Stuff to die for

The Stuff (1985)

When I saw this back in the 80's I didn't like it, but as I stumbled across the trailer of this movie I though I'd give it another try. I was expecting something so bad that it would be great, but ended up getting a lot more than just that. The plot is that miner find weird goo underground and of course they need to taste it. Turns out it tastes great, so they decide to sell it as a dessert pudding. The stuff turns out to be quite addictive and soon everyone is eating it more and more until they end up eating nothing but the stuff. An industrial spy, an unemployed cookie company manager, a young boy and the advertising campaign creator of the stuff ads start to investigate what's going on. They soon find out that the stuff is turning everyone into consumer zombies. The idea sounds silly, but I really love how it's criticizing consumerism and big corporations. The stuff is a metaphor for drugs and you can just imagine how every food producer in the world would love to put some highly addictive ingredients in their product so people would keep coming back for more. But even though the story is great, the movie has it's flaws. It's badly acted and the comedy is kind of uneven, at parts it works great but at parts it's quite bad. Sure at times it goes so bad it's actually great, but the overall mood is a bit too uneven. Never the less it's still somewhat of a gem in it's company as it's a somewhat fun good bad movie that actually raises great points and even manages to be thought provoking at times. This is actually one of the few movies which I'd love to see remade, so Hollywood here's your next remake, go for it.
78%

Killing in the name of the lord

God Told Me To (1976)

When I began watching this I was expecting a fun campy exploitation flick, but was quite surprised how good the start was. It had an interesting story and held me watching with a good grip, at some points even raising some quite good questions. It was a murder mystery with people going on killing sprees and claiming "God told me to" as their reason. Sure it had that B-movie feel to it right from the start, with horrible acting to boost, but it was still quite interesting. So it set my hopes up for the end quite nicely. Well turned out in the end it went to the campy exploitation I was expecting before the movie. The nice setup and dilemmas set by the start were quite forgotten and it turned into a sci-fi nonsense with alien abductions, virgin births and even a guy with a slimy vagina on his stomach. Like the newspaper guy said; "Anarchy leads to chaos, chaos leads to reason, reason leads to sience" simple, eh? So the beginning worked nice as a proper quite interesting movie and the end worked somewhat ok as campy trash. But as a whole movie, it was just barely ok.
56%

Masters of Horror season 1

I know this is a TV series and I don't put TV series here, but as each episode is a short movie by itself I'll review them here. Idea of this series is that Anchor Bay has gathered some of the greatest horror movie makers together to make one hour long short movies. The selection varies from poor to very good. Finally had the time to watch them, so here's season one.


Incident on and Off a Mountain Road (2005)

Movie starts off as a quite basic slasher, but towards the end gets some twists to mix it up. Didn't like the flashbacks at start, they were just plain stupid, but as they tell a story of their own which influences the outcome, they were kinda needed. The first half with a survival battle in the woods was quite bad though there were some unintentionally funny moments which kept it entertaining. Towards the end it took a better turn and the twist wasn't that bad either. All in all quite ok movie.
60%


Dreams in the Witch-House (2005)

I like the Lovecraft story but this movie wasn't doing it much justice. There were some ok scenes, but not enough to carry the whole movie. Acting was quite bad and some scenes were just stupid. The man-rat was stupidly goofy and the witch wasn't exactly scary either. In the end not very good film with very little to offer.
20%


Dance of the Dead (2005)

This post apocalyptic vision by Tobe Hooper was surprisingly good, especially knowing what kind of crap the guy has made since the late 80's. Liked many of the ideas in this and it was nicely done. Too bad that towards the end all the momentum it had made falls into the corny plot. Worth the watch and one of the better ones he has made in the last 20 years.
70%


Jenifer (2005)

Dario Argento was at one point one of the best horror movie makers in the world, but has since faded in the vast nothingness. So my hopes were definitely not high for this one. And unfortunately it was pretty much what I feared. The story was ok, though the way the motives were brought up very poor. Rest was below average, even bad at points.
29%


Chocolate (2005)

Kind of an ok movie but with a lot of plot holes. I got the feeling that this story would have worked way better as a book and not a short movie as it rushes things a bit too much.
52%


Homecoming (2005)

Quite a nice film with a very different take on zombies. I can imagine this movie had even a stronger impact when Bush was the president. Still somewhat fresh movie worth watching.
80%


Deer Woman (2005)

The idea is just stupid, but it's more of a horror comedy anyways so it works quite well. This was surprisingly badly made, there were tons of little errors and those weird moments where the editing and dialog didn't really match. Also those crossfaded images were just plain crappy, could have worked in the 70's but not today. But still didn't get bored and it had it's moments. The lady was quite nice.
43%


Cigarette Burns (2005)

John Carpenter's best movie in over 20 years. Though that's not really anything special as he has put out some crappy films lately. Anyways this was a nice surprise and good to see that he can still do it when the story is right. Sure there were some bad scenes and the acting was sub par, but in the end it was entertaining and at points even quite chilling.
78%


The Fair Haired Child (2006)

This was surprisingly good. The demon kid was actually quite well made and looked freaky enough to be scary. The story was nothing special, but it kept me interested well enough. Worth the watch.
66%


Sick Girl (2006)

The leading lady in this one couldn't act at all, really a horrible performance. The story was kinda ok at parts, but the creatures were a bit too goofy to be scary. Nice ending though.
46%


Pick Me Up (2006)

This was total garbage. Bad acting, bad story, bad film. Though at some points it almost was bad enough to be good, but not quite.
2%


Haeckel's Tale (2006)

Clive Barker's story and the director of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) sounds good on paper. Well the movie wasn't bad either. Kind of predictable at parts, but the undead love was kind of a nice what the fuck moment.
58%


Imprint (2006)

Takashi Miike is a guarantee for something absurdly disturbing, so this wasn't a big surprise even though there were scenes that were really strong. One of the better from the series and totally in a different world than the rest. Well worth watching.
79%


All in all a very mixed series. Some of the movies were idiotic crap and some actually very good. As a whole it still kind of left a bad taste in the mouth. Is this really the best these "masters" of horror could do?