Director Christian Anderson’s short horror film is a short I hope turns in to a feature film. I intend to buy it. And re-watch it. Every time I think there can’t be any new material mined from the horror hero gamut, someone always surprises me. “Hell’s Belles” is a fantastic short horror film about two ghost fighting babes named Adria and Helena.
The comic book movie has never been bigger in the age of modern cinema, and as a commodity, it’s still a very valuable asset for many studios who once considered the notion of basing a tent pole movie around a superhero laughable. For a long time comic book movies were C grade Television fodder like “Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD” and “Generation X,” and now they’re raking in humongous profits at the box office, have helped fuel media empires, saved comic book companies like Marvel, and have attracted humongous movie stars to portray iconic characters. As such with comic book movies still being doled out in as fast a pace as studios can dole them out, here are ten of my Top Ten Comic Book Movies of All Time. So far. I expect this list to be different in ten years.
It’s not like I’m disappointed or anything. I mean, I’m shocked they managed to somehow take a one note ridiculous concept like “Hostel” and turn it in to one whole movie, let alone two. And now they decided to create a third film that attempts to flip the coin on the premise and fails spectacularly. “Hostel Part III” is a mind numbing, cheap, despicable little mess of a horror film, the last release of excess gas on the festering corpse of the torture porn fad that attempts to build on the hollow premise of the first film.
You know how I know “Spiders” is set in New York and not in a cleverly shot in a studio with the same set pieces re-used over and over again? Becawse Patrick Muldoon tawks like dis tru most of da movie. Youse guys and yaw clichés about New Yawkers! Hey, I’m walkin here! It sounds like I made a bad funny, but a character actually shouts that a half hour in to the movie. Because it’s not Canada if you don’t say “eh,” and it’s not New York if you don’t pay homage to Ratzo Rizzo.
This is almost like “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” if conceived by Jim Jarmusch and directed by Larry Fessenden. The film attempts to put up a pretence that it’s saving the monster shots for the big finale, but in reality you can almost feel the director concealing the monster for the fact that it’s not a very menacing creature, when all is said and done.
I’m not sure why, but “Ooga Booga” is apparently in the same universe as “Zombies vs. Strippers.” Not only is the strip club mentioned in passing, but Charles Band shoe horns the woefully unfunny and poorly created recurring character Hambo, a dysfunctional children’s show host in to the movie for reasons I can’t possibly fathom. Perhaps these last two films have been produced by the same person who feels the need to jump start their own Hambo movie somewhere in the future, I can only imagine. This isn’t the first time Charles Band has indicated these movies are all in the same universe, but I’m shocked that Band and Full Moon would rely on a recurring character like Hambo. I’d far more expect Full Moon to create a more enigmatic and interesting character to appear in their films to bridge stories from time to time than a perverted clown with a pig nose who hosts a kids’ show. But lo and behold, that’s what “Ooga Booga” feeds us.
Director Travis Betz, if anything, tries for originality and for the most part achieves it. Though “Lo” strives for simplicity and a downbeat nature, it’s a rather spectacular feat to comprise an entire film and story, as well as a horrific world, around one setting and one room only. Comprised very much like a stage play, “Lo” begins as a creepy trip in to the supernatural, and ends as a tragic love tale. “Lo” is about a man who simply can’t let his loved one go, and the trip he takes to ensure that he can re-claim the one he lost a long time ago.