Category Archives: Uncategorized

Candarian Evil is Back! Evil Dead remake review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Some moviegoers pride themselves as being a purist especially hardcore horror fans who are looking for an excuse to bash the shit out of anything that isn’t already the horror norm. Remakes are notorious for being made and resulting to being just a money-hungry cash-in and being an absolute piece of garbage bringing shame to the original crew of the original movie. Only once in awhile, a remake will come along to excite and thrill while still being true and respectful to the original movie. Evil Dead is very true and very respectful.

Four friends watch over a drug recovering addict going cold turkey in a woodsy remote cabin. They happen upon the Necronomican – a book bound in human flesh and inked in human blood – and release soul possessing and feasting demons that bring bloody havoc upon group of friends.
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With Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Bruce Campbell backing and producing complete the remake project helmed by newcomer Fede Alvarez, you could call this movie a slam dunk and was from start to finish. Right from beginning, the blood begins and, boy, did the blood keep flowing. Raimi’s The Evil Dead intended to be a frightening movie with lots of gore with very little campiness. Alvarez’s Evil Dead just amplified the scary and quadrupled the gore with little to no campiness while keeping Raimi’s story practically whole through the film’s duration and even putting little tidbit easter eggs in film much like Raimi did with placing Freddy Kueger’s blade claw in the tool shed to show respect to Wes Craven and Nightmare on Elm Street.

Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead is it’s own monster when being compared to the original film while still being a “Video Nasty.” I’d call Evil Dead a proud and gruesome spawn based off the original intent of Raimi’s The Evil Dead. If you’re Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness fan, you can completely forget about any humor being portrayed here; all the fun and games will be left out until Evil Dead 4 makes some kind of potential wave.
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Call me impressed by Fede Alveraz who has all short films under his belt. I watched his robo-apocolyptic short Panic Attack and thought he had an eye for detail and the details for Evil Dead are right on the nose – the Cabin, the overzealous fog, the controversial woods scene, – but Fede did add his own. For example, there is no Ash (which might piss some people off more than the rest), the whole reason for being at the cabin, the explanation of the Necronomicon, the ending. Yet all these elements make the movie stand on it’s own two evil feet. It is mindless, it is gory, it is sick and it is fun – just like the original.

Evil Arachnids from Space! Spiders review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Spiders creep me the hell out. Eight legs, hairy, lots of black eyes, fangs – Spiders are frightening creatures of nature especially if you’re an insect. Spiders can hunt probably better than any human can as they can spin a web to capture their pray, dig holes to create traps for passing by prey, and can inject poison to paralyze their soon to be meal. I’m so fascinated (and frightened) of spiders that I had to review a copy of Tibor Takacs film simply
entitled Spiders.
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A disabled Soviet Union space station once harvested alien DNA that would only combine with the genes of spiders. The station was abandoned and 20 years later, the station orbits earth until a crumbling meteor slams into the station breaking off portion and sending the space junk into the atmosphere and crash landing into New York City’s metro underground. The mutated spiders lay eggs inside their prey and grow six inches every hour. A massive military cover up exposes the greed behind a rogue colonel’s intentions and its up to a metro controller and his estranged ex-wife, a city health inspector, to bring the surface the truth of the colonel malicious reign and to stop the mutant spiders from taking over the city.
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Director Takacs isn’t new the giant spider genre as he directed the 2007 TV movie Ice Spiders which didn’t fair too well with audiences, but who doesn’t love man-eating monstrous spiders? 2013’s Spider’s feels like David Arquette starred Eight Legged Freaks with the terror among the community in an old fashion creature feature, but Spiders does stand on it’s own eight legs by making the spiders alien in origin. Adding the once softcore porn actress Christa Campbell doesn’t hurt either. Campbell is accompanied by Patrick Muldoon who might remember from another arachnid type sci-fi movie Starship Troopers as the fleet pilot Zander. Muldoon also appeared in Ice Spiders – the guy has a thing for spiders.
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Takacs surprises me with the quality of Spiders and his other recent work. The story and the effects are okay and passable, but not as creatively outstanding as 1987’s The Gate – the film that had boosted his career as well as Stephen Doriff’s. These computer generated spiders are awkward when crawling and their razor-teeth filled mouths are even more awkward when stretched out to devour the next victim. However, Takacs knows how to keep an adventure and the action going and continuous, but seems to lack character motivation at times. I struggle to comprehend and begin to question our hero’s (Muldoon) and heroine’s (Campbell) choices in handling the spider chaos and the military’s cover-up. Also, I’m finding difficulty understanding that Muldoon’s character can outwit a giant Queen spider which is three stories tall while an entire military force can’t even handle the baby 4 foot tall male spiders.

With Spiders you will have to stretch your imagination beyond the limits of logical thinking, but with most creature features, you kind of need to and with that said, Spiders fairs well among the latest in the monster spider genre which has been severely neglected over the last five years. Spiders is also available in 3D if you have the capabilities! Thank you Millennium Films and Nu Image productions for a terrifying arachnophobia experience.

Evil That Is Hard to Swallow. Bad Meat review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

badmeatNot quite sure I want to review Bad Meat. Analyzing a project that never saw completion is like trying to teach terminally ill 3 year old how to manage a bank account. As I do a little more back ground research on Bad Meat, I’ve come across some very interesting and almost discouraging tidbits about the history behind Bad Meat. First off, the director is named Lulu Jarmen. Right now, you might be asking yourself who the hell is Lulu Jarmen and what else has she directed? Some people think Jarmen took over the project from Rob Schmidt, the director behind the inbred cannibal movie Wrong Turn and who promised fans that Dead Meat would be the most vile move ever seen quoted in 2011. However, many other people believe that Lulu Jarmen is a pseudo-name for Rob Schmidt because of how embarrassedly bad Bad Meat turned out financially and plot-wise.

Six troubled youths are sent to the isolated Camp Hardway under the cruel thumb of an hitler-esque figure and perverse, sadistic counselors. When the camp cook feeds the counselors rotten meat, the counselors transform into raging, flesh eating psychopaths.

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The premise is a shortcoming much like the ending of Dead Meat. Literally, the film just ran out of money from Capital films and immediately shut down production half way through the movie. Is it a good thing that perhaps Schmidt (or Jarmen) shot the movie from first sequence? One would think. Yet, Dead Meat ends right at the middle of the movie and in the midst of an attack none-the-less. The characters’ fates, the six teenage renegades, are left unexplained by an open ended, most likely reshot, ending that has left us to conjure up our own imagination to seek an ending to Dead Meat.

Dead Meat from the beginning had no promise even though fun to watch. The perversity is awkward, the fluids flow in chunky green vomit and think warm red blood, and the dialogue is as colorful as all the spectrums of the rainbow. The first 82-83, give or take, manages to at least make your time worth wild, but the last ten minutes are severely butchered with reshot with scenes of a severely burned (maybe?) survivor of the camp laying in a hospital bed and typing away on a bedside computer. Typing what? Yo no se. Most likely the story behind how this survivor came to be mangled and so horribly disfigured. These scenes, which are interjected into the original film, barely have any connections besides the name of the main character Tyler being thrown about by his apparent older brother who looks old enough to be his father.

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Dead Meat is not the “sickest move you’ll see this year.” Besides, I most likely would not even call it a full film. Intriguing, gross, and hilarious but a grand let down by Jarmen (or by Schmidt, who cares?). Any bit of Dead Meat’s success died with Capitol Films the production company. Revolver Entertainment’s pickup of Dead Meat would have rejuvenated life into this film, but instead arbitrary reshoots baffles and confuse.

Awesome Evil! Biting Elbow’s music video for Bad Motherfucker!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The best first person video ever from the latest music video, called Insane Office Escape part II, of the single from Biting Elbows and you’ve probably never even heard of this of punk band before – I know I didn’t – but after viewing this awesome gangster-style, kill them any way possible video, you might want to know more? The video reminds me a lot of the drug induced, alcoholic, and perversive The Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” and even has that edgy feel to it. In Biting Elbow’s music video (the song “Bad Motherfucker” is great as well) pits a lone man against many expendable henchmen and he is fighting for his life and for a portable teleporter. Check it out below.

I have to track down part I of this series created by the very talented Ilya Naishuller and Sergey Valyaev.

The Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” (Uncut)

Store Your Evil! Storage 24 Review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

storage24magnetFinally! Storage 24 is a sci-fi creature feature that lives and breathes to impress and to entertain! I hadn’t had this much fun with a monster movie since Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield back in theaters of 2008. Both works have a simple premise, a cast of favorable characters, and deadly results for them by a vicious, out of this world thing that just wants to rip anything and everything to shreds without reason. Of course, Storage 24’s smaller setting confines itself to a sole storage unit instead of the broad city landscape that is New York, but Storage 24 builds to be, and develops really well into, a bigger than expected movie.

A military plane crashes in the middle of London. The event seems small enough until the military quarantine the area. Exes Charlie and Shelley are trapped in their powerless storage unit facility during their clean out their belongings with the help of their friends. Lurking in the building with them is the contents that were on that military plane – an 9 foot alien with a killer instinct.

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The alien portrayed had me thrilled with the movements and the special effects. The mandibles were a big plus with me as I am a huge Predator fanatic (Sorry Xenomorph fans, but Predator has the bugs beat!). The creature performs in almost stop motion which gave it a more unearthly feel and the way it mangled people lives up to a killer animal on the loose – think Ghost in the Darkness. Unlike Predator, the alien seemed to be more mobile and more crafty by being able to move and hide in the rafters of the storage facility. I know that sounds like an aspect of Predator, but this alien did more with ease and without being bulky about doing it. Less human and more alien – if we knew how aliens existed I’m sure Storage 24 captured the perceptual concept.

I love the films misdirection as you’re sucked into hating one set of characters and sympathizing with the other set during the first part of the film. Suddenly, just before the shit hits the extraterrestrial fan, you’re now rooting for the asshole and the slut who cheated. The laws of a horror movie are null and void at this point.

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I’m not completely satisfied on why Storage 24 is being wrongly shunned on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes with both sites sporting around a meager 40% freshness. Perhaps the dorky comedy at the first half of the film is too blame? Maybe the dialogue tracks could have been louder and the actors could have their pronunciation cleaned up a bit? Who knows and who cares? All I can tell you about Storage 24 is how much fun I had and that’s what matters the most about b-movies, right? You can buy your copy of Storage 24 here!

Storage 24 Trailer