Movie Reviews

For the last four years, Alamo Drafthouse programmer Zack Carlson has hosted a late-night horror movie celebration called Terror Tuesday and if you are a lover of horror, both esoterically brilliantly and obscurely awful, this night was invented just for you. The Terror Tuesday Report will dissect the movie shown as well as provide a barometer for the audience's reaction; as many of these films demand to be seen with an audience, this proves a vital component to the evening.

This week's film: Blood Bath, directed by Joel Reed, 1976

Annnnnd we're back! I hope you've all had a chance to check out the awesome British serial killer flick Peeping Tom. I was a bit late posting the film for this weekend, so I've waited a little longer than usual to do the discussion post. Hopefully giving you guys some extra time led to a few more of you discovering this awesome film.

As I mentioned before, director Michael Powell's fascinating film had the misfortune of being released in 1960, the same year Alfred Hitchock released Psycho. Peeping Tom was certainly overshadowed by Hitchcock's work. In fact, Peeping Tom stirred up quite a controversy in it's native Britain. After requiring many cuts from the BBFC in order to secure release, the film was met with critical disdain, the backlash of which basically killed Powell's directing career. It's unbelievably disheartening that such an obviously talented director was railroaded for a film that was fantastic and in no way deserving of the drubbing it received. In fact, the film has gone on to find it's place as one of the great British films. It's an absolute shame that the cinematic world was robbed of future Powell films because he decided to make a dark, edgy film that was, in many ways, ahead of its time. It's just sad to see that kind of ambition rewarded with unwarranted criticism.

Hunger directed by Steven Hentges 2010

Not content to let the Horrorfest and Ghosthouse Underground people have all the fun (and make all the money...) by releasing horror movies that couldn't get distribution, Fangoria and Lightning Media have now joined the fray. The two companies have joined forces to bring horror-hounds an all new line-up of under-the-rader horror flicks under their brand new Fangoria Frightfest banner. The initial batch of releases includes eight new horror films that you've never seen prior to now.

First up on the docket is Steven Hentges' film Hunger. A selection at the Austin and Hollywood Film Festivals, this psychological horror flick evokes memories of Wan and Whannel's original Saw. Five strangers, including Lori Heuring and Linden Ashby, wake up to find themselves trapped inside a subterranean chamber with no idea who's put them there or why. As time passes, they come to realize that they're part of an "experiment" being run by their unseen assailant – one that involves seeing how long they can hold on to their humanity in the face of potential starvation. Will the five people work together to escape the diabolical trap or will hunger drive each one to fend for themselves while breaking one of mankind's most deeply entrenched taboos?

Jump past the break for the rest of What We're Watching.

Welcome back to Terror Tapes; the weekly feature that would have served us well had we launched Horror Squad back in 1981. Each week I fly in the face of modern technology and submerge myself in a sea of videotape. My goal is to see any and all horror titles that were abandoned in the great format upgrade...for better or for worse. Sometimes I will discover gems whose relegation to forgotten formats represents a true tragedy of technological advancement. Conversely there will also be occasions when I wonder why anyone bothered to recommend a given title for home viewing in the first place; as audiences would have surely been adequately assaulted by the film in theaters.

Today's tape: Nightmares, 1983

Argh. What am I going to do with this girl? She's one of my best friends, but sometimes, she just doesn't listen to reason. Or common sense. It's not that horror remakes are bad. It's just that often they're so unnecessary. In this case, however, a remake the Crazies was necessary. I just think the execution was lukewarm. There were some huge gaps in logic that just snagged my brain and wouldn't let me get past them. That and the fact that I'm tired of 'zombie' movies. No, this isn't your traditional zombie film, hence the quotation marks, but it still fits. Everyone goes rabid and attacks the normal people. I grow weary of it.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Deadly Debates, Kayla Kromer and I go head to head, arguing over the merits of any particular film. Our positions aren't always something we agree with, which is where the fun is. Wait til I try to argue that Poltergeist is a bad film. That was nigh impossible.

Check out the video past the jump, leave some comments, and let us know what you'd like for us to debate next.

For the last four years, Alamo Drafthouse programmer Zack Carlson has hosted a late-night horror movie celebration called Terror Tuesday and if you are a lover of horror, both esoterically brilliantly and obscurely awful, this night was invented just for you. The Terror Tuesday Report will dissect the movie shown as well as provide a barometer for the audience's reaction; as many of these films demand to be seen with an audience, this proves a vital component to the evening.

This week's film: They Live, directed by John Carpenter, 1988

It's time for another round of I Would Have Saved/Killed, where we pick a character, big or small, from a movie and explain how, for whatever reason, we would have altered his or her fate.

Don't worry, we will never spoil anything pre-jump, though obviously everything after the break is operating under the assumption you've seen the film, so be warned. And a big tip of our hat to Arbogast on Film for inspiring us with his post The One You Might Have Saved.

Hit the jump where I choose one person to save from Jason's wrath in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

Tamara, directed by Jeremy Haft, 2005

It's always cool whenever you find a flick that you hadn't really heard of before and then discover that it's good. Such was the case with Jeremy Haft's Tamara, which our own Scott Weinberg recommended to me one night via Twitter.

Jenna Dewan plays the title character, a mousy girl who's the butt of pranks and not-so-secretly in love with her English teacher (Matthew Marsden). When her school paper article about the school's jocks using steroids causes some guys to get suspended from the team, the athletes plan their cruel revenge. They lure Tamara to a hotel under the pretense of meeting the man of her dreams and then burst in and videotape her while she's undressed in bed. Naturally, she flips out, and winds up dead. Or does she?

The teens decide to cover up the death and bury Tamara, but come Monday, she's back in class and looking like an entirely different girl in low cut tops and short skirts. Before you can say "supernatural revenge", she's knocking off everyone who tried to cover up her death in suitably gory ways.

Tamara reminded me of several films -- mostly Carrie and Hello, Mary Lou: Prom Night II. It's not a particularly original film, but it's fun despite its familiarity.

Welcome to this week's Horror Squad Movie Club discussion post. Hopefully everyone got to spend time with David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone over the weekend and is now ready to talk about it in depth. Naturally, there could be some spoilers here -- so if you didn't get a chance to check it out, go do that and come back once you're done. We'll still be here, I promise.

As I mentioned on Friday, Cronenberg's adaptation of The Dead Zone is my favorite film based on a King novel outside of Kubrick's The Shining. It hasn't aged as well as Kubrick's film -- which benefits greatly from its limited setting -- but it does feature a fantastic performance from Christopher Walken that may not be as gleefully unrestrained as Nicholson's, but is still quite powerful.

The Dead Zone has some uncharacteristically melodramatic moments considering it's a Cronenberg film (which are usually marked by a sense of almost clinical detachment), but it's hard to blame any of that on the director since a lot of that same melodrama is present in King's book. And while it doesn't have anyone developing videotape-hungry stomach slits, it still covers some distinctly Cronenbergian ground.

For the last four years, Alamo Drafthouse programmer Zack Carlson has hosted a late-night horror movie celebration called Terror Tuesday and if you are a lover of horror, both esoterically brilliantly and obscurely awful, this night was invented just for you. The Terror Tuesday Report will dissect the movie shown as well as provide a barometer for the audience's reaction; as many of these films demand to be seen with an audience, this proves a vital component to the evening.

This week's film: Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, directed by Romano Scavolini, 1981