MonsterHunter

This movie manages to do in twenty minutes what most zombie movies do in about ninety. Whether you consider that a good thing or not depends on what you think about all those full-length zombie movies we’ve been exposed to in the last thirty years. I have often complained that some of these zombie films seemed to go on for way too long (see Dawn Of The Dead and Hell Of The Living Dead for example) so you might think that this twenty minute short film would be perfect for the genre. Read More »

When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will *yawn*. Huh? What? Oh, yeah, I’m awake. Just sort of dozed off for a minute. You know, deep down I never really believed the various explanations that the Man gave out for these periodic attacks of undead terror cells. You’ve got your Trioxin barrels that keep getting lost and busted open. Or there’s always some comet or meteor or other vague outer space situation that might have caused Joe Zombie to start fussin’ and fightin’. Then you’ve got your virus that some goofball scientist created and inadvertently let loose when he was too busy playing with his Bunsen burner. But I think that Day of the Dead 2: Contigium really hits the nail on the head in the realism department when they have the end of the world hinge on a guy in an ugly shirt clutching a green Thermos. I mean, has any good ever come out of dudes who don’t know how to dress themselves wandering around with a Thermos? Read More »

As expected, Day Of The Dead (2008 edition - now with CGI!) is horrible, but in its defense, it never really gets as horrible as you assumed it would when you busted into the gun store, stocked up on Uzis, ammo, and machetes and hit the streets of small town America to hack your way through a batch of zombies accidentally unleashed by our clumsy government again. Sure, there were plenty of reasons to hate this movie (Mena Suvari as a tough as nails soldier? I had to look in the mirror to make sure some zombie virus hadn’t attacked my freaking brain when I heard that one!), but whenever my hatred would edge into murderous loathing territory, Nick Cannon would go and do something like kick a severed zombie head like a soccer ball while dispensing some potty mouthed bit of dialogue! Goooooal! Read More »

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Four people including two white guys, a black guy, and a chick fly around in a helicopter after the living dead have run roughshod over our planet. These four people are holed up inside a rather large structure where they not only have to do battle against zombies with a sweet tooth for arms, legs and pig guts, but also against their fellow humans, thus provoking that often-asked and perpetually not-so-subtle question: Who are the real monsters? Read More »

In any long-term relationship you’re going to encounter that moment where after years and years together you find yourself a bit bored by your partner. You know each other so well that there doesn’t seem to be anything left to discover and even that hairy mole on her chin isn’t endearing anymore so much as just flat out disgusting. When you hit this point and realize that you’ve been calculating how many of the CDs you would get post-breakup while she’s been asking when your back won’t be too screwed up to go back to work, you’ve got to decide whether you want to try and save things or not. Read More »

I don’t think there’s a bigger group of prima donnas in the world than horror movie fans. They just sit around debating the finer points of whether some crappy flick has good gore, wringing their hands over which obscure Italian slasher movie is the best, and ranting and raving about boycotting this and that company until they release some scuzzy movie in its properly uncut form. Even worse are the wars they have over what the aspect ratio really is of some movie no one’s ever heard of. Read More »

I remember back in the early 1980s when this movie played the local drive-in under the title of The Gates of Hell for something like three straight months. I always wondered why week after week whenever I opened up the local newspaper the same gaudy ad featuring a rotting skull stared at me screaming that it had been “Held Over! Fifth Gigantic Week!” when they could have been cycling in some different Italian gore movies. (They probably didn’t want to ditch the killer ad artwork.) Read More »

In his earlier Strip Nude For Your Killer, director Andrea Bianchi (Massacre) harnessed man’s deep-seated fear of fat guys in tighty-whities to scare us into dropping our Twinkies and Moonpies lest tons of fashion models get killed by dudes in motorcycle outfits. With Burial Ground, Bianchi raises the stakes, turns it up a notch, and takes terror to a terrifying new freaking level by setting an army of Etruscan zombies loose on a bunch of dirty old sods and horny skanky sluts! Read More »

If you’ve seen George Romero’s zombie movies too many times, are tired of the wan imitations from Italy, and befuddled by the recent Japanese wave of undead films that stress low budget style over storytelling, then it may be time for you to look into a cheap Chinese import. Bio Zombie is a movie out of Hong Kong that puts a frenetic, comedic spin on the zombie genre and is surprisingly entertaining once the zombies finally start rampaging in the second half of the movie. Read More »

Everything starts innocently enough when a mob of angry townspeople in the bayous of Louisiana way back in 1927 get wind that there is some kind of weird stuff going on at one of the local hotels. It’s called The Seven Doors Hotel or something that anyone with half a brain could tell was code for The Seven Doors of Hell Hotel. Down in room thirty-six (thirty six minus seven is twenty-three. Add the two and three together and you get five which is just two less than seven which equals the doors to hell! Creepy, huh?) there’s a dude who’s painting these really ugly paintings, the likes of which the art world hasn’t seen since Track Of The Vampire. Read More »