Saturday, July 23, 2011

NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW (1995)

Standard, low budget (IMDb says the budget was 2 million but I find that very hard to believe) 90's horror flick about a warlock who is magically trapped in a tomb beneath a corn field until one night when some drunken buttholes steal a bulldozer and accidentally crack the seal. The warlock is released and his spirit is now stuck in a scarecrow. Naturally all this puts him in a bad mood so he goes around attacking whoever. The whoever includes Stephen Root, John Hawkes, Bruce Glover and Gary Lockwood from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY! What a bizarre cast for low-budget horror movie.

Anyway, the main chick is kinda cute and I did enjoy the 90-ness of it all, but I can't recommend watching it. Lame kills, zero gore, almost zero blood, slow pace, brief badly shot tits and it's just too goddamn cheap looking. Skip it.
This is how you say "Well, hay there." in, I'm guessing, Japanese.

Friday, July 22, 2011

THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER (1991)

[Update 03/28/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Co-written by Dario Argento and directed by Michele Soavi, the man behind the clever CEMETERY MAN, THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER is kinda like ROSEMARY'S BABY except that there is no sense of doom.  It's set in the country and the woman isn't raped by a big demon, but instead a large pelican-buzzard looking thing that eats worms out of the gaping hole on the woman's neck.

The film opens in 1970 with members of a Satanic cult killing hippies off screen. We then move to 1991 where an old codger is nearly run over by a woman. Being an idiot, the woman takes the man to her house where as soon as she falls asleep he implants an icky bug in her nose! What the fuck?! The bug does some freaky stuff inside her and a killer handkerchief (yes, you read that correctly) starts running around possessing people. People die and the devil worshipers set up shop in the girl's basement. They pass the time by chasing people around and eventually use some hooks to rip a different woman's face off. That part isn't as exciting as it sounds.

Soavi made this between the barely entertaining THE CHURCH and before his masterpiece CEMETERY MAN. It has it moments, but overall I was pretty bored. The biggest problem I had was I couldn't determine if the main girl was just a complete idiot or her future was already predestined, either way removes any chance of the movie being suspenseful. No gore, long-winded story that really went nowhere, only one painted hippie boob exposed, low body count and a nearly two hour running time. I wanted to like it, since I enjoy Satanic cult movies, but I can't recommend it. Just watch ROSEMARY'S BABY again instead.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

TICKS (1993)

A group of twenty-year-old looking teenage city slickers go out to the woods with two social workers as part of a wilderness retreat. The group is your standard early 1990's horror movie teenager cliches: brooding dude, quiet girl, wannabe gangbanger and so on. Luckily for the viewer none of them are annoying and their banter is kinda funny. Like when the gangbanger keeps loudly lamenting that he should have brought his piece. At first, things go alright, but then our heroes find out that the patch of woods they're in is about to be taken over by very large ticks!  Nasty.

TICKS, or Infested as it was originally released, is an alright movie.  No real ups or downs, steady pace, okay special effects, tolerable acting, mild violence, zero nudity, zero tension.  Overall, it's an alright time-waster, but just too bland for it's own good.  There's never any shocking or stand out moments.  The movie just plugs along and then it's over.

Worth a nostalgic watch for fans of 90's horror, but others will probably be bored.