Alien (1979)

Posted on November 8, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

As its successors, carbon copies, and wannabes have shown, “Alien” is a film that easily could have taken its premise and diluted it in to exploitation or just another stock monster movie. There’s something eerie and absolutely unnerving about “Alien” from the moment it begins. Director Ridley Scott, paired with the brilliance of H.R. Giger and Dan O’Bannon, spawns a truly creepy tale of a phallic alien hatching in the belly of an old ship that begins wreaking havoc on its surrogate caretakers. It takes a powerful woman to conquer the male manifestation with a protruding orifice, one who defies all kinds of gender stereotypes and tropes.

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Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

Director Ron William Neill’s “Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman” is a sequel to “The Wolfman” and a prequel to “Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein.” One of the many future crossovers for monsters, Neill’s movie is often incoherent, but at least delivers on the promise of the wolf man meeting Frankenstein. They only do battle for about four minutes in the finale, but technically they cross paths, so your expectations should be low for this sequel. The reasoning for bringing the characters together stretches all ideas of logic and suspension of disbelief. So “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” is really a process of asking the audience to willingly ignore its inconsistencies and wait for the monsters to meet up and fight.

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Seymour, Audrey, and the Price of Obscurity

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Guest Contributor

Real depth can come from the most surprising sources, things which at first glance are commercial grabs, but which, when mined, show greater depth. On the one basic hand, Star Wars is ships in space shooting at each other and guys beating on each other with laser swords. On the other hand, the critical hand that studied at a college, it’s an examination of our yearning for a call to adventure lost in the grit of seventies cinema.

Consider Little Shop of Horrors, one of the movies that came out of the well of nostalgia that is the eighties. Many remember it as a musical. Many remember it as a comedy. Many remember it as a horror flick. Few, if any, read much into it.

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Earth vs. the Spider (2001)

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

Director Scott Ziehl’s “Earth vs. The Spider” is an often overlooked and extremely obscure film, and for good reason. It’s a relative rip-off of David Cronenberg’s “The Fly,” and let’s face it: There’s no reason to call this movie “Earth vs. The Spider” at all. I fondly remember this being featured on Cinemax here in America in a Stan Winston horror movie showcase. His company rehashed American International Pictures films, but in name only. As is the case with “Earth vs. The Spider,” which isn’t a masterpiece, but isn’t bad for a hokey shamelessly derivative monster movie.

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Almost Human (2014) [Blu-Ray]

Posted on October 28, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

Sometimes shocking simplicity is all you really need to give audiences a good scare here and there. With a noticeable low budget, director Joe Begos doesn’t aspire to deliver anything more than a gruesome alien horror film while also sticking to the basics of what makes a good horror movie work. “Almost Human” is a very well made horror science fiction movie in the vein of “The Thing” and “Xtro.” It works within a limited budget and still delivers a pretty eerie and tense, albeit flawed, horror entry. If you can forgive the obvious nods and winks to films like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and “The Terminator,” you’re in for a good time.

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Frankenstein’s Army (2013)

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

I’ve never gone in to a movie wanting to love it so much and come out of it feeling so utterly disappointed. Except maybe “Cabin Fever.” In either case, I wanted to love “Frankenstein’s Army” if only for its interesting tale of a Russian squad going in to battle and finding a madman scientist using soldiers to form his own army of decrepit freaks. Normally I’m a big fan of the found footage sub-genre as well, but once I realized “Frankenstein’s Army” was found footage, it threw me out of the narrative almost immediately. I can see the found footage formula working in the age of digital camera, and digital camcorders, and cell phone videos. I can even see it working in the nineties with VHS camcorders, but to have us believe there’s a found footage movie set during World War II is immensely absurd, and just downright desperate.

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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

It’s surprising how quickly “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” becomes a vanity project for director Kenneth Branagh. Rather than a tale of a monster wreaking havoc on his master, the film feels more like Jane Austen co-starring the monster who is kind of a nuisance and then becomes a threat to his creator. I’ve rarely seen Frankenstein movies where the creature is the third banana, but lo and behold Branagh pulls it off in what is more a film about Victor Frankenstein having a lover’s spat with his wife, who discovers her husband has committed some evil selfish acts. To his credit though, Victor Frankenstein is no hero. He’s selfish, self-centered, and has a God complex, but Branagh is very obsessed with chewing the scenery. So much so that he even manages to outdo Robert DeNiro.

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