February 28th, 2015 - Aberration (1997)

I was pleasantly surprised by Aberration. I generally like to go into movies with an open mind, but you hear "killer lizard movie" and adjust your expectations accordingly. But I dug it - it's a pretty small-feeling film (small cast, not a lot of locations... even small monsters actually), but it wisely invests in building interesting characters as well as creature feature action.

It's about a young woman named Amy (Pamela Gidley) who has just moved into her family's small cabiny-house in an isolated, quiet town. (I was guessing somewhere in Alaska, but I don't think it's ever mentioned specifically. Maybe northern Minnesota, as one guy has on a University of Minnesota shirt. Regardless, it's snowy and very cold.) It's clear that she's trying to escape from her past - it's not revealed what she's running from until the third act, but whatever happened she has a fanny-pack full of cash with her. (It's not a shocking reveal, but the Netflix synopsis spoils it.) Unfortunately, once she gets to the house it appears as though she has a pest problem that her cat Frankie cannot control. She runs to the general store to pick up some mouse traps, and meets townie/field biologist Marshall (Simon Bossell). He's small town charming and a little bit weird, but when Amy's car won't start she accepts his offer of a ride home. When Marshall hears about her pest problem, he offers to help. When it becomes clear that Amy has more than a mouse problem (if her disemboweled kitty is any indication), Marshall uses his convenient biological science expertise to help her get rid of her pests, which turn out to be these guys:

February 27th, 2015 - The Werewolf of Washington (1972)

Or the "Weerwolf" of Washington, since that's how it's said most of the time here. Even though Werewolf of Washington predates An American Werewolf in London by almost 10 years, it goes for the same horror/comedy vibe. I'm not sure why werewolf + place = horror/comedy, but whatever. Werewolf of Washington is only vaguely funny and is not scary at all - it's just a little too goofy for it's own good. It's a little interesting in the respect that it got made at all (I have *no* idea who exactly the audience is supposed to be for this thing), but it's too ambling and unfocused to win you over.

It's about a DC journalist named Jack Whittier (Dean Stockwell!) who is in a relationship with the President's daughter. He wants out of the relationship with as little drama as possible, so he does the natural thing and asks for a transfer to Bulgaria. While he's there, the President decides he *must* have Jack on his team working with his press secretary. It's too good of an opportunity for Jack to pass up, so he plans to go back to DC. Unfortunately, on his way to the airport in Bulgaria, he runs across a group of nomads who make him crash his car - and one of them is a werewolf. He manages to fight and kill the manimal - apparently, it's a weak strain of lycanthropy. I like Dean Stockwell as an actor - I don't like him in a fight against a werewolf. But Jack is bitten during the scuffle, so is now cursed and turns into a killing machine every full moon.

February 26th, 2015 - Donner Pass (2012)

It's kind of weird how closely Donner Pass resembled yesterday's film (Legend of Sorrow Creek). Four kids, isolated in a remote wilderness home, looking for a good time, run afoul of some evil and start getting killed. I mean, that probably describes about 20% of horror movies, but still - I'm having a bit of a tough time keeping them separate in my head. The big difference is that Legend was more supernatural-based and Donner Pass is more psycho-cannibal-guy-in-the-woods based, with a little dash of the supernatural thrown in the mix. I mean, the *big* difference is that Legend was mostly enjoyable, and Donner Pass really isn't.

Donner Pass stars with a quick and liberally-interpreted retelling of the infamous Donner Party story. (In the 1840's, a group of pioneers was traveling through the Sierra Nevada mountains, ran afoul of some bad weather, were stranded and out of supplies, and resorted to eating members of their party who had died of natural causes.) Here though, one guy is crazy and kills people; eating them alive in a very zombie/gut-munching style. It's kind of gory, really.

February 25th, 2015 - Legend of Sorrow Creek (2007)

The last movie I watched from one of my Echo Bridge budget packs (Disturbed) was a big indie stinker, so I was a little hesitant about The Legend of Sorrow Creek. My fears intensified early on in the film when we have a scene where a cop and an anthropologist are roaming through the "deep woods." It's likely just a neighborhood park - you can see traffic moving in the background. It's got a pretty poor shot-on-video look too. But once we get to our main story, I was actually kind of impressed. Despite it's obvious cheapness, The Legend of Sorrow Creek is decently acted and manages to be unsettling at times. It won't win over anyone who is on a steady diet of slickly-produced studio fare, but to me it was a pleasant surprise.

We get not one but two prologues. In our first, we're way back in the olden days, if the sepia-toned picture is any indication. It's annoyingly dark most of the time - as in most of it is just audio with a black screen. Maybe they shot it normally (there are glimpses of footage there), but it didn't look convincing enough... Anyways, you hear a woman creepily saying bible verses and it becomes apparent that she is going mad. She hangs herself while her husband knocks on the door and yells frantically. He bursts in, just yelling "my wife! my wife!" in case we couldn't figure it out.

February 24th, 2015 - Dark Vision (2015)

I like watching found footage movies on my iPad. There is a certain immediacy/intimacy when watching them on a tablet... like you're just reviewing footage rather than sitting back in a comfy chair to watch a film. It sort of enhances the experience for me.

Boring story short, I had to watch today's movie on the iPad. So I cruised through my options on the amazon app, and stopped on Dark Vision. Not just one, but *five* teams of paranormal investigators compete to win their own show in the "Dark Vision Competition!" I could be getting five crappy ghost hunting movies for the price of one! (Against my better judgement, I love the damned things.) Well, the synopsis is pretty misleading - we only follow around one team as they investigate the basement/cave-like tunnels beneath "one of Britain's most haunted locations." The other four teams are only hinted at using text onscreen, and have next-to-nothing to do with the story. But I was still pleasantly surprised with Dark Vision - it's a pretty entertaining film that is moderately successful as a horror film, and probably even more successful as a comedy.

February 23rd, 2015 - The Living Dead Girl (1982)

I'm not super familiar with director Jean Rollin's films, other than the fact that they are usually pretty surreal, lush-looking, uh... French, and not afraid of the nudity. And The Living Dead Girl fits right in with that (rudimentary) understanding of the man's work. And now, I'd probably add disturbingly gory in a low-fi way to that list. But it all comes together really well here.

The Living Dead Girl kicks off with a couple of shady fellows trying to stash some barrels of chemical waste in an underground chamber. They must moonlight as grave robbers as well, because one of them knows that a wealthy mother and her daughter are there - not buried though, their coffins are just sitting in an adjoining room. So they break into the graves and begin stealing riches from the bejeweled corpses. Then a tremor knocks over a barrel of waste (with a convenient tap on the side), which starts to leak out. Unfortunately for the grave robbers, it's the kind of chemical waste that brings the dead back to life! Only the daughter however - she's in her 20s and is strangely un-decomposed, considering she's been dead for a couple of years. She can't really talk or anything - she just wanders around with a blank stare and kills people (her zombie powers allow her to just jam her fingers into people's flesh). She makes quick work of the grave robbers and begins to wander back to the nearby castle where she grew up.

February 22nd, 2015 - All Cheerleaders Die (2013)

I wanted to like All Cheerleaders Die way more than I actually did. I'm a big fan of director Lucky McKee - May is awesome in so many ways and The Woman is one of my favorites of the last few years. Even though Cheerleaders is a co-directed film (McKee and Chris Sivertson), I was pretty excited to see something new from him. His films are usually pretty upfront and deft about exploring gender/sexuality issues in really interesting ways, as well as subverting genre conventions. It seemed like the high school setting of Cheerleaders would be fertile ground for a filmmaker of his skills and style. I also knew that McKee & Sivertson were revisiting a short they made 10+ years earlier, so I assume they must have had good reason to go back to the well. Unfortunately, it just didn't do it for me. There's a pretty fine line between mocking negative genre conventions and outright embracing them - and I felt like Cheerleaders was pretty inconsistent and veered a little to closely to the latter.