The Mummy Returns (2001)

Posted on October 16, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

Man, Evie and Rick O’Connell have to be two of the most incompetent movie heroes ever conceived. Not only do they bring the mummy to life in the first movie, but in the opening of the second film, they desecrate a tomb, and steal a sacred bracelet that their snot nosed son slips on. Even worse, their son is kidnapped, and said bracelet is going to kill him in a week if he doesn’t find a mythical oasis. There’s a big difference between being an average Joe adventurer like Indiana Jones, and a bungling nincompoop like the O’Connell’s. Seriously, is it so hard to watch one child? And if you’re handling priceless artifacts that are absolutely irreplaceable, why entrust it to an eight year old kid?

Continue reading →

The Mummy (1999)

Posted on October 16, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

Stephen Sommers’ ridiculously successful reboot of “The Mummy” is a film that almost gets the formula correct. It’s like a cocktail of action, comedy, romance, horror, and adventure that almost becomes the perfect marriage of sub-genres, but never quite hits the mark; even when it’s at its best. “The Mummy” is incredibly uneven and tough to really respond to, because Sommers seems to want to opt for action, while Universal seems anxious to embrace the horror. Thus it’s all so unbalanced and drags down an action horror comedy hybrid with potential to be a classic.

Continue reading →

Leprechaun 2 (1994)

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

So apparently, not only does the leprechaun value his gold beyond all else, but he also requires a bride, too. His convoluted rules are that if the bride sneezes three times and no one but the leprechaun blesses her, he can marry her and she’s eternally bound to the knee high monster. The sequel to “Leprechaun” opens in ancient Ireland, where the leprechaun agrees to free his man servant, once he chooses his bride. Unaware the bride is the servant’s gorgeous daughter the servant outwits the leprechaun, causing him to look elsewhere for his bride. Which takes a thousand years on St. Patrick’s Day, for some reason.

Continue reading →

Leprechaun (1993)

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

I remember the first time my brother and I asked my parents if we could rent “Leprechaun” from the video store. My dad responded with “No way! You guys won’t be able to look at a box of Lucky Charms for a month!” Suffice it to say he did rent it after we begged, and not only did the movie not scare us, but it bored us to tears. You can just sense that writers behind the concept were running low on mythical monsters to turn in to horror villains. Trolls were taken, as were elves, so the leprechaun seems like a logical but failed next step.

Continue reading →

Leprechaun: Origins (2014)

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

It’s not like the Leprechaun was a horror icon in the ilk of Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees, but one of the aspects of his movie that made them somewhat bearable was Warwick Davis. His personality and good humor shone through the crap that was the “Leprechaun” series. In one fell swoop WWE Films, and Lionsgate take the entire series and completely sap out the life, appeal, and dark comedy in favor of a really stock monster movie where absolutely nothing happens. All of the lore and mythos that the original series tried to implant with their small monster is gone and we’re given a very dull and lifeless horror film.

Continue reading →

Werewolf Rising (2014) (DVD)

Posted on October 14, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

Director BC Furtney’s “Werewolf Rising” might be a decent werewolf horror film if it took its eighty minute run time and trimmed it down to forty five minutes. The rest of the thirty five minutes are nothing but padding, filler, and bad exposition that are meant to compensate for the obvious lack of narrative present. There is so much obvious padding that it actually becomes an endurance test, because while I was irritated at the script treading water, there is still so much here that could have become a great werewolf picture. Unlike most indie werewolf films, there is actually a good portion of werewolf action, with rampaging monsters, and transformations, and a chase through the woods, I just wish we’d seen more of that, and less people getting drunk in bars.

Continue reading →

The Digital Dead: Rise of the Zombies (2014)

Posted on October 14, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

I honestly have no idea what to make of “The Digital Dead,” other than it’s at least worth watching for experimental horror fans. It’s surreal, unusual, disjointed, and incredibly unfocused, and yet it seems like beneath the head scratching moments, director Wendell Cowart has ambition to create something interesting. With a bigger budget and more resources perhaps “The Digital Dead” may have been good, but as of now it looks incomplete, is woefully under developed, and really needs to trim twenty minutes to its run time. “The Digital Dead” is part slide show, part computer generated opening for a computer game of some kind, and part loose use of public domain.

Continue reading →