From what I’ve read, Dimension has the right to Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” property and wants to remake the film series. But the ever troubled production has reached the point where the rights have run out. To keep the rights, Dimension basically rushed out a cheap shoddy sequel to the original “Hellraiser” series. This is a movie so horribly made and poorly constructed that the iconic Doug Bradley opted out of his star making role as the horrific Pinhead, due to his salary being chopped down from the low budget film. In his place is Stephan Smith Collins a poor bastard who has to live up to Bradley’s gravitas as Pinhead in every conceivable way and wages a losing battle from the very beginning.
Tag Archives: H
Hansel & Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft (2013)
Booboo and Fivel Stewart together at last! I’m glad they waited for that right cinematic project to get together and reveal their inner strength as an on-screen duo. Granted, Fivel Stewart is adorable, but “Warriors of Witchcraft” is one of the most uneventful knock offs of 2013. Especially for a movie with such a low budget, and the casting of Eric Roberts as a the school’s overly eager headmaster. The titular characters Jonah and Ella attend after Jonah is kicked out of his old school for fighting. Feeling the need to look after him, Ella follows Jonah to his new school, and before long discovers that this posh mostly bland private school is being run by witches.
The House at the End of the Street (2012)
Elissa is the new girl in town. Elissa just met Ryan, a good looking neighbor of hers, who she really wants to sleep with. Elissa doesn’t realize that Ryan may or may not have a dangerous past behind him. You know, he has no parents, and every time she enters his house, he screams for her to run for her life and never come back, but you know, Elissa wants him to come over for dinner. Elissa’s mother Sarah is uncomfortable about Ryan and tries to warn her about him, but where does she get off? What is she, her mom or something?
Hitchcock (2012)
Director Sacha Gervasi’s treatment of the life of Hitchcock is very much in the tone of Tim Burton’s “Ed Wood.” I gather there will be numerous comparisons and parallels drawn, as this new look at Hitchcock’s career is very much like Burton’s own tribute to Ed Wood. There’s the breaking of the fourth wall, the satirical look at filmmaking, the focus on the madman behind the director, the glimpses at studio politics, and ultimately the way women affected these two famous directors. This time around Alfred Hitchcock is worn by Anthony Hopkins who doesn’t quite convince as the rotund director, but has a ball as the perpetually repressed and lovelorn creative genius who expressed his inner most desires and fears through his own creative work. For Hitchcock aficionados, “Hitchcock” doesn’t quite inform you of facts about the man’s life that you haven’t already seen or read before.
Help for the Holidays (2012)
It’s Summer Glau as the cutest elf ever created. As her future husband and father of her children, I have to support my gal. It’s only logical.
You say delusional, I say hopeful. I guess other people star in this movie, too, but Summer Glau stars as optimistic elf Christine, one of Santa’s most important elves who dreams of another world where Christmas isn’t the focus of every day. Christine gets her wish when Santa gets an alert that there’s a family that has lost their Christmas spirit and is in need of some fun and love. Christine is sent as an agent in to a small town to help mom Sara VanCamp (Eva LaRue), a local store owner, re-claim her spirit and discover how much she’s missing of her children. Christine’s journey is of course the one that matters in the film, as she figures out the real world is much more difficult than she ever realized and every choice she makes with the new assignment has their consequence.
The Hidden Chapter (2012)
In truth I could kind of see where the short film from director Rodney Wess was headed, but “The Hidden Chapter” has enough potential to be a solid crime thriller, that I saw it to the end, either way. Though the film does have occasional sound problems, and some editing issues, Rodney Wess does compose a clever and sharp crime thriller short that goes beyond your normal tale of cat and mouse.
Haunted High (2012)
Zombie frogs, demonic exercise machines, ghostly sports jerseys, and evil toilets, they’re all here to be about as moronic as possible in one of the least scary movies I’ve ever seen. RL Stine in his days of “Goosebumps” drew more chills from me than “Haunted High” a film so laughably bad, it’s almost impossible to watch in one sitting. It basically has everything a bad horror film should have. Special effects so bad they seem to have been created in the mid-eighties, a villain so non-threatening he barely registers above a yawn in the spook meter, and did I mention genre favorite Charisma Carpenter gets top billing for a role that’s literally only thirty seconds in length?