If you’re willing to ignore the obligatory self-aware jabs at slasher films in the first half hour that derails the story for a good portion of the prologue, “The Hills Run Red” is actually quite an entertaining slasher film, and one that dabbles in that classic formula of teens wanting to uncover a legend and meeting pure evil and chaos face to face. If you keep knocking on the devil’s door, eventually he’s going to answer, and two aspiring filmmakers learn that lesson when they team up to find the mythical grindhouse flick “The Hills Run Red” a controversial gory film in the vein of Ruggero Deodato’s classic that mysteriously went missing along with its director and co-stars.
Tag Archives: Survival
Rammbock: Berlin Undead (2011)
Fans of the zombie sub-genre are ensconced in the walking dead these days as Hollywood and filmmakers all over the world in every corner have found taking to the living dead to be a source of creativity and an unlimited audience who want to see who can take the belt from Romero. “Rammbock” has an hour long to tell multiple stories and screenwriter Benjamin Kressler is up to the challenge staging the end of the world in modern Germany at the hands of raging infectious monsters, all of whom have a taste for blood and are relentless.
Brain Dead (2007)
Director Kevin S. Tenney, the mind behind eighties cult classics like “Night of the Demons” and “Witchboard” aims about as low to the ground as possible with a mini-budget horror comedy that’s neither scary nor funny. I guess it takes a special kind of mind to appreciate what Tenney has to offer audiences, but I just couldn’t find the fun in what was really just a series of misfires in an unfocused muddled movie that, in the end, is just a waste of time. I enjoy horror movies where you have to just go on auto pilot and not ask for logic, but “Brain Dead” asks almost too much from its audience.
Frozen (2010)
The work of horror auteur Adam Green has been something of a mixed bag for me since he debuted to horror fans so many years ago. I was not gaga over his slasher throwback “Hatchet,” but I was entertained immensely by his murder mystery “Spiral,” and somewhere between those movies he found the middle ground to make a movie that’s something of a horror film based around natural inconvenience. Such as “Open Water,” Adam Green sets down upon an incident that doesn’t seem like much of a big deal to the natural observer… until it happens to them.
Shock Invasion (2010)
Another leg in Frank Sudol’s “Budget Gore Series” of animated genre entries, and the final cut out style animated movie from BlackArro, “Shock Invasion” is pure Frank Sudol available solely for the open minded genre buff where in Sudol channels Bakshi in a gore soaked science fiction tale that is about as creative and surreal as Sudol can be. Going from zombies, to demons, now on to merciless aliens, Sudol enlists his mini-budget and vocal talents to animate a sick little gem that chronicles the fight for survival of a group of rag tag denizens of a futuristic city. Ral Foster awakens one day to discover his entire city has been infested by aliens who have taken over the living and can inhabit their shells.
Plague Town (2008)
Adding to the continued xenophobia themed horror sub-genre, “Plague Town” is a movie that acts as a form of torture on its movie viewing audience implementing some of the most absolutely irritating and obnoxious characters I’ve ever seen put to a horror film, ever. Director Gregory tries to bring us in at eye view on a family of travelers who are griping and bitching at one another with some issues that have yet to be resolved. But that attempt to add these warring characters to the fold of horrific freaks on the Irish countryside works against him as there isn’t a single sympathetic character in the lot.
Alive (1993)
I didn’t lead a fairly sheltered life growing up. When you are raised the way I was, you tend to see many disturbing things, And yet first watching “Alive” was a very interesting experience because it shook me down to the core. Watching people eat their loved ones and best friends is harrowing enough but having to ask myself how far I’d go to survive in the middle of nowhere is something else entirely. We’ve all heard of the Donner party, and we relive that same experience with the Uruguayan Rugby team who found themselves at death’s door after a horrible plane crash left them stranded in the snow covered Andes where help was literally hundreds of miles away. Losing their lives, and their sanity the group had to rely on their faith and their strength to make it through day by day being forced to live on rations and inevitably each other.