“Ninja III: The Domination” encapsulates everything you loved about the eighties. There are ninjas, Sho Kosugi, Aerobics instructors, Lucinda Dickey with puffed hair and an Aerobics uniform playing an arcade in her house, a synth pop soundtrack, and yes, a callback to “The Exorcist.” To reflect upon the fitness-centric decade, Dickey’s character even seduces a man by pouring V8 juice down her body. Teaming a revenge film with a possession film, “Ninja III” is every bit the silly genre mashing I remember from when I was a kid. While I have fond memories of Lucinda Dickey being called upon by her floating sword back then, “Ninja III” watches surprisingly well today. It’s silly as all hell, but in the end it’s a fun eighties trip that you can’t help but smile through from beginning to end. And who didn’t love Ninjas back then?
Tag Archives: Supernatural
Mama (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet) (2013)
I can see why Guillermo Del Toro would be attracted to a film like “Mama.” While it is a horror film in nature, deep down it is a tragic drama about the power of love and the lengths we’ll go to preserve it. “Mama” is the first fantastic film I’ve seen in 2013, a film about spirits and how immense love can be. After their dad murders their mother in a murderous rage, sisters Lily and Victoria are taken to an abandoned cabin where their father looks to mercifully murder them. There, they’ve found something that is not only intent on keeping them safe, but in maintaining their innocence. Years later, the daughters are discovered much older and in a feral state, clinging to a presence they call Mama. Their uncle Luke and aunt Annabel seek to take them back home and establish a life free from the pain of their original lives. But the girls find it impossible not only to adjust, but to display physical affection toward the young couple. Jessica Chastain gives a strong performance as the unkempt Annabel who finds her loyalties lying with her husband Luke when he fights to take care of his nieces Victoria and Lily, and transforms in to a bonafide mother figure of their very own.
Phantoms (1998)
What if the blob was a sentient being with a massive ego? That’s basically the summation of “Phantoms,” a film that alternates from tedious, to goofy, to downright silly quite often. The tonal shifting often affects “Phantoms” turning it from a mediocre horror film to just a downright idiotic horror film with no semblance of common sense. Why does every single monster or being with a consciousness suddenly turn in to a comedian when they have the upper hand? Freddy Krueger turned from a specter in to a clown, Pinhead began spewing puns suddenly, and during the finale of “Phantoms,” the being begins spouting one-liners like it’s going out of style. In the midst of possessing Liev Schreiber’s character, the monster screeches with a half body “How low can you go?!” as it chases our heroines through a house slithering along the ground.
Pet Sematary Two (1992)
While Mary Lambert’s “Pet Sematary” was nothing but a melodramatic exercise in tedium that put the actual center of the film in the background in favor of endless moaning and groaning about inept parents, her follow-up puts the sematary front and center. And still pretty much misses the point of it all. The 1992 follow-up is ugly, mean-spirited and still lacks any dread or menace to it. Not to mention there’s an immense focus on animal cruelty that’s often tough to sit through. In the end, it also fails to recognize the lure of the sematary and why these idiots continue bringing their loved ones to it to revive the dead. Once again the sematary is still there.
Exit Humanity (2011)
I wanted to love “Exit Humanity,” but in the end I feel like there were just too many ideas for one film. “Exit Humanity” attempts to take a simply a period piece zombie movie and turn it in to a high concept art house film. So there’s narration (by the great Brian Cox), there’s an alleged journal chronicling the rise of the dead, there are animated wipes that progress to the next scene, there are animated sequences where our hero fights the walking dead, and there are an endless stream of flashbacks and nightmare sequences allegedly symbolizing the carnage of the situation at hand.
Hell Comes To Hollywood: An Anthology of Short Horror Fiction Set In Tinseltown Written By Hollywood Genre Professionals (Volume 1) [Paperback]
I quite like the premise of “Hell Comes to Hollywood.” Create a short horror story that in some way involves Hollywoodland and its devices. In that general framework, Eric Miller’s compendium of various horror stories from a cadre of actual Hollywood screenwriters and television writers makes Hollywood feel so bleak and hopeless. There are no happy endings in any of the stories presented here, and thankfully there isn’t a bad story to be read either.
The stories here range from forgettable to really damn good. Even the worst story is really just a groaner that will inspire you to quickly flip to the next story hoping for the best. Most of “Hell Comes to Hollywood” does tend to fall in to the trappings of monotony most times, which is a caveat. The writers base their stories on vapid shallow human beings or the horrors of the movie studio system, and there’s never really anything that breaks out from the pair of themes. Sometimes they collide in the most unusual ways.
The Earth Rejects Him (2011)
Director Jared Skolnick’s “The Earth Rejects Him” is one of the most surreal horror films I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s not often I can watch a movie with a baffled expression and still recommend it as a great film. Not many indie directors know how to direct child actors, and director Skolnick brings out the best in his young cast. Ellis Gage gives a very memorable performance as this young boy who finds himself in an extraordinary predicament and has no idea how to handle it without becoming homicidal.