Just Watched Movies (2012)

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Bigfoot-After crashing a music festival in South Dakota, a small band of locals try to put their differences aside to hunt the massive Bigfoot responsible for the carnage before it's rampage escalates out of control. An exceptionally cheesy Sci-Fi channel entry, meaning this one is filled with all the usual hallmarks of such films including the atrocious CGI work, story that tends to put the events in the wrong order (why is the festival rampage, which should be the film's highlight, put half-an-hour into it?) and utterly innocuous points into it that are supposed to character development pieces that don't have anything to do with the story itself and serve no purpose being there? This is made up by the film's large number of action scenes where the creature's on the loose and running wild on the citizens, large-scale confrontations with the military and a big finale that's pretty shocking for what's accomplished. It's really cheesy, but that isn't a point to hold against it.

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Blood Creek-After finding his long-lost brother who was held captive by a maniacal Nazi officer on a remote ranch, they learn of his true purpose in trying to gain the secret of immortality and race to stop him before he can accomplish this involving the ranch-hands trapped with him. A really entertaining effort, which features a lot of really innovative moments from the numerous scenes of the reanimated animals going berserk and attacking everyone, generating a lot of great action scenes mainly in the barn and the kitchen. Bundled together with a great story that introduces a nice mixture of occult, black magic and the supernatural, a frantic pace that keeps things going along and a rather insane streak that constantly keeps things off-guard and this is rather enjoyable overall. Throw in some gore and it's even better, though not without some flaws, mainly in the main villain which doesn't really do a lot to inspire fear beyond ripping off his face numerous times, his lack of logic doesn't stay consistent from scene-to-scene and a few unexplored areas are left unanswered. Still, this one was a lot of fun.

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Stake Land-After a devastating plague has reduced most of mankind to a vampiric state with small, isolated pockets remaining, a small group tries to survive a series of encounters with a ravenous group of vampires that started the apocalypse. Enjoyable effort, though not without some flaws, first and foremost among them the idea that a fundamentalist religion group is behind it all and that there's a lot more going on in the story than there really needs to be. That said, this is mostly placated by a series of big action scenes that are really fun, from scenes of the group fighting the vampires in small towns, a couple good forest battles and even a pretty good finale battle in an underground lair to generate some great points. Again, not without it's problems but certainly a lot of fun.

True Bloodthirst-After a rash of brutal killings, vampires and a team of cops must work together to solve the mysterious killings, only to find the source to be a greater enemy than they imagined and race to stop it's deadly origins. Pretty enjoyable vampire effort, working with a couple smarter ideas than normally found in these kinds of films (the idea of vampires coming out to expose their existence willingly, of a high-level governmental cooperation between the two societies and another big one which really spoils the movie so it won't be revealed) that are not only fresh and original but make for a great basis to hang the film's biggest selling point, the high level action on display, as there's no shortage of shootouts, mass swarming attacks, raids and gunfights, which are incredibly fun and definitely enjoyable. Has a few missteps here and there but overall far better than expected.

Trespass-A group of firefighters in an abandoned building looking for a hidden stash of stolen gold find the area overrun with gangsters looking for the same thing and try to hold them off to get away with the gold. Fairly enjoyed Actioner that, despite the initial set-up being pretty serviceable for such a film, tends to devolve quite quickly into a routine pattern of getting them into trouble and the villain's inability to kill them off allowing the film to continue. This happens pretty frequently to the point of growing tiresome, but luckily the amount of high-energy shootouts, firepower and explosions allows for a number of scenes to come about and be overwhelmingly entertaining, which is certainly true of the fire-packed finale that is really impressive with it's large-scale destruction on display. Not all that original and is certainly filled with enough flaws, but enjoyable nonetheless.

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The Black Cat-Traveling through the Austrian countryside, a man and his wife get stranded at the remote villa of a tormented scientist along with his long-time rival who is out to seek revenge for long-dead wife and must get away before being dragged into the escalating war. Notable old-school Gothic horror remembered for Karloff and Lugosi together and not much else. Very little happens here, both in terms of what's supposed to be scary and when we finally get the film rolling, which is thankful because it's not that long and it's over pretty quickly so there's little chance of being bored here, but again the lack of anything going on really hurts the film until it gets to the finale. Kinda creepy for the time period, but nothing all that spectacular nowadays, really leaving this one up to the cast to provide the entertainment values.

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Added an uncut copy of Hillside Cannibals to the collection.

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Camp Hell-Sent to a missionary camp for teens, a man finds himself targeted by a demonic force intent on driving him insane as he tries to follow the strict doctrine imposed by the camp and tries to find what's going on and why he's being targeted. Really lame horror effort, mainly due for a variety of reasons. The most egregious of all is the fact that there's just nothing going on here, as the potential demonic manifestations and hallucinations are kept so short it's hard to make out what exactly you're supposed to be afraid of and they're so infrequently observed it tends to forget exactly what it's supposed to be, wandering through the proceedings with more focus on the bible study and religious teachings than the horror scenes, leaving this one so agonizingly slow it might lull you to sleep before getting to the first lame scare. Despite having a bit more energy in the last half and actually gets the chance to feature some more traditional horror elements, it's still far too little too late.

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- Dark shadows. A vampire awakens from a centuries-long slumber in 70's America to try to bring the disfunctional remains of his once-prosperous family back to glory. But the witch who imprisoned him in the first place has other plans...

Really not that bad a dark comedy from Tim Burton, through the reaction to this from fans of the 60's soap opera is just about vitriolic (and yet, there have been thousand other versions of that soap, some most definitely worst than this one). The last act is more than a little ridiculous, but that's really nothing new from Burton [Beetlejuice and Sleepy hollow had their share of this, too]. I guess I would call it an entertaining enough romp, if you know what to expect.

- Raging bull. The hard rise and harsh fall of real-life boxer Jake LaMotta, as potrayed by a then innovating Martin Scorsese and a Robert DeNiro at the top of his game.

Not quite as compelling and shocking as it seemed back in the 80's, this is nevertheless a great bio film, certainly one of the best boxing movies ever lensed.

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Iron Man-Returning to the US after supposedly dying in the Middle East, a good-hearted weapons manufacturer creates a metal-tinged suit of armor and heads off to avenge the injustices wrought by a friend who ordered him dead to begin with. Not knowing anything about the comic, I ended up getting somewhat lost early on with the guy being held hostage in the desert and his battles with the group out there, as well as the rationale behind the different groups' fighting with him, but in terms of pure action this delivered was a lot of fun, with the main battle at the end being especially impressive and fun, though the numerous amounts of mini-battles beforehand were a lot of fun. The humor was definitely a nice touch and it made me laugh a lot more than expected, though there's a couple jokes that do run thin a bit. Much better than expected and a lot of fun.

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Added uncut copies of Summer's Moon and Evil Eyes to the collection.

The Possession of David O'Reilly-Visiting a group of friends following a nasty break-up, a man finds their house under assault by shadowy, grotesque beings that are utterly remorseless in trying to get at them, forcing them into a long, bloodsoaked night to fend them off. Yet another in a long, long, long list of utterly terrible British horror efforts, this one featuring all the hallmarks of their lame films in a pace that features no energy, momentum or excitement, a series of seemingly scary scenes ruined by the irritating camera that won't stop moving to give you a clear idea of what's going on, a decided lack of explanations as to what's happening and a large number of scenes that offer up hardly anything in terms of scares that leave large portions of the film utterly boring. It's almost impossible to find anything in here worthwhile, but at least some of the attack scenes at the end were pretty intense, what could be seen, so overall this one isn't really worth it.

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Bear-Going through a shortcut in the woods, a family group get stranded in the area and must fend off a mother grizzly bear's relentless, retribution-fueled attacks as they struggle to survive the animal's continuous antics. A rather surprising creature feature at times and frustrating at others, as sometimes this manages to be quite entertaining and enjoyable due to the film's rather brutal and relentless attacks, which are helped along by the high-action content of the scene and where it's going. Then, though, the film manages to feature something so irritating and aggravating that this overcomes the positives, and the majority of this comes from the cast as they're constantly snipping at each other so they're hardly fun to watch, then it spends the last twenty-minutes in an annoying twist that does nothing for the film as a whole. It's not that fun and really brings the film down as a whole.

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Added an uncut copy of The People Under the Stairs to the collection.

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Wolf Town-Hoping to use a spur-of-the-moment camping trip to win his dream-girl, a couple of friends tag along and stumble upon an abandoned mining town that serves as the home to a pack of vicious, killer wolves, forcing them to fight off the creatures to get away alive. Somewhat decent effort here, mainly because so little of it really stands out as being all too impressive. Whereas the creepy ghost-town setting and the rathe clever twist to make the creatures plain old wolves was pretty unique, the fact that there's such a small body count of potential victims that the film really can't do anything with the wolves to showcase their killing skills, drastically reducing their fearfulness and instead relying on the pack to generate the fear. Also problematic is that this leaves so much of the film devoid of wolf attacks because there's not a lot that can be done with them as is that it feels pretty dragged out in spaces. While it's not a terrible film, there's some problems with this one.

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Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings-Getting stranded in a freak snowstorm, a group of friends seek shelter in a supposedly-abandoned asylum only to find it still inhabited by cannibalistic inmates and must find a way of getting away from the vicious killers. Rather fun and entertaining entry in the series, managing to feature even more of the usual elements found in the last entries to become that much more entertaining. The gore and kills here are both over-the-top here, featuring numerous amounts of splatter and carnage which allow the film to be pretty brutal at times with some innovative torturing methods. The stalking and hunting on display are quite a bit of fun, and the large, cavernous structure with it's long, looming hallways, tight quarters and hidden rooms are used to good effect in both creating effective atmospheric locations and perfect areas for them to display their cruel tactics. While it's finale does seem to run on forever and get old after awhile since it's not really all that clear what's going on, this here is a blast and quite enjoyable.

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Added uncut copies of The Unholy and Evil Eyes to the collection.

Exorcismus-Realizing that their daughter's strange behavior is being brought about by a demonic possession, a family hires their troubled priest brother-in-law to perform an exorcism that should drive the being out. Not only did this one turn out to be a lot of fun, but it's also one of the few recent-vintage British horror films that hasn't been a complete waste of time. One of the film's best tricks is that it manages to contain the necessary ingredients for the possession early on, practically in the first few minutes which makes this film just fly right by. The quick pace is perhaps the best example of why this works so well, as well as the fact that the exorcism scenes are quite extensive and really fun. As well, the scenes showing the possession are a great deal of fun, with the crazed behavior, unnatural antics, distortions and much, much more that give this a pretty creepy feel since they come out of nowhere. Despite the fact that it stumbles a bit in the last half with an overwrought guilty-conscience/ulterior motive plot-twist, it's still quite a bit of fun.

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Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown-Absolutely fascinating documentary/biography on the man and his works, interweaving both pretty well to document where his works came from, his background and where his career lead to in influencing today's writers and artists. Covers just about most of his important works as well, though they tend to spoil many of them in the course of discussing it so it's probably only for those that have already read them. Still, a fascinating watch on the man and his career.