Tag Archives: demons

Book Review: D.A. Stern’s “Black Dawn”

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Discovering ancient gyms in the literature world is like finding $5 in your pocket that you didn’t know you had. The feeling is a rush, an enlightening feature that emits from your soul making you glow with enjoyment. That feeling is so powerful because that means there lies hope and there lies new prospects, in all walks of life, out there for all of us. Coming across D.A. Stern’s novel “Black Dawn” in a second hand book store was a great find amongst the vast rows of books because of the novel’s timeless nature, something we’re all in fear of coming one day, the apocalypse.

“Black Dawn” follows multiple story lines of people, some good of heart and some not so much, when two waves hit. The first wave knocks out all electrical devices much like an E.M.P. does. The second wave sends a rush of anger into the bowels that makes people want to rape, rob, and kill. The story lines eventually connect to a finale that involves awaking an ancient, world ending entity.

Released in October of 2001 (yes, now I feel old), “Black Dawn” could have been read today or thirty years ago and still have the same affect. Why? Part of the agelessness of this book due to the author’s writing style. D.A. Stern’s style is blunt, to the point, and without mercy. Some critics might consider it dry and bland. In hindsight, Stern’s articulation of the events, jumping back and forth from story to story, would have been mass confusion if done in a more colorful, descriptive manner. Just tell me a character was shot and that convey’s the character’s death or seemingly death; this type of writing is perfect for “Black Dawn’s” as it lays down a serious tone.

Also, Demons never seem to go out of style. Though Stern never labels the undead creatures as demons, the idea that a character is killed and then resurrects to doing the bidding of an evil, soon-to-be-awakened threat spells out Demon from afar. The apocalypse happens in stages and so does the outing of each villain and hero creating a grip on your eye balls so you can’t look away from the words that tell how the events unfold.

Certainly a good read and a fast read. Quick, easy, and to the point but still giving you the edge of insanity, fear, and horror which is always refreshing especially since this novel is 13 years old. D.A. Stern wrote a couple of Blair Witch sequel novelization: “Blair Witch:: Graveyard Shift” and “Blair Witch: The Secret Confession of Rustin Parr”

Coming Attractions: The Quiet Ones!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

I gotta tell ya – I’m getting very excited about the upcoming supernatural horror film The Quiet Ones! I’m always down for a good demon/poltergeist film especially with Hammer Film Productions behind it and while I was not a total fan of Daniel Radcliffe’s The Woman in Black I thought the film was solid enough for a Hammer comeback. Plus, Let Me In was a decent remake too of the Swedish vampire film Let The Right One In.

The Quiet Ones has an unorthodox professor conducting an off campus experiment with his students. The experiment is to create a poltergeist by use of the human imagination. But when one of their subjects is pushed to edge of her sanity, the experimenters trigger a supernatural being that won’t let them go so quietly.

The film stars Jared Harris from Resident Evil: Apocalypse and The Ward. Check out the trailer and let me know what you think!

Get Down With Evil! The Disco Exorcist review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Rex Romanski loves the ladies. His swinging disco fever charm dons no rival and the ladies, acknowledging his love’em and leave’em attitude, want his mojo even after he ditches them. But when Rex wines and dines and screws the wrong woman Rita Marie, his nightmare is only beginning. Rita is a black magic priestess with devilish revenge on the mind and Rex’s new play toy, mega porn star Amoreena Jones, becomes the host of an implanted demon to reek havoc among Rex and his groovy friends.

Director Richard Griffin did a decent job with this sleazy decadence of a screen play making the most of the nudity, the blood, the sex, and the utmost offensive nature that is The Disco Exorcist. I’m not too familiar with Griffin, but the native New Englander has been balls deep in horror and exploitation since the early 2000’s and his decade efforts really show the core of his passion. The Disco Exorcist won’t win Academy Awards, but have rock the shit out of horror film festivals including Rock and Shock 2011 and Killer Film Festival 2011 and rightfully so. This homage to the 1970’s includes super fueled drug and sex scenes that are, but probably not, the overboard culture of the 1970’s.

Rex Romanski isn’t a stereotypical hero. In fact, Rex is a bit of a wimp with a big love stick and he just happens to be in the right place at the right time when his ass needs saving. While the The Disco Exorcist wants to portray Rex the all mighty and strong hero, he doesn’t really do anything. Actor Michael Reed who portrays Rex makes you forget how pathetic Rex really can be by using his on camera charm. The guy is likable – what else can I say? Griffin and Reed have worked together previously in Griffin’s older work Nun of That and The Beyond the Dunwich Horror and I imagine their chemistry is similar to that of Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs.
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Ruth Sulterland is another of Griffin’s entourage and her role as the black magic priestess doesn’t spark as much likability as maybe Reed’s Rex does for the sheer fact that there resembles not nearly enough evil in Ruth to conjure any real threat to our hero and heroine. Rita is more in the background playing with her voodoo dolls and placing spells upon the grave to awake all scorn women from their tombs. Rita would have been more convincing if she was more hands on with Amoreena or Rex, but instead Rita resembles more like one of Rex’s whores and is easily forgettable.
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The gore of The Disco Exorcist doesn’t really pick up until almost 45 minutes into the film when the porn shoot goes array with possessed, bare chested roller girls hacking away at the on-set production crew. The first 45 minutes were more about Rex mojo’ing the beaver from various ladies and snorting coke like his life depended on it. The retro fitting of The Disco Exorcist really helps set the stage for the homage to the exploitive films of that represented decade. What doesn’t hurt the film either is the mayhem after that initial cherry popping gore scene which follows up with castration, decapitation, and combustion!
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Tons of fun, tons of drugs, ton of gore, tons of nudity – what is not to like about Richard’s Griffin’s sleazy and funny tale of Rex Romanski? Wild Eye Releasing and MVDvisual bring this film to DVD home entertainment and both companies are super pro-independent and company you can trust to give you a good time. The Disco Exorcist is a prime example of a good time.

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.

Seeing Evil! Curandero: Dawn of the Demon review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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By now I imagine we’re all, by all I mean avid movie-goers, familiar with the director Robert Rodriguez. The balls-to-the-wall flare for action Rodriguez has written and directed some of the most memorable movies in nearly the last two decades – Desperado, From Dusk till Dawn, Planet Terror and, yes, even Spy Kids. Rodriguez is now a well-known household name now that he has his own production company – Troublemaker Studios – and is a hot-shit friend of Django Unchained writer and director Quentin Tarantino (they’re always in each other films if you haven’t noticed). Now, I had thought that I’ve seen all of Rodriguez’s work with the exception of Spy Kids, but I was wrong. Curandero: Dawn of the Demon is a latest release from Lionsgate; however, the movie was completed and released in 2005 – why such a delay? Perhaps the delay was a product of the film being made in and using the language spoken in Mexico. I wouldn’t doubt this as El Mariachi was not known to the American audience until Antonio Banderas and Selma Hayek starred in Desperado, a sort of sequel or remake of El Mariachi, and an American DVD of El Mariachi was released later.

Curandero, which translate to The Healer, follows the healer Carlos – a practical man who uses his knowledge of healing on those he think are weak minded fools just so they feel better about their lives. That is until he meets Mexican Federale Magdalena who hires him to become involved a case where a satanic cult terrorizes Mexico City. Carlos beliefs will be challenged as black magic becomes ultimately real and the forces against him are closer to home than what he could ever imagine.
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Curandero grabs you right from the start as we’re thrown into Carlos’s simple hometown world where he competes with another curandero named Alex Munez who is more popular around town, but even though Carlos thinks his line of work is a bit of a sham, he still makes an effort to please other people making him well liked in the community and has been given respect due to his father’s healing services. The horrifying action begins when Agent Magdalena enters the story; the saucy tall Latina is a realist and doesn’t much in the mumbo-jumbo that is black magic, but her story makes a complete 180 degree turn at the finale and so does Carlos. The story is well written by Rodriguez giving the both Carlos and the federale the same view on spirituality yet making both reason completely different.

Robert Rodriguez’s style directorial feels implemented into Curandero even though Robert Rodriguez didn’t direct the film. It is another Rodriguez who takes the credit for Curandero’s fast-paced, over-exaggerated action. Director Eduardo Rodriguez tries to recreate Robert Rodriguez, but does molds his own take to reconstruct the elements and add great horror qualities that contribute to the action.
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This 2005 cult/possession film should have had a much earlier release in the U.S. There is definitely an appeal here for niche horror fans. Would Curandero have done well with mainstream audiences? No because there is just too much working against Curandero when considering American mainstream audiences – it’s in Spanish, it’s lost in translation with the dialogue, and it deals with some Mexican traditions. Certainly pick this up from Lionsgate Home Entertainment. Curandero will fill your cup of blood and horror.