Movie Review: Night Train to Terror (1985, Vinegar Syndrome)

...getting right down to the nitty gritty, when discussing a rather unconventional genre film, like the 1985 horror anthology flick, "Night Train to Terror", this viewer cannot help but recall a poignantly applicable line in the 1987 Steve Martin-starring comedy, "Roxanne", where at one point, the Cyrano de Bergerac-inspired character Steve plays, crudely describes his character's rather large nose, and says something like, "...it's not the size of the nose that's important; it's what's in it, that's matters". A fitting metaphor, to be sure, considering that "Night Train to Terror"...this totally batshit crazy insane 'trilogy of terror' is basically culled from keenly edited (...ha!!), easier to digest (...double 'ha'!!), Reader's Digest versions of longer and, for the most part, wholly negligible horror-themed feature films (...well, actually...two feature films, and the footage of one unfinished film), including "Scream Your Head Off", "Cataclysm" (...aka "The Nightmare Never Stops") and "The Death Wish Club" (...aka "Gretta"). Horror anthologies are typically a mixed bag, anyways, but in this case, throw in some whacked-looking stop-motion animation...a rather striking and respectable amount of gore...humorously irreverent and irrepressible character actor Richard Moll (...1986's "House", 1982's "Sword and the Sorcerer"), here, doing the 'Karen Black/Trilogy of Terror' thing, by having unrelated multiple roles in the film...some rather arcane, cross-banter, 'good versus evil' dialog, bridging the stories together...not to mention some of the most cheesiest, brainless and tortuously infectious '80's style music video sequences, and you've got an off-the-charts and over-the-top excursion into horror anthology insanity, which tosses in everything, including the kitchen sink...and you know something?? Well, I'll be damned...how about that?? In a weird way, this actually works!!!

Movie Review: H.P. Lovecraft's The Dark Sleep (2012, DVD)

Review By: Rob Sibley

Nancy Peterson (Ashley Galloway) is an author who has just just gone through a nasty divorce. She needs some place secluded to work on her next book so what's a gal to do? Well lucky for Ms. Peterson her ex-husband Pete (Steve Diasparra) is a real estate agent. She convinces him to give her the house for free! Only catch is in the basement there is an odd pentagram that has a sinister look to it. Just paint over it you say? Well she can't, because apparently it's in the contract that the pentagram has to stay untouched. Don't worry she does paint over it (with little effect). During the first night of staying at her free pad she has some horrible nightmares and sees a giant rat (a charming rod puppet). The next day she has two exterminators over (One of them even looks like Super Mario) they are supposed to provide some comic relief but sadly the humor falls flat. I was just waiting for Mario to say “That's a spicy meatball!” sadly that didn't happen.

Movie Review: Ray Harryhausen Box Set (2005)

Before the advent of computers and CGI, movie makers used a variety of approaches to achieve animated special effects. One approach was stop-motion animation, a time consuming process where miniature models were filmed a single frame at a time with slight movements to the models in between the frame shots. It was pioneered by a man named Willis O'Brien and first used in the films The Lost World (1925) and the classic King Kong (1933).

Find Ray Harryhausen at Amazon.com

As he sat in a theater watching King Kong, a young boy named Ray Harryhausen was so amazed by the images he saw that he decided that he would dedicate his life to bringing this amazing art form to the silver screen. And the rest, as they say, is history. His list of credits include some of the most beloved sci-fi and fantasy films of all time, including Mighty Joe Young (1949), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Mysterious Island (1961), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), and the original Clash of the Titans (1981).