The Movie:

The Museum of Wonders is an Italian flick, which tells the story of a dwarf named Marcel who owns and operates a circus, but falls in love with a dancer named Salome, who upon finding out of his inheritance, conspires to have him killed. When the rest of the performers in the circus find out, they team up for some sweet revenge on those who would do harm to Marcel.

I had seen the trailer before reviewing the film and was sort of blown away with the visuals. This, unfortunately, is where my like for the film begins and ends. The Museum of Wonders is a giant soap opera. Seriously, it plays like one. You've got the studs and the beautiful women who croon and moan over past and present loves, and whatnot. The film takes place entirely at the circus or in the set that has been built to look like one.

I understand budget limitations, but maybe if the story had not...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The oddly titled Italian horror import from 2009 House Of The Flesh Mannequins follows a young man named Sebastian (Domiziano Archangeli) who was horribly abused as a child and who has carried a lot of that emotional baggage with him into his adult life. He wasn't just slapped around and mistreated, however, he was subjected to constant documentary videotaping at the hands of his strange father, a man who obsessed over capturing as much of his son's life on tape as possible. Maybe not so surprisingly, Sebastian has grown up with a penchant for working with cameras, though as an adult he's behind the camera, not in front of it - but Sebastian is messed up, taking odd jobs working for the likes of a child pornographer named Cannoluti (Randal Malone).

Sebastian also happens to own the building that he lives in, renting out rooms to various tenants and his two different...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Everyone in Shadow Falls is looking for something . . . or . . . something is looking for them.

Shadow Falls was a series of brief short films - interconnected by location and shots of mysterious characters - intended for the Internet but picked up by the Horror Channel. Its filmmakers, Kendal Sinn and Sally Cummings, admit to being relative novices and in the extra features on this DVD, Sinn even states that "Shadow Falls was created basically as a way to learn how to make movies better" for himself. The basic premise behind Shadow Falls is that it is the name of a town which was mysteriously vacated a couple decades ago. It's now a haven for the dead and those who are looking for them.

The first short, Jabberwocky, focuses on a young girl who sits alone in a schoolhouse and recites Lewis Carroll's classic poem from memory for her teacher....Read the entire review

The Product:
While Hollywood keeps trying, they have yet to successfully revive the movie musical. Sure, Chicago and Sweeney Todd have captured critical attention, and efforts like Hairspray and Dreamgirls have garnered box office gold. But these are stage transplants, Broadway babies given a new celluloid shimmer. No, there are very few original cinematic song and dance offerings, and with good reason - if the motion picture industry is all about making money, trying your luck on some untested collection of tunes seems like an unnecessary gamble. If it raked in the cash on the Great White Way, however, there's a good chance it will translate into infinite turnstile twists (Phantom of the Opera excluded). So anyone, especially an independent filmmaker, trying to create their own rock opera, is definitely biting off much more than they might be able to chew....Read the entire review

Elite Entertainment has released Heartland Horrors, a compilation of ten short films from the Kansas-based production companies, Senoreality Pictures and Gunn Park Entertainment. I don't have The Horror Channel, where I understand these films are shown as part of a series, so I wasn't sure what to expect when the DVD arrived. I was pleasantly surprised. Shot on video with zero money and local actors, these idie horror efforts have a lot of style and economy of storytelling, with a nicely warped sense of humor that gets the viewer over the obvious drawbacks of some of the tentative acting choices and the budgetary restrictions.

Ten short films are included here, with run-times from a little over three minutes to twelve and thirteen minutes each. And while many of...Read the entire review

The Product:
Among the many newly formed independent film companies, entities truly removed from the mainstream workings - and watchful eye - of the industry, Wicked Pixel stands alone. They're dedicated to more than just jerryrigging the old form genre's into occasionally exasperating examples of geek love. They avoid the standard monster movie machinations to explore more ethereal, evocative terrors. And with production chief Eric Stanze in charge, there's an artistic aesthetic that carries across as well. As part of their ongoing exploration of the eerie, the morbid, and the shocking, Elite offers up the company's latest DVD release - in this case, a sequel to a superlative 1997 effort, Savage Harvest. While this revisit may not match the first film's blending of ambiance and arterial spray, it has its own unique charms. Not only that, but it argues for Wicked Pixel's continuing dom...Read the entire review

The Product:
Among the many newly formed independent film companies, entities truly removed from the mainstream workings - and watchful eye - of the industry, Wicked Pixel stands alone. They're dedicated to more than just jerryrigging the old form genre's into occasionally exasperating examples of geek love. They avoid the standard monster movie machinations to explore more ethereal, evocative terrors. And with production chief Eric Stanze in charge, there's an artistic aesthetic that carries across as well. As part of their ongoing exploration of the eerie, the morbid, and the shocking, Elite offers up the company's latest DVD release - in this case, a compilation of two previous short film collections. Granted, as with any omnibus production, there's an uneven amount of individual returns, but since that's to be expected, it also makes such a disc an artistic adventure. It also argues for W...Read the entire review

The Movie

Some movies want to be more than they seem. Much like literature, these movies are full of symbolism and it's up to the viewer to dive in and find the story within the story. And then, there are movies which hide nothing and strive to be exactly what they are. This "what you see if what you get" approach definitely applies to Forest of the Dead.

As Forest of the Dead opens, a group of friends -- Johnny Rebel (Chris Anderson), Roger (Mark Singleton), Amy (Brandi Boulet), Christine (Elaine Cummings), Crystal (Heather Duthie) and Marcel (Kevin Norris) -- take a trip to the woods of Canada in search of a campground. What they find instead is an old summer camp. (I found this part really confusing). They had planned to spend the night and meet some friends the next day. They are unsure of what to do, when suddenly a woman named Angie (Stephane Halin) appea...Read the entire review

The three-part documentary "Creature Features" promises to be an insightful, thorough analysis of a century of horror cinema. But it's an empty promise: the series plays instead like any other clip show, one with all logic removed. The narration is high class and the producers take some chances by presenting the occasional art house obscurity, but the overall result is shallow talk that offers nothing new to the discussion.

A 2003 co-production between European filmmakers and the Bravo cable network, "Creature Features" divides itself into three 50-minute themed chapters, covering "The Beasts," "The Machines," and "The Dead." The breakdown of each episode is fairly obvious from the titles, although the producers play it loose throughout. A clip from Jim Jarmusch's somber western "Dead Man" strangely wraps up "The Beasts;" footage from several "Star Wars" movies help round out the discussion of "...Read the entire review

In 1994 author Joe McCarty wrote a book profiling some of Hollywood'smost impressive directors of horror, suspense and SF films.  EntitledThe Fearmakers, it was released by St. Martin's press.  Twoyears later the book was turned into a TV show with the same name, with each of the program's thirteen half-hour episodes examining a different directorof classic horror films.  Though the series was aired in several countries,ironically McCarty couldn't find any interest for it in the United States.

Fast forward ten years.  McCarty acquires the rights to TheFearmakers again and re-edits it.  The thirteen original episodesare trimmed down to ten, the host is eliminated, and the series is at longlast released domestically on DVD.  (I'm not sure if it was ever releasedon VHS here in the states.  If it was, it would have be...Read the entire review

According to Merriam-Webster OnLine, Occam's Razor is "a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities".

With that in mind, filmmaker Philippe Mora tried to put together a documentary depicting and proving the existence of extraterrestrials and UFOs. According to Occam's Razor was originally released in 1999 and came ten years after the success of his adaptation for Communion. While previously Mora may have worked with prominent talents like Christopher Walken, Christopher Lee, James Coburn, and Kathleen Turner, this project felt like a more personal visit into his life.

According to Occam's Razor is completely...Read the entire review

Fear Chamber isprobably best remembered for...well, it's really not remembered by anyone, anywhere, although I guess it's notable for being one of Boris Karloff's last movies, and it was written, produced, and partially directed by Jack Hill a few years before he made Pam Grier a kinda-sorta-household name in movies like Coffy and Foxy Brown.

Karloff stars as a bed-and-occasionally-chair-ridden scientist too weak to venture out into the field, so he has his daughter and her lover descend deep into the earth. They stumble upon a sentient rock who coos like a cross between someone twirling a bunch of knobs on a Moog synthesizer and a sixteen year ol...Read the entire review

Click to read SCHLOCKCAST summary.

CONTENTS

00:00 - High Tension

09:10 - Razor Blade Smile (Correction: Not anamorphic)

12:00 - The Janitor

13:55 - Frankenstein vs. The Creature From Blood Cove

16:50 - Recap

DOWNLOAD MP3 (18 mins, 11 mb)