Movie Reviews

Details: Created: 23 October 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Housesitter . . . The Night They Saved Siegfried’s Brain has an interesting history and it makes for a great lead. Originally filmed in Kalamazoo in 1987, this horror/comedy sat unfinished for over 30 years because no one wanted to deal with it. Now, thanks to Skywalker Sound and Paramount ...

Details: Created: 30 October 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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Sylvester Stallone was infamously underrated and dismissed until he stormed the box office and got an Oscar nomination for Rocky. By 1982 he’d attained enough box office clout to name his next project and what he decided to do was First Blood, an adaptation of a novel by David Morell that had been in ...

Details: Created: 15 October 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Planet Drool, here we come . . . again! This is what happens when you go in expecting worse. You are constantly surprised. Max (Cayden Boyd) has had an incredible summer. He’s made new friends and is super stoked to tell all his friends at school about them. The problem is their ...

Details: Created: 29 October 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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Young Guns successfully entertained the 1988 box office to the tune of 45 million dollars. The film chose to focus on the revenge of Billy the Kid and the regulators on his employer’s killer and once Jack Palance caught one between the eyes ...

Details: Created: 11 October 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Hi-yo, Silver . . . . Bullet, away! Arriving just in time for our quarantined Halloween is Curse of the Undead, an oft neglected B-grade horror/western about a vampiric gunfighter (played by Michael Pate, Hondo) and the trouble he kicks up when he arrives in a small town and falls for ...

Details: Created: 28 October 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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In the late 70s and early 80s, the short form ‘mini-series’ was a chance for networks to stretch their muscles with event storytelling. Long before HBO and Netflix and Amazon showed that feature film budgets and top shelf talent could not only match the quality of storytelling in cinema, but best ...

Details: Created: 08 October 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Dark Infinity and genre filmmaker Dustin Ferguson (who is comparable only to Roger Corman when it comes to impressive B-movie offerings) have yet another horror hit on their hands with the FIVE terrifying stories absolutely crawling and clawing their way through the innards of Tales for the Campfire 3 ...

Details: Created: 12 July 2019; Written by Frank Wilkins

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What could be worse than being in Florida with a Category 5 hurricane bearing down on the state? No, the answer is not “waking up to discover that you now live in Boca Raton.” The answer we’re looking for is to awaken from the nightmare of your neighborhood now ...

Details: Created: 09 October 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma. Two repeating syllables is all it takes to conjure up memories of pure evil slashing away at fleshy objects in the night. I know we fans of Friday the 13th and its many incarnations have been burnt before by subsequent releases of these films, but Scream Factory - issuing ALL the films together with love, care, and respect - have seriously come through with their latest release the Friday the 13th Collection ...

Details: Created: 16 October 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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This low budget ($300,000 USD) slasher film, made by a recent (in the 70s) USC graduate, would spawn countless sequels and give its backers some serious profits, the world horror auteur John Carpenter and Jamie Lee Curtis. Those things make the love for this ...

Details: Created: 03 October 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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The new comedy starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson called The Hustle is an almost identical remake of the 1988 classic comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels which starred Michael Caine and Steve Martin - itself a remake of Marlon Brando’s Bedtime Story. I say “almost” because ...

Details: Created: 19 October 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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Stanley Kubrick was a director of unparalleled technical mastery in his time. There isn’t a film fan, or filmmaker out there that hasn’t delved deep into the many works he produced over three decades before his untimely death. His subject matters were always ...

Details: Created: 03 October 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Question for you all, Dear Readers. When is a ship not like a ship? When it’s a Ghost Ship! And, true to its name, this supernatural horror film from Dark Castle Entertainment - who previously brought to life the Thirteen Ghosts remake - doesn’t behave at all like a boat afloat as its ...

Details: Created: 17 October 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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This reviewer is a little slow to update to new technologies. When it came time to replace some of my old equipment, I dove deep into the pros and cons of the next (and many say last) generation of home movies: 4K. The pros and cons of yet another format are involved and not a blanket statement. For example ...

Details: Created: 01 October 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Candy, Mandy, Sandy, Andy and Randy! Say it again with all the joy you can muster! And then there’s Glen. Glen . . . Dandy! Yes, those are the names of possible victims in Pandemonium, a horror spoof directed by Alfred Sole (Alice, Sweet, Alice), and - whether it be via strip poker, a trampoline, javelin ...

Details: Created: 16 October 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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One look at Spielberg’s filmography and it’s hard to imagine the man has ever set a foot wrong. But alas, just before the 1980s dawned, he took a misstep with the (at the time) expensive comedy 1941. Not to rest on his laurels, he doubled down in 81 and 82 and introduced the ...

Details: Created: 30 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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A crossdressing criminal who’s paranoia causes him to become fully committed to his matriarchal role in a hideout from the cops? Something this wild - two gay pyschopaths assuming the identities of nephew and aunt - could only come out of Florida in the 1970s, especially when you see just how ...

Details: Created: 16 October 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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Back in the early Noughties, Joss Whedon was synonymous with punchy genre series that, more often than not, dealt with strong female protagonists and thrilling plots. As if cursed by his own success, Whedon tried to branch out from vampires and slayers to the sci-fi with the ...

Details: Created: 26 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Arriving just in time for a quarantined Halloween, Spooky House has re-opened its doors for all the kiddos to delight in! While not my favorite Halloween film, this quirky comedy does have some laugh out loud moments thanks to a skeleton on a toilet and his magazine reading material ...

Details: Created: 16 October 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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Very early in the history of film different filmmakers sought to tell the story of the world’s infamous vampire. Bram Stoker’s most famous creation has influenced popular culture, in all its’ incarnations, since it appeared in 1897 - some might argue to the point of oversaturation. In the ...

Details: Created: 22 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Infidelity made private investigator and war veteran Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) the man he is today. We know this having seen the excellent Chinatown, but admits as much in the opening line of The Two Jakes, the 1990 Nicholson-directed sequel to that 1974 film, now on blu-ray ...

Details: Created: 21 June 2019; Written by Frank Wilkins

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Bad news: Toy Story 4 is Pixar’s biggest money grab to date. Good news: This is Pixar, so it never feels like one. It is not a stretch to say that the company couldn’t make a bad movie if it tried. After all, none of its films ...

Details: Created: 20 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Release the blood parasites! One of the images that has long haunted my dreams and nightmares is that of a shirtless man bent over a nude woman’s body - which is placed on a desk in an office - as he opens up her stomach, pours acid into her open chest cavity and then, taking the same instrument ...

Details: Created: 05 July 2019; Written by Frank Wilkins

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Here’s a bit of life advice. Never trust the remote village that no one has ever heard of, especially if it puts on a pagan celebration that even fewer are aware of. I promise, you’ll thank me later for this. ...

Details: Created: 20 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Family cult classics? Sure! Little Monsters is back in action because knowing that urine and apple juice are interchangeable is something one needs to know early on in life! ...

Details: Created: 03 July 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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Making any film is a tricky endeavor, let alone a film in a franchise that shows no duds. Added to which, this latest incarnation has been balanced carefully between ...

Details: Created: 13 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Sometimes the road to the altar - or in this case, the justice of the peace - is fraught with unexpected unexpected bumps along the way, like a fun media-frightened Archduke, saving a gangster from drowning, rescuing a missing cruise liner, and prank calling an insane asylum ...

Details: Created: 28 June 2019; Written by Frank Wilkins

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A good movie always begins with a killer premise. And Yesterday, the new film from director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Richard Curtis has a great one. It takes on the idea of what our world would be like today if The Beatles never existed ...

Details: Created: 11 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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The Awful Truth might have been Cary Grant’s first SUCCESSFUL screwball comedy, but Big Brown Eyes - with its witty dialogue and snappy performances - is, for my money' worth, the FIRST screwball comedy that he starred in. Never heard of it? Change that. Quick ...