Evil Dead Trap 2: Hideki:

If you'll indulge me, I first saw Evil Dead Trap back in the VSOM days. VSOM was Video Search Of Miami, a company that basically made duplicates of foreign movies you couldn't find in the western world, and I'm pretty sure I saw Evil Dead Trap on one of their cassettes, probably in a 4x3 ratio, and with no subtitles. I didn't understand it, but it sure was interesting. I felt I had better bone up with a re-watch before tackling Evil Dead Trap 2: Hideki and luckily found it streaming on Amazon, and watched it literally the night before getting my screener for the sequel.

Seeing Evil Dead Trap in its proper aspect ratio with subtitles revealed it to be a nonsensical pastiche/homage to Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, with a shocking snuff scene, some style-above-substance set-pieces, and a truly loopy ending. I don't know that watching it ...Read the entire review

Hanger:

Ryan Nicholson movies are either an acquired taste, or you're a proud reprobate. No judgement here, I count myself a member of the latter group, and one affected by the former dynamic. My exposure to Nicholson's movies is somewhat limited, (gotta remedy that) but this is my second go-round at watching Hanger a movie in which the auteur seems hell-bent on pushing every button possible. To wit, if you have a zero-tolerance policy regarding offensive material, just stop reading now. Don't even bother with this movie. However, if you're looking for A Serbian Film-style offense, you also are barking up the wrong tree. Hanger means to offend, but means no offense. Combining 13-year-old-boy macho humor with a horrifying world-view and genital fascination, what the late director wanted to do, I think, was to tout for the values of being responsible parents. Maybe.

Han...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Directed by Srdjan Spasojevic in 2010, A Serbian Film has been the subject of no small amount of controversy when it played a few festival dates and was released on DVD and Blu-ray in some European territories. Not only did a German film lab refuse to print the movie, but it's been banned in Norway, heavily cut in the UK and released cut and then later banned entirely in Australia. Unearthed Films brings it back into print in North America, in its completely uncut form. The film is strong stuff to be sure, but is it without merit?

When the film begins, a young boy named Petar (played by an uncredited child actor) is watching a porno movie without his parents realizing. They walk in on him and while he's too young to really understand what he's seeing, he's perceptive enough to know that he's watching his father, Milos (Srdjan Todorovic), on the screen. It tu...Read the entire review

Famine:

I was all prepared to write this review as an acknowledgment of the pinnacle of Ryan Nicholson's career. It seemed a fitting capper, as a posthumous release. But then I discovered it was completed in 2011, and just never released, I guess. Regardless of that fact, Famine feels like the culmination of Nicholson's efforts behind the camera: it's funny, disgusting, well-acted, perfectly structured, written, and directed. It's got great dialog, and though gory as hell, seems to have been edited with the MPAA in mind. Maybe that's the thing; did Famine represent Nicholson swinging for the fences? And did the fact that it was a non-starter cause Nicholson to go back on offense with unsafe movies like Collar? Or am I over-thinking things?

The reason Famine feels like something close to a studio effort; it's almost six minutes into the film before I'm even mildly ...Read the entire review

Brutal:

Unearthed Films delivers this short/not-sweet slab of insanity from Japan, a movie that seemingly could only come from the realms of horror-lunacy that Japanese extreme-horror-makers and fans inhabit. Mixing sex and violence in a way few others would dare try, director Takashi Hirose leaves it all and then-some on floor, for you to pick up and marvel at.

We start this latest trip to hell in the apartment of a stunted man having his way with a few bound and gagged women. Eschewing any form of set-up, Hirose sets his Man (Butch) loose, battering and beating his victims while he asks them if they understand what he's doing. Too late, and despite much hysterical begging and pleading, they learn what he's doing is stabbing them repeatedly in the groin. Blood flows copiously, and a few intestines are wallowed in for good measure.

Meanwhile, in another nearby neighborhood, a Woman (Ay...Read the entire review

The Unnamable:

Unearthed Classics brings us this H.P. Lovecraft adaptation from 1988 in a nice Blu-ray special edition. Does the movie merit the love? And why are most Lovecraft adaptations sourced from short stories? Could it be, at the heart of it, that Lovecraft is ... unfilmable? Let's have a look-see, shall we?

Drawing inspiration from the success of Reanimator, director Jean-Paul Ouellette uncovers the perilous well of eldritch energy to craft The Unnamable with a touch of humor, a touch of horror, and a whole lot of '80s hairspray. Unlike the source, Lovecraft movies such as this one have tended to rely on over-the-top special effects and gore, rather than the kind of free-floating dread the author specialized in. The setup in this case is a hideous creature locked in an attic for centuries, and the 'Me Era' college students inspired to seek it out, not due to curiosit...Read the entire review

The Song of Solomon:

Horrormeister Stephen Biro treads interesting ground in this world, not the least of which belongs to his studio, Unearthed Films, which releases some of the strongest horror around, with an emphasis on outrageous gore. Head-spinning and puking aside, outrageous gore is not what you tend to think of in regards to the exorcism genre, but that's what you get in Song of Solomon. Despite a few shaky performances, this profoundly disturbing movie leaves everything on the floor, continually topping itself in the shocks department on the way to a whacked-out ending that blends hope and cynicism in a startling way.

Things start off with a bang, as an aggrieved father (Biro in a manic cameo-of-sorts) gives himself a 'Cuban Necktie' in front of his disturbed daughter Mary (Jessica Cameron). When a family counselor fails to solve spooky daughter Mary's problems, th...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Italian giallo films continue to creep back into the mainstream thanks to newly released homages like The Editor and this film, from Argentinian director Luciano Onetti. Onetti and his brother, Nicolas, wrote the film, and obviously know their way around the works of Dario Argento, Sergio Martino and Aldo Lado, among others. The mimicry on display here is both a strength and a weakness. There is no doubt that Francesca<...Read the entire review

Atroz:
Atroz means 'atrocious' in the Spanish language, and no matter how you slice it, (or who you slice, I suppose) Lex Ortega's entry into "Offensive Horror Movie" sweepstakes ranks right up there near the top. The reasons are multifold: things done to people, how and why they're done, and what we're shown. However, Ortega doesn't miss the most important beat of all in crafting a hard-to-take movie; complete moral free-fall. Viewers can't tell which characters are completely awful, and which are to be remotely sympathized with. In the lottery of movies you're not sure you ever want to see again, the most potent are the ones which cut you adrift in a sea of violence and offal. For that, Atroz is a serious contender.

Ortega drops us right into the thick of it, with scabrous scenes of the mean streets of Mexico City, one of the world's largest. Stacks of trash and cardboard, t...Read the entire review

Collar:
One does not simply watch a Ryan Nicholson movie. If you know the name, good for you - and you know what I mean. If not, and you're a horror fan, best catch up real quick. Nicholson is one of the fiercest voices in horror today. Collar is exemplary of Nicholson's particular brand of madness. Full of humor, insane violence, and degradation, the movie is vintage Nicholson. It also might be his most heartfelt and humanistic effort yet. (Yeah, I said it; humanistic.) Belly up to the bar for 70 minutes of modern grindhouse nastiness.

A pulsing, John Carpenter-esque electro theme (courtesy of Protector 101) follows Massive, (Nick Principe) an insane homeless loner, through the mean streets of Vancouver, British Columbia. Massive pushes a shopping cart full of trash and heavy metal chains, decorated with a pentagram made from duct tape. Massive decides to shave off his nasty ...Read the entire review

The Movie:
It would be hard to classify Matthew Garrett's film Morris County as strictly horror. Sure, there are murders, suicide, corpses, and all manner of other horrific subject matter, but it's all played straight in a non-exploitive, almost deadpan way. It's not what anyone would describe as a "fun" film, but it is worth watching.

Morris County is comprised of three independent stories, connected only thematically, and by the fact that they are all set in Morris County, NJ. The first segment concerns Ellie (Darcy Miller), a young woman who is exhibiting some troubling and self-destructive tendencies, very much unlike her normal personality. We follow her through the course of a particularly bad day, and eventually learn the root cause of Ellie's state of mind, and the rather extreme method she uses to come to some kind of closure.

The second segment involves a middle ...Read the entire review

The Product:
When our entertainment mediums were young, the Western ruled. It was our first communal fairytale. Over the years, it was revered and rejected, reconfigured and reinvented, returned to its original roots and reimagined as the story of a still growing nation. It told history. It told travesty. But mostly, it told the standard heroic poems of villains and veiled good guys. Over the decades, it droned on, deviating little from the staid stereotypes and narrative routines that threatened to kill it. Once the '60s arrived, the dying artform was given new life by a group of gonzo Mediterraneans, each putting their spaghetti spin on things. Today, the Western is the realm of remakes, few finding anything original or new in the still overdone dynamic. Perhaps this is why something like The Scarlet Worm resonates as powerfully as it does. Writer David Lambert and director Michael ...Read the entire review

The Movies:

Made for God only knows how little money by the enigmatic writer/director known only as Lucifer Valentine (obviously his real name), Slaughtered Vomit Dolls hit right around the same time that the August Underground movies were causing some pretty rabid debates on horror nerd boards across the web, ours included. Valentine was essentially self distributing this picture, and you could buy a DVD from him if you so inclined, and it was easy enough to find as the dude was posting on message boards to try and get the word out, again, ours included. The film was the first part of the Vomit Gore Trilogy and it did come to some notoriety upon its initial release. And then it more or less faded away only to resurface again when Valentine unleashed two sequels. Leave it to Unearthed Films to resurrect all three entries of this vile cinematic bile for a larger audienc...Read the entire review

Where The Dead Go To Die:
"Wellllll doggies!" As Uncle Jed used to say. I'm pretty much speechless after watching Where The Dead Go To Die. I'm comfortable in saying it's beside the point to assess this movie in terms of others of its type. I don't think there's any good or bad, just levels of effectiveness. This is animation of transgression, which effectively sends you into a mesmerizing vision of hell. As an almost thoroughly jaded fan of extreme cinema, I can tell you this one threw me for a loop. Whenever you're in the mood for something extremely disturbing, far beyond what you think you can handle, well ...

It's best not to know too much when going into this movie. At least it worked for me, since this was the reviewer's equivalent of a blind buy. I knew ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

In a post nuke world where irradiated mutant animals have taken on very human characteristics, Omar (Paul Le Mat) and Angel (Susan Roman) front a small time rock and roll band in the tiny burg of Ohmtown. They work pretty hard at what they do and they take their music very seriously, but stress creeps into their relationship when Omar forbids Angel from auditioning at a dingy nightclub, secretly fearing that she might go on to bigger and better things without him.

When their duet doesn't work out as well as they thought it would, Angel defies Omar and hits the stage to do her thing anyway, and it's here that she catches the attention of Mok (Don Francks), a rock and roll star-maker with some very sinister ties.

You see, Mok is into the dark arts, black magic so to speak, and he's able to make wannabe musicians like Angel famous quite easily, as long as they're willin...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Brainjacked is the low budget feature debut from director Andrew Allan, who co-wrote the film with Andy Lalino, and made in the wilds of Florida for what we can safely assume was very little money. Low budget doesn't always equal bad though, as often times those with less resources available are far more likely to get creative with what they do have.

The film tells the story of a young man named Tristan (Chris Jackson) who suffers from some pretty debilitating migraine headaches. So bad is his migraine problem that he has recurring dreams about having to drill a hole in his own head just to deal with the problem. Unfortunately when we meet him, he wakes up to something just as bad - the sight of his mother having sex with a few unexpected junkie dudes, which is never something that anyone wants to wake up to. It just gets worse for the guy from there, as the guys bo...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Dead Fury is a very interesting curiosity. This direct-to-video crudely animated tale is quite literally a one-man show. Frank Sudol, whose only credit on the Internet Movie Database aside from his individual forays into animation is for being an artist on the film South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, plays every role in this movie. He's the director, the writer, the animator, the musician, and the vocal artist. And while Dead Fury is not quite a success as a movie-length feature, kudos to Sudol for sticking to his vision and making it - especially considering he has a day job, a fact he tells his audience on the audio commentary for the film.

Dead Fury follows the exploits of Max, his Pop, and his friends, the engaged couple Jen and Jake. They're trespassing in the woods to go deer hunting - even though it's off season - and they soon enco...Read the entire review

The Product:
As film fans, it's prudent to be wary of the "-est" tag. You know the one - The Blair Witch Project is the "scariest" movie of all time, Borat is the "funniest" comedy of all time, etc. This is especially true of gorefests, the fluid-soaked examples of cinematic arterial spray that make some macabre fans jump for joy, while others remain skeptical...and queasy. Whenever someone pronounces that fright flick X is the "nastiest", or "grossest", or "bloodiest" ever made, certain warning signals start firing off in the seasoned scary movie maven's mind. Either the splatter is nothing but overhyped hokum, or the perspective/tolerance of the person making the declaration is under question. In the case of Philosophy of the Knife, however, there is a clear "-est" classification that can't be questioned. While this fact-based geek show is indeed disgusting (per...Read the entire review

Intentional or not, Lethal Force acts much more like a backyard hodgepodge of carbon-copied action "tributes" existing atop a cracker-thin plot than a film with any form of direction. Brittle and crumbling underneath the endless stream of odes to famous action flicks, you're not liable to find much of anything solid this vapid, airy snack has been bitten into.

The Film:

Just like the light and fluffy aforementioned nibbles, director Alvin Ecarma's vastly independent and sparsely funded action flick leans upon the sparse atmosphere of a 70s style kung-fu action escapade. And, much like the films it repeatedly jabs at, an uninteresting and simplistic plot surfaces. After his wife and child get kidnapped, small-time mobster Jack (Frank Prather) is brought before his family with a task that shall ensure the safety of his brood. To show the seriousness of this villainous t...Read the entire review

The Film:
I was lucky enough to see director Frank Henenlotter's Frankenhooker in the theater, when it first came out, at a midnight screening. I was already a fan of Henelotter's Basket Case, and was excited to see his latest film. At the time, watching Frankenhooker with my friends, it seemed like the funniest movie we had ever seen. Of course, we were drunk, as was most of the audience, and we were just so caught up in the moment that I think we would have loved any movie we were watching that night.

When I found out Frankenhooker was finally come out on DVD, I got pretty excited, because as I recalled, "I really loved that movie." But as I sat down to watch the film for the first time since seeing over 15 years earlier, I realized I had almost no memory of the film itself. All of my fondness for Frankenhooker sprang from my memories of the experience ...Read the entire review

The Movie

What can one say about a movie in which a man allows another man to slice (and bite) his penis off, have him fry it up in a pan, and serve it to the near-dead (and penisless) man before he nods off into eternal sleep in a bloody bathtub?

How about "Don't watch it"?

One of the sickest and freakiest movies ever to come from a nation well-known for its freaky and sick movies (Germany), Cannibal is shocking, outrageous, sickening ... and just a little bit interesting because it's based on actual events. Entirely true: Two gay men met through the personal ads, and they both shared a rather unseemly passion: One of 'em loves to eat human flesh, and the other guy wants to be, well, eaten. It's all very gross, trust me.

Writer/director Marion Dora treats the story like its Shakespeare meets Adrian Lyne, which explains why there's next to no spoken dialogue in Cannibal -- ...Read the entire review

Visions of Suffering (2006), as far as I can recall, is the first indie Russian horror film I've seen. It's a genre pretty alive everywhere else in the world but I assume due to financial limitations and government restrictions, which are just now really starting to open up in Russia, the market for horror films must be pretty small.

With the opening tagline: "A dream is a reality rejected by the mind", director/writer/producer/co-actor Andrey Iskanov has created an homegrown effort with a lean towards the experimental and surreal. The story, such as it barely is, concerns two men who are experiencing nightmares about the same Hellish dreamscape and feel that the walls between these nightmares and their waking life are collapsing. Something, simply, is out to get them. And get them it will.

The Man with Glasses (Alexander Shevchenko) dreams every time it rains. His dreams are of a marshy w...Read the entire review

The Movie

It's fairly common for me to admire what a movie is trying to do -- even if I don't actually get a whole lot out of the process. One such example would be Nails, a 60-minute mega-mind-bender from Russian filmmaker Andrey Iskanov. The thing's a full-bore freak show, complete with Lynch-style weirdness, random visual ugliness, a few healthy doses of gore, and more than a few head-scratching ideas along the way.

The nearly dialogue-free film tells the story of a retired hit-man who spends his time in a rather depressing apartment -- when he's not struggling against all his painful memories and the unexpected desire to hammer nails into his brain. Yeah. It's a fairly vague and amorphous little movie, but Iskanov deserves commendation for his comment to, well, weirdness.

More of a cinematic Rorsarch test than an actual "movie" movie, Nails will appeal most probably to th...Read the entire review

The Movie

As a rule, I certainly have no problem with Joe and Jane Shoestring Filmmaker and the low-low-low budget schlock they love to turn out. However...Problems often arise when I'm required to sit through a 104-minute zombie movie that looks like it was shot inside of a shoebox, sounds like it was recorded inside of a seashell, and moves forward with all the momentum of a 60-year-old garden slug.

I reiterate: I've got nothing against no-budget Massachusetts-based filmmaker Brian Paulin (Mummy Raider) and his enthusiastic neighborhood of gore-lovin' blouse-droppers ... but Bone Sickness is a special kind of amateur-hour awful. (OK, some of the gore is pretty creative, I'll give the guy that.)

Here's what I think the plot is: There's this young guy who's dying of a horrifically degenerative bone disease, and all his doting girlfriend can do is watch him waste away. Fortuna...Read the entire review

The Movie

Oh jeez, here comes yet another feature-length animated zombie comedy horror action movie.

Yes, you read that right: Frank Sudol's City of Rott is all of the above. All the thing's missing is a musical number and a wedding scene.

Produced on an ultra-low budget using only a home computer and some obvious talent (both artistic as well as musical), Sudol has slapped together a cartoon zombie-com that should prove to be an absolute delight to all the hungry gorehounds out there.

Well ... actually, that's not entirely accurate. The first 2/3rds of City of Rott is a silly, colorful, cleverly animated, and amazingly gory little tale. But somewhere right around where most movies start focusing on Act III, City of Rott takes a curious turn...Read the entire review