Sometimes with the good Grindhouse titles of the seventies and eighties, there are also the truly awful ones that make it through the ringer and come out looking pretty. Unfortunately Frank Henenlotter’s “Basket Case” is a piece of junk that has managed to garner a massive reputation as a horror classic. For what reasons? I have no idea. I guess because Henenlotter is such a creative and interesting director. I won’t lie, a movie about a guy walking around with his deformed brother in a basket is original, but that doesn’t mean it’s watchable. Duane Bradley is an average guy with a large secret who has just made it in to New York, and is living in a hotel with some of the most idiotic neighbors around. They’re all so eccentric and colorful it becomes obnoxious after their second introduction.
Tag Archives: Romance
Ten Horror Femmes We'd Spend the Night With
I remember watching a horror documentary about Dracula, and I forget who exactly said it, but during a screening of Frank Langella’s “Dracula,” two women in the audience admitted that they would completely allow Langella’s Dracula to take them with him and turn them, if they could just spend the night with him. In spite of the inherent attraction and allure of the vampires, men also have those female figures in horror that we wouldn’t mind spending the night with, even if it meant sacrificing our very lives, skin, blood, or brains. For the very reason those women would have given themselves to Dracula is the reason why many men would submit themselves to certain horror femmes. In spite of suffering a slow and possibly painful death, you’re almost guaranteed a night of head exploding, heart rupturing, love making that will leaving you a withered, soulless, but wide grinning corpse. To add to the endless hordes of horror geeks who’d offer themselves up to hot horror figures of the opposite sex, we list ten horror femmes we’d risk our very essence to spend one long night with.
My Sucky Teen Romance (2012)
Director Emily Hagins gained instant fame in 2006 when she recruited all of her friends and family to direct her first feature horror film. The production and Hagins’ enthusiasm for the genre garnered the attention of film critic Harry Knowles (who cameos as a vampire expert) who took Hagins under his wing helping to fuel her film career. In 2009, Hagins then became the topic of the excellent documentary “Zombie Girl: The Movie,” a light hearted and entertaining look at Hagins relentless efforts to complete her feature length zombie film “Pathogen.” The documentary took festivals by storm and remains one of the more heart felt depictions of filmmaking ever produced. Now that we’ve played catch up, “My Sucky Teen Romance” is director Emily Hagins one step forward in to a much more legitimate career as a film director.
Transylmania (2009)
“Transylmania” is a pretty much just a waste of time. It rips from better horror comedies and tries in vain to construct something new and fails at every single turn imaginable. Go see “Transylvania Twist,” or “Young Frankenstein,” or “Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” or “Hold That Ghost” if you want to view what a true horror comedy is capable of. Hell, go see “Dracula Dead and Loving It” if you want to see a film that never quite manages to make use of its horror farce status but is still ten times better than “Transylmania.” It feels as if they wrote out a story (assuming there is a story) that involved a bunch of moronic college kids going to a foreign country. And then someone along the way figured they’d make some cash off the vampire craze and injected a lot of faux horror themes in to the script.
Justice Woman
The new superhero web series entitled “Justice Woman” is an episodic adventure that’s less “Elektra” meets Lois Lane, and more Carrie Bradshaw if she decided to don a costume and investigate crimes in her city. “Justice Woman” is definitely a web series for the martini drinking, “The View” watching audience. That’s by no means meant to be a disparaging commentary on the series, but “Justice Woman” is definitely aiming for a niche audience, and I’m sadly not it.
H.P. Lovecraft's The Evil Clergyman (2012)
In 1988, Empire Pictures sought to create an anthology of films that would act as sequels to their big hits. There was a planned “Trancers 1.5,” a sequel to “The Dungeonmaster,” and the HP Lovecraft short film “The Evil Clergyman.” Re-uniting the legendary Jeffery Combs, and the gorgeous Barbara Crampton, the film was never released, and for many years it was thought to have been lost. After being discovered on a low quality VHS, the print of “The Evil Clergyman” was restored as best as possible by Full Moon and given a new opening title and brand new music to accompany a fairly twisted story.
Night of the Creeps (1986)
Almost thirty years later, 1986’s “Night of the Creeps” is a horror science fiction film that is nowhere near being a masterpiece, but is still one of the best horror romps I’ve ever seen from the decade. Director Fred Dekker treated fans to a double dose of horror entertainment, offering “Monster Squad” and then “Night of the Creeps.” While both films aren’t universally renowned like “Bride of Frankenstein,” they are classics in their own right. If you happened to love both films, you kind of want to give Fred Dekker a big hug. For me, it was a one two punch of horror comedy gold.