ADAM & EVIL

We love clichés around Absolute Horror – and what could be more clichéd than a film centered around teenagers camping out in the woods and getting killed one by one?  So it was with giddy anticipation that I sat down to watch ADAM & EVIL, another variant on this same thing.   How sad I was at the failure of this film to get even the basics right.  Now, it’s not brain surgery.  Making an entertaining film about teenagers getting whacked isn’t that hard to do.  So, in a sense, it’s almost more of an achievement that ADAM & EVIL failed so spectacularly.  But I’m still not giving it a good rating.

BRAM STOKER'S THE MUMMY

When Francis Ford Coppola released BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA – there was good reason for putting Bram’s name in the title.  Although there was plenty of artistic license taken in that film, it largely stayed true to the original story.  Soon a whole industry of low budget movies only tangentially related to Bram Stoker's stories emerged, yet somehow they were able to put his name in the title.  Case in point: BRAM STOKER’S THE MUMMY, a humorously bad adaptation of Stoker’s “Jewel of the Seven Stars.”  Now, I can’t speak to the book, because I haven’t read it – but I have read other work by Stoker and they tended to be of high quality.  Which is why I suspect this film had little to do with the source material.

LOGO GIRL - WHAT'S HER STORY?

Isn’t our logo just awesome?  I mean, you have this hot chick right out of an 80’s slasher flick about to get diced, but many questions are prompted by it.  Where did the blood come from?  The killer obviously made a stop on the way to this room, so who did he kill or injure first?  What happens next?  Does he turn off the lights, never revealing his face?  Does our hopeless hottie survive her brush with the slasher?  Does she have any weapons at hand to thwart this guy?  What did she do to put herself in this position?  Maybe she deserved it or maybe she is just an innocent victim.  Does she know the killer?   What room of the house is she in?  How old is she?  She looks like the girl who gets slashed in movies, not the girl who gets away at the end, doesn’t she?  What’s her name?  I think Mandy fits pretty well.

Does anyone want to suggest a backstory?  Otherwise, I can just continue to ask questions.

ALIEN 51

What the hell just happened?  I awoke from the mystifying daze known as ALIEN 51 with that question on my mind.   I have seen more terrible horror movies than your average Joe, but this was just so unfathomably unwatchable that I almost considered hanging up my DVDs and riding into the sunset.  Still, I had to give it a shot – if only to see Heidi Fleiss in her first major acting role.   If it’s not her last major acting role, then please stick a spike in my eye right now because I don’t want to see anymore.

NIGHT OF THE CREEPS

A masterpiece.  Simply a work of art.  NIGHT OF THE CREEPS might just be one of the cheesiest, most entertaining horror films ever made.  This is why I got into the bad horror movie reviewing business.  NIGHT OF THE CREEPS is the gold standard by which all other bad horror films should be measured.  Rent it. Love it. Live it.

THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS

Look, I don’t mean to dispute Wes Craven’s credentials as horror king. Early in his career he pulled off LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and THE HILLS HAVE EYES. Not long after came A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. But it dropped off pretty fast from there, with one lame effort after another – from the misbegotten sequel to HILLS to the inexcusable SHOCKER. Then, Wes read a story about a California couple who kept their children locked in the basement and decided to write THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS. To be fair, anyone would have a tough time coming up with a full-length feature film based on that one concept. But Wes Craven, despite a fair amount of tripe in his career, is a pro so maybe he could pull it off. Wishful thinking.

NIGHT TERRORS (aka TOBE HOOPER'S NIGHT TERRORS)

How could they?  What happened?  What in the process of making TOBE HOOPER'S NIGHT TERRORS went so utterly wrong?  How could this movie be so incredibly poor?  I was attracted towards this movie by its elegant cover, by the fact that Robert Englund (Freddy Kreuger) was in it, and finally that it was directed by Tobe Hooper, the man behind the first two TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRES movies and POLTERGEIST.  Sure, every good director has bad movies, but this movie is so far below bad, so incredibly shoddy, so mind-numbingly awful, that it defies comprehension.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1990)

I don’t get it.  Why mess with a classic?  For whatever reason, George Romero agreed to remake his 1968 masterpiece in 1990 – and went so far as to write the screenplay for this movie.   He got some great people involved, including director and make-up master extraordinaire Tom Savini.  But still, what’s the point?  Remakes are one thing, but if you’re going to do it I think you need to depart enough from the original to make it your own (see DAWN OF THE DEAD and its remake).  Instead, Romero and Savini decide to stick very close to the original, with a few key changes.  The problem is, these changes aren’t enough to erase the memory that you’re essentially watching a poor imitation. 

SCARECROWS

We here at Absolute Horror are used to plots that are essentially incomprehensible.  But rarely are they literally incomprehensible, as was the case with SCARECROWS.  Which isn’t to say it’s all bad, just that there were many moments I quite literally had no idea what was happening.  Moreover, there were plenty of times I would hear dialogue and not know who was speaking it.  It was like watching a Terrence Mallick film gone horribly, horribly wrong.  Yet, despite it all, this low, low-budget scare flick actually manages to deliver some thrills. 

THE PAPERBOY

I saw the preview for THE PAPERBOY while watching an old John Woo movie I rented (yes, I do sometimes watch non-horror movies).  Upon seeing the preview, I thought to myself, “This is going to be classic, you have to rent it.”  So, next time I got a chance I rented THE PAPERBOY with the hopes that it would be a silly little movie about a psycho paperboy who delivered death with his papers. With those expectations, I was disappointed.  THE PAPERBOY, however, isn't a terrible movie. It's not necessarily that enjoyable, either, but the concept of the movie is actually quite disturbing and got under my skin more than I suspected it would.