on the big screen. I waited and waited and waited. Only two promo reels were released and then the project just drifted off into the dead project pool and drowned out of existence. Raaphorst was inspired again, most likely, by his failed project to create Frankenstein’s Army and even using some of the monster nazis he was once going to input into Worst Case Scenario. I’m stoked that Raaphorst was able to see his creation in another, more profitable direction.

Speaking of nazi monsters, the creations where spectacular especially the creature “Mosquito Man.” Mosquito Man has blades on all fours and a drill for a mouth – pretty fucking frightening. There are also creatures with razor sharp blade fingers, cast iron maiden-chopping faces, slice and dicing propeller heads, and whatever your demented imagination can conjure. Frankenstein’s Army is an ultimate take on the Frankenstein legacy and spins it into the 20th century during World War II the most crucial and humbling time in the world’s history.
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Raaphorst chose to film Frankenstein’s Army in first person using the story of a soviet solder recording a documentary of the team’s reconnaissance mission and to show back home in mother Russia, to the socialist people, that their solders were happy and safe and brave in the face of the enemy. I watch a lot of movies and I stand by my personal decision that the first person use has been overused, abused, and old as a Roman shoe. In saying that, the first person works here for Raaphorst because we’re only given glimpses of the creatures leaving more to the imagination and probably so the audience can’t really see how bad the costumed nazi getups may have turned out.

Mosquito Man!

Mosquito Man!


Usually in screening the portrayal of any historical war, I can usually tell if a war’s historical accuracy is off or how I feel on how believable these characters can be in period piece. The Soviets soldiers felt like Soviet soldiers. The war felt like war. Saving Private Ryan is a good example of what I’m trying to convey where we, the audience, can empathize and experience the gruesome war with Tom Hanks and his band of brothers. That same sensation didn’t strike me when viewing Nicholas Cage’s Windtalkers which seemed to bastardized by Hollywood. Raaphorst had me in the dark, dank underground tunnels of these spooked Soviet lads and had me feel the fear in the face of patchwork humanoid creatures.
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I can’t recommend Frankenstein’s Army enough. The unique concept and the precision of execution should be a great draw for this film. More likely, Raaphorst’s film won’t win any major awards. Dark Sky’s picture presentation is clear. The audio suffers tremendously as much of the background noise drowns out the fake Russian accents. The extras are a little thing with a 31-minute “making of”, the trailer, a “creature spot” which displays the picture in a slide-show like feature. Raaphorst steampunk horror-thriller will keep you entertained and see what kind of man-machine construction will lurk around the corner, but the movie does feel like a video game with creatures hacking away at the camera while others stalk in the dark.

If you want to see Raaphorst Worst Case Scenario promo reels and see the similarities – see below.


Promo Trailer 1


Promo Trailer 2

Evil Ready to Chow Down! Eyes of the Woods Review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Always does this seem to me is that all the root causes of demonic possession in films stem from the ye ole ages when the land was young and naive.  Nearly in the same vein are The Evil Dead and Ginger Snaps in which these prequels explore ancient curses and demons to be the reason for all the present carnage and this is just to quickly name a couple of examples.  Darrin Reed and F. Miguel Valenti’s The Eyes of the Woods follows a similar structure but separate’s itself by beginning in the past with a pilgrim village Knobb’s Creek being slaughtered by a vengeful father who lost his daughter and blames God for his loss.  He leads Satan into his soul giving him ultimate strength, sustaining life, and a thirst for human flesh.  Four hundred years later to the present day,  five friends are hunted and tormented by the legendary creature of Knobb’s Creek whom has consumed numerous lives over the years feeding his body with souls.

What might be the most interesting piece about the Eyes of the Woods is Mark Villalobos whom’s hands are deep within the bloody special effects and also behind the creature played by Walter Phelan (Dr. Satan of House of a 1000 Corpses). The prosthetic applications on lanky Phelan are a nice touch making Phelan look like Baraka from Mortal Kombat 2, but naked. What a shame that the sound editing screws up the whole character; at best the foley sounds come off as loony-toony and the boom mike, or whatever was used, doesn’t produce quality sound – what can you expect with 2.0 Dolby?

However, the Creature has been overshadowed and not by the our young fresh-faced victims. The forest becomes more frightening than the actually villain much like, again, The Evil Dead. Entire lakes move, night is actually day, day is actually night are only a few examples of how our group of kids get turned around and completely “mind-fucked!” The Creature is completely overshadowed and becomes just a meager product of it’s environment – the forest. Unlike my comparison to The Evil Dead, the trees don’t reach out and rape women nor bust down doors to swallow souls. Instead, the trees act as an Electric Magnetic Pulse disabling phones and cars. How and why you say? Fuck if I know. Eyes of the Woods doesn’t explain much about the cause and one could guess that evil forces, especially demonic forces, are working to keep modern technology out of the bush!

Our young bunch deem very unlikable and audiences will have a hard time sympathizing with them. We want them to die just because there is nothing interesting about them, no showy love poise, no fight for something to live for and if anything, we can cheer for the character of “Winter” portrayed by Johnny Moreno, who in my opinion acts and looks just like James Duval from Cornered! Quirky and likable, had me rolling a couple of times, yet completely idiotic and still doesn’t become a character that you can root for to live. Even the female characters (who give us any gratuitous nudity and only gratuitous lake crossing in their bikinis) are just, well, blah. Now, there is gratuitous nudity with a chick walking out of the cave, covered in blood, and walking aimlessly through the woods and stumbles upon a backpacking couple who are not helpful. The backstory on this naked, covered in blood, chick doesn’t explain much of a background besides that her friend went in a cave and died. That’s about it – just walking tits.

Eyes of the Woods, not to be confused with The Hills Have Eyes or The Woods Have Eyes, homes into other horror flicks, but tries too hard to become a cult favorite. Instead, a mesh of mess chops off the film’s livelihood and throws it out the window because, basically, there is no use for the film’s manhood. Eyes of the Woods becomes another direct-to-video to take the direct-to-graveyard, do not pass go, do not collect $200 route. Even with a veteran villain, a special effects guru, and a decent, if a confusing, premise, this satanic creature feature won’t settle well with horror fans and will certainly leave a bad taste.

A..B..C..D..Evil! The ABCs of Death review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

abcsofdeathAbout damn time a way of learning your ABCs by the teaches of death! The ABCs of Death brings together 26 international directors to direct, at their own artistic freedom, their each short film segment. Each director was given a letter and were told to choose a word to title their work with and create a story around that word. The individual segments are not your typical horror thrillers about death and what I mean by that is that you don’t have a vampire segment, a slasher segment, etc. Death can come in any way, shape, or form and is certainly explored every single way in this fatal anthology.

I’d like to start off with my favorite segment which is entitled “D is for Dogfight” directed by Marcel Sarmiento, who you might remember from his direction work on Deadgirl and it’s been a little bit since that project! “D is for Dogfight” simply pits a man versus a vicious dog in an underground “fight club” style face-off. The short film is shot nearly without dialogue and the twist ending will leave you more with a sinister grin rather than a shock on your face. The man versus dog fight is excellent when done in slow motion with every dog punch and every bite to the arm or leg just as real as you would see on any animal attack video on RealTV.

Those Japanese directors again....

Those Japanese directors again….


The worst videos have to come from the Japanese, especially the one entitled “F is for Farts” directed by Noboru Iguchi. Iguchi did Machine Girl which is ultra-violet and just brutally stupid in a good way, but then Iguchi followed up later on with Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead and, well, yeah. By The ABCs of Death title alone, you can tell he hasn’t expanded his horizon’s much further. The whole episode, which lasts no more than four or five minutes, is about stinky, women farts. The comedy element I get, but the death part I do not and nor will I ever. Maybe I’m just not Japanese educated enough to learn the history behind Japan’s wackiness.
CLAYMATION!!!!

CLAYMATION!!!!

There are other really cool segments (Timo’s Tjahjanto’s “L is for Libido”) and other silly toilet humor death segments (Anders Morgenthaler’s “K is for Klutz”). This anthology is unique because you get a taste of everything, of every culture, of every opinion with no restraint and with no influence. Creativity is boundless and that is what is more outstanding here than most of the segments and you won’t get bored which is great! I can’t wait for The ABCs of Death 2 and the anticipation is killing me – wait – that should be in the sequel – “A is for Anticipation.”

The ABCs of Death is distributed by Magnolia Home Entertainment.