31 Days of Horror 2024 Day 22 The Card Player

 

TITLE-The Card Player

SOURCE-Scorpion Releasing Blu Ray

Yea I know latter era Argento. And this is one most don't like. Having seen and enjoyed some of the lesser liked Argento movies,Phantom of the Opera is one,I took a chance when this OOP release was on sale at Kino.

A killer is challenging the police to games of poker over the internet. If the killer wins a women ,who is on webcam gets multilated. 

Once a British tourist gets put into this deadly game of chance two top detectives get put on the case. And we get a modern era Giallo.

Ok yea this feels like a sleazier episode of one of the many detective shows on the air. Call this CSI Giallo or as I have seen a few do CSI Rome. 

It is the sleaze and sometimes well done kills that make this stand out. Yea we aren't getting peak Dario Argento. Even average Argento is so much better than most of the horror crap clogging up shelves when this came out in the early 2000s.

Now yea the lower budget hinders the CGI FX. With the scene near the end with the train cutting off someone's head,And then the head rolling,looks cheap andd takes what should be a nice kill to end the film and make it not have the impact it should have.While not top 5 Argento this is for me Top 10 Argento. 

The blu ray has a decent commentary. And a few other extras nothing of which stood out much. The transfer looks nice. 

The Card Player gets a C+

31 Days of Horror 2024 Day 21 Blade

 

TITLE-Blade

SOURCE-New Line Blu Ray

I was sure I had covered this years ago. Checked the master list,either I never covered it or somehow I did and it ain't on the master list.

Ok so for all the attention Rami's Spider-Man or Singer's X-men films get as starting the modern MCU,even  if not fully connected to the proper MCU,Blade came earlier and started it.

1998 I am at the comic shop and hear from the owner that Blade is coming out. And it is Wesley Snipes playing Blade. Ok hell yea let me know what night it starts we will all go.

Was there opening night and loved it. Nice blending of horror and superhero genres. A modernized Blade,at this time I hadn't read much of the Midnight Sons era of Blade. Fairly gory it was a fun film. One I meant to buy. Then just didn't. Until I stumbled upon this Blu ray at a pawn or thrift a few years back.

Wesley Snipes is Blade a rare vampire that can withstand sunlight. He hunts down the other vampires. And is helped out by Kris Kristofferson,as Whistler. Deacon Frost,who IIRC was a minor villain in the old Tomb  of Dracula comic,is the lead vampire villain. 

The movie moves extremely fast for a 2 hour film. Part of that is just the pacing of the film,with a few pots where it slows down for the audience to rest a bit. And thankfully this isn't as quickcut shaky camera for action scenes. That horrible crap would infect movies a year or so later.

The FX is decently done for what I am guessing was a fairly low budget film for New Line of that era. There was no really horrible CGI that stood out.

Blade gets a B+

31 Days of Horror 2024 Day 20 Last Voyage of the Demeter

 

TITLE-The Last Voyage of the Demeter

SOURCE-Universal Blu ray

For the past 7 or so years I rarely see ads on TV. Most of what I watch is either off dvd/blu ray or streaming. And with streaming when an ad break starts I usually have a book or comic nearby and I read during the ad break. Which is why in the summer of 2023 I had no clue about this movie until a friend was asking if I was going to go see it. After she told me the basic idea behind the film I knew I had to see it. 

Pretty much now I rarely goto a theater to see anything. Not really the price of a ticket keeping me at home it is more lack of a good theater near me. And how now people can't sit through the movie without having to use their phone. Not sure how people dont realize that the bright screen of their phone is just as distracting as talking on it. I just chalk it up to the general public are assholes and morons.

This movie is a neat idea. Taking one chapter from the Bram Stoker classic Dracula,the chapter about Dracula's trip by sea to London,and making an entire film about it.Fleshing out what needed to be fleshed out.

A young doctor barely manages to get passage on the Demeter. After finding a young woman who is almost dead in a crate he realizes something ain't right. 

Then the animals on board the ship start dying and disappearing.  Yep we got a vampire on the ship and where do  you run when out at sea and there is a vampire on the ship?

Well shot and with a great score,this is a throwback to the horror made 60 years ago. A slow build. Where the sense of dread is huge. And when a horrific act happens you are a bit relived to have the tense broke for a short bit.

Not really sure who this movie was aimed at. The friend that mentioned it to me is a huge old horror fan. But she is also a bit older than the average person going to the theater to see a movie. From what I can find The Last Voyage of the Demeter bombed. Not even making half of what it cost to make. 

This Blu ray has a few extras. Including some deleted scenes and an alternate opening. I can see why they used the opening in the film and why the scenes got cut. Then we get a commentary from the director and the producer.

What I wanted was an extra talking about how this movie has been trying to be made since the mid 90s. AFter the writer got inspired by Coppla's Bram Stoker's Dracula which came out in 1992.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter gets a C+

31 Days of Horror 2024 Day 19 The Dentist

 

TITLE-The Dentist

SOURCE-Vestron Video  Blu Ray

When I hear people saying that the 90s was dead for horror or the more common variant of that now "Horror was dead in the 90s until Scream." I know whoever is saying that either wasn't around back then or is someone that only watched what hit wide release in theaters back then.

Today's movie is a perfect example of how wrong  the whole horror was dead in the 90s is.

Premiering in late October 1996 on HBO  The Dentist is another great film from Brian Yuzna. I was lucky the night this aired I happened to be over at the home of my almost in-laws. And my lady's mother loved horror.

Corbin Bernsen is the titular Dentist. Racked with OCD and losing his mind  he finds  out his wife is cheating on him  with the pool cleaner. This drives Corbin  off the deep end and he starts killing people for various reasons.

Being a Yuzna film you know we are gonna get some gore and the FX work from Anthony C. Ferrante and J.M. Logan are great. Almost all practical FX work. 

Add in that most people have a fear of going to the dentist and you get a film that works on  a few levels. 

This Vestron Video Blu ray is packed with extras. Got a great commentary from the director and Makeup Effects supervisor. Which is loaded with info. A really fun  interview with Corbin Bernsen and one  with the co writer Denniss Paoli.

One interesting thing pointed out in the commentary,and one my now ex pointed out while we were watching this almost 30 years ago,is the film  kind of plays with is this actually happening or is all the kills in  Bernsen's head? Kind of like the film  American Psycho years before that movie was made,and yes I know the novel AP is based on came out before The Dentist. Also like the American Psycho movie,the sequel to the Dentist lets us know that it wasn't all in the lead's head.

For a fairly cheap price you get both Dentist movies. Both loaded with extras and both looking better than I have seen them look before.

The Dentist gets a B-

31 Days of Horror 2024 Day 18 House of the Dead 2

 

TITLE-House of the Dead 2

SOURCE-Lionsgate DVD

When it came out in the early 2000s I heard how bad House of the Dead(the movie) was and avoided it. A few years later while looking at a site loaded with rips of screener dvds I saw House of the Dead 2 was out. Grabbed that rip burnt  it to a disc and either never watched it or saw it and don't remember watching it.

Skip ahead to one  weekend earlier this year. Was at my secret junkstore,where dvds/blu rays are 50 cents. Saw HotD2 and took a chance.

Now pretty sure I have played the second House of the Dead video game,and this movie appears to not folow the plot of that game.

Sid Haig has one of the surviving Hyper Sapians,AKA Zombie,from the first film. And this causes an outbreak of zombies on a college campus up near Seattle.

Which means a Special Forces team is sent in to contain the zombies and prevent it from  getting worse.Standard zombie movie tropes of course. 

Thankfully the cast and a few minor things make this stand out a bit from the glut of DTV zombie movies that came out in the mid 2000s.

One change,and one I liked,was it isn't just getting bit by a zombie that will change you into one. If a mosquito bites a zombie the people they bite afterwards will become infected. Neat idea I haven't seen before in movies. Wish they did a bit more with this.

Then this cast. It is packed with people I know from various tv shows. People like Victoria Pratt Who I knew from Mutant X. And Nadine Velazquez who most will know as Katalina on My Name is Earl. 

So while the budget ain't high, the combo of new ideas and a cast that is use to working with a smaller budget helps boost this movie over similar zombie films from the same era.

Sure this isn't nothing mindblowing.And it aint one I would say you should buy,unless you find it cheap like I did. For a DTV sequel to a film considered one of the worst horror films of the past 40 years this ain't bad.

House of the Dead II gets a C-.

31 Days of Horror 2024 Day 17 Snakes on a Plane

 

TITLE-Snakes on a Plane

SOURCE-New Line DVD

Since I was a kid I loved creature features. Stuff like The Swarm or Tarantulas Deadly Cargo I would watch on WPMI and love. So when I heard about Snakes on  a Plane I was interested. 

When the film hit theaters it was a time where most movies I would just wait till they hit home video. Then rent the DVD through Netflix. By the  time it hit Netflix I was busy and just never rented it.

Over the almost 20 years since it came out I have had many chances to see Snakes on a Plane on TV. Rather not watch the film edited to shreds and packed with ads. Then earlier this year while at my new secret junkstore I found the DVD pictured at the top. And it was 50 cents.

Sam Jackson is escorting a witness to a trial. The bad guys don't want the witness to testify. So they load the plane up with piles of exotic deadly snakes.

Decent cast,with more than a few people that are known character actors/actress. And the script aint bad for a creature feature. Really the  only thing that shows this was a lower budget movie is the FX. Some of the CGI snakes look good,almost real.Then others look like crap you would see in a Sub  Rosa Studio release. And in a film  like this bad FX can really hurt it.

I did enjoy the movie. Just that this feels more like a movie that would work better seeing it in a packed theater. Instead of sitting here just me and the dog,Maggot Ass the wonder mutt.

Snakes on a Plane gets a C.

31 Days of Horror 2024 Day 16 Warlock

TITLE-Warlock

SOURCE-Vestron Video Blu Ray

I have always enjoyed exploring these lesser known horror franchises. So when I found the Warlock Trilogy Blu Ray set cheap I had to get it. 

Made in 89 but not released in the USA until a few years later,this ended up being a minor hit thanks to home video and it's airings on the various cable movie channels.

Julian Sands is the titular Warlock. And to escape a witchhunter he flees 300 years into the present day. Followed quickly by the witch  hunter.

If the Warlock can complete his mission in the modern day Satan will be able to take control of Earth. Our witch hunter gets teamed up with a waitress,played by Lori Singer. 

This waitress gets cursed by the Warlock. And for every day that passes she ages 20 years. Which gives us a time limit. Can Lori and the witch hunter find and stop the Warlock before Lori dies from old age?

Sure this isn't some big budget horror like what studios like Paramount were putting out. Even with the lower budget the movie looks good. 

The  blu ray is loaded with extras. From interviews and BTS stuff made back when the film was current to modern day stuff like a great commentary.

Warlock gets a B-.

 

31 Days of Horror 2024 Day 15 Camp Blood 8 Revelations

 

TITLE-Camp Blood 8 Revelations

SOURCE-Tubi

I have known of the low budget slasher series Camp Blood for close to 20 years now. Never watched any of them. Mostly cause I never see the DVDs for sale in any store.

Was scrolling through TUBI,the modern day mom & Pop Video store,and had a friend messge me "Go to TUBI watch Camp Blood 8". Knowing her taste in horror is similar to mine I put on the movie.

2 hours later,stopped 2 times to get a snack and go piss,I had finally seen a Camp Blood movie. Did some research and found out that there is more than 8,some were not numbered. And almost all of them are on Tubi.

Camp Blood is rural area filled with woods. Once years ago a man in clown make up roamed the woods killing whoever was in them. But he is gone,replaced by his son who just wears a  clown mask and the son's insane mother.

A bus bringing a Girls Beach Volleyball team to Salt Lake City breaks down. And we got our ladies wandering the woods.

2 of them find what looks to be an abandoned warehouse. Another gets captured and tied to an ottoman in Clownmask's living room. Where she is forced to make up songs about the mother's tits and ass. And another two run into Coolduder,YT personality,who lives in a cabin and is a survivalist.

 Maybe 10 minutes into the movie we find out that Clownmask has a sister that was abandoned in the woods. At first I was thinking the asian lady that is in the warehouse was this sister all grown up. Nope turns out it is the volleyball girl in Coolduder's cabin. 

But right when it looks like the sister is gonna do a heel turn Clownmask shows up and kills her.

The kills are bloody but cheap. The acting is either ok or horrid. Even with all these flaws I had a blast watching this. 

Plus even without seeing the previous films I didn't have trouble keeping up with this one. Seems there is a bit of Camp Blood lore in this franchise. Thankfully the scenes with the mother and the girl tied to the ottoman answered the few questions I had.

Camp Blood 8 gets a C-.

31 Days of Horror 2024 Day 14 Archnoquake

 

TITLE-ArchnoQuake
SOURCE-TUBI

Sometimes you want a dumb creature feature. Today was that day.

Set down in New Orleans a fracking accident releases giant albino firebreathing spiders. 

And we follow around 2 groups trying to survive this invasion of creepy crawlers.

One group you got Bug Hall,the guy who was Alfalfa in the Little Rascals movie,along with Tracy "Growing Pains" Gold and a few others. Bug drives a tour bus through the city.

The other group is a girls' sports team. On a bus driven by Ed Furlong looking like he hasn't slept in 4 years.

Now this was made for Sci Fi Channel. So you know that means the spiders are CGI. But this isn't the normal SCIFI original horrid CGI. This is a slight step above that. Hell the script and the acting is a slight step above the normal made for SCI FI Creature feature.

What surprised me the most is there is a handful of stunts were someone is set on fire. And these aren't done with CGI. Nope appears they just lit someone on fire.

Not a bad way to pass almost 2 hours. And being free on TUBI helps.

ArchnoQuake gets a C-.

31 Days of Horror 2024 Day 13 American Gothic

 

TITLE-American Gothic

SOURCE-Amazon Prime Video

Not sure why but this movie was one I just never saw until earlier this year. Yea I saw the reviews of it in Fangoria. Thought it sounded worth seeing. Then never rented it.

A pile of people are flying out to vacation on a small plane. Hoping this vacation will help their friend who just lost her baby. Have trouble and make an emergency landing. Thankfully a small island is near by.

After camping for the night,the friends discover an old home on the island. And not long after exploring parts of it run into the owners. An older couple,with the wife played by Yvonne DeCarlo. 

Then we start meeting this couples kids. Who are all at least mid 30s. But still act like pre teens or younger. 

More and more odd things start happening and the friends notice this.

The next day,I think it was the next day. One of the guys sees the 2 kids playing on a giant swing over a huge cliff. He gets talked into getting into the swing. And the male child climbs up and cuts the ropes holding the swing. Which results in a bloody death below on the rocks.

With this first kill the movie gets going and just keeps ramping up the gore and oddness. Like when we find out the babydoll the daughter carries is a mummified infant corpse.

Pretty sure this hasn't gotten a Blu ray release. Think the DVD is OOP. So this copy streaming on Amazom Prime Video is the easiest way to see this forgotten sleazy horror film.

American Gothic gets a C.