News Potography and art: English Movie Reviews

Showing posts with label English Movie Reviews. Show all posts

Thursday, June 28, 2012

The Holy Virgin vs. The Evil Dead

The music is funky, the bad guys look ridiculous, and the dubbing is poor — it’s gotta be a Hong Kong martial arts movie! Damn right, and what’s more, it’s a horror-themed one with zombies, bad special effects and the promise of “erotic fantasy.” The weird plot involves some nonsense about a princess, a rapist “moon monster,” and abundant nudity, and is about as trashy and gratuitous as you’d expect. Life doesn’t get much better — read: stupider — than the VHS movie craze of the ’80s and ’90s.

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers

The thing about irony is it means anything goes. Case in point? ’50s B-movies. They were lambasted at the time for their corny plot lines and badly done effects (even for the period) and then adored in later decades thanks to that very same crappiness. Now it seems like never before has it been so acceptable to like crappy things. Yes, it’s easy to see why a movie like Earth vs. the Flying Saucers was so laughable at the time, and why people love it now. Forget Independence Day; this is where all subsequent White House flying saucer scenes got their inspiration from. Run! Alien enslavement nigh!

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla

Wow. Does it get much stupider than this? (Don’t answer that…) This movie is another supreme example of movie mash-up crappiness (and it’s also yet another movie with a bonkers poster designed solely to make your sinuses ache). The plot is so basic there’s little point mentioning it. Suffice to say, there are two giant monsters — the reptilian legend and his robotic nemesis — and they fight. And generally go on the rampage. A lot. Released in the US as Godzilla vs. Bionic Monster, it never really hooked Western audiences, but is a bona fide classic back in the Land of The Rising Sun.

Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus

The first of our movies brought forth from the minds of genius mockbuster studio The Asylum, Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus gives you a headache from looking at the box art alone. Then, when you press play, you’re treated to the two titular 1,000-foot monsters taking the odd chunk out of each other while getting in various tussles with the military. With the worst effects available in our contemporary world of abundant CGI, it’s shamelessly crappy epics like this that keep The Asylum in business, as stoned frat-boys all over the country buy their DVDs for a cheap laugh.

Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy

Just about exactly what it says on the box. Two wrestling honeys — sisters, no less — team up to inflict furious punishment on a mischievous mummy of South American extraction. The chicks are hot, the mummy about as scary as Grandpa sleepwalking down the hallway, and as a “versus” concept it’s about as absurd as it gets.

The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman

What is it about ’60s and ’70s horror movies that’s so addictive? Is it the inherently hot babes? The camp settings? The overdone bad guys? Or is it a combination of all three? If said horror movies are also European in origin then it’s pretty much guaranteed you’re going to enjoy your evening, even if the particular film being played is as startlingly silly as Spanish horror classic The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman (featuring a medieval undead countess awoken from her grave to show us her fangs and a nobleman with his own dark, hairy secret trying to stop her!).

Mega shark vs. Giant Octopus

The prequel to Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus, this movie is so unfeasible it almost hurts. In case you were wondering, the title pretty much tells you what it’s all about. Both prehistoric creatures are unleashed upon the world (and occasionally each other) when a glacier in which they were frozen is unwittingly destroyed, ushering in much wreaking of monstrous havoc. At one point, the Mega Shark leaps 30,000 feet into the air in order to catch a commercial airliner in its jaws. Enough said.

Alien vs. Predator

A prime example of two classic movies being shoved into the same oven with less than appetizing results; we can’t remember anyone who actually bought this as a concept. Arguably the two best extra-terrestrial badasses battle it out under the Antarctic ice, but this belligerent union is (like the hybrid creature the two life forms inevitably produce) definitely less than the sum of its parts. Despite the genuinely good video game that has resulted from the Alien vs. Predator crossover franchise, it’s safe to say that this particular amalgamation has been relegated to the hall of crappy taste forever.

Billy the Kid vs. Dracula

Clearly Cowboys & Aliens is not the first time a director decided to set a sci-fi or horror film in the arid plains of westward expansion. As this ’60s American “classic” proves, making tenuous movies about scared ranch hands and monster-slaying gunslingers has a history, even if it’s not quite yet a popular sport. Extra points in this case for genre-straddling absurdity, though. We’re just wondering how on Earth Dracula avoided sunlight in the desert…

King Kong vs. Godzilla

You can just picture the board meeting. “Okay fellas, we got one big freakin’ monster, now where do we go from there?” “I know boss, let’s add another big freakin’ monster and call it a day.” Cue the opening of sparkling wine bottles and a group hug. It’s almost as if people actually like being patronized by obvious attempts at squeezing money out of a dubious concept. The Japanese are normally pretty good at cheap, corny monster movies, but while this one features probably the two most iconic giant beasts out there dukin’ it out, neither oversized gorilla nor mutant dinosaur manage to raise the bar above the level of distinctly average.

Dracula vs. Frankenstein

We gotta admit, there’s something about this hammy, overworked B-movie (in which Dracula looks to resurrect old Frank in a deal with a doc to get an immortality serum) that appeals to us. For one, its tagline is the unbeatable, “Love tramps — seduced by creatures from the grave! Yesterday they were cold and dead — today they’re hot and bothered!” And the love tramps in question are undeniably hot. Even so, this is fundamentally a dead duck, with the cynical cashing in on two horror legends too much to sit through once your arousal has subsided.

Freddy vs. Jason

Bacon and chocolate are both equally delicious, but eat them together and all you’re left with is a lingering sense of regret as you race for the toilet bowl. In other words, the addition of one good thing to another does not guarantee success. Case in point: Friday the 13th was an awesome franchise, and so — obviously — was A Nightmare On Elm Street. But Freddy vs. Jason? It sucked. (In case you were wondering, the two meet in Hell and then *yawn* slug it out in a case of strength vs. speed while humans get slaughtered along the way *zzzzzz…*)

Frankenstein vs. Baragon

Also sometimes known as Frankenstein Conquers the World, this nutty Japanese flick is mainly set after the Allied bombing of Hiroshima. It’s basically builds to a crazy smash-up between the stitched-together horror legend himself (who somehow swells to giant-sized by guzzling one too many protein shakes) and a kind of people-eating lunatic dinosaur called Baragon. It was made by Japanese horror production legends Toho studios and is about as bats as a double-monster showdown can get.

Dahmer vs. Gacy

The short synopsis of this direct-to-DVD badboy is insane. A mysterious, evil doctor decides to make the ultimate killer by splicing together the DNA of renowned serial murderers Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy. Inevitably, the bespectacled cannibal and his child-killing, clown-faced counterpart escape before the experiment can be completed, and madness ensues. In its defense, the movie is a comedy, but it’s still utterly, utterly bonkers!

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Hell Night

This “haunted house” style slasher starts off with an innocent sorority prank that quickly gets ugly with the arrival of our resident nutcase! About as talkative as a zombie with a bad hangover, he doesn’t pause for breath and sets about murdering the unfortunate invaders of his creepy mansion.

Friday the 13th (Jason Voorhees)

Iconic to the letter — Jason’s trademark hockey mask is instantly recognizable to those who love him, and those who fear him! As far as indestructible, machete-wielding psychos go, he has to be one of the best. He’s all action, no talk.

Halloween (Michael Myers)

Halloween virtually launched the slasher genre, and what would it be without its antagonist, the sinister sister-stabbing murderer Michael Myers? Concealed behind his mask, this silent killer plays on our greatest fears — the idea of a faceless, unknown force that cannot be stopped and is coming to kill us!

Scream (Ghostface)

Spooky mask: check. Black robe: check. Kitchen knife: check… It sounds clichéd. It is clichéd (and deliberately so). Yet, put these ingredients together and they make for one scary stalker. Granted, he seems quite talkative on the phone, taunting and threatening his victims, but the jarring contrast between this and the menacing silence of Ghostface’s on-screen presence makes for a great slasher star.

Final Destination (Death)

Okay, a slightly tenuous entry: can Death himself be a slasher killer? Well, in this case we’d say “yes.” Either way, the Grim Reaper’s not stopping by for a nice chat! This amazingly successful franchise doesn’t even feature a “killer.” It prefers instead to use the abstract idea of Death — who sets about stalking and killing a number of victims in increasingly contrived ways, after they each “cheat” their intended fates.

Jeepers Creepers II (The Creeper)

This guy doesn’t speak a lot, but then what have you got to say when you’re a body-snatching demon? He growls and screeches his way through a whole school bus of frightened teens, literally!