It’s Pinhead. In space! With his cenobites. In space! Someone opens the puzzle box. In space! And people are tortured and turned in to cenobites against their wills. In space! The aspect about “Bloodlines” is that even though it closes the original continuity, there’s still a host of questions never answered for the fans. One of them being, if it’s indicated in the original film that becoming a cenobite is based primarily on the subjects own sado-sexual desires that transforms them in to beings of unbridled sexual pain and pleasure, why is Pinhead still just a stock slasher who turns people in to cenobites against their wills? In space? It’s a surefire sign you’re in for a thrill ride when you see director Alan Smithee at it again.
Tag Archives: Suspense
Arcade (1993)
“Kiss reality goodbye.”
Boy I love “Arcade.” I just want to hug it tightly until it pops. It’s such a bad movie that it’s actually damn good when you overcome the absurdity. Maybe it’s because a plump Ralphie Parker plays a strong supporting role. Maybe it’s because Seth Green co-stars with a grungy nineties doo. Maybe it’s because the movie is just a rip-off of “Tron” and “Lawnmower Man”; either way it’s quite ridiculous, but for whatever reason Albert Pyun’s Full Moon Entertainment science fiction horror film is one of the finest pieces of schlock I’ve ever seen.
Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)
Like it or not, “Paranormal Activity” was the indie success story of the decade. After the big take off of “The Blair Witch Project,” director Oren Peli proved a valuable successor to the end of the twentieth century sensation by providing a horror film for the digital age where the chronicling of a couple at the mercy of a demon was filmed through HD camcorders and the advent of the then seasoned instrument of the worldwide web. “Paranormal Activity 2” commits what is almost an impossible task. It completely compliments the storyline of the original film while also adding to it.
Official Psycho Parody (2011)
Porn parodies are everywhere. Right now with the industry looking for customers porn parodies are what’s in and surely enough they’re big money makers and headline grabbers. It’s just shocking that somewhere down the road someone thought “Psycho” would make a good porn parody. I mean who would have thought a movie about a cross dressing psychopath with an obsessive Oedipus complex and possible incestuous relationship with his mother who mutilated hapless female travelers would make for something of an entertaining and arousing porn flick. Factoring in the thought that “Psycho” was already a fairly sexual film with thick overtones and a sexually repressed man who could only react to an attraction to a woman with aggressive homicidal behavior, and you’re already headed for a dead end. “The Official Psycho Parody” is up for the challenge though as a movie that seems to try very hard to mimic the style and atmosphere of Hitchcock’s masterpiece, while also presenting it’s obvious purpose for being a hardcore porno first and foremost.
There's Nothing Out There (Two-Disc 20th Anniversary Edition) (1990) (DVD)
From Troma comes the twentieth anniversary release of “There’s Nothing Out There!” a film I’d admittedly never heard of and was most surprised to see that not only was “There’s Nothing Out there!” something of a fun early nineties horror comedy, but one that was a self-aware jab at the genre long before “Scream” ever convinced audiences it did it first. “There’s Nothing Out There!” is about a bunch of high schoolers who out in to the woods for Spring break to party, drink, and bone each other senselessly. Around the same time as their arrival, an alien being has just crash landed in to Earth, and is now lurking in the woods. Is it out there? Where is it if it is out there? Why is it not in there with them?
The Last Airbender (2010)
As big a fan as I am, and continue to be of M. Night Shyamalan, the one tragic fact of “The Last Airbender” is that there just isn’t a need for it. The original television series is about two or three years after its series finale, the series lasted about four or five seasons, it still plays in syndication, and there is a new story waiting in the wings. Fans of “Avatar” are in no short supply of their Airbender fix, so Shyamalan’s adaptation of the show isn’t all too necessary, nor was it wanted. So instantly the cards are stacked against him. Yours truly being a hardcore fan of the animated series (frankly, it’s one of the finest and most entertaining shows of the last decade), I was anxious to see what Shyamalan would do to “The Last Airbender,” and I wasn’t all too disappointed with what turned up on the screen.
Devil (2010)
The devil is fiction’s greatest anti-heroes. A being of pure brute calculated force, the devil has many names, and many appearances and is without a doubt the most interesting figure in all of history, an individual whose sole purpose is personal gain and pure unbridled joy in making humanity suffer. But in all of its incarnations, the devil is also someone who has something of a moral code, and a guideline, and always has something to say about the disgusting bile of the human sole. The devil is the very reflection of ourselves, and the character always has something to teach us. Even before destroying us from the inside out barely flinching at our cries for help and mercy.