Dracula 2000 (2000)

Directed by: Patrick Lussier
Starring: Gerard Butler; Johnny Lee Miller; Jennifer Esposito; Nathan Fillion; Omar Epps (from House); the curly guy from That Seventies Show; and Seven of Nine.

I was in the mood for something vampy. The mood doesn't strike often because I rarely find bloodsuckers scary,  but I was feeling optimistic today.

Van Helsing's "great grandson" is in London dealing in antiques and denying the legend of his ancestor. When a group of thieves break into his vault they find a secret which belies Van Helsing's unassuming exterior. A metal coffin. They come up with some plausible reasons to break the coffin open, which turns out to be a bad idea.

They make off with the coffin to the sounds of an overpowering noughties soundtrack. At this point I have to say that some of the accents are also fairly offensive but I let it slide because the film is surprisingly engaging. Spooky Drac mist seeping out of the coffin?! Hell yes!

Yes I know, it's silly, it's stagey and improbable but aren't all films featuring Dracula?  And Gerard Butler makes a delicious Count.

30 minutes into the film and the thieves have all gotten theirs but Drac has only one thing on his mind. A girl named Mary, whom he is compelled to find. Since she has been dreaming of a tall pasty stranger since childhood it seems the feeling is mutual. The reason for this fascination is set out in a dull lengthy exposition by Van Helsing to his protoge Simon. It has something to do with leaches.

Don't worry there are a few unexpected chuckles throughout the film, which do take the edge off the otherwise grandiose storytelling.

Anyway, Simon (Miller) endeavours to protect Mary from the vampires and between them they try to figure out how Count Dracula can be destroyed. And here an interesting concept is floated - one which I (as a vamp film neophyte) had not heard before. Dracula' s hatred of all things Christian, where does it come from? He's averse to crosses, silver, sunlight - why?  He also speaks Aramaic which hasn't been popular for about 2000 years...hang on a second...is it possible that Dracula is quite a bit older than Bram Stoker had us believe?

In my humble opinion a potentially trashy idea was employed quite neatly. It's not a brilliant film but it's watchable. I liked the vampire make-up, very understated and Esposito is just fab to look at. Also, though I hate to repeat myself, there is lovely lovely Gerard Butler. 5/10.

The Ward (2010)

Directed by John Carpenter
Starring Amber Heard, Jared Harris and Lyndsy Fonseca

No doubt Mr Carpenter should be forever revered for Halloween,  but that does not mean he can't make a bad film. Do I need to mention Ghosts of Mars? Or the tragic soundtrack to Vampires? The fact that this film is directed by him gives me hope. The fact that I never heard of it before fills me with concern.

In 1966 a pretty young girl named Kristen is caught setting fire to a remote farmhouse. She had no memory of why she is there or who she was before this act. She is summarily thrown into mental hospital.

Her room is a cell and the girls are 'locked down' at night but Kristen believes she has seen a girl roaming the corridors. The ward nurse is mean, the doctor seems nice. The four other patients are stereotypes: the child, the crazy, the priss and the whore.

The setting is perfect for a horror movie - dark creepy old hospital,  vulnerable young girls, trapped in the dark with lightening flashing outside - but it falls curiously flat. Scenes cut from one to the next with nothing really happening, it seems like bad writing as well as bad editing.

Kristen is terrorised by visions of a zombie-looking girl and it seems she's not the only one. Another girl is mercilessly lobotomised by the scary mary. I do like the fact that this monster defies classification.  She looks like a zombie but dissapears like a ghost, she's corporeal but cannot always be seen.

I expected the film to explore the themes of captivity and mental illness- is there a haunting or is she just crazy? are the doctors helping or using the patients for nefarious experiments? Will the girl stand true to her own mind or accept what she is told? Instead the film plays it as a straight haunting throughout and then offers a limp 'haha!' at the end - by which point I had already become completely pissed off by the implausible occurances and lack of explanations.

Not impressed John, not impressed. Think I'm going to give this woopsie a 3/10. You can safely avoid it folks.

Black Christmas (1974)

A Canadian film starring Margot (Lois Lane) Kidder and Olivia (Juliet)Hussey.
All I knew before watching was that this film pre-dates Halloween and Friday 13th and is sometimes referred to as the first slasher.

Set in a sorority house and based on an archetypal horror story the film hangs together quite well. It's not as gory as its later counterparts and the body count is lower but there are plenty of creeps provided by the 'prank' phonecalls being made to the girls at the house.

These phonecalls include mumbling, squealing, screaming, panting and schizoid voice changes with an unnatural urgency. If I was getting these calls? I would be sleeping with on eye open.

The tension in the house escalates when one of the girls goes missing and another is found dead in a local park. Pretty young Jess (Hussey) seems to be bearing the brunt of the calls and after she upsets her boyfriend he begins to behave erratically causing the finger of suspicion to point his way.

The film takes its time. It's not just a sequence of murders strung together. Despite the patchy acting, some of the characters are quite interesting and Hussey is oddly watchable. As we approach the climax I do actually care - who is the killer? What's the twist? Did the boyfriend do it??

We see the inevitable call from the police. Having traced the prank calls they tell Jess that they've been coming from...inside the house! Shock!  Horror! Jess knows she should leave the house but her friends are still upstairs, what to do? She narrowly escapes and hides from the monster awaiting the final showdown. In the whole film to this point we have yet to see this psychotic maniac killer.

The close is perfect, some will disagree, but I liked it. Beautifully subdued and quiet. Open ended in the way of a good scary story (before the franchise era made us groan at the end of every sequel).

I enjoyed it but it didn't move me so it's getting a 6/10.

Four for the price of one!

Crap. Blogger just lost my draft of this entry when I was three paragraphs in. Damn you blogger.

I was saying that I have seen a few movies recently and whilst I didn't make notes at the time I definitely have something to say.

Friday 13th (2009 remake)
Boring. Dull, pointless. Lacking panache or fun. Characters avoid being stereotypes by being utterly bland and forgettable. Not a patch on the original and less memorable thsn Jason X.
3/10

Child's Play 3 (1991)
Dissappointing. Not as good as I remembered! There was a lot of fuss about this movie in the 90s and the impact it had on the terrible actions of young boys. This film is tired. Having a semi-grown Andy in a military setting (why?) is just nonsense.  There is enough Chucky for me to give it a 5, but I won't be watching it again for a while.

World War Z (2013)
Starring Brad Pitt. Wow. An intelligent,  big budget, zombie apocalypse movie.
It looks great,  it's original and bloody tense. Featuring the new trend of fast zombies and even more frightening - fast infection,  the scares come from the relentless nature of the plague. It's an intense film with great moments - like the first time a zombie headbutts it's way through a car windshield. Must see again 8/10.

Evil Dead (2013)
Directed by Fede Alvarez.
Supremo horror movie. Unexpected near perfection.  Love love loved it!!
This is the best remake I have ever seen and the best horror movie I have seen this year.
I loved the original and did not think for a second that a remake could come close. They kept the key elements but really made their own film. A film which was gory, gross, funny and actually bloody scary. I just can't praise it enough. It's not the cult film that it's big brothers have become but it's a great movie in its own right. Own it! Happy to award my first 9/10!!

Child's Play 2 1990

Dir: John Lafia
St: Brad Dourif;  Alex Vincent;  Christine Elise; Jenny Agutter

At the end of the first film Chucky, the evil killer doll, was somewhat...charred. As the sequel opens we see the doll being refurbished.  Apparently the toy company wants to find the cause of the reported 'malfunction'.

The first death happens almost immediately and tells us what sort of film we can expect. It's ridiculous and cartoonish with no sense of horror whatsoever. I doubt anyone over the age of 12 would even blink. But it does signify that Chucky is back.

His little friend Andy Barclay is in foster care after his mum was sectioned for raving about a killer doll. Now Chucky needs to track him down to avoid being trapped in his plastic form forever. He escapes the factory when a toy exec throws him in the boot of his car. He repeatedly slams the door on the doll's head and we think 'uh oh,he's not going to like that!'.

There is no mystery in this film. Chucky is facially and physically mobile from the start and wise cracking all the way. Unfortunately this means the film is less scary than the first and lacks suspense in the beginning but tension is still created by Chucky's relentless stalking.

Andy (still cute) is staying with a sweet little family who have no idea what they are getting into when they take Andy into their home. Chucky quickly manages to infiltrate the house by taking the place of another Good Guy doll (is there a word for doll murder? Plasticide perhaps?).

Of course Andy's foster parents don't heed his warnings about Chucky and they both meet a nasty end. There are a couple of nice hints early in the film to potential grisly murder weapons. One is a brutal looking machine in the toy factory and the other is an old fashioned sewing machine which we fear could be used to horrible effect.

People seem to die in really schlocky ways, with bug eyes and mouths agape - neither scary nor gruesome. In parts the film actually seems more parody than sequel. Still I cannot deny how messed up Chucky can look. His expression is feral, brutal and inhuman.An actors face can only move in certain ways but with a doll the features can be distorted to monstrous proportions.

Andy's foster sister, Kyle, doesn't seem too phased by a knife wielding devil-doll and I had to wonder if she was a sassy precursor to Sydney Prescott five years later?  When Chucky eventually catches up to Andy it's Kyle to the rescue. Very improbably the final players end up at the toy factory. We get another little nod to Kubrick here as Kyle and Andy are pursued through a maze of boxes.

I must admit that the escape scene in the toy factory is fairly nerve jangling,  with Chucky's grotesquely determined face and his hellish screams when he tries to free his trapped hand from a machine.

In fact the closing scenes of this film are amongst my favourite in all horror movies and I'm not going to spoil it by saying more... Ok let me just say that there is gore, tension and some full on scary nastiness. Chucky's curtain call is spectacularly gruesome, almost barf worthy.  Let's face it,  there are things you can do to plastic that you csnnot do ti flesh. And a hybrid of the two is just gross.

As with the first film, suspend disbelief,  munch your popcorn and have a laugh. It's not a masterpiece but its watchable and the ending merits 6/10.

Dragged back from hell

I haven't abandoned you blog! It is just my nature to flit between projects. Whilst I've been away I did happen to see Paranorman - which I highly recommend to zombie fans (yes it's an animation but it's beautifully done and funny too) and Drag Me to Hell.

I was expecting good things from Sam Raimi's offering and it did have his trademark gross out black humour with some really 'urgh!!' moments. Unfortunately the ending was far too predictable for me and I spent the last 10 minutes waiting to be proved wrong. It's a shame. And I'm not the best at 'guess the twist' so it must have been pretty obvious.

Still worth a look though, if only to see the young heroine repeatedly violated by nasty things going into her mouth. Seriously.

Anyway I will shortly upload the reviews for Angel Heart and Child's Play 2 and then I'm watching something paranormal which will freak the shit out of me no doubt.

Child's Play 1988

Director: Tom Holland
Starring: Catherine Hicks; Alex Vincent; Brad Dourif

I was so excited to see this film again. I remember it scared the pants off me as a kid. I accidentally saw a snippet of it on satellite TV aged around 10 and Chucky lurked in my subconscious for years.

The story is that a working single mum wants to get her kid the toy he desperately desires for his birthday. A moving, talking doll called a Good Guy. But these dolls are expensive, so when mum finds one for sale from a grubby character for a bargain price, she takes a gamble. Little Andy is thrilled with his new pal Chucky.

When Andy's babysitter, Maggie, orders him to bed it seems that Chucky doesn't like this. We don't actually see him move, but suddenly there he is - in the armchair watching the 9 o'clock news.

This is followed by a scene of classic shock-horror devices. Maggie hears some odd noises and walks slowly around the flat to investigate. She peers into dark corners and we feel the delicious anticipation waiting for a 'Boo!' when the doll attacks. Ultimately Maggie's demise is completely implausible but it does end with a satisfying thuDD.

You see, Chucky is no ordinary doll. He's possesed by the spirit of a serial murderer named Charles Lee Ray and he is looking for some old fashioned revenge. In my opinion the doll is almost creepy enough without the homicidal killer possesion. Seriously who would buy that ugly thing for a child!?

Andy seems to like him though, despite Chucky's habit of whispering nastiness in his ear. Poor little Andy trudging along in his snowsuit carrying this monster with him. We feel on edge as we are aware of the constant peril and we wonder how far the film will go to threaten this cute little kid. Alex Vincent is fantastic by the way. Cute and smart but without the saccharin Disney aftertaste.

When Andy turns up at a second crime scene and starts telling the police that his doll is alive, his mum has to decide whether her son is crazy or Chucky is truly evil. On finding evidence of the latter she threatens Chucky with the fireplace unless he talks.

This is a great scene. Until now we only see people move the doll or him appear somewhere he shouldn't be. When he is confronted he reveals his true nature. The doll's face becomes contorted with rage and he attacks her. It's scary and funny at the same time. The switch from a waxy faced doll to the furious demented killer is frightening and, well, awesome.

From this point the film asks us to accept a lot if implausible actions from the central characters.  Yes, I realise it's an implausible premise to begin with, but aren't all monster movies? The best ones work because the horror is so firmly embedded in a familiar rational world. It's the contrast that makes it convincing and therefore horrifying.

The film gets sillier and less frightening in the last 30 minutes, but just about pulls it together for the ending.  Trapped in the house, the survivors hide from vengeful Chucky who manages a nice little Kubrick homage as he chops through the bedroom door with an axe.

Turns out, it takes an awful lot to stop a voodoo animated hunk of plastic and Chucky gets a glorious, graphic and painful death.

The film is cheesy and you really need to suspend all disbelief before watching. The script isn't great, but the cast do well with it. In my view it's a true horror rather than horror-comedy and it delivers the requisite shocks in it's short run time. Above all the film intoduces us to Chucky who is just horrible and the effects used to animate his facial expressions are really great.

Many may not agree but I really like this film and I have to give it a 7/10. If you haven't seen it - give it go. And let me know what you think.