Just Watched Movies (2013)

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Added an uncut copy of The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas to the collection.

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Added an uncut copy of Event Horizon to the collection.

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Flying Monkeys-Attempting to make up for his continual absence, a man's purchase of a monkey for his daughter turns out to be a form of demonic monkey-creature that begins terrorizing the townspeople and must band together with a group of hunters to take the creatures down. This turned out to be a solid, middle-of-the-road offering that had some rather fun stuff about it. One of the better elements here is the fact that the opening shock jump doesn't kill off everyone it comes in contact with, which is a pleasant surprise as well as the film's origin story for the creatures which is far better than expected and definitely has some good elements for later use coming out of it. As well, we've got a couple fine action moments with the multitude of creatures swarming over their victims in town at several big scenes, and the finale at the house is quite exciting. This is still plagued with the usual Sci-Fi Channel atrocious CGI and gore, but as well there's another flaw in the treatment of the guardians' search for the creature who seem shoehorned into the story without really doing much and their quest at starting at the front of the chain of possession halfway through the movie doesn't make much sense. Overall, this one wasn't all that terrible though.

Knight and Day-After accidentally helping a man out of a confrontation with gangsters, a woman learns he is really a spy trying to hunt down the fellow agents who want him dead and is enlisted to help him carry out his mission. A rather goofy and somewhat clumsy action effort, though there's some overall decent work in here at times with several halfway entertaining set-pieces including a fine shootout in a junkyard and a hospital encounter in the later half that, despite the unnecessary inclusion of humor, makes for a rather decent overall effort. As it stands, the film's got way too much comedy for something like this which, while cliched through-and-through, does make a fine straight action film with the different elements presented here with the different revenge elements. As well, it's a bit too long and really could've stood to loose about ten-minutes of useless antics that don't really offer up much to the film overall with the shoehorned romance angle that's a bit too cliche and hammered home here rather than subtly inferred. Still, not too bad an effort overall.

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Jack Ketchum's The Lost-Truly wretched and horrible stuff here, supposedly a serial killer effort about a teen running rampant on citizens in his small home-town but there's no horror at all in what's going on and the whole thing was moving at such a glacial pace I turned it off after fifty minutes and one death, which occurred in the opening minutes. I heard a lot of good things about it, but no thanks this was truly terrible.

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Bait 3D-Trapped together in a flooded supermarket after a devastating hurricane strikes the town, a group of survivors find their escape attempts impeded by a vicious, man-eating shark trapped with them that has a taste for blood and must stop it to get out alive. This one turned out to be quite an enjoyable killer shark efforts. One of the better elements at work is the fact that the escape attempts being made are handled quite realistically, with the group's attempts at getting away being hindered naturally and giving themselves to the shark to tear them to pieces, which creates an effective atmosphere and suspense when combined with the fact that being in the water at any point means that there's potentially going to be an attack, creating even more worry. That the attacks are brutal, vicious and extremely bloody, while still remaining logical as to how a shark would go about doing this, makes for even more fun with it's cool gore and continuous pacing that never really lets it get too bogged down and boring. While this is absolutely ludicrous-looking in 2D since it doesn't need 3D at all, the only other flaw is the pain-inducing and atrocious CGI used, which is plain wrong and doesn't belong here, but otherwise this was an outstanding offering.

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Juan of the Dead-When a man notices that a zombie epidemic has overrun his Cuban home-town, he joins forces with his friends to start an eradication service to dispose of them only to realize the inevitable and tries to get them out of the country alive. This turned out to be one of the more flat-out enjoyable zombie efforts around in the last few years with some absolutely great work to this one when it came down to it. The comedy here is the biggest plus, as this seems to be done in the right way with a group of funny people at the center of the storyline rather than just trying to shoehorn the jokes and gags into the proceedings, and there's a lot of fun with the great comedy that comes from both the verbal and physical areas, yet is still smart enough to keep the creatures as true threats and something to be dealt with in a serious matter. This allows for a lot of great gore to come through with some pretty innovative kills and copious bloodletting during the zombie massacres, even though the low-budget shines through and it resorts to clever and ingenious but still cop-out methods of hiding the biggest gore scenes. As well, the fact that the scatter-shot story seems to go all over the place at times is a little problematic, but overall this was a pretty entertaining and enjoyable zombie epic.

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Executive Target-Kidnapped from a prison transfer and taken hostage, a former stunt-car driver tries to stop his captor's mission to kidnap the US President and rescue him before the group's mission is completed. A really enjoyable Action affair, mostly because there's some out-right amazing action scenes here with the car chases featured, with three stellar sequences full of crashing, smashing and high-speed ducking and weaving that leaves a lasting impression each time and generally feels highly entertaining each time due to the quality of such scenes. Mix in some fine shoot-outs and a rather explosive, action-packed finale that really gets a lot of fun and this has a lot of good parts that are enough to overcome it's few flaws, such as the rather lame plot of the villains which makes no sense and feels doomed to fail had it been attempted in real life, some questionable and odd character motivation parts for each side and a disturbing habit of shifting the camera during the action scenes to render them a little out-of-focus during their appearance. Otherwise, this was a lot of fun and highly enjoyable.

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Added an uncut copy of Needful Things to the collection.

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The Pact-Heading back to her childhood home after her sister's disappearance, a woman finds a ghostly spirit living in the house that isn't too pleased with the intrusions to her domain and tries to force her to leave through eerily similar antics to their mother's treatment. This was an utterly disappointing and disjointed effort that doesn't have a lot going for it. One of the main problems here is the fact that this one doesn't seem to understand just what it wants to be since the early indications of what's going on, from the attacks in the house and the set-ups provided through the investigations, point to it being a ghostly mystery, yet the film switches gears half-way through and introduces a lame kind of human killer that doesn't seem all that well integrated into the storyline at all and makes no sense as to it's inclusion to start with. That the investigations don't even provide all that much in the way of scares, thrills or even anything remotely interesting other than the girl looking around acting sullen at what's going on around her just doesn't make for an interesting effort. The finale picks up the action somewhat with a few good chases and confrontations around the house and the first attacks are kinda creepy, but otherwise this one wasn't all that impressive.

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Assassination Games-When a hit goes awry, two professional hitmen must work together to stop the gang of mercenaries on their tail thinking they're the ones responsible for the whole affair to begin with. A pretty good Van Damme effort, moreso than many of his recent DTV efforts and really getting in some good parts when it needs to with some outstanding chase scenes, several high-energy shoot-outs and a frenetic finale that definitely works well and brings the whole thing into a real flourish during the film's best moments. While that's said, there's still several big flaws here, mostly notably the cliche of the romance developed with the daughter of the original hit who gets drawn in unknowingly due to the association and constantly requires her to be saved which fuels the romance, and overall becomes quite lame. As well, for such two skilled performers in this one they're not really allowed to let loose in two many hand-to-hand fights and are relatively kept on the ground only to use those skills when it's a last resort which isn't often. Otherwise, this was a lot of fun and really settles nicely amongst his newer output.

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The Revenant-Killed in Iraq, a former soldier returns to his hometown alive but desperately needing blood to survive, and when his buddy decides to have him kill vagrants around town to do so, they find themselves in increasingly desperate situations to try to survive. This turned out to be quite an impressive if mildly flawed effort with a lot to like about it. One of the film's strongest points is the delicate area of how it deals with the guy's condition, bestowing traits of vampires and zombies onto him yet never stating whether he is one or the other and contains traits that cancel out whether he is one or another. It's a great strategy that pays off quite well as this creates such an endearing creature that the resultant scenes of them hunting people down are a lot funnier than expected and generate some really good, genuine laughs from their bumbling and stumbling around, which is nice to see. That said, it's far too long for it's own good, coming in a good twenty-minutes over it's allotted time for such a goofy, non-horror-specific premise since it adapts an action-movie feeling more than once instead of horror during the middle, and it's quite distracting overall. Otherwise, this is quite enjoyable.

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Chupacabra vs. the Alamo-When a series of savage deaths strike their small town, a Texas sheriff finds the vicious chupacabra is responsible for the attacks and tries to get everyone to safety, eventually leading them to the Alamo as a last-ditch effort to stop the rabid creatures. This here turned out to be quite an enjoyable if slightly flawed Sci-Fi Channel creature feature, as there's some good stuff to be had here. The film's decision to keep the creatures a constant threat means there's a big action scene continually on the way, and this one doesn't disappoint with big scenes as the attack at the high school party, the house sequence or the ambush in the abandoned refinery, which is quite impressive itself and has a lot of good stuff about it with their coordinated attacks, gunfire blazing and overwhelming numbers making for a fun scene. That all leads to the finale in the titular building, which is a little short on time but still incredibly enjoyable with a lot of big action, some nice surprises and a few admittedly clever tactics of dealing with the creatures to offer itself as some full-scale fun. There's still some flaws here, besides the atrocious CGI but also the fact that this calls them chupacabras when it's just the same as a rabid dog, and in fact a pack of rabid dogs wouldn't have changed the film at all which makes the creature's designation all the stranger. As well, there's some questionable motives from all involved as to what's going on from scene-to-scene, but overall this one was a lot of fun.

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The Gap-When several couples get stranded at a small, remote village in the Mexican countryside, they realize the truth about a legendary clock that will predict people's deaths is true and that a sinister figure is intent on forcing the issues to be true. This was a mostly frustrating Mexican horror effort that is quite liberal with it's horror issues since they appear only at the film's bookends while the middle of the film is quite hard to be called a horror film. Those bookends, though, are quite fun and definitely worthwhile, with the opening offering a shadowy figure chasing frantic and scared individuals through a darkened, foggy forest that starts it off rather well, while the finale is the figure's attack on the couples in the house, and it works well with the house's layout to provide some fine scares, excitement and a few cool deaths in the whole experience. That said, the rest of the movie isn't that enjoyable other than the fact they get the hottest girl amongst the group in skin-tight tank-tops and body-hugging underwear that's always thrust into the camera at every opportunity, as it consists of endless scenes of the group arguing over their situation and how they'll get out, with an occasional attempt at scare-making only to wimp out with a shortened scene that's quite confusing overall. That these are where the film spends the majority of it's running time is where the film falters, since it's disproportionate how much horror/drama time there is in the film, and what ultimately causes the downfall.

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Caught a bunch of movies thanks to a movie marathon with friends:

- Life of Brian. The life, times and misadventures of the eponymous Brian Cohen, who happened to be born next door to Jesus Christ. Biting parody with a very interesting reflection about fanaticism and the absurdity of life itself as only Monty Phyton could do it.

- Hitchcock. A brief examination of the infamous director during the making of "Psycho", as well as his complex relationship with his wife, secretary and actressesses. I enjoyed this movie, but I think I can see why so many people hated it: this isn't a biography per se, nor does it really tell you anything about Hitchcok or his movies [like a lot of movies based on famous artists, it never elaborates on *why* this or that artist is so important]; instead, it's a whimsical pastiche of several tidbits about the man himself (both genuine and pure urban legend), and at heart a love story about two very passionate people in a constant battle of wits.

- Body double. A pastiche of "Vertigo", "Rear window" and a few sleazy thrillers having to do with a peeping tom who seemingly witnesses the savage murder of his neighbor, only to be drawn into a complex intrigue that involves fake identities and the porn industry on the gutters of Hollywood. One thing for Brian De Palma's thrillers: they know exactly what the public wants (sex and violence in a polished package) and gleefully delivers it. A very entertaining thriller, then.

- 9 (original short). This is only 14 minutes short, so delineating the plot would be a huge spoiler. I'll only say, then, that it's a neat animated feature, and that it's even darker than the resulting movie, if maybe a bit less gruesome.

- A dangerous method. A loose adaptation of the real-life case of Freud, Jung, and Spielerman, the patient they shared and who would go on to become a lead psychologist herself. Again, this movie isn't much of a biography, but it is a very interesting study of three obsessive personalities and the little hipocrisies they construct to stay "sane". Maybe not vintage Cronenberg, but certainly worth a look.

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The Man in White-After accidentally witnessing a serial killer's brutal murder of a policeman, she must race to get herself and her daughter out of the killer's path before his bloodsoaked rampage includes them as well. This was a really disjointed horror/thriller that doesn't have a whole lot going for it at all. Despite an incredibly rousing opening about the Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations that are quite colorful and provide a unique look at the celebration, but after that isn't quite so exciting since the majority of the film deals with the chasing down of the lone witnesses to the detriment of all other happenings, so there's going to be a lot wrong with this. The first one is that the lack of victims means there's very little blood or gore, despite the initial murder sequence being one of the more bloody ones shown. There's also the fact that the film is incredibly one note, detailing her merely escaping and hiding only to repeat the process ad nauseam until the movie's over which is quite boring after a while and really leaves this one without anything going on in the middle parts of the movie with the same set-up repeating over-and-over. It's got a couple good chases, but not a whole lot else.