The Movie

Shot in 15 days for the cost of two hours' production on your average Hollywood production, Dan Myrick's Believers is a rough-edged, chatty, and scrappy little genre flick, but it also manages to tap into a fear source that few filmmakers touch upon these days: The cult!

You know the types I mean: You hear about them on the news every once in a while: "Heaven's Gate," for example, which is one of this movie's most obvious influences. From the outside perspective, the groups are 'quietly wacko' at best and 'seriously disturbed' at worst. So when a pair of average Joe ambulance drivers answer a call, only to be kidnapped by a religious cult, you can be sure it's not for good reasons. (If you remember Myrick's name from The Blair Witch Project, then you know you're not about to get a flashy or over-kinetic horror story.)

So there's the basic plot of Believers: T...Read the entire review

The Movie

There are numerous adjectives you could employ while describing a movie like Evening: corny, precious, melodramatic, predictable, sappy, sweet, formulaic, etc. You get the point. But hey, women over the age of 40 like movies too, and this is one that's tailor-made for that specific demographic. And as far as well-scrubbed Lifetime Channel experiences go, this one's not half-bad. But were it not for the stellar ensemble, this film would be playing on your television and never at your local theater.

Ann Lord is dying. As played by Vanessa Redgrave in her autumn years and Claire Danes in her youth, Ann is a bold and daring woman ... whose made several mistakes over the course of her life. And in case you haven't guessed by now, Evening is a whole lot like The Notebook, in that it jumps back and forth between the present and the past whenever the director feels the...Read the entire review

The Movie

All the makings of a fun 90 minutes. In my hands I held one of the (VERY) few 1980s slasher flicks that I hadn't seen, presented in an uncut version and featuring some work from the wonderfully goofy Roddy McDowall, the generally appealing Martin Mull, the lovely Jill Schoelen, and (in one of his very first roles) a pre-stardom Brad Pitt in a lead role. With a few slices of pizza and an iced-up glass of Pepsi, I was ready to have a little fun.

But hoo boy is this a bad flick. I mean bad even by slasher flick standards -- and Cutting Class barely even makes that cut! It showed up in 1989 ... when everybody knows that the slasher craze was well and truly DONE WITH by 1989! So not only is this a painfully dry and consistently sloppy little piece of genre nostalgia a late-arriving copycat, but it's also a straight-faced festival of ineptitude that's as generic as it is (yeah) un...Read the entire review

The Movie

Nothing's more annoying than settling down for what promises to be a fast-paced crime thriller -- only to discover that the flick you just rented is actually a made-for-TV yawn-fest that you wouldn't even watch for free. Such is the case with Tim Hunter's Kings of South Beach. It's a slick DVD cover in search of something (anything!) exciting. And it doesn't find a whole lot.

Formless and conventional in every imaginable fasion, KOSB stars Jason Gedrick as a semi-slick Miami night-club owner who dabbles in some decidedly illegal activites. Donnie Wahlberg is the sleazebag's right-hand man -- and also an undercover cop who's aiming to bring the whole racket down. From just that simple plot synopsis, you can predict all the key scenes: The tests of loyalty, the cop's struggle to remain noble, the part where we're sure the narc's body-mike will be discovered, and (of cou...Read the entire review

The Movie

I don't know what it is about Christmas that inspires so many drop-dead atrocious comedies, but there's little denying the phenomena: For every family favorite like A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, and Elf -- there at least three amazing pieces of crap that hope to steal your money by delivering something "broadly awful -- but seasonal." Anyone who suffered through the yuletide double-feature of torture known as Surviving Christmas and Christmas with the Kranks knows precisely what I'm talking about. But guess what? The patently unwatchable Deck the Halls makes those flicks look like It's a Wonderful Life and (the original) Miracle on 34th Street by comparison. (Well, not really, but I'm exaggerating to make a point: Do NOT rent, purchase, or spend less than 3.7 seconds contemplating the DVD cover of Deck the Halls....Read the entire review

The Series

All throughout elementary school and well past high school -- I hated the subject of history. Hated it. It wasn't that I thought it was a stupid thing to study (even back then I knew it was crucial to learn lessons from your past), but I guess I suffered at the feet of a few too many, well, seriously boring teachers. They'd rattle off dates and names and documents andzzzzzz -- I just involuntarily tuned out. To this day my knowledge of American History is sadly underwhelming, mainly because of my laziness as a student -- but also because Philadelphia used to hire just about anyone to be a history teacher. At least that's how it seemed to me.

But as I got a little older (and began discovering how delicious the cable channels "brain candy" could be), I took a strong interest in stuff like The American Revolution, The Civil War, and all that jazz. Plus, living in Philadelphia you rea...Read the entire review

The Series

Once a popular series reaches its third or fourth season, it's pretty tough to keep track of which one was which -- but The Cosby Show made it easy: Season 4 is when Lisa Bonet left the cast to head off to college and a spin-off series called A Different World -- which also turned out to be quite the little hit for NBC. But for those who tune in mainly for The Coz, there's no reason to fret: The legendary comedian is still at the top of his game in his series' fourth season.

Actually, Denise went off to college in the third season, but it seems like season four is when the family got used to not having the teenager around -- which means there's a lot more room for the exploits of little Rudy, precocious Vanessa, underachiever Theo, newlyweds Sondra and Elvin, the lovely Claire -- and the main reason anyone even tuned in in the first place: Mr. Bill Cosby as lovable O...Read the entire review

The Movie

I've been called a "soft touch" where certain horror movies are concerned, which might help to explain why I quite enjoyed the old-school-style horror flick Dead Silence. The movie pretty much died at the box office and vanished after about a week, and I suppose the hardcore horror fans were expecting something a little more harsh and dark from the two guys who created the original Saw -- but I'm of the opinion that director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell deserve some credit for trying to go in a completely different direction for their second "official" collaboration (not counting the Saw sequels).

The movie opens with the old-fashioned Universal logo, which pretty much sets the stage right there. Far from being a torture-laden gore-fest, Dead Silence seems inspired by everything from William Castle to James Whale. It's a broad and pulpy litt...Read the entire review

The Movie

What looks like just another cable-ready adventure flick starring Ben Cross, Peter Weller, and Ione Skye is actually a three-hour Italian mini-series that's as dry and arid as the massive desert in which it takes place. Putting aside the extraneous moments, the outrageous voice dubbing, and the endless redundant storyline ... the thing's still a massive and silly mess from start to finish.

Here's sort of a recap: Weller and Cross are estranged brothers who comb the Arabian desert searching for two pieces of an ancient pendant. The pendant leads, I think, to a golden tablet, which in turns leads, I think, to a goofy idol which (I'm pretty sure) leads to the mysterious Tower of the Firstborn -- and what resides inside the tower is anyone's guess. Suffice to say it's all powerful and biblical.

Clocking in at over three hours in length, the movie delivers a tale that could have been ...Read the entire review

The Movie

There's just no excuse for failing a test when you've been given all the answers ahead of time. All it takes is one half-glance towards "Spider-Man," "X-Men," and "Batman Begins" to figure out the superhero formula: Give the audience an actual foundation of heart, drama, and character -- and you're halfway to making an excellent superhero flick. The precedents have been set and the results are crystal-clear. Apparently none of these memos made their way into the Fantastic Four production office.

There's a bona-fide laundry list of things that are wrong with Tim Story's Fantastic Four: the acting is almost completely bland across the board, the screenplay is a mawkish and uncomfortable collection of corny gags and painful exchanges, the direction could be charitably described as "the pinnacle of all things pedestrian," the pacing is all off... For all these reasons and...Read the entire review

The Movie

Cheap-looking, obvious, and derivative are a few ways to describe the indie comedy Do It for Uncle Manny. But once you get used to the chintzy look, the scattershot acting performances, and the point 'n' shoot directorial style, the flick's actually kinda, almost, sorta watchable. Not really a GOOD movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it's better than I could come up with for less than $200,000. (Although if I had $200,000, I'd find much better things to invest in.)

One of those wacky "all in one day" concepts, "Manny" is about two best pals: a smooth ladies man called Danny and a whining nebbish named Stuart. After a night of partying with a hottie known only as "Jenny," Dan and Stu discover something terrible: The $250,000 Rolex watch that belongs to Stuart's uncle is missing! Obviously Jenny stole the watch, but how will these two idiots get it back? (Through a le...Read the entire review

The Movie

Years before he hit Hollywood and turned out titles like One Fine Day, The Emperor's Club, and the really funny Soapdish, director Michael Hoffman cut his teeth on a few European indies, one of which is the perfectly quaint Restless Natives. It's a movie that's got more in the "sweetness & scenery" department than in the arena of laughs, but if you're in the mood for a forgettable little trifle, you could probably do a little worse.

Will (Vincent Friell) and Ronnie (Joe Mullaney) are your typical young idiots: One's a shiftless sanitation worker and the other mans a counter at the local novelty shop. Since they have no money, no plans and no prospects, the duo decides that they should motorcycle up into the Scottish hills and rob all the tour buses that drive by. This being a light and wistful comedy from the 1980s, it should come as no surprise to l...Read the entire review

The Movie

Simplistic? Sure. Corny? Yeah, sometimes. Funny? Darn straight, thanks to one of the most beloved comedians of our age. And I'm not talking about Malcolm Jamal Warner, trust me.

My grandmother used to make a huge deal out of Thursday nights. Nobody could make her laugh like Bill Cosby, so we all had a great time with the man's mega-smash sitcom hit. By the time the third season had arrived on NBC, the Coz had hit his groove. The series gave the man a perfect stage on which to deliver his family-friendly, yet slyly insightful, brand of warm-hearted comedy. For those who just MIGHT not know, I'll remind you that The Cosby Show is about a good-natured OB-GYN who has a lovely wife and five (strategically aged) kids: Little Rudy, pre-teen Vanessa, high-schooler Theo, college freshman Denise, and grown-up Sondra. (Well, she's about to graduate college, anyway.)

Obviously the wid...Read the entire review

The Movie

If you want the "bare bones basics" on a world-famous celebrity, two of the more convenient resources are Wikipedia.com and A&E's long-running "Biography" series. And while the Wiki might give you some of the "grittier" material, "Biography" is still a pretty classy series that does a fine job on their research. Since it debuted in 1987, Biography has covered everyone from U.S. Presidents to flavor-of-the-week celebrities, but this new 9-disc compilation set focuses squarely on one of the most popular professions out there: The Movie Star.

"Biography Presents: Legends of the Silver Screen" delivers eight favorite episodes (and one bonus special) in one handsome (albeit unnecessarily bulky) collection. The episodes offered are as follows:

Humphrey Bogart
Betty Boop
James Dean
Clint Eastwood*
Katharine Hepburn
Paul Newman*
Robert Redford*
Shirley ...Read the entire review

The Movie

If you're slapping together your own low-budget slasher flick, and you're intent on writing, directing and starring in the damn thing too, it might be a good idea to toss a sense of humor into the equation, just to generate a little goodwill among the horror fans who've already seen 300 "homemade" slasher flicks in the past five years. That's pretty much what Beth Dewey did. She's practically the Orson Welles of Kill House, and I'm having a hard time figuring out which of the three professions she's worst at.

A throughly sloppy and annoyingly unpleasant little indie flick, Kill House is fairly plotless: We're introduced to a collection of hateful jerks who work in a realty office. Then we're introduced to some rich jerks in a "fancy" house. Then both groups start getting attacked by an unseen slasher and (thankfully) the ensemble starts getting thinned out big-time. I...Read the entire review

The Movie

There's goofy and there's boring and then there's Memory, a movie that...

But wait. Let me start again.

Starring Billy Zane in the leading role...

Yeah, that's it. Nothing against Mr. Zane on a personal level, but if you're watching a movie in which BZ has the lead role ... odds are you're watching something very cheap, very goofy, and very boring. Ironic that a flick called Memory would be so instantly forgettable, but let's hear it for B-movies that pretty much review themselves.

Zane stars as a scientist who specializes in Alzheimer's Syndrome, but after he inhales some voodoo dust while visiting a near-dead patient in a Brazilian hospital (don't ask), he returns home to discover that his dreams have been invaded by a serial killer from three decades earlier. Oh, and Dennis Hopper and Ann-Margret stop by (briefly and listlessly) to earn a quick paycheck.

Ba...Read the entire review

The Movie

Fact: Katja von Garnier's Blood & Chocolate is based on a novel of the same name by Annette Curtis Klause.

Opinion: The movie pretty much stinks.

Fact: Sony was convinced that the book's success would lead to a big movie hit, at least among 14-year-old girls.

Opinion: 14-year-old girls are smarter than Sony gives them credit for, thus explaining the flick's paltry $3.5 million haul at the box office. (And that's for the whole release, not just opening weekend!)

Fact: Blood and Chocolate is more a weepy little romance drama than a horror film.

Opinion: Werewolf "dramas" are a really stupid idea.

And on and on it goes. Yet another PG-13 pseudo-horror flick masquerading as something worthy of your 92 minutes, Blood and Chocolate is about as dry, redundant, and ridiculous a genre film as you can imagine. The DVD cover proclaims "From the producers of ...Read the entire review

The Movie

Curious about some of the biggest "engineering disasters" ever created? Dying to know what goes into the construction of a "monster truck"? Want to know the truth behind sugar refinery, the creation of the atom bomb, and the world's longest bridge? If so, you have two options: You can keep your cable box frozen on The History Channel, or you can get your hands on this 8-disc box set of their "Modern Marvels: Technology" series. (Plus there's an entire episode dedicated to "James Bond Gadgets" AND a double-sized episode that looks into the creation of Disney World!)

I can't get enough of stuff like this, really. The first episode I jumped to deals with engineering disasters, which explains how poor planning and a little help from mother nature can conspire to cause big trouble (like exploding rockets and collapsing stadium roofs and stuff). Then I switched over to the episode on Wal...Read the entire review

The Movie

Here's a list of things I learned while picking through the 8-episode History Channel series "Modern Marvels: Architectural Wonders."

Regarding the ancient Egyptian pyramids:

--The pyramids were crypts for Egyptian royalty, and the reason they were shaped this way was so the deceased spirits could ascend to the sun and be reborn.

--The Great Pyramid of Khufu, at 481 ft., was the largest man-made structure until the creation of The Eiffel Tower (1045 ft.) in 1890.

The Great Wall of China

--The wall is over 4,700 miles long and, contrary to popular rumor, it cannot be seen from the moon.

--The wall (as we know it today) is actually several walls built over several centuries that were connected together.

The Empire State Building

--Native American construction workers were among the most "death-defying" employees on the project.

--A plane crashed into the building in J...Read the entire review

The Movie

"A bunch of people wake up somewhere dark and grungy, with no idea of how they got there, and must then work together to piece the clues together and get the hell out before something horrible kills them..."

I've been writing a lot of synopses similar to that one over the past few years, thanks mainly to the arrival of the Saw series. It's amusing to note how different filmmakers will start with the same basic framework and then branch out to make a crime thriller like Unknown, a retread like Captivity, or a sorta-zombie flick like The Shadow Walkers. So if the sound of "Saw meets Resident Evil" sounds appealing, you might want to go rent the flick and just stop reading now.

Although it earns a few points for trying to wedge two colorful sub-genres into one gore-soaked package, The Shadow Walkers suffers from the most prevalent of ...Read the entire review

The Movie

I distinctly remember being somewhat disappointed by Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate the first time I saw it. I walked in expecting some sort of devil-centric horror thriller and walked out two hours later really in the mood for a cup of coffee. Not that it was a bad flick, but at the time I thought it was more than a little dry and uneventful -- mainly because I was expecting a horror flick.

But after some time and distance I was compelled to give The Ninth Gate a second spin, and I've now come to the opinion that, while it's still not a horror movie, the film is a very engaging (and appreciably dark) film noir throwback that just happens to have something to do with the occult. Call it a noir thriller mystery drama if you like -- it's still a pretty solid flick.

Johnny Depp stars as a rare book expert called Dean Corso. While definitely capable of some pret...Read the entire review

The Movie

There's been a lot of ink spilled on Renny Harlin's Cutthroat Island over the last twelve years. It's very well-documented that:

A. The flick cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million, and it pulled in less than $12 million at the box office.

B. Director Renny Harlin, fresh from the success of Cliffhanger, was given carte blanche by Carolco Pictures, which he utilized to cast his girlfriend Geena Davis in the lead role, alienate a ton of potential leading men (including Jeff Bridges, Michael Keaton Keanu Reeves, and Michael Douglas ... among others), and blow through gobs of money unchecked.

C. The movie's pretty darn rotten.

And yet ... for all its generic plotting, stilted dialogue, and disinterested performances, there's still something strangely watchable about Harlin's folly. It's certainly not due to the paint-by-numbers screenplay, the cho...Read the entire review

The Movie

Well now this was pretty darn confusing at first, but I think I have it figured out. I recently received a pair of movies called Born to Fight, both of which are action flicks from Thai filmmaker Panna Rittikrai. The review you're reading now is for the 1986 version, which I couldn't even locate on the IMDb, so you just know it's a "cult" flick. Apparently this is the film that inspired Tony Jaa to become a martial arts star -- and it was Rittikrai who helped him become just that.

The plot of Born to Fight is completely and entirely superfluous: A lawyer for a crime family discovers that someone's been stealing money from the clan, but before Sianfong can speak up and finger the thief, Tungseung sends a group of martial arts ass-kickers to silence the stool pigeon. Sianfong ends up on the run in Thailand, where (evetually) he comes across a cop (played by the director...Read the entire review

The Movie

Since I'm not a big expert on the Thai film industry, I had to do a little digging to figure out the difference between Born to Fight (1986) and Born to Fight (2004). Both films were directed by the same man (Panna Rittikrai) and both feature some seriously amazing action scenes and stunt work, but despite what my research indicates ... this one's not a remake at all. The first flick is about a cop on the hunt for a mob lawyer, while this one, well, I bet you've never seen a movie that could be described as Gymkata meets The Dirty Dozen mixed with Die Hard, only over-stuffed with that patented Thai trademark of hardcore "stunt fighting" -- with a whole lot of John Woo-style gunplay to keep things juicy.

Born to Fight is an absolutely insane experience, and it's definitely something you'll want to see if you're a big fan of action movies. Th...Read the entire review

The Movie

There are two obvious ways to mount a "disaster movie." You can go the Irwin Allen / Roland Emmerich route and exploit the deaths of screaming citizens for a quick thrill, or, if your project is based on actual events, you can go the Deep Impact route and focus more on the human part of the equation: What do natural disasters do to cultures, civilizations, and specific people? Such questions are asked, asked again, and then answered numerous times (slowly) in the handsome, sober, and almost entirely boring Tsunami: The Aftermath.

I'm not saying that a three-hour HBO mini-series that was inspired by the horrific Thailand tsunami of late 2004 should be played for thrills, chills, or simple escapism. Absolutely not, as a movie like that would be as tacky and classless as Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor, but there is something to be said for entertaining an audie...Read the entire review

The Movie

Sort of a youth-driven and very low-budget take on the "female empowerment" themes found in flicks like Death and the Maiden and Extremities, the indie thriller Wilderness Survival for Girls is a bit more insightful than many of its ilk. It's clearly an inexpensive production created by filmmakers with more ideas than money, and it's definitely being misrepresented as a full-bore "slasher flick," but WSFG is still a fairly compelling little project all the same.

Ruth (Jeanette Brox), Kate (Ali Humiston), and Deborah (Megan Henning) have decided to spend their graduation weekend up in a very isolated cabin deep in the woods. (Already you're pretty sure where this flick is headed.) After bickering a bit, talking about sex, and participating in a little topless sunbathing, the gals return to their cabin -- only to realize that a creepy stranger has noticed ...Read the entire review

The Movie

Jeremy Kasten's The Thirst borrows quite heavily from films like Near Dark and Requiem for a Dream, and by "borrows quite heavily" what I actually mean is "steals quite blatantly." But at least the CFQ Films production team is honest about it: On the front of the DVD case is a quote that reads "Requiem for a Dream meets Near Dark." The source of the quote is CFQ Magazine.

Only Requiem for a Dream is a stunningly sober film, while The Thirst is overwhelmingly campy. And Near Dark is smart and fairly subtle, whereas The Thirst is very broad and frequently kind of silly. Still, there's something to be said for a fast-paced vampire flick that delivers the goods at a quick clip -- even if those "goods" were actually created by someone else.

Plot: A young stripper has cancer, but is also a vampire, so she stages her own sui...Read the entire review

The Movie

Back in my high school days, my friends and I would sometimes hang out after school and film goofy little movies with someone's dad's "state of the art" video camera. I remember we did a Star Trek spoof once, and it made us laugh when we watched the footage. We also threw ourselves around the backyard and made an "actiony" type mini-movie, and there was one afternoon when we tried to be "extra raunchy funny" in an effort to get laughs. That last one was particularly embarrassing to watch. I mention all this stuff only because Zombies Gone Wild made me think back to those afternoons for the first time in a few years. So thanks, Zombies Gone Wild for being so awful that you reminded me of the lamest years of my life.

The thing is a "home movie" in every sense of the phrase. Here we have three young goofballs, obviously good friends and big movie fans, who took a ...Read the entire review

The Movie

If you're younger than I am, you may wonder who the heck Chevy Chase is and why a large number of movie fans seem to hold the guy's work in high esteem. Over the last ten years the former Saturday Night Live performer has appeared in a whole bunch of really awful movies, so you couldn't be blamed for wondering "Why does everyone seem to like this guy who starred in Snow Day, Orange County and Funny Money? If he's such a brilliant comedian, why's he doing voice-work for junk like Doogal and Karate Dog?" And those would be two very good questions. But to those movie freaks over the age of thirty, Chevy Chase is remembered (very) fondly for his work in stuff like Caddyshack, Three Amigos, the original Vacation, and a pair of very entertaining comedies in which he co-starred with Goldie Hawn. (OK, and Christmas VacationRead the entire review

The Movie

Gamebox 1.0 is a lot of things, but (despite the Saw-style DVD cover) a horror flick sure isn't one of 'em. Lionsgate's marketing department ought to know that while a misleading cover might bring in a few extra nickels, it also tends to create some bitterness and disappointed to the buyers who end up feeling duped. Best described as a (very) low-budget mixture of Tron and The Matrix (with a good dose of Brainscan thrown in there), Gamebox 1.0 is definitely not a horror movie -- but it's not the piece of junk I was expecting, all things considered.

Boasting a lot more nifty ideas (be they borrowed or semi-fresh) than it does production value, the flick is a perfect example of why you should probably think a little small when it comes to the indie fare. Basically, in order to do Gamebox 1.0 the best way possible, you'd need at least 1...Read the entire review

The Movie

Hollywood doesn't make nearly as many Westerns as they used to, and you know what's great about that? Fewer westerns means fewer bad Westerns, obviously, and I'm a big fat fan of the genre and the relative dearth of titles makes it a bit easier to catch all of them. Every few years a really special one will crop up, be it Kevin Costner's Open Range or John Hillcoat's The Proposition... Heck, I just sat through a fantastic three-hour Western called Broken Trail -- and that one was made for cable!

So I guess you're expecting me to label Seraphim Falls as this year's modern Western mini-classic. Alas, no. But it's a pretty damn entertaining oater all the same, provided you have a soft spot for "greatest hits" medleys of only the most familiar Western conventions -- as I so definitely do. Plus how often do you get to see Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson...Read the entire review

The Movie

Back in the early '90s, South African filmmaker Richard Stanley directed a strange pair of genre films ... neither of which I actually liked upon initial viewings. The first one was a killer robot movie called Hardware, and a recent visit with the film impressed me quite a bit more than it did back in 1990. Stanley was back a few years later with Dust Devil, which I rented as soon as it was available on VHS ... and then promptly fell asleep before the flick was half-over.

But now, more than 13 years after Miramax released a (somewhat butchered) version of Richard Stanley's film, Subversive Cinema has come to the director's rescue. "Dust Devil: The Final Cut" is the result -- and while I managed to stay awake throughout the entire movie this time, I must come back with an opinion of "meh." Based on the production notes and the audio commentary, it seems that Dust De...Read the entire review

The Movie

By the time filmmaker Brian Yuzna was finishing up with the worst movie of his career, his production company was on the verge of closing up shop. With Yuzna and his Spanish cohorts at the helm, Fantastic Factory delivered a variety of genre titles between 2001 and 2005, Dagon, Beyond Re-Animator, and Rottweiler among them. The shingle's final film is the Lovecraft and Carpenter inspired Beneath Still Waters, which is just about as goofy a horror flick as you're ever likely to come across.

Stealing a whole bunch of pages from John Carpenter's The Fog, Beneath Still Waters is about a small Spanish town that's about to celebrate its 400th birthday, only there's one catch: 400 years ago the town fathers flooded a nearby village and left the local satanists chained inside a church as the waters poured in. To make matters worse, two really stupi...Read the entire review

The Movie

Atop the front of the DVD case you'll see the sentence "From the director of Children of the Corn," as if A) Children of the Corn was a good flick and B) the name Fritz Kiersch means much of anything to today's horror fans. (Kiersch directed The Hunt after a ten-year directorial sabbatical, but his earlier films include Tuff Turf, Gor, and Into the Sun ... and if you've seen all of these movies, then you probably know what you're getting into with The Hunt.

Shot (rather sloppily) on handheld digital video cameras, The Hunt is little more than a late-coming and entirely arid retread of The Blair Witch Project -- with just a casual dash of The X-Files tossed in at the end -- the way you might toss a small slice of ham to a dog who's been salivating for 80-some minutes. Boasting an unnecessarily convoluted story str...Read the entire review

The Movie

Flick through the catalog of Mindfire Entertainment releases and you probably wouldn't find too many reasons to get excited for their next movies. House of the Dead, The Darkroom, Room 6 are what you'd find there, genre flicks either seriously awful or instantly forgettable. But riter/producer Mark Altman clearly loves the low-budget horror vibe, and with each new flick I walk in intent on giving the guy a fair shake. Having said that, I'm happy to announce that Mindfire and Altman's Dead and Deader is ... quite a bit more entertaining than those other movies. These guys are still in search of their first "good flick," but this latest zombie-fest does, at the very least, move at a brisk pace, exhibits a goofy sense of humor, and delivers on the gore goods.

That's not to say you won't find a few atrocious performances and howlingly bad lines of dialogue s...Read the entire review