The “Ghoulies” film series is the predecessor to Charles Band’s obsession with miniature terrors, and it took a long time before he could perfect the formula. Somewhat before the “Troll” movie debacles, the “Ghoulies” movies are recognizable not so much for their iconic monsters but for the monsters coming out of toilets in every single movie poster they’ve inhabited. Scream Factory packs in a twofer feature with new and interesting extras that the movies deserve far too little.
“Carrie” is one of the most attempted and tapped in to books of all time, and Scream factory’s latest release proves this fact pure and simple. The story of a pubescent young girl coming of age to realize she’s pure evil, or perhaps misunderstood (?) is a compelling tale that Hollywood has tried to perfect can’t quite get right. Brian DePalma’s film has comes the closest to acing what makes the narrative so incredible. 2000’s “Carrie” was a made for TV backdoor pilot for a possible TV show that’s just a mess from start to finish. Even without its efforts to tout itself as the next big television show, “Carrie” only has a few redeeming features to it and nothing more.
You wouldn’t think you could squeeze in such a unique story with so many layers in nine minutes but director Patrick Rea is up for the challenge. A tribute to “Are you Afraid fo the Dark?”, “Howl of a Good Time” is a successful ode that is in the spitir of past Rea horror comedies. Morgan Collar plays Brianne, a young girl who, with her two sisters, is attending the screening of a new horror film.
Once Mel Brooks proved that horror could be lampooned while also paid tribute, Hollywood followed suit with a lot of horror comedies that were sometimes mild spoofs and other times very heavy (“Transylvania Twist”) to the point where it was literally nothing but winks and gags. In either case, “Love at First Bite” took advantage of George Hamilton’s star power and put him front and center in a full fledged Dracula spoof.
It’s hard to believe that there’s ninety minutes in the run time of “Dark Haul” and absolutely nothing happens during the duration. I’m convinced that this was the concept for a comic book at one time, or perhaps is already from, as the movie dodges all the unnecessary junk like story and compelling characters in favor of a really repetitive piece of action horror tripe.
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It’s been presumably a thousand years since nuclear explosions destroyed the ozone layer, thus relinquishing all source of water from mother nature. On the forefront of the battle for Earth’s last bit of water are a peaceful society and the ravenous Exterminators that drive around in war vehicles. So water is nowhere to be found but gas is a very large resource? “Exterminators of the Year 3000” is the type of “Mad Max” wannabe trash I love. It’s goofy, it’s silly, but hot damn is it fun or what?
The zombie anthology movie is here and director Jesse Baget undertakes quite a task in delivering ten very diverse and interesting zombie tales set amidst the zombie apocalypse. It’s “V/H/S/” meets “The Zombie Survival Guide” with a dash of “Zombieland” as director Baget doesn’t collect a series of shorts from very talented directors. Instead his anthology is a raucous celebration of all things zombie for horror fans in the mood of an all out orgy of torn limbs, guts, and the undead. “Zombieworld” is set with a darkly comical framework where star Bill Oberst Jr. gives a great performance as the boisterous news reporter Marvin Gloatt. While the world is under siege, Marvin decides to gives audiences a play by play of the end of the world, despite being bitten on the neck by one of the walking dead.