There’s never been anything like Jason Lei Howden’s “Deathgasm” before and I doubt there will ever be anything like it ever again. “Deathgasm” is one of the very few death metal horror movies I’ve ever seen and it’s one that will definitely touch on the right spots for horror fanatics, despite the fact that it’s heavily centered on characters that live and breathe death metal music. For them, it’s a way of life and eventually becomes the downfall of humanity. “Deathgasm” is a shockingly excellent horror comedy that focuses more on the coming of age of its main character and how he uses the eventual demon apocalypse to discover something about himself.
Tag Archives: Action
Critters 2: The Main Course (1988)
With the original “Critters,” the producers adhered to a certain kind of formula that made the monsters from space seem like twisted cousins of “E.T.” With “The Main Course,” director Mick Garris is able to go beyond the limits of the concept and widen the mythology of the Krites and their bounty hunters. What’s more, Garris is also able to get so much more creative than the first film, as well as offer a better variety of Krites, and how they’re capable of devouring humans when they crash land on Earth once more. One of the best moments of “Critters 2” involves the krites working together as a hive and forming a gigantic ball that goes rolling through town.
Critters (1986)
Stephen Herek’s “Critters” is a fun and gory horror science fiction film that knows exactly what kind of movie it is. It’s neat a mix of a monster movie and a tongue in cheek action sci-fi movie. As well it delights in doling out a lot of gruesome kills and fun nuggets of very light comedy that will arouse some chuckles, but never ruin the momentum of the movie. Up in the space in a prison space ship, the Krites have managed to escape their cells and are now on the run. They’ve taken hold of a ship of their own and are headed for Earth. The alien overlords hire two skilled bounty hunters with blank faces, urging them to find the krites before they reach Earth and wreak incomprehensible havoc on the population. With the bounty hunters on their tails, the Krites have crash land on a farm in the middle of a rural town in Kansas.
Killbillies (2015) [Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2016]
Killbillies, also known as Idyll and Idila, follows a group who goes out to the mountains for a photoshoot and gets interrupted by the local hillbillies hell-bent on killing them. Writer/director Tomaz Gorkic takes the hillbillies in the woods tropes and transposes them to Slovenia. The story basis is one the public has seen a bunch of times before: city people trespass on hillbilly family land and suffer the consequences. The story is one that has been seen before, however its development and added details such as the alcohol the hillbillies produce and the fact that the group in danger is of varied adult ages gives the film an edge.
Dead Rising Endgame (2016)
It’s a damn shame that the Crackle team couldn’t follow up the entertaining first “Dead Rising” movie with an even better one. “Endgame” is a very disappointing follow up that spends most of its ninety minute run time involving government cover ups, potential military strikes, and reporters trying to get the word out about corruption. Every now and then the movie decides to dole up some zombie carnage. And even then it’s disappointing, since the story slowly drifts away from zombies and begins focusing on more rabid mutants that the government has been testing on. The narrative for a movie like this shouldn’t be so hard to follow but lo and behold when I wasn’t drifting off from boredom, I was anxiously trying to figure out how any of this worked.
In a Valley of Violence (2016)
In a year where Hollywood is trying very hard to resurrect the star studded Western once more, Ti West comes along and casts Ethan Hawke in one of the most simplistic love letters to the sub-genre ever filmed. “In a Valley of Violence” doesn’t so much have a narrative as it has a string of events that coincide with one another, leading in to a chain of revenge, violence, and death. Ethan Hawke’s character isn’t a hero, and John Travolta’s character isn’t entirely villainous, they’re both pushed in to unfortunate corners. It then becomes a bunch of scoundrels striking one another down thanks to the actions of one individual who sets up a huge string of events that slam in to one another in bloody chaos. Ethan Hawke stars as enigmatic Paul, a lone drifter who has only his side arms, his horse, and his loyal dog Abbey by his side.
31 (2016)
It’s amazing how a man like Rob Zombie who fancies himself a hardcore horror fan has done little to evolve since his first film “House of 1,000 Corpses.” Every film he’s made since that initial movie has repeated the same beats over and over, just re-arranged in various ways to look new and original. He fills the screen with genre veterans again. He inexplicably sets his movie in a mid-seventies gritty trailer park landscape. The opening of his film is directed by a goofy music video, padding the run time, and he even includes something of a montage with our characters, set to classic rock music as we saw in the finale of “The Devil’s Rejects.” Worst of all, he writes some of the clunkiest dialogue I’ve ever heard, and he is still dead set on placing wife Sheri Moon Zombie front and center.