Someone forgot to write a plot

Curse of the Undead: Yoma (1989)
Director: Takashi Anno
Rating: Three of Ten Stars



"Curse of the Undead: Yoma" is the tale of a ninja who undertakes a quest to slay a childhood friend gone bad. Along the way, he has a number of inexplicable encounters, including one that's an odd, unexplained time-warp (I think).
Like the header says, the animation is nice, there are some interesting plot elements, but those plot elements are just floating out there with no real thread to tie them together.

The more Japanese cartoons I watch, the more obvious it becomes that Sturgeon's Law is just as universal as gravity.

If you want a video that makes you think (even if thinking involves going 'Huh? Did I miss something?') then I suppose "Yoma" might be worth checking out. Otherwise, I think your money and time can be better spent elsewhere.

One of the best horror anthology films

The House That Dripped Blood (1971)
Starring: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Denholm Elliot, Nyree Dawn Porter, Jon Pertwee, Ingrid Pitt, John Bryans, Joanna Dunham, and John Bennett
Director: Peter Duffell
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

An arrogant Scotland Yard Inspector (Bennett) goes to investigate the disappearance of a famed horror movie actor. Locals, including real estate agent A.J. Stoker (Bryans), claim the actor disappeared because the house his rented was cursed. They tell him for tales of strange tragedies that took place there--a horror writer (Elliot) who rented it for some peace and quiet while writing his new book found himself haunted by his latest villainous creation; a retired stockbroker (Cushing, nursing a broken heart and hoping to recover in the country, vanishes as mysteriously as the actor the did; a reclusive widower (Lee) and his daughter's tutor (Porter) encounter strange and mysterious forces; and, finally, there's the horror actor (Pertwee) who vanished with his co-star (Pitt). The detective dismisses the stories as nonsense and goes to see the house... at Midnight. Will he uncover the secret of the house that dripped blood, or will he himself become an unsolved mystery?

"The House That Dripped Blood" is an excellent horror anthology that features some truly great actors in four spooky tales with a framing sequence. A couple of the stories themselves are a bit shaky, but the acting is excellent all around. The camera work and lighting are mostly studiously bland, so much so that when there are some flourishes to underscore a horror scene, they work with great effectiveness.

Something that really helps this film succeed are little touches scattered throughout the film, an extreme attention to detail that makes the fantastic stories even more believable. My very favorite of these is the final one where Pertwee and Pitt's characters have to contend with a cloak that turns those who put in on into vampires. The story is played mostly for humor, but I loved the touch of the vampire lifting into air... and leaving her shoes behind on the floor. It's funny and creepy all at once.


Of the four stories, the one featuring Pertwee ("The Cloak") and Lee ("Sweets for the Sweet") are the strongest; Elliot piece ("Method for Murder") featuring a cute twist on what was otherwise a fairly standard ghost story. The tale starring Cushing ("Waxworks") is probably the weakest and most nonsensical of the bunch, but, as with virtually everything I've seen Cushing in, his presence is almost enough to make even this flimsy, confused story work.

"The House That Dripped Blood" was the first in a string of anthologies from Amicus Pictures that collected some of the greatest horror actors of the Sixties and Seventies. It's not the best of the batch, but it is still worth seeing for the excellent performances by the actors. (And, as always, the beauty of an anthology film is that if one story doesn't work for you, there's probably others that do.)

You didn't expect anything else, did you?

April Fool's Day (1986)
Starring: Deborah Foreman, Ken Olandt, Pat Barlow, Deborah Goodrich, and Jay Baker
Director: Fred Walton
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Muffy St. John (Foreman) invites several of her good friends from college to spend the weekend of April 1st partying at her isolated family home. Fun turns to fear when the guests start to fall victim to a murderer.


"April Fool's Day" demonstrates that long before Wes Craven's "Scream" movies, filmakers were playing with the subgenre's standards and audience expectations to create films that deliver both the familiar and unexpected. The coolest about "April Fool's Day" is that the title and the jokes that day brings to mind are used to their utmost all throughout the movie... all the way up that twist upon the all-too-expected "unexpected twist ending.

With a cast that's not only handsome but also talented, a solid, expertly paced script that only works as a slasher tale but also serves as a almost-classic suspense film, this is a movie that fans of both slasher flicks and mystery films should get a kick out of. (The only possible dissapoitment I can see is if you like gory death scenes with lots of blood. This film features none of those. There is a really cool scene in a well where.... I better stop. I don't want to spoil anything!)

'Fallen' is a superb supernatural thriller

Fallen (1998)
Starring: Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, and Embeth Davidtz
Director: Nicholas Kazan
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Homicide detective John Hobbes (Washigton) captures and witnesses the execution of a serial killer... but a short time later, the murders start up again, as the demon that was doing the killing has found a new host. Will Hobbes find a way to stop a formless, immortal being that slips easily from host to host before it's too late?


"Fallen" is a slow-boil horror film that's low on the graphic violence so many people seem to crave today, but high on suspense. It's also a movie that demands the audience pay attention, because if you notice the various clues and hints scatterered thorughout, the film is that much more exciting. (The way the end loops back to the beginning is particularly cool... I was so engrossed in the going-ons that I'd forgotten the entire film is a flashback that starts with "Let me tell you about the time I almost died.")

The cast is excellent--Denzel Washington is as good in this film as he's been anywhere, I think--and the supporting cast is also great. The photography and other technical aspects are also top-notch, and it's all driven by a perfectly paced script and well-crafted characters.

Where inmates run the asylum

The Mansion of Madness (aka Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon) (1972)
Starring: Claudio Brook, Arturo Hansel, David Silva, and Monica Serna
Director: Juan Lopez Moctezuma
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Gaston (Hansel) visits a remote mental hospital and finds a bizarre place where the chief doctor (Brook) has instituted the very unusual approach to curing mental illnesses described in "The System of Dr. Tarr."


"The Mansion of Madness" is based on one of Edgar Allan Poe's creepiest stories, "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether", and unlike so many films supposedly based on Poe's works, the originating story is still at the heart of this film. However, "The Mansion of Madness" is far bigger than the story, and far creepier. The insanity that permeates the sprawling mental hospital--which seems to be the size of a small city--and the haunted woods that surrounds it, is felt in every second of the film... and along with that madness is an ever-growing sense of surreal horror and dread.

This is probably one of the creepiest and strangest movies I've ever seen. If you like offbeat, low-key horror movies, I think you'll enjoy this one. (It drags at a couple of places, and Gaston has got to be one of the densest people on the planet that he doesn't realize that something is wrong with the asylum AND his host, but the good far outweighs the bad here.)

Tomie carries a grudge like no-one else!

Tomie: Rebirth (2001)
Starring: Miki Sakai, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Kumiko Endou, Masaya Kikawada and Yutaka Nakajima
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A group of friends (Tsumabuki, Kikawada, and Endou) are stalked by the undying Tomie after two of them cover up one of her deaths.

"Tomie: Rebirth" is a drab and boring entry in the film series based on Junji Ito's classic "Tomie" horror comics. The characters are uninteresting, Tomie is more irritating than scary, and the chills and terrors are so few and far between so as to be barely worth mentioning. In fact, the post image is more interesting and disturbing than anything in the actual movie.


This sequel is almost as bad as the original "Tomie" movie, being elevated only slightly above it thanks to a creepy plotline where Tomie returns from the dead by possessing cute, innocent Hitomi, and a sequence where Tomie is reborn from the surface of a painting that had been smeared with her blood. These are also the only elements of the film that come close to matching the chills that Ito's "Tomie" comic book tales inspire when read.

"Tomie: Rebirth" is a film you can skip, even if you're the biggest fan of the "Tomie" series on the planet. It's definately not the first of the series you should watch... that should be "Tomie: Replay" or "Tomie: Another Face", both of which are superior efforts to this one. (The "Tomie" films can be watched in pretty much any order; they are indepedent of each other, and they even have all different casts and directors each time.)

(As of this writing, all the "Tomie" movies and graphic novels are out-of-print in North America.)

Saturday Scream Queen: Jacqueline Lovell

Using the stage name Sarah St. James, Jacqueline Lovell was a very busy nude model and adult film star during the mid-1990s. She appeared in hundreds of magazine layouts and photo shoots for "adult" websites and online services, as well several dozen softcore and hardcore pornographic films.

Among the producers she worked for was B-movie maven Charles Band, first appearing in sci-fi and fantasy-themed softcore films made for his Surrender Cinema production unit, but later showing herself to have talent for acting beyond disrobing and moaning on cue when she appeared in the Band-directed horror classics "Hideous!" and "Head of the Family".

Lovell gave birth to a daughter in 2000 and for a time left show business to focus on her family. Since 2005, however, she has been taking small parts in television shows and low-budget horror movies.

Click here to read reviews of a few of Lovell's films at The Charles Band Collection.

'When Evil Calls' isn't much past its novelty

When Evil Calls (2007)
Starring: Jennifer Lim, Sean Pertwee, Chris Barrie, Lois Winston, Gemma Chan, Lucy Barker, Dominique Pinon, Rick Warden, Oscar Pearce and Luke Lynch
Director: Johannes Roberts
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A deal that one girl (Lim) makes with an evil spirit (Pearce) unleashes death and mayhem via text messages in a British high school.


"When Evil Calls" is a film version of the first-ever horror series produced for broadcast over cellphones. Each of the 20 episodes was 2-3 minutes long, offering up sex and gory violence brought on by evil magic--magic that causes wishes to come true in twisted and bloody ways. Here, they have been linked together with framing sequences featuring Sean Pertwee as a crazy janitor who is relating the horrible events and trying to be more and more like the Crypt Keeper as he gets more and more drunk.

Given its history, I acknowledge it as a novelty and probably even as a milestone. However, as a movie--and this is how I came to it and how most people will come to it--"When Evil Calls" is a run-of-the-mill low-budget horror effort with predictable and/or far-fetched stories that we've seen done better elsewhere, but which manages to rise slightly above similar material due to a better-than-usual cast. (Chris Barrie was particularly fun as the most oblivous school headmaster ever.)

However, when they were cutting the movie together, they should have trimmed parts of the original episodes. There was an annoying repetion in the film--over and over again, it established the content of text message recieved by victims of the evil magic received, something even the dimmest viewer would be aware of after the third or fourth time. I understand why that detail has to be reestablished every time a new episode is released in a serial, but there's no need for it when the pieces are packaged as a whole.

It also occurs to me that a better title for the film (and the original series) would have been "When Evil Texts". That is, after all, what is going on.

As a curiosity, the film might be worth seeing. Otherwise, I'm sure there are better things out there for you to spend your time on.

'Darkness' is condusive for sleep

Darkness (2003)
Starring: Anna Paquin, Lena Olin, and Iain Glenn
Director: Jaume Blaguero
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Regina (Paquin), a troubled teen, moves with her family to a house with a dark and mysterious past in the countryside. Soon, strange events start to occur--whenever darkness settles over the house, it's as though a transformation takes place and other residents start to appear. Her parents (Olin and Glenn) remain oblivious to the growing danger and terror, so Regina comes to the realization that it is up to her to unlock the secrets hidden in the house's past if the evil growing within it is to be stopped before it consumes her family.


"Darkness" is a movie that tries to be a haunted house story and fails miserably. The primary reason for this is the same that doomed the Worst Big Screen Release Horror Movie of 2005 "Boogeyman" (my review, at Movies You Should Die Before You See); build-up without pay-off does not make a horror movie, it makes audiences bored. The same true of spooky images of shadowy figures standing just out of view of the principle characters--if nothing comes of them, they stop being disturbing. Some of these would-be horror movie makers would benefit from watching a horror movie or two, I think.

That said, I think "Darkness" will appeal to teenagers, but few others. They'll be able to identify with Regina, as she is the only member of her family with a brain in her head. (The father is coming unglued, her little brother is behaving strangely... yet her thick-skulled mother doesn't notice and refuses to listen when it's pointed out to her.) Yep... the Anna Paquin character will be seen as Everyteen by the 14-19 year-old set. The rest of us will be bored, as "Darkness" contains no scares, a plot that is so muddled it's hard to tell whether the actors are doing a good job or not, because one isn't really sure what they're supposed to be reacting to.

It isn't until the final 15 minutes or so that those of us who aren't teenagers will find something to entertain us in "Darkness," as the secrets of the house come to light and the plot finally stars going somewhere. FINALLY, we get something other than ghosts standing around in rooms and staring at unawares Paquin, Glenn, and Olin, and we get some genuine scares; this final sequence earns the pic a whole Star by itself. The ending of the film is also pretty chilling (even if I'm a bit unclear as to exactly what it means). Still, it's too little and way too late to save "Darkness" from being just another badly done movie.

(Note: I watched the DVD release of the "Unrated Version." I'm not sure what in it makes it "unrated"--other than, I suppose, they didn't send that particular cut to the Ratings Board--so maybe the theatrical release wasn't as tedious.)

Beware the voodoo sex dolls of 'Baba Yaga'!

Baba Yaga (aka "Kiss Me, Kill Me" or "The Devil Witch") (1973)
Starring: Isabelle De Funes, Carroll Baker, and George Eastman
Director: Carrado Farina
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Commercial photographer Valentina (De Funes) becomes the target of the twisted effections of immortal, sadistic lesbian witch Baba Yaga (Baker). As Valentina's models and friends start falling victim to mysterious curses, she turns to her filmmaker friend Arno (Eastman) for help. Will they together be able to overcome supernatural lesbianic powers as old time itself?


"Baba Yaga" is a decidedly weird movie. From beginning to end, it has a dreamlike quality about it, and as it progresses and Valentina is snared increasingly by Baba Yaga's dark powers, it starts to feel like a nightmare. Usually, films of the disjointed, somewhat pretentious variety that is represented here bug me. But here, we have a film that is so well done that I can accept the quirky, illogical and random nature of many of the events. The acting also reflects the dream-sense that permeates the film, with De Funes being particularly fun (and sexy) to watch.

Part horror movie, part bizarro softcore Euro-trash sexploitation flick, "Baba Yaga" is strange and well-makde enough that it's worth a look. The climax where Valentina is trapped by Baba Yaga and a bondage voodoo sex-doll come to life, and Arno is attempting to rescue her, is extremely well done.

I hesitate to recommend "Baba Yaga" as a film you should seek out, but I found it an interesting movie.

(Trivia: The movie is based on an Italian comic series, "Valentina". I read a few album reprints when I was a kid, and I remember them as being strange and sexy, just like this movie. De Funes' appearance is also very much like the character appears in Crepax's drawings, which are displayed during the opening credits. So, I guess this sets "Baba Yaga" aside as one of those rare successful comic book film adaptations.)




(Special Bonus Trivia: Artist Crepax based the look of Valentina on actress Louise Brooks. You can check out pictures of the real thing at the companion blog Shades of Gray by clicking here.)

'The Return' isn't really worth the trip

The Return (2006)
Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Peter O'Brien, Sam Shepard, J.C. MacKenzie, and Adam Scott
Director: Asif Kapadia
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A traveling sales-rep (Gellar) starts having strange dreams and visions when she returns to Texas for the first time in years. When she tries to unlock a mystery that dates to her childhood, she finds herself remembering places she's never been before, and eventually being haunted by phantom voices and stalked by a phantom killer. Will she uncover the truth before she completely loses her mind?


"The Return" had a lot of potential. It still does, if someone were to edit it down to about 53 minutes. It's got good acting, gorgeous cinematography and production design, and a decent (if obvious and predictable) story... but everything is draaaaaged out and the result is that the movie is boooooooring. What tension is built disspates over drawn-out sequences, and subsequently any pay-off feels either pointless or forced.

In fact, because the movie is such a meandering mess, the whole experience is one of emptiness and pointlessness. It's neither scary nor romantic enough to birng about the sort of emotions in the viewer that it is hoping to inspire. Even the climax--where this feeling should dissipate and be replaced with relief and maybe even happiness--has an empty sort of feeling to it. (I wish I could explain more, but doing so might give the movie away completely... and I try not to give too many spoilers in this forum.)

The film also suffers from the fact that we don't really get to know any of the characters in it. Even Gellar's character is a bit of a cypher... although given her nature that's forgivable. But her father, her "rescuer", and even her pursuer should have been developed more. This might have helped to raise the tension a bit, and it might even have helped justify the running time.

"The Return" would have made a great "Twilight Zone" or "Night Gallery" episode. It could even have been a decent movie--all the elements are here, they're just not used properly. As it stands, the film is worth seeing so you can admire the beautiful camerawork and production design. Just don't expect an exciting viewing experience.

Journalism student receives tip from ghost

It was a toss-up whether to post this review here or at the Watching the Detectives blog. The presense of the ghost made me choose to post it here.

Scoop (2006)
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman, Woody Allen, and Ian McShane
Director: Woody Allen
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Sondra (Johansson), a bubble-headed journalism student, is contacted by the ghost of recently deceased journalist Joe Strombel (McShane). He wants her to write the scoop he didn't have a chance to: That the dashing and handsome man-about-town Peter Lyman (Jackman) is actually a serial killer. With the help of a third-rate magician (Allen), Sondra goes about getting close to Lyman in order to gather the evidence needed to prove Strombel's accusation from beyond the grave, and get her scoop of a lifetime. But what will Sondra do once she starts falling in love with Lyman?


"Scoop" is a lightweight mystery comedy. The mystery isn't really much of a mystery, and the comedy is of a type that will make you smile rather than laugh.

The characters are, for the most part, well enough acted and the story moves along in a straight-forward fashion, unburdened by a desire on the part of the writer/director to show off his cleverness by throwing in either painfully predictable "twists", or developments that are completely unsupported by the plot. Allen avoids the very thing that dooms many movies of this type that are being made by younger, hipper filmmakers. My hat is off to him for not trying to make this movie seem any deeper than it is, but simply letting it stand as the plain little movie that it is.

I am also impressed by the way that an element of the film that bothered me at the beginning turned out to be one that I very much enjoyed by the end. There are scenes of characters on board Charon's barge as it crosses into the Afterlife, and the first couple of times Allen cut to this mystical scene, I was irritated, because I didn't feel it fit the nature of the film, despite the fact thee's a ghost popping in and out of the story. I felt it was too much of a fantasy element for a film that is, basically, grounded in the modern, everyday world.

However, by the end of the film, Allen pays off the River Styx scenes to the point where, looking back, they're probably the funnest part of the film.

One thing that isn't as fun is the character Allen plays in the film. His character is so socially awkward and downright dumb that it's painfully embarrassing to watch him attempt to mingle at the parties Sondra drags him to in her quest for dirt on Peter Lyman. It also doesn't help anything that there doesn't seem to be a connection between Allen and Johansson on screen--yes, they are delivering lines from the same script on the same set, but there's no sense that either actor is really paying attention to what the other actor is saying or doing. There's no spark between the two, and the comedic timing of every scene they have together is likewise off.

(It's tempting to say that Allen has "lost it" now that he's in his 70s, but this isn't so. He does fine in his scene with McShane, and he's okay when interacting with bit players and even Jackman... there simply seems to be something absent between him and Johansson. However, Allen must be happy with the result, because Johannsson is starring in at least one more Allen production.)

I think anyone who enjoys watching the lighthearted mysteries from the 1930s and 1940s will get a kick out of "Scoop". Those out there looking for a film with "twists" or lots of sex and violence are going to be bored. (Although Johansson fiills out a swimsuit quite nicely.)

'Rise' is a decent vampire flick

Rise: Blood Hunter (2007)
Starring: Lucy Liu, Michael Chiklis, James D'Arcy, and Margo Harshman
Director: Sebastian Gutierrez
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Features reporter Sadie Blake (Liu) is raped and murdered, but that's only the beginning. She wakes up in the morgue as a vampire, and soon sets out to take revenge on those who killed her and to stop them from doing what they did to her to anyone else. An obsessed police detective (Chiklis) who lost his daughter to the same killers (Harshman) is also on their trail, but will they help each other, or ruin each others quests?


"Rise: Blood Hunter" plays as if it was scripted from the outline of someone's "Hunter: The Reckoning" or "Vampire: The Masquerade" RPG campaign. If you understand what that entails, you'll either know this movie is for you right now, or you'll know it absolutely isn't.

(The title is sort of a dead giveaway if you've seen any of White Wolf's Storyteller games over the past 15 years. There's also the fact that Liu character tells her editor that the "vampires" she just published an article about were a bunch of wanna-bes that were playing "like D&D... but with nipple-rings" makes me believe even stronger there's a gaming campaign somewhere in this film's evolution.)

That aside, it's basically a paint-by-numbers modern-day vampire flick, with a victim who rises from the dead and wants to retain her humanity while getting revenge for her condition. It's an engaging enough movie, but there's nothing terribly original here, and there won't be any surprises for well-seasoned horror fans. (And those White Wolf gamers will find even fewer surprises... although that may be a selling point.)

There's nothing all that bad about the flick, but there's also nothing to make you go "wow!" while you're watching it.

Technically, it's a very pretty movie. The camera-work is decent, and the director has a good notion of now to stage and pace an action flick. He's a little less adept at invoking horror and dread, having to rely mostly on "Boo!"-type scares, although the scene where Liu's character wakes up in the morgue shows that Gutierrez might be able to produce a scarier movie. It's definately the horror high point of the film. (On the other hand, he probably should not attempt comedy. The two scenes that are clearly intended to be comic relief fall flatter than a pancake.)

Acting-wise, the film is mostly decent. Everyone is playing figures more than characters, except for Liu... and she demonstrates that she probably should stick to light-weight action roles or utter coldhearted bitch parts. She was at her weakest when she was trying to portray emotions such as sorry or uncertainty, with only the scene where she calls her mother on the phone after her "death" being the only such scene where her performance is convincing. She does fine as the hardbitten, vampire-asskicker, but her range seems to fail her otherwise.

In the end, I think lovers of slick-looking, Beautiful People Vampires movies will enjoy this film. (You'll enjoy it twice as much if you prefer playing Toreador or Ventrue Clan vampires in White Wolf games.) It might be worth seeing for the rest of you horror and action fans out there, just don't expect anything you haven't seen before.