Fuck Yeah Grindhouse!!

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie

An Antique dealer gets sidetracked by a tired woman who accidental runs over his motorcycle. While reluctantly driving to the woman’s destination, they run into a farm experimenting with a new machine that uses radiation to destroy pests. The bad part of this is that it raises the dead. The couple learns this the hard way when they catch one of the risen in the act of killing the woman’s sister boyfriend.. Now, they in a race against time not only to stop the machine and get rid of the dead, but to get away from a bigoted detective who will stop at nothing to tie them to murder.

This Spanish horror is possibly the only zombie in the 70’s that tried to be like Romero and finally got him. The film uses not only worries about the environment and how we inadvertently pollute the land but also covers the generation gap and the abuse of power by the law enforcement in post Franco Spain at the time. Another thing of interest is that there isn’t a high volume of zombies. There is at least four zombies at one time. The movie operates more on the threat of the machine creating more zombies then the zombies themselves. Very intense.

A damn good movie overlooked by the zombie pantheon.

The Cinema Snob suffers through the Alien ripoff Creepozoids (1987)

The Last Exorcism

A huckster preacher decides to give up the exorcism business due to the increasing violence upon the subjects. He takes a film crew with him on one last “exorcism” in the boonies of Louisiana to show how he sets up the hoax. But after being visited at their hotel room by the newly “clensed” subject in a trance and hearing pleas from her brother to save his sister…. is his last subject truly possessed….or is she just psychotic?

How can I put this best?

*drops the film can, unlatches the lid and pisses on the film*

That’s all it’s worth. Again, great at building tension. Did well at building characters and making you care about them. Then it pissed it all away in the last quarter. The difference between this and Paranormal Activity, is that You expedited a lil bit of derivative on the subject matter from a film that started in the film festivals. You forgive that because you understand. This movie has derivatives up the ass!! I’m not fucking kidding when I say that the ending derives from at least five films…all at once. That is fucking bush league from a big production company. Seriously! As I watched the ending, I couldn’t help but expect to hear this at the end credits. That’s how much it fucking sucked.

Fuck you Dan Stamm. Fuck you Botko and Gurland and Double Fuck You Eli Roth.

*shakes head*

Paranormal Activity

A young couple record their paranormal experience at night. After a psychic relays to them the activity is not from a ghost, but a demon, Katie urges immediacy in dispelling the house. Micah, however tries to record and communicate with it…with chaotic results.

I wanted to like this movie, I really did. I even watched the original. I can’t help but feel this movie either was incomplete or that the director didn’t care anymore and just hit the coast button on the last quarter of the film. It especially was apparent when on character went totally against type to advantage plot.

I’m really lost at how this got so many rave reviews.

The Vampire Bat (1933)

A German village is hit with a string of murders. Because the death is by ensanguination, superstition runs rampant and fingers are starting to point at the village idiot and accuse him of vampirism. Once he’s handled however, the killings still continue.

This is possibly the first famous and successful ”cheapie” in horror film history. Majestic Pictures leased out extras and sets from Frankenstein and Old Dark House. Hired Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray just after they were done shooting Mystery of the Wax Museum and added Dwight Frye, the end result was a quick cash grab on Universal horror. It had something for everyone because they tied everything Universal was offering at the time. Does that mean it’s good? Not really. The dialog is super cheesy and stilted. It’s still pretty to look at though and it fooled people into thinking this was a Universal picture.

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The Manitou (1978)

After getting a weird lump looked at, the friend of a cartomancer goes to the hospital to remove the lump. Little do they know that the lump contains a great evil and it will take the combined efforts of the cartomancer and a shaman to stop it.

I wanted to do a William Girdler movie later in the month, but with Tony Curtis’ passing, this was too good not to cover. Girdler is the horror director’s horror director. While he has a small amount of movies in his collection, almost all of them influential. Manitou was Girdler’s big budget effort. You can tell in this movie William was a kid in a candy store to get this done in his full vision. While it may be slow for some, the climax to the ending is really a must see. I do wish it were a wee bit longer though. This was Girdler’s last film. He died in a helicopter crash a year later.