I never like to read too much about the movies I am going to watch before I do, so I can just see it and get it over with. Last night, I was surprised, and caught some old performances from two greats. Michael Berryman, famous for The Hills Have Eyes, and Lawrence Tierney, of Reservoir Dogs fame, and it also happened to be a Troma flick.

The title you ask? Wizards of the Demon Swords (1992). I know, I know. Laugh. But if you haven’t seen it, you’re missing some great sword play and one liners you’ll never forget. In addition, some great scenes and spliced in “dragons” that are actually Stegosaurus clay animations. Funny.

I also really enjoyed the crystal dagger, and the moment two goon run to a cliff (which looks more like a ten foot drop) and say “she must’ve jumped.” LOL It will keep you on the edge of your sofa, and laughing. Those looking for ladies in their horror are in for treats, I believe its not intended for minors.

Trust me, order your copy of Wizards of the Demon Swords now, it will definitely be a great addition to your horror collection.

Sure it’s cheesy. The acting is pretty bad, but who watches these for the plot? Pretty girls, guys with swords, and silly fight scenes. Invite a friend over though, may be too much to watch alone.

Ok, so it’s been a little while since I updated this site. But tonight I picked up a copy of this old flick: Frogs. I’m not particularly into the horror movies with action scenes, and boats, but this one turned out alright. I wanted to see it more because it had Ray Milland in it than any other reason. However, seeing a young Sam Elliot in it was a surprising bonus. I didn’t notice he was in it until after he was on screen.

Anyhow, I really like Ray Milland in Dial M For Murder, so I went ahead and watched this without hesitation. My complain though, I can’t stand fake “Southern accents” in movies, so this kind of drags on for me.

I’m also not that scared of frogs, are you?

“A shocker reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds” (Variety), this amphibious horror flick is teeming with thousands of nasty-tempered creatures that are hopping madand murderous. Jumping with action, suspense, revenge and Southern Gothic charm, Frogs’ stars Sam Elliott, Joan Van Ark and Ray Milland are constantly a lily pad away from croaking! Jason Crockett (Milland) is an aging, physically disabled millionaire who invites his family to his island estate for hisbirthday party. The old man is more than crotchety he’s crazy! Hating nature, Crockett poisons anything that crawls on his property. But on the night of his shindig, it’s nature’s payback time, as thousands of frogs whip up every bug and slimy thing into a toxic frenzy until the entire environment goes environ-mental.

Order a copy of Frogs DVD from Amazon.

The Omen Remake sucks.

All remakes are needless, but this update of “The Omen” is especially so.

Not only was there nothing wrong with the 1976 horror classic, in which the Antichrist wreaks havoc on Earth as an innocent-looking 5-year-old boy, but the original stands as one of the most frightening movies. Ever.

It’s so ingrained in our pop culture, all you have to do is say the name Damien and everyone instantly knows you’re talking about a demonic child.

So why mess with it?

Thirty years later, the makers of “The Omen” barely have. They’re exceedingly faithful to the original — too faithful, actually — including having “Omen” screenwriter David Seltzer return to tweak his own script.

It’s not a shot-for-shot remake like Gus Van Sant’s pointless “Psycho” from 1998, but it’s close. The structure, characters, setting, events and even giant chunks of dialogue are all the same. One can only assume the intention was to appease the purists, but in doing so, director John Moore (”Behind Enemy Lines”) has breathed no new life into the material.

Tiny changes here and there inevitably contemporize the film. It takes place in the modern day, so the characters have cell phones.

When Julia Stiles — filling in for Lee Remick as Damien’s unsuspecting mother — begins to think there’s something wrong with her child, she immediately goes into therapy.

And Liev Schreiber — standing in for Gregory Peck as the father who surreptitiously brings the demon spawn into their lives — cries way more than Peck ever would have dreamed. Peck’s Robert Thorn choked up a little when he learned his wife had died, but mostly he held it together; here, as troubles mount, Schreiber is wiping away tears half the time. It’s the sensitive-man remake of “The Omen.”

But in the most feeble effort at modernizing the material, this “Omen” vaguely attempts to be politically relevant. A montage of photographs at the start suggests that the devil is everywhere, all the time — on Sept. 11, at Abu Ghraib, etc. — and we just don’t know it. The visit to an ancient biblical city toward the end of the film features flashes of flags, both Israeli and Palestinian. Such references feel tossed in.

More important, though, it isn’t even scary. It’s so similar to the original that we already know what’s coming. And because it adheres so closely, it only serves as a reminder of the superiority of Richard Donner’s original.

Not to be confused with the band White Zombie, but this is a great horror flick if you have not seen it.

Check it out!

White Zombie

A young man turns to a witch doctor to lure the woman he loves away from her fiance, but instead turns her into a zombie slave.

Young couple Madeleine and Neil are coaxed by acquaintance Monsieur Beaumont to get married on his Haitian plantation. Beaumont’s motives are purely selfish as he makes every attempt to convince the beautiful young girl to run away with him. For help Beaumont turns to the devious Legendre, a man who runs his mill by mind controlling people he has turned into zombies. After Beaumont uses Legendre’s zombie potion on Madeleine, he is dissatisfied with her emotionless being and wants her to be changed back. Legendre has no intention of doing this and he drugs Beaumont as well to add to his zombie collection. Meanwhile, grieving ‘widower’ Neil is convinced by a local priest that Madeleine may still be alive and he seeks her out.

Wait, there’s more:

Bela Lugosi followed up his star-making role in Dracula with this ambitious low-budget horror film from the Halperin brothers, who effectively transplanted the misty gothic mood of the Universal horror films to their poverty-row studio. White Zombie drips with atmosphere from the opening, as eerie chanting accompanies the credits and Madeleine (Madge Bellamy) arrives at midnight to witness a mysterious burial before coming face to face with the satanic looking Murder Legendre (Lugosi with goatee and searing eyes), a hypnotist and voodoo master who has been supplying the local mills with an army of zombie laborers. Madeleine’s nightmare is just beginning. Having landed in a world of almost perpetual night, where hollow-eyed zombies lumber through the sugar mill and the ghostly town is eerily bereft of living souls, she becomes the object of desire for Legendre, whose plan to possess her involves her initiation to the world of the undead. This first zombie movie is also one of the best, with Lugosi’s archly sinister performance dominating the film (thankfully obscuring a lot of overacting by supporting players), and astounding sets and gorgeous matte paintings creating a wondrous sense of poetic doom. –Sean Axmaker

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Starring: Terry Potter, Pete O’Herne Director: Peter Jackson Yes, Peter Jackson from Lord of the Rings

Bad Taste - The population of a small town disappears and is replaced by aliens that chase human flesh for their intergalactic fast-food chain.

Could a title be any more direct? New Zealand maverick Peter Jackson made a splash (well, more of a splatter) with this film debut, a slapstick gross-out comedy about an alien fast-food franchise that turns a small town into a cheap source of meat. All that stands in the extraterrestrials’ way is the Alien Investigation Defense Service (yes, it’s a tasteless gag), a bunch of would-be Rambos who take on the aliens with axes, rocket launchers, and chainsaws. Jackson mines vomit jokes, dismembered corpses, and brain-spattering gore for over-the-top laughs and succeeds with inventive low-budget effects, crack timing, and sheer exuberance. Not bad for a film made on weekends with homemade props and a bunch of energetic mates. Jackson topped himself a few years later with the even more outrageous and hilarious bloody gut-buster Dead Alive.

The limited-edition two-disc set also includes the documentary featurette “Good Taste Made Bad Taste,” a revealing “making of” shot at the time of production and featuring behind-the-scenes footage of Jackson’s home-made special effects, and a 16-page booklet with cast interviews. –Sean Axmaker

A must for the horror maniac!

Add this great movie to your collection: Order Bad Taste DVD

Blood Feast - A Weird, Grisly Ancient Rite Horrendously Brought To Life In Blood Color

Egyptian caterer busies himself collecting body parts from young maidens in order to bring Ishtar, an ancient goddess of good and evil back to life. When he has prepared enough parts for the ceremony, he hypnotizes a woman giving an engagement party for her daughter, at which he plans to perform the ancient rites of summons, using the daughter as his final sacrifice.

- Commentary by: director Herschell Gordon Lewis and producer David F. FriedmanDolby Digital 1.0
- WARNING!: This program contains graphic violence.
- Carving Magic: A grisly educational short subject in which William Kerwin (Blood Feast) and Harvey Korman (Blazing Saddles) demonstrate how to slice meat
- Rare Outtakes
- Gallery of Exploitation Art

Order your Copy of Blood Feast

Nothing so appalling in the annals of horror has ever been seen before. When Mrs. Fremont hires crackpot Egyptian cultist Fuad Ramses to cater a party for her daughter, Suzette, she commits the culinary catastrophe of the century! Fuad immediately prepares a Blood Feast made from the grisly body parts of nubile young women. The world’s first (and most notorious) “gore” film, “Blood Feast” is both shocking and hilarious. It’s also the first of the infamous “blood trilogy” from director Herschell Gordon Lewis and producer Dave Friedman, who followed this perverse classic with the equally twisted “2000 Maniacs” and “Color Me Blood Red.”

“One of the most important horrible movies ever made.”

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Plot Outline: Two college friends, Marie and Alexa, encounter loads of trouble (and blood) while on holiday at Alexa’s parent’s country home when a mysterious killer invades their quiet getaway.

Plot Synopsis: Two female college students, Marie and Alexa, set off to Alex’s parent’s secluded homestead in the country to relax and study. Come nightfall, Hell pulls up at the front door when a mysterious killer breaks in and kills Alexa’s father, mother, brother and pet dog. Alex is now bound and gagged, taken off by the killer, with Marie not far behind eluding the intruder. Can she save her friend’s life in time? Or is everything all that it seems…?

Here’s a quote from Amazon about this one:

Home to some of the world’s best food and fashion, the French also have the wonderful habit of producing some of the world’s best movies. With High Tension, French director Alexandre Aja offers up a bloody buffet of terror; a violent concoction of style over substance, with a bloody French twist. Two college girlfriends, Maria and Alex, take a weekend to study at the secluded country home of Alex’s parents. Shortly after their arrival, a mysterious killer appears, and things take a shockingly terrible turn for the worse. As the horror and body count rises, Maria and Alex find themselves fighting for their lives, and it’s revealed that things are not exactly as they seem. Essentially a one-act cat-and-mouse affair, High Tension is an explosive bloody thrill ride that rarely lets up. Oozing style in every color-saturated frame and boasting some intense performances, Aja mainly succeeds in sustaining an intense momentum throughout the film. The plot occasionally suffers from a thin, flimsy storyline, and the abundant graphic scenes of violence will either thrill and delight, or simply disgust. Nonetheless, this adrenalin-fueled addition to the genre gives the American slasher flick a real run for its money. High Tension is high-art horror, and comes highly recommended. –Matt Wold

Do yourself a favor and order a copy of High Tension.

Tonight, I think I’ll just put on Cube. Fear… Paranoia… Suspicion… Desperation

7 complete strangers of widely varying personality characteristics are involuntarily placed in an endless kafkaesque maze containing deadly traps.

Here’s another opinion:

If Clive Barker had written an episode of The Twilight Zone, it might have looked something like Cube. A handful of strangers wake up inside a bizarre maze, having been spirited there during the night. They quickly learn that they have to navigate their way through a series of chambers if they have any hope of escape, but the problem is that there are lethal traps awaiting if they choose their route unwisely. Having established some imaginative and grisly punishments in store for the hostages, cowriter and director Vincenzo Natali turns his attention to the characters, for whom being trapped amplifies their best and worst qualities. The film is, in fact, similar to a famous episode of Rod Serling’s old television series, though Natali’s explanation for why these poor people are being put through hell is a lot closer to the spirit of The X-Files. Cube has some solid moments of suspense and drama, and the sets are appropriately striking: one is tempted to believe at first the characters are lost inside a computer chip. –Tom Keogh

If you haven’t seen this one yet, check it out soon.

Order it: Cube

When a government-run lab accidentally lets loose a deadly virus, the population of the world is decimated. Survivors begin having dreams about two figures: a mystical old woman, or a foreboding, scary man. As the story tracks various people, we begin to realize that the two figures exemplify basic forces of good and evil, and the stage is set for a final confrontation between the representatives of each.

After a government-spawned “superflu” wipes out more than 90 percent of the earth’s population, the devastated survivors must decide whether to support or resist the advances of a mysterious stranger from way down South (heh-heh) who wishes to claim this new world order for himself. Although the six-hour length makes it nigh-impossible to digest in one sitting, this well-paced adaptation of Stephen King’s apocalyptic magnum opus ranks among the best adaptations of the author’s work, with strong performances from Gary Sinise, Miguel Ferrer, and especially Jamey Sheridan as a good-old-boy version of Old Scratch. The opening scene, set to the strains of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” is one of the most chilling things ever shot for television. Director Mick Garris is no stranger to King’s world, having also helmed Sleepwalkers, the recent television remake of The Shining, and the upcoming Desperation. –Andrew Wright

Stand DVD

Tags: Stephen King

Bubba Ho-Tep (Limited Collector’s Edition) (2002)

Don Coscarelli directs and Bruce Campbell stars as the King of Camp in this intentionally over-the-top schlockfest. Bubba Ho-Tep is partially about Elvis Presley and partially about the title character, an Egyptian cowboy zombie, but mostly it is about camp. The movie is equal parts story and back story. We learn through narration and flashback how Elvis didn’t really die, ending up instead in a rest home in East Texas with JFK (played by Ossie Davis), who was dyed black and had his brain removed, presumably for reasons of national security. Campbell and Davis realize that something strange is going on when their rest-home compatriots start dropping off suspiciously. The whole movie leads up to a final showdown to the death with the Egyptian cowboy zombie who has been sucking the souls of their fellow residents because he thought no one would notice. The movie unfolds a bit slowly; it is, after all, a geriatrics-fight-Egyptian-cowboy-zombie movie. However, one wishes this self-conscious movie’s pacing took its cue from the atypically fast-moving zombie instead of from the senior-citizen Elvis and JFK. In the end, though, Campbell is flawless as the aged King; his accent, intonations, glasses, and trademark karate are at the same time sincere and over the top. –Brian Saltzman

Bubba Ho-Tep may have the most substantial and most worthwhile bonus features of any single-disc DVD release. “The Making of Bubba Ho-Tep” focuses on effects, make-up, and the musical score (which includes Don Coscarelli interviewing the composer, Brian Taylor). While the focus isn’t on the filmmaking itself, the 45-minute, four-part documentary (which can be viewed in segments or in its entirety) is an insightful exposé with lots of screen time for Bruce Campbell and Don Coscarelli discussing the success of the film on the festival circuit and the financial and industry challenges of making an “Elvis and JFK aren’t dead Egyptian zombie” movie that is set in Texas. The making-of is the heart of the bonus features, but there are also a couple of deleted scenes, a photo gallery, TV and theatrical trailers, and two commentary tracks, one by Campbell and Coscarelli and one by Campbell playing Elvis (”the King”). The limited edition also includes a small scrapbook liner note insert with photos and a brief letter from Bruce Campbell. –Brian Saltzman

Bubba Ho-Tep (Limited Collector’s Edition)