Let me start off by saying that I'm not the biggest gorehound in the world. I just like (ok, LOVE) good horror movies. ZOMBIE is a great horror movie! From the beginning shots of the derelict yacht in NY harbor to the end credits, this movie is scary. Fulci has a twisted / sadistic style all his own. I overlook most of the ultra-splatter and focus on the sheer terror of the story. Tisa Farrow and Ian McCulloch are excellent as the scientist's daughter and intrepid reporter, drawn ever deeper into the hideous gloom. Even as they head toward that tropical isle, we can feel the building dread. Richard Johnson plays the only doctor left on the island, still attempting to get to the bottom of the zombie plague through science. Unfortunately for him and everyone else, science has become meaningless. The rules no longer apply. Once the zombies start marching and munching, this movie is relentless! Of course, the true stars are the zombies themselves. These are some creepy folks! We've got rotting villagers meandering about, with flesh falling off, worms wiggling, and pieces missing. A spanish conquistador graveyard becomes a death-trap for our heroes, as 400 year old corpses start crawling out of their sacred soil. ZOMBIE is a suffocating fearfest! Fulci knows how to build tension as well as pop out eyeballs. Highly recommended...

Bill and Mary were just two typical all-american 25 year old highschool students, playing tennis, drinking hot cocoa, and reciting Shakespeare. Then, Bill got mixed up with the "wrong crowd". He ended up at their house of evil, where He took a "hit" from a marijuana cigarette and "freaked out". Bill joined in with "satan's children" as they danced uncontrollably, played piano jazz, and had wanton abandon sessions! Meanwhile, Mary's brother borrowed her car, took a puff from a "hemp-joint" and drove uncontrollably, running over a pedestrian, laughing mercilessly. Ultimately, poor Mary ended up at the "drug den" herself, being introduced to the "killer weed" by Ralph, a crazed "pot fiend" given to uncontrollable fits of hysterical laughter. Ralph took advantage of Mary, causing Bill (who was having a wanton abandon session with a female "pot-head" in another room) to lose control and attack Ralph. Suddenly, the swinging "dope pad" was turned into a murder house, as the co-owner of the hangout drew a gun. Bill fought him and Mary was inadvertantly shot dead! Bill was framed for Mary's homicide and Ralph was committed to an insane asylum. And, remember the wicked girl Bill was having wanton abandon with? Well, she was called upon to testify in court, and wound up diving out a window! Let us learn the lessons here! Remember, smoke only good wholesome tobacco, or drink harmless, invigorating alcohol; and leave the "reefer" to the ne'er-do-wells and hepcats of the world...

A man and his wife and daughter are on their way to the Valley Inn, for a fun little getaway. They become hopelessly lost, ending up at the last house in the desert. The family is met there by Torgo, the bubble-thighed (like a grasshopper w/ elephantiasis), gibbering, hillbilly henchman of the mysterious "Master". Of course, rather than just leaving, our family decides to spend the night. Torgo gets too friendly with wifey and she slaps his fuzzy face. Meanwhile, the family's poodle "Pepe" has wandered outside to his doom. Hubby looks for his faithful canine, finding only a pile of black mattress-filler! The untold horror really begins when the Master rises from his slab in the nearby tomb! He's accompanied by six wives, dressed in atrocious white nightgowns. The women are not awake ten seconds before they start arguing! They can't decide whether to kill the whole family, or to spare the daughter or... After what seems like hours of inane bickering, the gals decide to fight each other, in what must be the most boring catfight ever filmed! They roll around in the sand, shaking and half-heartedly slapping each other. It's like watching a clownschool sorority induction party! Anyway, the Master decides to kill Torgo in another long, drawn out process of immense tedium. The family wanders around in the desert, unable to make any progress escaping, due to their total idiocy. So, they head back to the house of hellishness, only to be confronted by a golfball-eyed Master. Dad shoots him to no avail. This leads to the surprise / shock finale. MANOS is a movie written, produced, and directed by Harold P. Warren. Imagine Ed Wood's brain transplanted into the skull of a chipmunk. Now, give our Ed Wood chipmunk a lobotomy, a pad and pencil, fifty bucks, and a movie-camera. Given enough time, this Ed Woodized rodent would inevitably recreate the stunning masterpiece called MANOS THE HANDS OF FATE...

A little girl is kidnapped right out of her bed by a nameless, faceless maniac. Her mother is found (alive) bound, with a plastic bag over her head. Two months later, the girl's dad calls in a psychic army colonel (Cameron Mitchell) to investigate and do what police can't do in order to find his daughter and her abductor. The colonel gets visions of the madman and contorts his face a lot. Meanwhile, a beautiful pre-school teacher (Jennifer Holmes) keeps seeing an unknown stalker outside her classroom, and at the mall. Said stalker is, of course, THE DEMON, and has already killed a man who picked him up hitch-hiking. This guy's a real freakazoid, complete with black leather razor-blade tipped gloves (sound familiar?), rope, and plastic bags in his murder-kit. He attacks a girl in a dark alley, who's just left "Boobs Disco" (?!) only to be interrupted by two goofy bikers. THE DEMON clotheslines them both, leaving the girl to scream, and stand around gawking, before finally realizing she should run away. Another pair of honeys is standing outside of another disco, in another dark alley, being menaced by THE DEMON, when three blokes happen to wander out. The girls point at the weird guy, causing the three men to give chase. THE DEMON kills all three in quick fashion. Later, two boys are playing army in the woods. One falls on his back and sees the missing little girl's skeleton in a tall tree. Yep, THE DEMON is a bit disturbing. It all comes down to a final showdown at the young, pretty schoolteacher's house, where he pursues her and she spends most of the time topless. THE DEMON himself seems to have no face, wearing a mask to give him human features. He has super-human strength and desires only to kill. We get glimpses of him in his apartment, doing push-ups among a clutter of bikini-clad babe magazines. Not much to go on is it? I liked this one due to it's (somewhat interesting) supernatural element. Not bad...

I'm not a big fan of Roger Corman's cheaper-looking monsters (as in "the creature from haunted sea" et al), however, SWAMP WOMEN could certainly have used one of Corman's 8' styrofoam space-turds to spice things up a bit! Instead, we've got four women, consisting of 3 "hardened" criminals and one undercover cop, floating trough the bayou. We've also got Mike Conners and his half-wit girlfriend as hostages. It seems the "Nardo Girls" have escaped from prison in search of $200,000.00 in stolen diamonds. Unbeknownst to them, a policewoman is posing as their partner in crime. We get to see Conners tied to several trees, and his dopey girlfriend gets (mercifully) eaten by alligators. Eventually, the diamonds are found, the girls have one catfight after another (the only real highlight), and one decides to sneak off with both the diamonds and Mike Conners! This leads to her demise at the end of a spear. Beverly Garland is tough as Josie, and stands head and shoulders above the material. This film is 70 minutes long and would have been much better at 50 or so. Watch it if there's nothing else to do...

Bela Lugosi is Armand Tesla, an amazingly Dracula-like vampire, in this fangy fable. Assisted by his werewolf helper Andreas Obry (Matt Willis), Tesla goes on a reign of terror, only to be stopped by a spike through the heart. Years later, during WWII, we find Andreas reformed of his lycanthropic ways, and working for Lady Jane, the very woman who had helped put an end to Tesla. Well, the nazi's bomb England, unearthing Tesla. Two civil defense guys find his body and one of them pulls the spike out of Tesla's chest! Soon, The bloodsucking begins! Tesla regains his hold on Andreas and hatches his plot for revenge. Tesla now has a vendetta against Lady Jane. He has decided to destroy her by taking control of those she loves. Can Lady Jane stop him before it's too late? You can tell that Bela enjoyed playing this role. He IS Dracula in this movie, no matter what his name is. The acting is pretty good all around, including the wolfman, even if his make-up job is a tad goofy. Worth owning...

I remember watching this in the theatre. It was the first in a long line of disaster movies (I know "Airport" came out earlier, but it's not much of a disaster film). Irwin Allen took a cruise-ship full of happy new year's passengers, hit them with a monster tidal wave, turned the ship upside down, and let the waterlogged action fly! Gene Hackman is the disgruntled / doubting priest. He finds himself having to lead a group of misfits up to the bottom of the Poseiden to alleged safety. Among the survivors are the old married couple (Shelly Winters and Jack Albertson), the cute, mousey lounge singer (Carol Lynley), The cranky cop and his gorgeous, ex-prostitute wife (Ernest Borgnine and Stella Stevens), the waiter (Roddy Macdowell), the brainiac kid, his sister (Pamela Sue Martin), and the kindly widower (Red Buttons). What a cast! Together, they must endure the hidden dangers of this topsy-turvy adventure. I remember Mad magazine's parody: "The Poopside-down Adventure". It was hilariously on target! Irwin Allen ushered in a ridiculous era of burning skyscrapers, killer bees, earthquakes, etc. This is the first REAL disaster epic, and it's the best...

How does one describe SPIDER BABY? Well, take "The Addams Family", add "The People Under the Stairs", toss in "Arsenic And Old Lace", blend in a tablespoon of the attitude of "Little Shop Of Horrors" with just a pinch of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and stir violently. That comes about as close as I can get to describing it. Jack Hill has created a macabre masterpiece, full of frights and fun from beginning to end! The Merrye family have "Merrye Syndrome", a rotting of the brain, caused by generations of inbreeding. The kids Virginia (Jill Banner), Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), and Ralph (Sid Haig) are real cut-ups! They've been isolated in a big, secluded house on a hill, watched over by Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.) for their entire lives. Now teenagers, things are about to change. A pair of distant relatives (played by Quinn Redeker and Carol Ohmart) have come, with sleazy lawyer in tow, to take control and institutionalize the children. Unfortunately for these invaders, they don't know just how crazy the kids really are. They are also ignorant of the fact that these siblings are cannibals! If they had known, they would never have spent the night! SPIDER BABY relies on a cool story, great acting, dark humor, and creepiness to overcome it's microscopic budget (just think of all those mega-budget stinkers over the years). It's an ensemble effort that pays off. Buy it now...

OK, I heard a lot of negative things about this movie, so I put off seeing it. What got me to finally watch it was the fact that I love Halle Berry. I could watch her in just about anything! In GOTHIKA, Miranda Grey (Ms. Berry) is a psychologist who has a head-on collision with the supernatural. On her way home from work (at Woodward Penitentiary for Women), she gets caught in a torrential rainstorm, is detoured, and almost hits a girl standing in the middle of the road. Miranda swerves around the girl and into a ditch. After climbing out of her car, she goes to the girl to make sure she's alright. The girl spontaneously catches fire and puts her flaming hands on Miranda, causing her to black out. Upon waking, Miranda finds herself incarcerated in the very penitentiary she works in, sedated, and accused of murdering her husband (Charles S. Dutton), who also happens to have been her boss. Things get really weird from here! Miranda is visited several times by the ghost-girl from the road and given clues to what's really going on. Can she put the pieces together before being tried for a murder she barely remembers? Robert Downey Jr. plays a subdued role as Miranda's doctor and former colleague. Penelope Cruz is Miranda's ex-patient turned fellow inmate, who has clues of her own to share. Why did Miranda kill her husband? How can she escape her prison in order to work out this mystery? The answers to these questions are the ice-cold backbone of this story. Bathed in darkness, rain, and blue-filtered light, Gothika wears it's forboding spirit on it's sleeve. However, it's well done and Halle bumps this movie up a few notches just because she's in it. She's a dominant force and carries the film well. A spooky thriller-chiller...

Peter Falk is Nico, a smack dealer who poses as the leader of a merry band of beatniks. Nico's not just cool man, he's like crazy baby! He watches an old bum die and decides it is the ultimate kickeroo. Later at a swinging party, complete with goofy dancing, goatees, bongos, and a sea of turtleneck sweaters, Nico and his croany decide to feed an unlucky messenger boy a fatal ground-glass burger just to watch him die. Thankfully, the victim's non-beatnik brother Cliff (Jack Betts) sets out to catch those responsible for his sibling's death. Cliff delves into the dark, dank, terminally hep underbelly of beatnik culture looking for clues. He turns out to be one of the only ones among them with either a conscience or a brain. He is finally helped by a girl (Barbara Lord) who is disillusioned with Nico. Together, they attempt to cramp Nico's style. THE BLOODY BROOD is full of quasi-philosophical musings about life, death, work, etc., and priceless quotes like, "Did he die, or was he murdered by life?" WOW! That's deep, man! So, just pull up a floorpillow, put on your sandals and raybans, and tune into the scene! ...