Tag Archives: Murder

My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009)

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No one is more exhausted with the torrent of needless remakes than I am, but I was shocked that Patrick Lussier’s treatment of the modern “My Bloody Valentine” is not only clever, but very entertaining. I was never a big fan of the eighties slasher classic, so it was a welcome treat to see Lussier treat the concept with respect, and add his own twist to it. “My Bloody Valentine” acts more as a tribute to the original film with a continuation of the storyline rather than actually try to re-capture the dark comedy of the original. This time around, “My Bloody Valentine” revolves the latter day town of Harmony that lives by the legend of Harry Warden, the psychotic pick axe killer who mutilated many during Valentine’s Day.

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Valentine (2001)

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valentine4Taking every bit and piece it can from “Slaughter High,” 2001’s painfully bland and tedious “Valentine” examines what happens when you fuck a nerd in the ass. At a school dance for Valentine’s Day, young Jeremy Melton experiences endless rejection from his classmates during the dance and braves the social experience anyway. After young Dorothy Wheeler sets him up to become the target of school bullies, Jeremy is never heard from again and becomes fodder for the group of girls later in their lives. I always assumed horror films were supposed to focus on likable characters. If not, there should be at least one or two likable characters you can connect with. “Valentine” works against such an effort focusing on four of the most vapid and utterly despicable young girls ever written, all of whom are stuck up rich snobs just asking to be brutally slaughtered.

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Popcorn (1991)

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There aren’t many movies that come along every so often like “Popcorn,” but it’s safe to say long before “Scream” stomped in to theaters to pay tribute to the classic horror tropes, movies like Mark Herrier’s “Popcorn” came and showed audiences how to do it first and better. Which is not to say “Popcorn” is as landmark as “Scream” was. In fact it’s about as unremarkable as any old shelf filler from the eighties. But for a film that came along during the death of the slasher genre in the early nineties, it’s a safe bet that “Popcorn” will whet the appetites of anyone looking for an eighties romp in the cinema with some classic devices of the slasher and mystery genre.

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I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

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imagesAfter watching the incredibly over the top performances in “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” I’m suddenly not so shocked that subsequent this film, the four stars of this slasher never actually amounted to much cinematically. Not to be cruel or anything, but where as most slashers suffer from an abundance of bad acting, this film attempts to sap melodramatic performances from its four stars. That means a lot of shouting, and screaming, and attempted self-aware jabs at the horror genre. Ryan Phillippe in particular sounds like he’s auditioning for drama class as the testosterone laced Barry who runs around screeching at every character for the first fifteen minutes of the film. The incredibly loose almost pointless adaptation of the Lois Duncan novel “I Know What You Did Last Summer” stars a cadre of nineties stars trying their best to mine the gold left behind by Kevin Williamson’s “Scream.”

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I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)

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27001Jeffery Combs, John Hawkes, a dreadlocked Jack Black with a heavy inexplicable Jamaican accent, you’d be pretty stupid not to watch this at least once in your lifetime. “I Still Know” this times seems to embrace the inherent stupidity of the film’s premise and completely wraps itself around the film’s utter moronic plot elements and red herrings at every turn. Replacing the bland Sarah Michelle Gellar is the even blander hip hop star Brandy, who is protagonist Julie’s on again, off again best friend and roommate Karla. Julie is back (apparently that final scene in the first film was a dream or something) and now in college. She has a nasty habit of waking up screaming in class, thanks to her recurring nightmares of the evil sailor man so obviously not a lot of people in her school want to be around her.

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Elvira's Haunted Hills (2001)

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elvira2So not only is Elvira a descendent of a witch, but she’s also the descendent of a Romanian countess. Truth be told, I’d love to see Elvira descend in to my bed, but that’s another article for another day. The good news Cassandra Peterson still has her unkempt sense of humor and she still looks damn good cracking wise and getting herself in to trouble as the Mistress of the Dark. “Haunted Hills” is the further adventures of Elvira, as the film is set in 1851 where Elvira and her servant Zou Zou travel the countryside performing for various villages. A self-proclaimed celebrity, Elvira and her servant make a habit of skipping out of bills when given the order from rather aggressive innkeepers, and the two make their days on the run and hoping for jobs.

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Detention (2012)

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Director Joseph Kahn basically creates the “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” of slasher movies, a movie so meta and so self-aware that a subset of audience members may be convinced this movie is actually an affirmation of the fads this movie tackles. I imagine some folks will smile thinking “He really gets us” while Kahn is pointing and laughing at them in the background. Kahn seems to have little respect or regard for people in to fads and spends most of the movie skewering just about everyone in this odd vacuum of cyclical nostalgia and retro crap with a modern age lacking an actual identity of its own. “Detention” is a film that many movie fans will either love or hate. I often fell in to the category of despising it but also kept dabbling in the area of admiration for being so unpredictable and original.

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