WITCHBOARD: THE POSSESSION

As with so many movies reviewed on Absolute Horror, WITCHBOARD: THE POSSESSION happened to be on Cinemax one night when I was channel surfing.  You may be wondering at this point if we reviewers have lives outside our living rooms as so many of our reviews start this way.  The truth is the world needs us to watch this crap so we can review it for our loyal readers.  The ladies, the paparazzi, the fans all want us out hitting the town, but we force ourselves to stay firmly planted on our couches for your sake.   Having said that, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed WITCHBOARD: THE POSSESSION.  That is, until it hit the one hour mark…

MY LITTLE EYE

Contrary to the title, this film is not about a superfluous small eye located on someone’s forehead that sees horrible events before they unfold (I really shouldn’t drink when I write these things).  There’s always something that initially draws you to a bad horror movie: maybe it’s the chance to see has-been celebrities starving for a paycheck, maybe the DVD box is particularly eye-catching or maybe the premise is high concept.  Very rarely, do I encounter the third one, but I did in the case of MY LITTLE EYE, a movie in which five contestants enter a Reality Webcast in which they will each win $1 Million dollars if they can simply spend 6 months in a house.  Here’s the catch: If any one of the six contestants leaves the house, everyone loses!   I love the concept because with the entire glut of reality TV shows, it’s about time a horror filmmaker (and a good one at that) creatively weaves a plot:  “It’s BIG BROTHER with blood.”

THE UNBORN

Aaah, turn it off!” 

“No, you can’t turn it off, you must finish this movie for the sake of the readers of Absolute Horror.”

“But it’s just so awful!  Must…finish…movie.”

What you have just read was a dramatization of the voices in my head as I counted down the wasted minutes of my life watching THE UNBORN.   I know what you’re thinking, with a name like this it sounds like an anti-abortion instructional video.   But THE UNBORN does make a strong argument for birth control – not to mention the “off” button on your remote.   

VLAD

Remember in 1997 when tween-age girls from around the world were lining up around the block to see TITANIC?   So many, in fact, that the director, producers, and many principal actors of the movie were given huge bonuses by the studio.  Well, judging by his appearance in VLAD, a straight-to-video piece of garbage about a modern day search for the history of the “real” Dracula, Zane must have attended the MC Hammer School of Investing.  Remember that Chris Rock joke about sending a check to actors you feel bad for?  Let’s just say that if I had Zane’s address, I would flip a coin between sending a $50 to Billy Zane or Wild Life Rescue.

CLASS OF 1999 II: THE SUBSTITUTE

Well, here I go again, watching sequels before the original.  CLASS OF 1999 II: THE SUBSTITUTE.  In the first five or six minutes, I understood what happened in the original:  Professor Bob Forest created military battle androids programmed with a Cruela Deville-like sense of maintaining discipline.  Obviously the droids went ape-shit and started killing students.  The students prevailed and it was assumed that all of the droids were destroyed…

THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF

Contributed by our panelist member, Hateful Jock.

It is hard in film, or in any discipline really, to argue who did what first. Herschell Gordon Lewis says he was the first man to use gore in cinema and we find out that the Japanese were doing it years before and better (see JIGOKU). We can never say anything for sure but I'm saying this for sure. This is a proclamation that the very first medical horror movie as we understand them today (You DR. CALIGARI people can sit down) is, THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF.

HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP (1980)

I have long contended that NIGHT OF THE CREEPS (review forthcoming) is the ultimate in entertaining bad horror.  For years I was unable to find something to match its mix of humor (intended and otherwise), poor special effects, and all around bad horror-ness.  Until now.   HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP, a 1980 Roger Corman-produced effort (he followed it later with an unnecessary re-make) is among the worst horror movies you will ever see.  And it deserves every one of its four stars.

SHREDDER

We chose the name “Absolute Horror” for this website for a reason.  The word “Absolute” is defined as “Perfect in quality or nature; complete”, while the word “Horror” is defined as “An intense, painful feeling of repugnance and fear.”  The two terms seem to be inapposite, but in reality we seek the Absolute Horror – those movies that are so terrible that they achieve perfection.  One Absolute Horror that exists outside of the horror realm is the television show FULL HOUSE.  From the opening song, to the cheesy character intros and to the perfect one-liners that have emerged: “Okay dude!” “How rude!”, Full House meets all the requirements.  So, we all know what the Olsen Twins are up to, Bob Saget has been on Entourage and the movie “The Aristocrats”, Dave Coulier was on “The Surreal Life”, John Stamos is now without Rebecca Romjin, Candace Cameron married a hockey player, but what about Scott Weinger, the voice of Aladdin and Cameron’s boyfriend Steve?  AbsoluteHorror.com has found him.

JACK FROST

“What? JACK FROST?!” You're asking yourselves now, “Why is he reviewing a family film?” My gut response to that question is to say that I couldn’t get tickets for HERBIE: FULLY LOADED so I took the next best Michael Keaton movie. But then my next response will be to slap you firmly across the face with an open palm, leaving a bright red round mark soon to be wet with tears streaming over it. No, you sick fool, not that JACK FROST!   

WRONG TURN

We generally try to shy away from movies that were released in the theaters, and to be honest, I didn’t realize that WRONG TURN was anything but a straight-to-video. I guess the signs were there: Good production value, Eliza Dushku (hot off of “Bring It On”), Jeremy Sisto (of “Six Feet Under” fame) and a somewhat interesting premise: Cannibal Inbreeds living on an isolated patch of land up in the mountains trap and eat tourists who opt to take a shortcut through their dirt road. If it was released in the theaters, it must have left quicker than “Ishtar,” because I certainly don’t remember it.