Movie Review: "Farm/Ominous/Evidence of a Haunting/Meadowoods/Deadrise" (2015: Echo Bridge/Green Apple/Midnight Releasing/Brain Damage/Monterey/Brauer)

...OK!! OK!! I admit it. I am an absolute sucker for those Echo Bridge multi-movie bundles. Yes, those bargain-bin, mish-mash cult film collections, often butting the most familiar, up against the most obscure. A treasure-trove of long-time movie favorites, with preferred-to-be-forgotten cinematic fumbles. Big-budgeted matter-of-facts, mated with low-budget, independents oddities. Cheezy, no name direct-to-video fodder...and big starring, director-notable okie-dokes. The 'dumping grounds' for lesser studio efforts and public domain classics. The campy, crazy and nutty stuff, originally released singularly, from distributors like Midnight Releasing, Full Moon Pictures, The Asylum, Brain Damage Films, Alliance Releasing, York, and countless others...

...a buck or two'll typically get ya' four or five of these films, laid out on one disc...four or five bucks'll get ya' ten of 'em, and so on. Most of the film titles on the smaller bundles will usually all be found on the 'step up to eight-or-ten' film' collections, along side one or two rarities. And most of those will be found on the 15-to-20-film collections, along side even more obscurities. And often, it genuinely becomes worth the slight extra cost to double dip on a bunch of others, which might be sitting on one's video shelf, in one previously purchased collection, to get that singularly unique and obscure rarity, which might be only available on that attention drawing second collection (...heck, I remember collectors going all ga-ga over the unceremoniously released, under-the-radar editions of the bloody, 1980 'Bigfoot' horror obscurity, "Night of the Demon", as well as the under-appreciated 1983 slasher entry, "Curtains" in this venue, before a couple of the major cult film distributors picked them up, 'legitimately' and the allure of collectible 'special features' editions)...

Shower of Blood (2004) Movie Review

I bought this film a few years back at a horror convention because it was from Brain Damage Films. They don’t always deliver great B-movie fare but I was willing to risk $5 on it because I enjoyed Hell’s Highway so much. Little did I know that our own David Hayes was one of the screenwriters. That’s the only good thing about this flick.

Shower of Blood opens with a quick scene of some poor woman being attacked in the woods. Apparently, there has been a series murders in a local forest and she is the latest victim. Cue the opening credits scrolling over a naked woman rubbing blood all over her tithes.

Next we see a group of friends on their way to visit the one girl’s uncle’s house. I don’t know why and I certainly don’t care. But here’s the character breakdown: Lisa (ball-buster) and Kurt (douche nozzle), Heather (virgin) and Terry (moron), and Megan (drunken slut). Lisa’s Uncle Marty, whose house they are traveling to, isn’t home when they arrive but since she’s family she can let them all in to crash and raid the fridge.

Movie Review: Monsturd (2003)

During the late 60's and 70's there were a copious amount of films with wonderfully genius titles. Movies like I Dismember Mama, Night of Bloody Horror, Daddy's Deadly Darling and Scream Bloody Murder drew viewers into Drive-ins and theaters because of the lure of their exploitative titles. Besides the titles one thing these films also had in common was that they sucked ass.This always had me worried about Rick Popko's and Dan West's film Monsturd. The title is perfect, just like those other films - but could I be setting myself up to be disappointed?

Buy Monsturd on DVD

Movie Review: Granny (1999)

A few years back I read on some horror forum or board that this movie was excellent, gruesome, and possibly banned from somewhere. Not sure how many people could have gotten that so fucking wrong. It's been awhile since I've seen such an amateur, sloppy, half-assed attempt at a horror movie. I wonder if they meant the movie, The Granny, from 1995? Or was it Rabid Grannies? I'll have to find copies and let you all know.

Granny is the story of a group of 7 college students who are getting together to welcome a newb into their ranks. Michelle just moved 'here' (wherever the fuck here is) from Seattle and is grateful to be accepted into such a tight knit circle of friends. As they sit around and shoot the shit they somehow get on the topic of paranoias. Tom thinks it would be great to 'show' the group his paranoia but they all have to leave so he can prepare a skit about it. Wtf?

Whatevs. The group leaves and returns in an hour only to find a note from Tom saying he had to go out. Uh huh. Whatevs again. They file back into the house, start whining and arguing about their total bullshit lives when they suddenly hear crying coming from the basement (though they argue halfheartedly about whether or not it's actually outside. OMFG, who cares?)

Movie Review: Wisconsin Project X (2011)

I seem to be on a little bit of a zombie run here. I recently reviewed The Horde, and sung its praises for being different from the usual zombie flick. Then I come across Wisconsin Project X, which does all of the things that The Horde doesn't. An early scene explains that all of the zombies are modified humans that are part of a failed science experiment. Once they hit the streets, a ragtag bunch has to take them down with coffee. Yes, coffee. That's not really the worst of it, but it is the one original part of this movie.

Buy Wisconsin Project X on DVD

Movie Review: Slices of Life (2010, Brain Damage Films)

Okay, here it goes. I'm about to review the first Brain Damage films release that I didn't hate. What? Is it possible? After my review of The Farm, you wouldn't think so, but here it is. I'm not as opposed to anthologies as some people are. I think they can be a good showcase of short stories. Some are legendary, like Trilogy of Terror, Creepshow and The Twilight Zone. I think they can be fun, and if a story sucks, you only have to wait a few minutes for something new.

Buy Slices of Life on DVD

I'll be clear here. I didn't love this movie. It was okay. There are three stories, and they're all linked together by another story about a girl and her three sketch books. Each of the books, as you can probably guess, represent one of the three stories. The stories can be a little slow at times, but that's not far off from many episodes of shows like The Outer Limits or Fear Itself. Those shows have their merits, but they did drag sometimes. I was never a big fan of either, but I'd sit and watch The Outer Limits on a Sunday afternoon on channel 32 back in Chicago more than a decade ago. It was something to do, and you'd get an interesting story now and again. Slices of Life was good enough to be three episodes of that show.

Movie Review: The Farm (2009)

I wish I could tell you what The Farm was about. I also wish I cared. It starts out with some guy telling two other guys something about death and life, and then they make some sort of deal. The two guys drive around, and I start to suspect that they're in Ireland because of the accents and the driver being on the right side of the car. Yay for me. I couldn't hear most of what was said in the film, which might be another yay for me. I can only assume that it wasn't worth hearing.

Buy The Farm on DVD

Brain Damage isn't known for Oscar caliber movies. I'm not even sure they're known for watchable movies. I remember one of my early encounters with them called Terror Toons. I still can't shake that dingleberry off my brain. Hell, I'm in a movie they distributed, and that's even tough to sit through. Okay, back to the original mess I sat through.

Movie Review: Drive-In Horrorshow (2009)

I like a good horror anthology. Well done short horror films can be very intense and very scary or funny or gory or whatever you need them to be. Get in quick, shock ‘em  and then get out. Anthology television shows like The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery and Tales from the Crypt did it very well. In feature film land, we had Creepshow… and that’s about it (I’m sure there are others, but I’m drawing a blank). When we get to features, though, there are most definitely more attempts at the anthology format and people tend to do it for all the wrong reasons. We all know that it is easier to talk about making a film than actually making a film. It would then stand to reason that it is easier to make a short film than a feature length film. Couple of days, get some friends, don’t put too much thought into it and, bango, in a few months you’ve got yourself a feature anthology. That’s the problem here, and the problem with most horror anthologies: you have to take as much care and dedication with an anthology film than you would with narrative feature… even more. Pulling all the disparate elements together, creating a weaving story to pull some kind of uniformity about and keeping up the integrity, and quality, throughout each separate story is very hard. That is why most anthologies fail. Drive-In Horror Show fell into a few of the familiar traps, but showed some elements that, sort of, let it pull away from the pack a bit. To be honest, that pack is a rutting group of cannibalistic warthogs, but it is a pack nonetheless.

Pre-order Drive-In Horrorshow at Brain Damage Films!