Watching The Hazing (also known as Dead Scared), I kept thinking how unfortunate it was that the film kept resorting to stupid horror comedy shenanigans - that is, until I realized that this basically was a horror comedy. So, basically, what we have here is a horror comedy that actually had some potential to be a decent horror flick. The movie's official web site describes it as "The Evil Dead meets Scream," but that is pure hype. While enjoyable, The Hazing lacks the intelligence and unique appeal of a true cult classic. Comedy is one thing, but this film has moments of utter silliness that take away from an otherwise entertaining viewing experience. Of course, if The Hazing had given me more than a short but stimulating cameo from Brooke Burke, all sins might have been forgiven.

So it's Halloween, the perfect night for the hazing of wannabe frat boys and sorority girls. The final task of our three guys and two girls is to collect all manner of items in a scavenger hunt, bring their stolen possessions to the town's very own haunted house, and get through the night without leaving. Naturally, pranksters will already be there preparing all sorts of thrills and spills, but that goes without saying. It turns out they needn't have bothered, as this party will be crashed by a supernatural uninvited guest. Doug (Phillip Andrew) and Marsha (Tiffany Shepis) take it upon themselves to abscond with the scavenger hunt's most valuable item, a Necronomicon-type tome in the possession of weird Professor Kapps (Brad Dourif). Things don't go quite as planned, and the end result is that our gang of crazy college kids ultimately find themselves trapped inside a haunted house with an evil human spirit trying to torture and kill them as part of his bid to conquer death and gain unlimited powers.

Naturally, these being crazy college kids and all, there is some nudity and sexually oriented humor. What you will not find are any scares or frightening moments whatsoever, which I find to be unfortunate. Even the couple of gorier moments aren't that effective because you can't take them seriously. On the plus side, there was a little bit of effort made to diverge from the seemingly stereotypical characterization of the "bimbo" (Nectar Rose) and the "nerd" (Parry Shen). The acting itself is surprisingly good and the special effects rather impressive for the most part, given the low-budget nature of the whole production. The end result is a surprisingly enjoyable little horror comedy that could run circles around a few of the more prominent films in the genre. It's sort of hard not to have fun watching this.

Don't let the title and DVD cover fool you - heck, I think the plot summary is misleading, as well. This isn't a film about the restless ghosts of the ill-fated Donner Party rising up from their snowy graves to terrorize a group of friends stranded inside a lonely cabin in the Sierra Nevada range. You aren't going to see steaming hunks of human flesh coloring the snow red, either. Frankly, I'm quite glad that Necrosis was not the film I was expecting because what I was expecting was yet another predictable and utterly forgettable horror survival thriller. There are far too many Cabin Fever clones polluting the horror field already, but Necrosis is not one of them. In this case, I do believe that less is more. By the way, I'm assuming that we are all clear on the identity and meaning of the Donner Party in this context - if you think the Donner Party has something to do with reindeer, then go read a book and educate yourself.

OK. Having scored a great deal on a primo cabin in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Matt (George Stults) and Karen (Tiffany) head up there with four friends to enjoy a weekend of invigorating, stress-free fun and relaxation. The locals (including horror icon Michael Berryman) are a little weird about the idea of staying there, but Matt already knows the history of the cabin. Located in the same area as the Donner Party's ill-fated campsite, the woods outside the cabin are said to be haunted by the ghosts of those who died during the winter of 1846. Maybe the locals were right in their warnings about the place, though. Poor Jerry (James Kyson Lee) starts seeing disfigured, axe-toting spirits soon after arriving, while his girlfriend Megan (Penny Drake) almost goes and gets herself killed accidentally. Then, that very night, the guys discover something disturbing in the woods, and - wouldn't you know it - an unpredicted snowstorm blows in, making it impossible to drive down the mountain in the case of an emergency. Suddenly, there are more important things to think about than the odds of Michael (Robert Michael Ryan) and Samantha (Danielle De Luca) hooking up.

There really isn't a great deal of action or suspense in play here, and that explains some of this film's negative reviews. On the other hand, I actually found these characters real and likeable (well, all but Jerry) and enjoyed seeing a little character development play out. I also found that my expectations for the film made the actual plot more effective. I kept waiting for everyone to see the ghosts and freak out, not to mention wondering if any cannibalism would find its way into the story. All the while, the film traveled steadfastly on its own path, never caving in to give viewers what most of them probably expect. While some may find the actual storyline somewhat pedestrian, I think it works pretty well. Some actual scares would have been nice, but I still rather enjoyed this film - and, at seventy-six minutes, it doesn't overextend its welcome. I even enjoyed the end credits - largely because they were accompanied by a Tiffany song I had never heard before.

Ripper: Letter from Hell is probably a little too big for its britches, with the filmmakers trying too hard to make a truly mind-bending thriller. Truth be told, this is really just another slasher movie - but it's a slasher film that manages to distinguish itself from other films in the genre by delivering a rather open-ended and less than cut and dried ending. Some will find it confusing, while others will enjoy comparing notes on their personal theories - and that's where the fun really begins. I find myself in the camp with those who argue that things are not as they seem, even after all the smoke clears.

Five years after she alone survived a killing spree on some island trip with her friends, Molly Keller (A.J. Cook) is in college studying, of all things, serial killers. The professor, Marshall Kane (Bruce Payne), is a former FBI profiler turned creepy college teacher who has written a book "proving" that Montague John Druitt was Jack the Ripper (just for the record, this armchair Ripperologist disagrees with that conclusion). Then, wouldn't you know it? Just when the students break out into study groups charged with getting inside the mind of a serial killer, an actual serial killer shows up and starts killing the members of one such study group, the very one that Molly belongs to - sort of. Molly, you see, has turned into a bit of a tough girl loner who doesn't work well with others and doesn't play by anybody's rules but her own. After she makes the case for this serial killer patterning his murders on those of Jack the Ripper in 1888, though, she and the gradually dwindling members of her group set out to use what they've learned in class to try and figure out a match for the killer's profile.

The plot gives you plenty of possible suspects to choose from. Could someone in the study group be taking the others out one at a time? Has Professor Kane, who basically knows more about serial killers than anyone else, snapped and gone over to the dark side? Maybe it's the stutterer who can oftentimes be found flitting around the periphery of the study group and is also the only person there who knows the story of Molly's traumatic past. And what's with the weird cop who claims to have worked the homicide case on the island five years ago and now keeps watch from the shadows as those around Molly once again fall victim to violent murder? And what of Molly herself - could she be behind this new killing spree? The filmmakers do a pretty good job of dropping red herrings and shifting the focus of suspicion from one person to the next.

I must say I was expecting more from the ending than turned out to be the case. Taken at face value, the revelation of the killer doesn't exactly make your jaw drop to the floor. Now that I've thought more about it, though, I'm liking the ending more and more. It's not often you can legitimately question the truth as it seems to be presented at the end of a film. Things are not always as they appear, and I believe important yet easy to overlook clues scattered throughout the film point to another character as the actual killer. In fact, it seems to me that the filmmakers actually intended to insert a degree of ambiguity into the story - and that's what earned the film four stars in my book.

No one loves The Asylum and their ever-growing crop of cheap B-movies more than I do, but there's really no defense that I or anyone else could possibly offer for 2012: Ice Age. Not only is this the worst film The Asylum has ever released, it's easily the worst disaster movie I've ever seen. The storyline is laughably absurd, the acting is embarrassingly bad, and the special effects may as well have been done by a class of fifth-graders. This movie is so bad that you can't even enjoy its mediocrity -- rather than laugh at it, you just want to put it out of its misery.

Remember how air traffic in Europe was brought to a standstill by the atmospheric effects of volcanic explosions in Iceland a while back? Well, imagine what would happen if every volcano in Iceland erupted all at once. Now stop imagining because you've already created a better movie in your head than what you're going to see in 2012: Ice Age. Here, all those volcanic explosions send the mother of all glaciers hurtling down the eastern seaboard of North America. Canada apparently offers no opposition because the glacier is bearing down on New England within about ten minutes (which is strange since we later learn the glacier is moving at a speed of 200 mph). Patrick Labyorteaux plays (badly) Bill Hart, a big, doughy scientist of some sort who grabs his wife and incredibly wussy son and embarks on a desperate race to get out of Maine and get to his daughter in New York before the glacier destroys the Big Apple. Most of the "action" takes place inside the vehicles the Harts employ on their journey to New York. On many occasions, all kinds of CGI hell is taking place outside, sending their vehicle hurtling and sliding around dropping glacier chunks in a hurricane of snow and wind -- but you wouldn't know it from the constantly steady interior shots. Even more strangely, a number of exterior shots then show the vehicle traveling down a completely clear street, with the only signs of winter weather being some scraped-off snow on the sides of the road. Of course, America isn't taking this new Ice Age lying down. Basically declaring war on the glacier, the Air Force tries to bomb the hell out of the ice floe with jets -- and, apparently in an effort to confuse the glacier, these jets are specially designed to magically morph between F-15s, F-16s, F/A-18 Hornets, and F-22 Raptors; some of them even become invisible, as the number of visible jets in formation constantly changes from one shot to the next.

2012: Ice Age seemingly completes The Asylum's disastrous 2012 trilogy, following in the footsteps of 2012: Doomsday and 2012: Supernova, two movies almost as unwatchable and incompetently made as this one. We can only hope that The Asylum will now get back to the business of giving us what we want: pop icons of the 1980s fighting giant reptiles and aquatic monsters.

Killjoy is, without a doubt, one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life. There aren't a lot of horror films out there featuring an African-American cast, but there's one more than there should be. It absolutely floored me to find out that this film actually inspired two sequels. I can forgive one horrible movie, but three Killjoys really should be a crime. Truly, there is not one positive thing I can say about this movie; heck, I can't even give thanks that the film is so short because, even at 72 minutes, it goes on and on much longer than it should have. The acting is horrible, the dialogue is horrible, the film's herky-jerky pace is horrible, the special effects are embarrassingly horrible, and the story itself is utterly hopeless.

Boy loves girl; boy gets beaten up and murdered by girl's gangsta boyfriend; ridiculous clown with a magical ice cream truck seeks revenge on everyone involved. Apart from the absurd ending, that's pretty much the whole movie in a nutshell. For some reason, it took our victim's black magic ritual a year to actually work, and Killjoy the killer crown isn't exactly interested in justice when he does show up. It's a good thing there's a homeless man knowledgeable in the ways of this whole business that shows up with some advice on putting an end to the clownish carnage.

As painful as it is watching this film's gangstas trying to sound like gangstas, it's Killjoy's dialogue that will have your ears bleeding. It's one incredibly unfunny one-liner after another with this guy, but he's the only one laughing - maniacally - every single time he says anything. The special effects, on the other hand, are laughable, including what has to be the worst CGI beheading I've ever seen. I can only hope that someday in the distant future I will be able to block the bad memories of this awful film from my mind. Take my advice and stay as far away from this film as you possibly can.

Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure is the story of famed explorer Richard Byrd's famous (or infamous) solitary sojourn at the bottom of the world - ably, if somewhat reluctantly, told by Byrd himself. It is not a tell of adventure so much as survival, as the peaceful and scientific adventure Byrd had anticipated all too quickly became a months-long fight for survival in the most inhospitable of places. Only a small shack with dangerously faulty ventilation stood between Byrd and the elements during the continually dark days of the winter of 1934. The temperature routinely hit 60 degrees below zero and rarely wandered upwards of twenty below, as Byrd - laid low by carbon monoxide poisoning - fought a daily battle to survive a situation that would have killed almost any other man.

Over the years, much has been made of Admiral Byrd's decision to singly man a small meteorological station far south of the main Antarctic base of Little America on the Ross Ice Shelf. Byrd first envisioned a three-man crew (he thought two men stuck together that long would end up killing each other during the long winter months without a third person present to break the monotony), but it seems pretty clear from this account that he yearned to do the job alone. Certainly, there is something to be said for the perfect peace and introspection he expected to find there, but it seems equally clear that Byrd, having already achieved great fame with past adventures at the North and South Poles, sought the attention and acclaim that would come with this mission. Whatever his reasons, however, it was unarguably a most daring and brave decision - as if the living conditions were not difficult enough, he knew that no help would be forthcoming if something went wrong.

Byrd's daily tasks were to man the meteorological equipment, take measurements, and make observations from his position. This was no small job given the damaging effects that the cold had on everything, but Byrd's biggest job was to stay alive. Unfortunately, his greatest ally in that struggle - the stove - became his greatest enemy. Several weeks into the mission, Byrd began suffering the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning. Unable to solve the ventilation problems responsible for the danger, he had no choice but to run the stove as little as possible. Often close to death, even his best of days left him far too weak to accomplish more than the most essential of tasks. To his credit, he did the best he could to hide his condition from his men at Little America, knowing full well that any rescue attempt made on their part during those winter months would be incredibly dangerous.

This was not a book that Richard Byrd was eager to write, for it meant revealing to the world the vulnerable and perhaps foolish side of a man who was already legendary for his daring exploits. To his credit, however, he certainly seems to have held nothing back, especially in regard to the sufferings he endured on this mission. While Byrd's motives - and even some of his accomplishments - have come into question over the years, even as his fame has diminished, Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure reveals this man to be one of the last great adventurers of history, a man whose raw courage and unmatched strength is best revealed in the depths of his weakest moments.

As average horror films go, this is a pretty decent one. Unfortunately, its title and plot summary do it no favors. I thought this was going to be a film about a group of theology students summoning a demon and then trying to survive in the wake of their very bad mistake. In point of fact, that little demon conjuration story serves as the background to the actual storyline, which involves five college students picking the worst possible site for house squatting. Having - quite by accident, mind you - watched two consecutive movies about house squatting, I can say, with some authority, that house squatting is bad, mmkay. If you try it, you're just asking to find yourself locked in and hunted by some evil entity - be it man or demon. Getting back to the title, I think LionsGate made a mistake in changing this film's original name, Credo, to The Devil's Curse once it purchased the American distribution rights. I mean, please, The Devil's Curse? Could you possibly have a cheesier title for a horror film?

The central character in this story is Alice (MyAnna Buring), a most diligent student who is the last person to leave the library on a nightly basis. For some reason, she is friends and roommates with a stereotypical party animal, an insecure would-be suitor (Mark Joseph) who secretly tapes her in her room, and two other girls. Thanks to Jock (Clayton Watson) and his loud partying, the whole lot of them are evicted on an early Saturday morning. Jock finds them a new place to crash for at least the next couple of weeks, though. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a former seminary/dormitory where a group of five students tried to summon the demon Belial some years ago. As the urban legend goes, one member of the group chickened out and broke the pentagram (or circle, if you will), thus freeing the demon from the group's control; by the next morning, the other four students were dead. It goes without saying that I would be making some well-defined tracks out of that place, but these crazy kids decide to stay. Needless to say, that's a decision they're going to live to regret (if they manage to survive at all).

This sounds like your basic paint-by-numbers horror plot, but writer Alex Wakeford and director Toni Harman manage to pull off a pretty good ending. While it isn't uniquely original, the bit of a twist at the end works beautifully and changes the viewer's perspective on everything that has come before. Don't look for a lot of gore here, as this is primarily a psychological horror film. I like the low-key approach, though, and there's just something about The Devil's Circle that stayed with me after the film was over. This isn't really a crowd-pleaser, but it's more than worth a look.

Alas, critics have already laid claim to some of the best lines describing this film, such as "hole-y crap" and the very true statement that all you'll find at this bottom of this hole is "a truly beaten dead horse." Most of the pieces of a decent horror film are actually present here, but writer/director Daniel Simpson proves to be something far less than a master craftsman. I'm surprised some of the actors didn't trip over some of the many clichés that litter this cinematic landscape. What little suspense is built up early on is thoroughly wasted the moment we find out what is truly going on (hint: it's exceedingly unoriginal). And you can forget all about holding out hope for gore to emerge as this film's saving grace, as the director wimps out big-time in that department. Spiderhole is basically a paint-by-numbers horror film, which makes for a bland viewing experience devoid of scary or squeamish moments. Sad, really.

So you have these four art students who go out and find a big, abandoned house to squat in and call their own - not the most sympathetic of characters right from the start. If they're homeless, it seems to be by choice; they really just want to screw and around and party on their own without paying rent. Anyway, they break into this large and seemingly long-abandoned house and make it their own - without even having a look at most of the rooms. The two girls are a little upset when they find a cache of really bloody clothes stashed in a cabinet, but the gang soon decides to sleep on the decision of whether or not to leave. When they awaken the next morning, though, they find that the decision has already been made for them. Finding themselves locked in, they run around for a few panicked minutes, then basically just give up hope. The things that happen after this point should be frightening, suspenseful, and hard to watch - but they aren't. They are exceedingly predictable, though.

Spiderhole just goes through the motions, never building up any atmosphere or emotional connection with the audience. Perhaps a complete horror novice might find something of substance here, but this is a true ho hummer for the rest of us.

While the vast majority of anecdotes in this book feature stupid people doing stupid things, you also get a number of curious newspaper headlines, ironic acts by people with notable names (such as a fellow named Perry Mason suing over his expulsion from law school), some examples of extremely bad luck, and even the rare "there is justice in the world after all" pick-me-up. As an example of the latter, take the despicable man who parked his car in front of an oncoming train and bailed out, leaving his girlfriend inside to die -- she somehow survived, and he was killed by a piece of flying debris.

Yes, I suppose there is a degree of reveling in the misery of others, but one must admit that it is quite fascinating to discover some of the bizarre ways in which humans meet their deaths or suffer grave injuries. I don't pity any of the dumb criminals here (not even the Japanese woman who complained to the police that the hit man she hired was taking too long to get the job done), as most of them actually deserve worse than they got, but I do feel sorry for some of their victims (such as the man who was stabbed for humming a Megadeth song so loudly that his attacker couldn't enjoy her Celine Dion music). Frankly, though, I'm not sure how to feel about someone who choked to death while biting the calluses off his feet or fell out of a moving car after opening the door to relieve himself. And you wouldn't believe some of the things people have argued and killed over.

There's very little in the way of original content here, which is fortunate given the fact that Leland Gregory's occasional little comments and bad jokes are not nearly as funny as he probably thinks they are. The guy deserves credit for scouring news reports of several years to find all of the stories included here, but he really just edits that material down into short summaries. All too often, he doesn't offer up nearly as much information as I would have liked, compelling me to periodically search the web for details he left out. Some of these stories are absolutely fascinating, and almost all of them are interesting. Obviously, this isn't high-brow literature, but Cruel and Unusual Idiots certainly makes for entertaining reading.

Wrecked is basically a one-man show, and I must say Adrien Brody turned in a terrific performance as that one man (he does his own stunts, actually eats a worm, and even supplies the voice his character hears on the radio). Some say the movie is slow and perhaps confusing at times, but I say nay; you couldn't possibly convey the physical ordeal - nor the emotional roller coaster -this character endures in a mere half hour, nor would the ending be as effective as it most certainly is. I was prepared to say I really liked this movie as it moved toward its conclusion, and then the ending turned my like into love. It does require some patience on the part of the viewer, but Wrecked is a really, really good movie.

Brody's character wakes up to the grim reality of being trapped in a car deep within a ravine. He looks like he went ten rounds with Muhammad Ali, and his badly injured leg is trapped underneath the dashboard. Looking around, he finds an empty driver's seat, a dead man in the back seat, and another body a short distance away from the car. He doesn't know who he is or how he got there - but it's obvious that he was in one hell of a crash. Whatever road the car was on isn't even in sight. If he's going to survive, he has to free himself from the wreckage and somehow find help in the most isolated and dangerous of woodland situations. As the days and nights progress, he begins having short flashbacks about his past and finds other clues to his identity, the meaning of which is further sharpened by periodic hallucinations. If the plot sounds pretty basic, it is - but it is by no means simple. You'll just have to take my word on that.

I found this to be a rather gripping emotional story, thanks largely to Brody's marvelous performance (as well as some fine work from a wonderful canine actor). There are even some tender moments thrown into the mix with all of the fury and seeming futility of his character's struggles. You the viewer join the character in trying to piece together his identity, and that great unknown creates emotional friction because you aren't completely sure you should be rooting for his ultimate survival. As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing slow, simplistic, or boring about this film at all. I loved it.