Yar, “Tales from the Crypt” season five is now out on DVD, and boy what a set it is. Season Five is considerably hit or miss, as was the entire series, but there are also some genuine twists and turns with some rather fantastic episodes. Season five reaches around the home stretch, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to take from it. The humor is still as demented, and the crypt keeper is still a bastard. Gore flies, and the monsters are still rather horrifying with episodes that feature a possessive hypnotist keeping his assistant under his control, a controlling man trying to ship his wife in pieces in a trunk, a real estate salesman who comes across a family of freaks, and, my personal favorite episode of the season, “House of Horror.”
Tag Archives: Horror
Masters of Horror: Family
So far, the second season seems to be attempting to make up for the mistakes the first season made, and the two directors with the worst episodes of the first season, end up creating better episodes this time around. Landis whose episode, “Deer Woman” was basically a lightweight horror effort, makes up for it with the excellent installment “Family.” Harold Thompson loves his family. He lives in his large house in the middle of a bright suburb, and he keeps his family closely guarded and drawn away from human eyes, and there’s a good reason for that.
Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
For a film so set on camp, and only camp, Coscarelli dials the campy atmosphere down to about a four most of the time. He even manages to paint his character who thinks he’s Elvis as a rather dignified person. The entire concept of “Bubba Ho-Tep” is rather original. There’s a soul sucking monster at an old folks home, and to discreetly suck life, and not be noticed, it’s taking the remaining life from the residents there, and no one is drawing much of a stir. But Elvis and the black JFK decide it’s about time to stop this monster before they’re next in the war path of the undead mummy. “Bubba Ho-Tep” is a lot less a horror film, and much more of a film about the horrors of getting old.
City of Rott (2006)
Don’t be fooled, its goofy animation isn’t a sign that it’s for kids. This is strictly an adult affair, folks. Imagine “South Park” played with a straight face, imagine Romero’s “Dead” films without a plot, and you’ll get Frank Sudol’s “City of Rott.” An old man is the basic hero for Sudol’s zombie epic in which a new toxin discovered in water creates a citywide epidemic of flesh eating zombies that are rotting from the inside out. Armed with only a walker, which is his best friend, his means of conveyance, and his weapon, he looks around for some new loafers to help his ailing feet, but he can’t stop running into those stupid zombies, and the parasites that leak from the bodies when destroyed.
Masters of Horror: The Damned Thing
What do you know, after a long break, “Masters of Horror” returns. With a season of ups and downs, and mostly downs, the premiere is backed by the one and only Tobe Hooper whose last entry “Dance of the Dead” left much to be desired in terms of intelligence, coherency, and all around entertainment value. “Masters of Horror” was a season of safe scares, and that’s a shame. Is this season premiere any better? Yes. Yes it really is. “The Damned Thing” has everything that was missing from the first season. There is a substantial amount of engrossing story, wonderful characterization, a stern tone, and cogent direction a la Hooper who rebounds from the abysmal “Dance of the Dead.” After his father goes on a violent fit of rage suddenly, killing his mother on his birthday, Kevin Reddle, now a sheriff, is preparing for “the damned thing” to come, but how prepared is he?
The Initiation of Sarah (2006)
ABC Family’s “The Initiation of Sarah” isn’t an awful quasi-horror film, it’s just incredibly weak and bland. It’s never intentionally a very weak film, it’s just so lost in its own attempts to mimic a certain show about yakking women that it can’t find its own niche. What do you expect from a movie whose heroine has sex to prevent from being sacrificed as a virgin? “The Initiation of Sarah” is like a harder edged “Sabrina,” it’s a PG-13 “Suspiria,” and while that’s not always a bad thing, it’s just never interesting enough to warrant my full attention.
Feast (2005)
So, after an okay last season of “Project Greenlight” with Cleftatron Affleck, and Dimples Damon you probably wonder: “Did they actually spit a good movie from this show?” Well, I’ll say this: Even the goose shits a few times before laying a golden egg, and “Feast” is shockingly the golden egg after the two previous shits that were “The Battle of Shaker Heights” and “Stolen Summer.” Shocked? I still am. A group of strangers, the middle of nowhere, a rundown bar, a grizzled bartender, and an ass load of monsters. Sound familiar to you, doesn’t it?