Brittany Murphy shines in 'Cherry Falls'

Actress Brittnay Murphy died today from cardiac arrest at the age of 32. I only saw her in a single film, but she was the best part of it. In fact, she made a fairly mediocre slasher film into a thoroughly enjoyable experience.


Cherry Falls (2000)
Starring: Brittany Murphy, Michael Biehn, Jay Mohr, and Gabriel Mann
Director: Geoffrey Wright
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When three teens are tortured and murdered in the small Virginia town of Cherry Falls, it quickly becomes evident that the victims are linked by two things: They went to the same high school and they were virgins. What dark secret are the leading citizens of Cherry Falls keeping that's getting their (non-sexually active) children killed?


"Cherry Falls" is a mildly suspenseful slasher-flick that's remarkable first by the fact that it takes a prime convention and turns it upside-down: The promiscuous kids are safe in this one... it's the ones that are keeping their pants on that are at risk; and second that the characters are actually intelligent. Only once does a character fall show traits of "horror movie braindeadness" where they go into a dark and creepy place... but it's in a spot where she has no reason to suspect that any danger could be lurking.

Good acting from an attractive cast--with Brittnay Murphy being particularly excellent--and some well-execute plot-twists go a long way to making this film worth seeing. It's not a masterpiece, but it's not bad either. It's low on bodycount as far as slasher flicks go, but what kills it does feature are brutal and shocking.

Shows how to kill a werewolf movie series quicker than using silver bullets

Howling V: The Rebirth (1989)
Starring: Philip Davis, Victoria Catlin, Elizabeth Shé, Ben Cole
William Shockley, Stephanie Faulkner and Mark Sivertsen
Director: Neal Sundstrom
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A group of idiots wander around a Romanian castle as a werewolf kills them, one by one.

"Howling V: The Rebirth" isn't Ed Wood level bad, but it is bad. Its basic story is like "The Beast Must Die!" (review here) where a group of people are invited to an isolated location because one of their humber is secretly werewolf and another among them wants to kill the werewolf, but doesn't know which of them it is. Unfortunately, in this instance, the storyline is badly executed in just about every conceivable way, starting with the fact that the werewolf hunter wasn't prepared in any way, shape, or form to actually hunt and kill the werewolf, despite the fact he presents himself as a member of a global secret society created for just purpose.


To make matters even worse, It features terrible set design and a badly thought-out environment in which it takes place (supposedly, it happens in a castle that's been "sealed" for 500 years, yet the entire structure is in perfect shape, right down to the bearskin runs, wooden breezeways, and lit torches in secret tunnel), an utterly predictable script that only works because of a heavy use of Stupid Character Syndrome throughout, and a werewolf elimination game that ultimately makes no sense because, again, the werewolf hunter just guesses randomly at who the monster is and overlooks the most obvious of all suspects like everyone else in the film. (And I can't even figure out why he picks that particular person.)

And the ultimate flaw is that the film is never truly scary. There are a few suspenseful moments, but they are too brief and too few to make up for all the other weaknesses.

I'm not sure where the writers (of the script, or of the novel upon which it is based got their inspiration, but I think they would have done well to watch some Scoobie-Doo cartoons. At least the conspirators in those cartoons are always well prepared, foiled only by those meddling kids. If The Martyrs, the secret society of werewolf hunters in this film, had bothered to put up some cameras or motion detectors or maybe even bring some real weapons, the proceedings might have been more interesting. (Of course, maybe the fact they call themselves The Martyrs is a clue to why they go about their werewolf hunting business is such a stupid fashion.)

'The Messengers' are not bringing tidings of joy

The Messengers (2007)
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Dylan McDermott, John Corbett, and Penelope Ann Miller
Directors: Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Sixteen-year-old Jess (Stewart) moves wth her parents and little brother to a remote farm where everyone hopes to get a fresh start after a very difficult couple of years. Soon after they move in, strange events start occurring in the house, and they increase to terrifying levels after Jess' father (McDermott) hires Burwell, a mysterious but friendly drifter (Corbett), to help out around the farm. Will Jess discover the secret behind the nightmarish events that only she and her little brother seem to witness before it's too late?


"The Messengers" is one of those movies that has gotten a bad rap from moronic critics who can't seem to recognize when they're not the target audience for a film. Yes, there is nothing new or innovative in this film, nor is the plot particularly clever--anyone who's seen more than three haunted out movies KNOWS that Burwell is somehow the key to the haunting of Jess and the house. However, for the target audience--which is 12-14 year-old girls who want something spooky for the slumber party, this is just about the perfect movie. (The protagonist is a girl who is having a hard time getting along with her parents, who no one listens to, and who saves the day almost by herself. It's also a film that ultimately carries with it a very strong message of family values and that parents and children still love each other even if they sometimes argue.)

Even seasoned ghost movie watchers will find something to like about this flick--so maybe it's worth watching if you're a parent with a girl in the house who likes creepy movies--as it moves along at a brisk (if predictable pace) and there are some nicely staged chills and some even better "gotcha!" scenes. (Say what you will about this movie being derivative, but directors Pang-Chun and Pang understand that if you're going to have spooky music playing on the soundtrack and/or set up a creepy circumstances, you better have it pay off. Too many PG-13 and even some R-rated horror flicks these days seem to think that all you need to do to make a horror movie is to build suspense and then go "ha-ha... just kidding!")

There's another thing the filmmakers recognized here that more creators need to take to heart: That last second shock, after the viewer things the horror is all over with, that was so startling when it first came into vogue some 35-40 years ago is no longer shocking. It's now so expected that it's often annoying because it is so obviously tacked on. Thankfully, the creators involved with "The Messengers" knew to avoid THAT cinematic cliche, and they ended up giving their movie an ending that wrapped the story and themes of the film perfectly. The climactic events of the film plus its denouement are worth a full point on the ratings scale by themselves, as we go from very scary to very peaceful.

Saturday Scream Queen: Jamie Lee Curtis

Jamie Lee Curtis' presence in a 1980s slasher flick is sure sign that it's worth checking out. She was in the best of the "Halloween" series, as well as "Terror Train" and others. As the 1990s progressed, she mostly left horror films for comedy, and ultimately retired from acting to focus on her writing career.

'House of the Living Dead' is soul-crushingly boring

House of the Living Dead (aka "Curse of the Dead" and "Kill, Baby, Kill!")(1973)
Starring: Mark Burns, Shirley Anne Field, David Oxley and Bill Flynn
Director: Ray Austin
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A South African plantation is haunted by a madman who starts killing animals but soon graduates to the butchering of people. Will the young lady of the house (Field) get to the bottom of the mysteries of this family she's marrying into... before she becomes a victim herself?


"House of the Living Dead" could have been a nice little gothic horror film if only its 85 minutes or so weren't so soul-crushingly dull. This is a film that takes "gradual build-up" to new extremes, but it does so without successfully building the sense of menace necessary. The last half hour, though, is great, spooky, 19th century mad-scientist/occultist fun... but it's not enough to make the misery of the film's early part worth sitting through.

Like so many bad horror films, "House of the Living Dead" has a great idea at its core, but its execution is completely botched. The actors all do a decent job, but the writer and director fail them. The end result is a movie that is best avoided... unless you're the world's greatest devotee of South African cinema.

The best Hercules movie from the 1960s saw him entering a Haunted World

Hercules in the Haunted World (aka "Hercules in the Center of the Earth" and "Hercules vs. the Vampires") (1961)
Starring: Reg Park, George Ardisson, Christopher Lee, Leonora Ruffo, Franco Giacobini, and Ida Galli
Director: Mario Bava
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When Hercules (Park) and his best friend Theseus (Ardisson) return home after another extended bout of adventuring, they find Hercules' betrothed, Deianira (Ruffo), in the throes of a strange illness and her kingdom governed by a sinister regent, Lico (Lee). The pair embark on a new quest for the one magical artifact that will cure Deianira that will take them into the very depths of Hades, land of the dead. Successfully restoring Deinira isn't the end of Hercules troubles, as Lico isn't just sinister-looking... he's bent on obtaining immortality at the expense of the lives of Hercules and his lady-love!


"Hercules in the Haunted World" is a gorgeous-looking, well-acted fantasy epic. Although the constraints of a low budget are almost painfully evident at times, and the Underworld and most of the sets have that very plastic, very 1960s feel to them, the great camerawork and creative lighting very much makes up for the shortcomings. There are times when the film takes on an almost dreamlike, fairytale quality that conveys the mood of the never-neverland of heroes and gods-walking-the-land is is so necessary for a film like this to succeed and which is so often absent in fantasy films.

Story-wise, the use of Greek mythology, the traditional structure of Hercules' quest to save Deianira (as well the various components of that quest), and many truly suspenseful and chilling sequences--such as when Hercules is set upon by dozens of undead in the service of Lico-- combine to tell a tale that has the feel of the ancient adventure stories that inspired this movie.

This is not to say the film is not without some serious flaws. Without fail, Bava draws out lead-ins to action and establishing shots to the film to the point where the viewer becomes annoyed and bored when he should be pulled deeper into the film. The worst of these is the above-mentioned battle between Hercules and the undead. Bava SHOULD have established that they're emerging from their graves and then moved onto the excellently done fight sequence, but instead he establishes the dead emerging again and again and again and again. Meanwhile, Hercules stands there and looks back and forth, to and fro, like an idiot, instead of taking action. The movie grinds to a complete halt here instead of leaping forward into the action that follows.

As always with a Mario Bava film, the visuals are stunning and there is true artistry in the composition of every shot, with Bava's background as an artist and a cinematographer serving him and the audience to great effect. It's the story-telling that he has trouble with. This was, however, only is second directorial effort (the first being "Black Sunday," which I review here.)

The movie also suffers from the standard affliction of fantasy movies made on shoestring budgets: It's got a Big Monster that's supposed to be scary looking, but is just goofy. Here's it's some sort of demon made of stone. To make matters worse, the scene in which it appears devolves into something that comes across as a parody of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears". There's underlying horror in the scene, but the stupid-looking creature (with its mouth hanging open as if it rode the short bus to its underground lair) and its blathering about short and long beds make the scene unintentionally comic. (I have to pause to wonder if kids might find the sequence scary; I'm not the audience for this film, so maybe I'm just not "getting it"?)

Finally, the film suffers from the fact that every time Christopher Lee opens his mouth, is it not the deep, resonant voice we movie lovers have grown use to over the years, but instead one that is far more high-pitched. Like all Italian movies of this vintage, it was shot silently and then dubbed into numerous languages later--and they obviously didn't hire Lee to loop his own voice, and the film is less for it.

For all its problems, however, "Hercules and the Haunted World" is one of the few decent fantasy films that have been made... and it's a film that even lovers of monster movies will be able to enjoy. It's not a masterpiece, but it's also not a bad way to waste some time.

Not a creature was stirring, because Santa killed them!

Santa's Slay (2005)
Starring: Bill Goldberg, Emilie de Ravin, Douglas Smith, Robert Kulp, and Dave Thomas
Director: David Steiman
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Once upon a time, a demon lost a bet with an angel and was then forced to nice to children. He became known as Santa Claus. However, this Christmas, the 1,000 years are up, and now Santa (Goldberg) gets to be as nasty as he wants... and he's got one thousand years of yuletide horror to catch up on.


"Santa's Slay" is a fabulous horror comedy, with plenty of reference to Christmas pop-culture mainstays and lots of laughlines as the "jolly old elf" reasserts his true nature and calling and massacres his way across Christmas Eve.

Goldberg does a great job as the musclebound, hulking Santa, and, like most other professional wrestlers, he shows a sharp talent for comic acting. He takes what might be an eye-rolling concept--Santa as demon--and actually makes it something you can buy into. Unfortunately, our heroes--the fetching de Ravin and the milque-toasty Smith--both give such weak performances that I almost found myself wishing Santa would take them out next.

Still, with plenty of fun dialogue and an even greater amount of yule-themed murders committed with common household impliments, I think this might be something for the more cynical adults to watch after the little kids are soundly asleep.

It's not much of a Christmas homecoming in'Silent Night, Bloody Night'

Silent Night, Bloody Night (aka "Death House") (1973)
Starring: Mary Woronov, James Patterson, Patrick O'Neal, Walter Able, Astrid Heeren, and John Carradine
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When Jack (Patterson) moves to sell the mansion he inherited from his grandfather, a past believed to be dead and buried returns to haunt the living with furious, bloody vengeance. Poor Diane's (Woronov) Christmas gift list will be reduced to virtually no-one by night's end.


"Slient Night, Bloody Night" is not as overtly Christmas-themed as the title might imply, but it is a great little proto-slasherflick and quite possibly the first horror film to flirt with a holiday theme. (In fact, it might be more than a proto-slasherfilm. It's got all the elements that are present in "Halloween", except for fornicating teenagers. We do, however, get an cheating lawyer (O'Neal) and his horny secretary (Heeren).

The bodycount is low by modern slasher-movie standards, but every death is shocking and unexpected. Although I had a vague notion of what I was in for, the first murders took me completely by surprise.

It's a fast-moving film with a bare bones plot, although I wish it could have been a little less bare-bones. I'm still wondering why Jack had to "borrow" his lawyer's Jaguar when he appears in the story. How did he get to the mansion in the first place if he didn't have a car? I also feel that the framing sequence was an odd choice... telling the movie as a flashback undermines a bit of the suspense.

Still, as an example of a thriller/horror movie that was part of the cinematic evolution that led to the slasher flick subgenre, "Silent Night, Bloody Night" is far better than several of its contemporaries.

The Jack Frost Duology

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, so there's no better time to review the Jack Frost movies...

In brief "Jack Frost" is a watchable (if cheesy and goofy) monster flick, but "Jack Frost 2" isn't worth the effort it takes to open the DVD case.


Jack Frost (1995)
Starring: Christopher Allport
Director: Michael Cooney
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A mass-murdering homicidal maniac named Jack is killed in a freak accident as he is being transported from one prison to another. The freakiest part of the freak accident is that he is resurrected as a snowman. A mass-murdering homicidal maniac snowman. With superpowers. And a carrot for a nose. Naturally, he sets about getting revenge on the small-town sheriff who captured him (Allport), but happily kills anyone else who crosses his path.

There isn't much else to say about "Jack Frost" than what I did above. As low-budget horror flicks go, it's not terrible... it's not great, but it's not terrible. The acting is fair all around, the effects are decent, and if you can buy into a murderous snowman wih the power to control snow and ice and use it as weapons, then I guess it's an okay monster movie. The kills are also bloody enough to please gorehounds, I think. (It might have been better if the snowcover had been more consistent in the various shots and a little less fake in many of them.)

I think the greatest flaw the movie has is that I got the sense the filmmakers believed they had their hands on a character around which a franchise could be built, ala Freddy Krueger and "A Nightmare on Elm Street", and I think this led them to play the film far straighter than the concept deserves.

One thing I think will probably make "Jack Frost" stand forever alone in the annals of film history is the snowman bathtub rape scene. I don't think that's ever been done before, and I don't think it will ever be done again. (I know some find that scene laughable, but I found it pretty horrific. I'm not saying it wasn't goofy as hell, but that entire sequence creeped me out more than anything else in the film. Heck, it was the ONLY thing that creeped me out. And ending the scene featuring a girl being raped to death by a snowman with the line "Looks like Christmas came a bit early this year" makes it all the more sickening.)




Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Killer Mutant Snowman (2000)
Starring: Christopher Allport and Eileen Sheely
Director: Michael Cooney
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Sam, our Hero from the original "Jack Frost" movie (once again played by Chistopher Allport), decides to spend Christmas someplace warm the year following the Attack of the Killer Snowman. Unfortunately, Jack (after escaping from what appeared to be certain doom at the end of the last flick) follows him across the ocean and starts cutting Christmas (and life) short for vacationers at a Caribbean resort.

Remember how I said above that I thought the makers of "Jack Frost" should just have gone for a full-bore comedic spin on their subject? Well, they did that with the sequel. It's too bad they had a collection of bad actors, no effects budget (or any other kind of budget, based on the sets), and a script so bad that I have to believe it was being made up as shooting was progressing. (I know what passes for the "big special effects scenes" in the film had to be planned, but I really hope that the rest of the unfunny crap that makes up the bulk of this awful film didn't even go through one draft. It had to have been spewed straight from a keyboard into the hands of the movie crew.) I probably should have known that I'd regret wasting part of my life on this turd when I realized the killer snowman was menacing people on a tropical island.

I think the only nice thing I can say about "Revenge of the Killer Mutant Snowman" is that it is fast-paced; although I think my IQ dropped another point with each lame gag, I never did get bored. But that doesn't mean that what I watched was good. There is really only one scene that I thought was worthwhile in this entire film... and it's the one where Jack breaks himself into ice cubes and sneaks into a cooler of a photographer and his nubile models. It ends with the niftiest murder in the entire feature.


The bottomline on both these flicks is that they represent mostly missed opportunities. The first fails at being a good horror/comedy fusion, and the second just fails.

(Trivia: Christopher Allport was killed in a skiing accident in 2008.)

Will anyone survive the night in 'Murder Mansion'?

Murder Mansion (aka "Maniac Mansion") (1972)
Starring: Evelyn Stewart, Andres Resino, Analia Gade, Annalisa Nardi and Alberto Dalbes
Director: Francisco Lara Polop and Pedro Lazaga
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A group of strangers, lost in the fog on isolated back roads, are forced to spend the night in a mansion at the edge of a cemetery. Although their hostess (Gade) seems welcoming enough, a night of murder and terror ensues.


"Murder Mansion" is a well-acted, well-filmed, and very moody gothic horror film. While it's got its fair share of characters doing stupid things just to move the plot along, and a few predictable twists, there are enough twists and startling surprises that the short-comings can almost be forgiven. If you like haunted house movies, I think you'll enjoy this film. (That's not to say the mansion our travelers find themselves trapped in is haunted... or is it? (Duhn-duhn-daaaaaah!))

With a surprisingly small amount of gore and nudity for an Italian horror film from the early 1970s, this film instead relies on effective camerawork and a decent script to bring the sort of chills and scares necessary to make a truly effective haunted house movie. It feels like they took the sensibilities of the thrillers and horror films from the late 1950s and early 1960s and updated them for the 1970s. If Hammer Films had done this--instead of going the more gore and boobs route--perhaps they would have lasted.

Saturday Scream Queen: Erin Brown

Erin Brown (aka Misty Mundae) is a prolific actress who over the past decade or so has appeared in dozens of horror-themed softcore porn films and recently started appearing in more mainstream comedies and fright-fests.

'Ghosts of Edendale' is interesting mix of fact and fiction

The Ghosts of Edendale (2005)
Starring: Paula Ficara and Stephen Wastell
Director: Stefan Avalos
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

After Rachel (Ficara) a successful photo model suffers a nervous breakdown, she moves with her writer boyfriend (Wastell) to Hollywood to make a fresh start in a different part of the entertainment industry. They move into a house in a neighborhood built on the land once owned by silent movie star Tom Mix, and, while they are initially delighted to be so close to Hollywood's history, Rachel soon discovers that history isn't completely in the past. Is she really seeing ghosts, and is her boyfriend really turning into Tom Mix, or is she finally going completely crazy?


"The Ghosts of Edendale" is a ghost movie that incorporates real-world history and stereotypes about life in the Hollywood movie business to create a film that spends all of its time in very familiar territory but which is still very creepy. There no terrifying moments in the film, and only a small handful of truly scary ones, but the sense of dread it evokes is one that will stay with you even as the end credits start to role. It's a sense of dread that even manages to elevate a somewhat weak ending.

Most of the credit for the success of this film goes to the superior acting talents shown by stars Paula Ficara and Stephen Wastell. Ficara's mostly understated performance as a woman questioning her own sanity when she starts seeing the ghosts of Old Mixville throughout her house and the neighborhood, and Wastell's transformation from a cheerful, supportive lover to a fame-obsessed asshole possessed by the ghost of a long-dead silent movie star is very effective in the way it starts out somewhat subtle and builds to the point where the viewer believes and shares Rachel's fear of him. The script is so-so and the characters these actors portray are strictly ghost movie stock figures, but they bring them to full and realized life as the film unfolds.

The one slightly mystifying thing about "The Ghosts of Edendale is why writer/director Stefan Avalos chose to rewrite Hollywood history for his movie and cast the restless ghost of silent movie star Tom Mix as main villain. I'm no expert, but as far as I know, Tom Mix wasn't particularly obsessed with Hollywood. While it's true he died in a freak car accident while speeding through Arizona on his way to sign a movie contract, his career wasn't ruined because of the advent of sound--in fact, his last movie was a huge hit for the studio that made it--but he rather chose to step away from film because of his own advancing age. Mix doesn't seem to have any sort of unfinished business as is implied in this film.


So, in this case, a little knowledge was a dangerous thing, beause it got in the way of my enjoyment of the film. I suppose few people would even be aware of the historical errors, because, as a character in the film says, the early days of Hollywood and the silent movie era are mostly forgotten by all. (And, I admit, there are probably lots of things I don't know about Tom Mix.)

Despite my wondering about the wisdom of taking real history and messing with it in a completely illogical fashion, "The Ghosts of Edendale" is a nicely done and well-acted ghost movie. It's worth checking out if you enjoy movies that are more about atmosphere than splashy effects.

'The She-Beast' should be avoided like other she-beasts, be they mother-in-laws orex-wives

The She-Beast (aka "Satan's Sister" and "Revenge of the Blood Beast") (1966)
Starring: Ian Ogilvy, John Karlsen, and Barbara Steele
Director: Michael Reeves
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Young newlyweds Phillip and Veronica (Ogilvy and Steele) are honeymooning in Transylvania (their first mistake) when they suffer a car accident. The injured Veronica is possessed by the spirit of a long-dead witch who uses Veronica's body as a vehicle for her revenge against the modern-day descendents of the peope who executed her. Will Phillip reclaim his beloved with the help of eccentric occultist Count Van Helsing (Karlsen) or will she remain the she-beast?


"The She-Beast" is bad on just about every level. It's attempts at comedy are not particularly funny, it's horror elements aren't terribly scary, the characters range from unlikable to annoying, and every technical aspects exudes cheapness. And what passes for a script is muddled and confused almost beyond comprehension.

Barbara Steele brightens every scene she is in with her exotic looks, but she's not in the film enough to make it worth your while to sit through it.





(Trivia: Barbara Steele was so contempteous of this film that even while working on it she tried to dissassociate herself from it by wearing a large hat and sunglasses in most scenes.)