Evil Dead 2

A classic. I like the first one more, though.

Creepshow

Creepshow is one of the first horror movies I saw. It changed my life. When I watch it now, it isn't as exciting, but it's still Creepshow. The cockroach story is better than anything Kafka could ever come up with.

Pieces

Pieces seems like The Toolbox Murders, meaning the beginning plays like it was originally shot as a self-contained short film, and then an extra hour was shot later to turn the short into a commercial feature. I could be wrong about Pieces, but I know that's how The Toolbox Murders went down.

This movie is exactly what you think it is - an amateur extravaganza! A mysterious man walks through an alley in a trench coat. Cut to women working out in aerobics class. Cut back to the man walking more. Cut back to aerobics class. Back to the man. Back to aerobics, and so on and so on.

I'm pretty sure all of the dialogue was overdubbed in post-production.

Slither

Look at this beautiful monster:



Corny CGI horror:



CGI is OK:



It's even got Michael Rooker. Slither, from the writer of Tromeo and Juliet. I thought I was going to have a giggle fit when news broke of this movie in the trades. The finished product, however, didn't meet my expectations. I've learned not to get my hopes up.

I read James Gunn's novel The Toy Collector when I was 17 and became obsessed with it for three years, recommending it to everybody and blowing my credibility in the process. Somewhere along the way Gunn started to get on my nerves. His personality is like a plaid sport coat. I can't articulate it any better than that.

Slither bears many similarities to Night of the Creeps, even though Gunn insists he didn't see Night of the Creeps until after Slither was produced. Sure, I believe it. It's better than Night of the Creeps. Dekker's movie is too campy. At least Gunn strived for fire and brimstone.

There are references to other better horror movies throughout. For instance, the town is holding a Henenlotter festival, and The Toxic Avenger is seen playing on a TV.

CGI sucks in horror. Most horror movies can't afford good CGI, so when they try to pull it off it looks like the Sci-Fi Channel.

Poultrygeist and Lloyd's Great Acting

Instant classic, though I have a gripe: What was with all the green blood? Mixed with red, it gave me kind of a Christmas vibe. Other than that, the movie is solid.

I'm glad Lloyd Kaufman has settled into acting. Forget Vincent D'Onofrio, Lloyd is the best actor that's ever been in a Troma movie.

Kill Theory Sucks and Chris Moore Is An Idiot

This movie is directed by Chris Moore, the bug-eyed loud mouth from Project Greenlight (remember that three-year embarrassment?). A good axiom to follow is: Where there's Chris Moore, there's a corny movie. Nobody likes Feast. Moore even managed to squeeze a bad movie out of Gus Van Sant. If Matt Damon's Will Hunting solved the equation, how did he also mop the entire school? He's two people. Moore was probably slack-jawed when he read the script. Hollywood Miramax trash.

Kill Theory isn't Miramax because Moore isn't big enough for that studio anymore. I'll bet he's something of a joke around Hollywood because Project Greenlight was a fiasco. He probably made Kill Theory to feed his crying hungry babies. I love how nearly every studio exec seen in an episode of Project Greenlight is currently out of a job.

But is Kill Theory any good? My theory is that Harvard educated Moore thought having "theory" in the title would make this film appear to be intelligent. Instead it's a shot for shot remake of Saw. I can't believe he had to the audacity to make a horror movie. Wearing sweater vests doesn't qualify him. Burn copies of this on sight, if it ever comes out, but it probably won't 'cause who'd want to release it?

What a shitty tagline, too. Deep down we're all killers? Vague and uninteresting.

Bad Biology and R.A. the Rugged Dork

Frank, what were you thinking? You let R.A. the Rugged Man have creative control? Maybe it was how you got the movie made, but still. His fingerprints are all over it. Kinda pricked the hairs on the back of my neck, and not in a good way.

Wait, what am I thinking? Henenlotter hasn't made a movie in almost twenty years. It's amazing that he came out of "retirement" (I call it not being able to get a project greenlit). He's a true auteur, even if part of his creative process these days is to work with cheesy rappers. Every time I watch one of his movies I think, "Frank, what were you thinking?" Remember the musical stylings of the Basket Case sequels? Sure, I guess I loved those movies. Henenlotter is special because his movies are absurd. Add Bad Biology to the canon. I don't know if it's as good as Brain Damage.

It was made forever ago but it still doesn't have a release date. It played a few festivals, and I was under the impression that it got made as an installment of Showtime's Masters of Horror series, but maybe that's not true because it probably should've been released by now. If Synechdoche and Che had a hard time finding distribution, I can only imagine how hard it's been to sell a starless movie where the female lead craps out screaming aborted babies every five minutes. Writing that last sentence made me realize how special this movie is.

Henenlotter should've just shot it on video so there wouldn't have been as much of a financial risk. Any director that can't get their films made anymore should swallow their pride and shoot on digital video. They could make a feature for like a hundred bucks. People would watch it. Fans would at least, and there are more babies being born every day. It's not like the director's artistic voice wouldn't weaken if they switched from shooting with one type of camera to another. Shoot a movie on digital video, upload it installments to YouTube, then sell DVDs to the fans.