Sunday, March 20, 2011

HIGH LANE (2009)

Five annoying dicknecks go out for a little mountain climbing adventure and end up climbing into an ass whoopin'.  The End.

HIGH LANE starts out promising enough with the Alpha dickneck telling the other dicknecks how it's gonna be, then they drive along and sing and smile and smoke weed. Finally, they get to the mountain and climb around some.  It's all not very exciting.  Finally, shit starts hitting the fan and the story bogs down into the familiar, chased-by-a-crazed-hillbilly scenario that every horror fan has seen 666 times before.  Except this film has even less violence than normal and the killer is completely forgettable. Also, the entire film was just badly photographed.  I have no idea what look the filmmakers were going for, but HIGH LANE is a straight-up ugly movie to look at.  Bleached colours, insane amount of close-ups, nighttime scenes where you can barely tell what's going on, indoor scenes that are way too dimly light, non-stop shaky cam during the action scenes.

Outside of the one girls cleavage, I cannot think of a single reason to watch this movie. I didn't hate it, but there is simply nothing new or unique going on.  It's boring and chore to get through.

If you need me, I'll be in my room watching WRONG TURN 4.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

TREMORS 3: BACK TO PERFECTION (2001)

After his adventures down south, Burt Gummer returns to Perfection, Nevada for a little peace and quite. He doesn't get any because on his second day back, there's a Graboid attack. But that's not the worst of it, because now, there's a third type of Graboid: the flying Ass Blasters who fly around powered by their own farts! Much like Mary Poppins.  That umbrella was just a diversion.

TREMORS 3 is kinda weird as far as sequels go. Not only was the story better than the one from the second movie, but it had even more returning cast members from the original film than the second one did. Six as my counting goes (Yes, I'm counting the actor who played government agent who was a road crew worker in the first film). That said, while it is a fun film, it's nothing mind blowing and you can tell the budget was very low.

Good acting, nice pace, fun characters, well thought out story, world's fastest microwave, dated special effects, interesting Graboid life cycle facts, satisfying ending that was continued in the short-lived TV show.  Definitely worth a watch for Tremors fans.

Part 1 - Tremors (1990)
Part 2 - Tremors II: Aftershocks (1996)
Part 4 (prequel) - Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004)
Part 5 - Tremors 5: Bloodlines (2015)
Part 6 - Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell (2018)
Part 7 - Tremors: Shrieker Island (2020)

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2009)

THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL can proudly take it's place in "The Hall of Shitty Horror Movies That Are All Build-up and No Payoff" alongside such timeless turds as THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and 28 DAYS LATER.

Samantha needs money to help pay the rent. (I just described the first 30 minutes of the movie.) She takes a job babysitting an old woman and everything goes fine. Now we are at the 75 minute mark. No bullshit. Finally some shit happens and...it's nothing we haven't already seen 40+ years ago in ROSEMARY'S BABY. The End.

When I hear the name HOUSE OF THE DEVIL I'm thinking there's going to be some serious shit going down. I mean, the fucking Devil lives here for Christ's sake! But no, not much happens. Some bullets are fired, a little blood is spilled, a pizza is delivered and a few pentagrams are drawn. Sounds like what I would imagine a normal afternoon at Phil Anselmo's house would be like.

From what I read before I saw the movie, it was filmed to look like an old 80's horror movie. That really excited me...until I remember that most 80's horror movies sucked. Yeah, there's some classic 80's fashions and great female hairstyles, but you need a goddamn story! Then, after watching it, I discovered the dude behind THOTD is the same guy who made CABIN FEVER 2 and it all made complete sense. This guy blows. He's 0 for 2 in my book and, who knows, maybe one day he'll do something great, but from what I've seen so far I don't think he couldn't make a good horror movie to keep his dick from falling off.

Barely any blood, zero scares, unoriginal story, loooong build-up, zero nudity, zero gore, zero suspense. Fucking skip it.
Special Thanks to Goatse and Tubgirl huh? Maybe they should have written the script. At least then you'd know there'd be one Hell of a payoff! Most likely it would have been a payoff about buttholes, but still it's something.