Director Darren Lynn Bousman’s “The Devil’s Carnival” is a movie that made me think I should probably give “Repo! The Genetic Opera” another chance. Since its release, “Repo!” has apparently become a road show in the vein of “Rocky Horror,” and “The Devil’s Carnival” seeks to carry that success further. I sought out Bousman’s hour long film anxiously on the internet, and after watching it on Netflix, I still can’t stop raving about it. It’s a dark, mature, often brilliant look at the age old tale of lost souls and the devil’s efforts to lure them in to his den of sins and eternal torment. Three souls on the verge of death enter in to hell’s carnival and are put to the test. Lucifer is the ring master of this wicked carnival, and with his trio of minions, tries to test the revolve of these lost individuals.
Tag Archives: Satanic
976-Evil II (1992)
Director Jim Wynorski offers up a sometimes clever, but inferior follow up to the original Robert Englund film, that doesn’t really advance the narrative so much as it treads water. Rather than explore the themes of the apocalypse, and the eventual war of good and evil dictated by the hotline, we’re once again subjected to a tale about the hotline wreaking havoc.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
I really love that if producers were planning on engaging us in an anthology of horror films that they’d include elements from the holiday to incorporate in to a movie. I think with enough out of the box thinking, there could have been at least six movies about the horrors of Halloween or Samhain. But then this was the eighties. Audiences didn’t want out of the box. They liked it all boxed up and easy to consume. “Halloween” had a Halloween masked killer stalking babysitters during Halloween night. And here’s “Halloween III” about the idea of sacrifices and samhain all thanks to an… evil Halloween mask maker. And his army of robots.
Dead Before Dawn 3D (2012)
Watching “Dead Before Dawn” try to be funny is like going in to a third rate haunted house in the sticks on Halloween. It’s nice you’re trying really hard, but you really aren’t doing what you intend to. “Dead Before Dawn” tries to be many things, and one of them is a comedy. While it did elicit genuine laughs from me sporadically it manages to miss more than it hits. In fact by the end, the joke went on almost way too long. I was pretty relieved it ended or else I was afraid I’d begin to hate it.
Prince Of Darkness (1987) (Collector’s Edition) [Blu-ray]
John Carpenter’s “Prince of Darkness,” the second leg in the “Apocalypse Trilogy” is a horrifying film about the apocalypse and one of the many Carpenter films where good fights evil and evil wins. Again. And again. It’s interesting that “Prince of Darkness” is almost a precursor to the found footage film boom of the mid aughts, as director John Carpenter stages a series of dream sequences void of cinematic flare. Through fuzzy hand held cameras, he manages to stage numerous horrific dream sequences signaling the coming of the anti-god, and the anti-Christ, all the while using it as a means of expressing how imminent the apocalypse is. The thirty second dream sequences are much more horrifying than most found footage films I’ve ever seen.
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)
If this sequel had any balls, they’d take the reins of Johnny Blaze and hand the character over to someone talented like Idris Elba. At least then there’d be an interesting angle to this wretched sequel to a painfully mediocre movie that barely anyone remembers. Nicolas Cage once again proves he has no business being in film, reclaiming the role of Johnny Blaze, the balding mid-fifties biker who was cursed as Ghost Rider after making a deal with the devil. In case you didn’t know that, there’s five minutes of bad exposition along with Cage narration explaining the entire mythology of the Rider and what he does in particular, cue terrible animation. Most of the time during the opening animation, Cage sounds like even he doesn’t take this garbage seriously, and spend most of it making light of what is supposed to be a terrifying and mystifying character in the comic book universe.
Rosemary's Baby (1968) (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-Ray]
It’s not too often we’re granted a major motion picture with an all star cast that presents audience with such a subversive undertone of family and maternal struggles. It wasn’t up until this year that I learned “Rosemary’s Baby” comes from author Ira Levin who wrote “The Stepford Wives.” The latter work of fiction is a brilliant and horrifying look at the male animal struggling to repress the rising tide of feminism and women’s liberation across Western civilization through very shocking means. As the women of an elite group of men branch out seeking independence and liberation from home life, the men eventually form their plan to replace their women robotic drones that are perfectly content living the life of a subservient being whose goal is to please sexually and domestically.