Monday, March 31, 2008

Dawn of the Dead (2004) - USA





Dawn of the Dead is a 2004 horror film reimagining of George A. Romero's 1978 film of the same name. The remake and original both depict a handful of human survivors living in a shopping mall surrounded by swarms of zombies, but the details differ significantly.

A nurse, a policeman, a street gang member, his wife, a salesman, and other survivors of a worldwide plague that is producing aggressive, flesh-eating zombies, take refuge in a mega Midwestern shopping mall.
The cast is excellent, the cinematography and editing exciting and innovative, and the makeup and "creature" effects are top notch. As good as the original, with exciting new directions and room for a sequel!

This is COMPLETELY Zombie-riffic! Be sure to turn your sound on!

IMDB Info :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363547/

Dawn of the Dead (1978) - USA





Dawn of the Dead (also known as George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, and Zombi internationally) is a 1978 American independent horror film, written and directed by George A. Romero. The film featured David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, and Gaylen Ross. It is the second in Romero's Living Dead series, preceded by Night of the Living Dead (1968). The film centres around a plague which reanimates the dead, who prey on human flesh. Several survivors of the outbreak barricade themselves inside a suburban shopping mall. Dawn of the Dead distances itself from the predecessor, this film is more of a polemic, exploring the apocalyptic effects a "zombie epidemic" would have on society, than a straightforward horror film.

The gore, courtesy of make-up impresario Tom Savini, is of the comic-book kind, where it's all very real and horrifying until you realize the color is off on the blood and the color on the faces of the un-dead is off.I could go on and on about this film, but the key thing is to see it, even just once. You may find it out-dated trash, or time-less beauty. Either way, it's likely Romero's best film, or at least his most ambitious (though I've yet to see Knightriders to comment fully). Energy, humor, sadness, excitement, love, loss, it's everything a movie should be (plus the origin of Sex Machine)! By turns horrific, hilarious, disgusting and absurd Dawn of the Dead is the work of a director truly on top of his game. Given almost total control (something which was to be denied Romero in later years) George Romero gives us his unique and vivid view of a world in absolute turmoil.

Not just a mockery of the hedonistic and empty America of the late 70's Dawn is also a parable or warning if you like of the brittle structure of society and how easily it can be disintegrated. Many have criticised the film for being too over the top and questioned the quality of the acting. This for me is one of the joys of the film, Romero uses gaudy sets and effects and combines this with comic book hero dialogue to lull us into a false sense of security. Then masterfully Romero pulls the rug out from under us and brings the reality of the situation crashing in on our heads.

Dawn stands alone well but really comes into its own as part of the trilogy to which it belongs. One theory of mine is that the Alien trilogy (forgetting the miserable fourth installment) takes a lot from the dead trilogy namely the pace and claustrophobia of the two which book-end the mass hysteria and over the top horror and violence of the middle film.

IMDB Info :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077402/

Night of the Living Dead (1968) - USA




Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 black-and-white independent horror film directed by George A. Romero. Early drafts of the script were titled Monster Flick, but it was known as Night of Anubis and Night of the Flesh Eaters during production

Night of the Living Dead, directed by Geoage A. Romero, is a horror masterpiece and the first of three of his "Dead" movies. This low budget horror has changed the way movies are made. This didn't need an "A" grade cast and a huge budget to become one the world's greatest and most influential horror movies.

This is the simple story of seven strangers who board themselves up in a farmhouse from the ravenous hoards of flesh eating zombies that are rising. But peace doesn't last for long as the tension rises, chaos and tragedy breaks out.

This movie today is still shocking. There isn't a lot of gore but the scenes with gore a shocking and disturbing, even though they are in black and white. This is still regarded as one of the best horror movies in the world. A quarter of a century old and it is still absolutely terrifying.This is horror at its most probing, subversive and socially aware, with a truly harrowing ending that reveals the dangers of misdirected fear and prejudice.

IMDB Info :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/

The Others (2001) - SPAIN , USA





The Others is a 2001 psychological horror/suspense film by the Spanish/Chilean director Alejandro Amenábar, starring Nicole Kidman. In the United States, it was rated PG-13 for thematic elements and frightening moments and runs around 100 minutes.

The Others is one of the top horror stories ever told. It's creepy, simplistic, and eerie.

Good things about this movie is enchanting simplicity of the plot, the lack of need for "Hollywood" special effects, and the haunting atmosphere that loomed over everything from beginning to end.

The first half, or even three quarters, seemed to move along a bit slowly, but it felt necessary to build the suspense to the most important point of the movie .

The film is set on Jersey Island, on the eve of the end of the second world war. Grace (Nicole Kidman), raises her two children by herself in a big mansion, teaching them religion, and protecting them from the external light. The kids suffer from an allergy that does not allow them to be exposed to daylight. As a result, all the shutters and doors are closed. But after she hires three servants, strange phenomena start.

The Others succeeds in the horror genre by being really scary as the director develops a fear of the unknown and madness. The strength of the film is to never go for violence or gore. Instead, he builds the fear in the imagination of the audience. Each closed door (and they all are in this house) masks what each one is afraid to find.The story and final twist are familiar, in the light of the recent trend in moviemaking: once again in The Others, the worlds of the living and the dead cross each other. The twist could easily be predicted, making The Others an answer to the Sixth Sense.With such an ending, flaws and inconsistencies come to light while a lack of originality can be criticized.

Nicole Kidman's brilliant turn is at the center of this sumptuously made supernatural thriller that builds and sustains creepy tension without ever relying on gory violence or special effects.

Like a stranger following in the blackness of twilight, The Others creeps up on an audience when they least expect it and leaves them breathless and dreading. It’s a throwback to psychological terror films of yesteryear.

Highly Recommended .

IMDB Info :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230600/

Saturday, March 29, 2008

EVIL DEAD TRIOLOGY (1981, 1987 & 1992 ) - USA







Another classic horror triology - EVIL DEAD . I think that everybody knows about this movie . The Evil Dead (also known as Evil Dead, The Book of the Dead, Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead and The Evil Dead: The Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror) is a 1981 horror film written and directed by Sam Raimi, and starring Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss and Betsy Baker. The film depicts five college students and their vacation in an isolated cabin in the woods, which turns into a nightmare when they find an audiotape that is a key to unlocking evil spirits.

Not for the faint of heart or those uninitiated in the ways of modern horror, it's a hoot for fans of the genre.

Energetic, original and icky, Raimi's splat-stick debut is a tight little horror classic that deserves its cult reputation, despite the best efforts of the censors.

There are two sequels to this one

"Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn"
"The Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness"

The second part is definitely the best of the bunch . Third part is more of a comedy then a horror .

IMDB Info :

The Evil Dead (1981) : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083907/

Evil Dead II (1987) : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092991/

Army of Darkness (1992) : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106308/



Friday, March 28, 2008

Dellamorte Dellamore (1994) - ITLAY





Dellamorte Dellamore (also known as Cemetery Man in the United States and Of Love and Death in Australia) is a 1994 Italian horror - Comedy film directed by Michele Soavi.

This movie is not as great as a horror flick but yet it is fun to watch .

This movie is based on a novel of Tiziano Sclavi, and it always reflects the "sclavian philosophy" diffused by the most succesful comics in Italy: Dylan Dog, the detective of the nightmare. There is the duality between love and dead (in Italian "dellamore" means "of love" and "dellamorte" means "of death"), a duality that Dellamorte feels in a really hard way. He is the guardian of the cemetery of Buffalora, a little town in the north of Italy, in which, we don't know why, corpses rise from tombs and Dellamorte has to destroy them. Dellamorte seems not to ask to himself why this happen, he shoots and loves. But at the end he wants to leave Buffalora...

The movie has a satirical undercurrent that's easy to miss; I think this is where the film is most intelligent. It's a scathing look at all the obsessions of the 1990s that veers from the ridiculous to the sublime. It deals with the obsession with safe sex in a comical scene in the ossuary. It skewers the annoying absolutist-relativist idea espoused by many students who've heard something about postmodernism—the idea that any form of judgment is bad—with Gnaghi's vomit and a young girl's assertion that she can be eaten by anyone she wants to be eaten by.

The film is more than a comedic gore fest (although it is the best of the lot). It is also a rueful mediation on life and death and love, on the lengths to which lonely people will go to find happiness, and on being content with what we have. It is filled with gorgeous camera work by Mauro Marchetti, including one perfect shot of Everett facing a statue of death while silhouetted by broken angel wings. It contains wonderfully wry dialogue for people familiar with Everett's usual work. It is a perfect balance of comedy and tragedy, with gibbering zombies thrown in for the ride. It's a flesh-eating, existential take on modern society's steady move toward individual lives that are insulated entirely from direct human contact. It's both a satire of empty 1990s angst and a profound examination of the causes of that angst.

Recommended .

IMDB Info :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109592/

The Exorcist (1973) - USA





No need to describe this classic horror movie . One of the most profitable horror films of all time . The Exorcist is an Academy Award-winning 1973 American horror film, adapted from the 1971 novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty, dealing with the demonic possession of a young girl, and her mother’s desperate attempts to win back her daughter through an exorcism conducted by two priests. The film features Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Max von Sydow, Kitty Winn, Lee J. Cobb and Jason Miller. Both the film and novel took inspirations from a documented exorcism in 1949, performed on a 14-year-old boy.

Extremely controversial at the time of its release, THE EXORCIST kicked off intense debate among critics, community leaders, and even religious leaders--spurring the public, of course, to make it one of the most financially successful horror films ever made.

Based on William Peter Blatty's runaway best seller (which itself was based upon a reported exorcism in 1949) THE EXORCIST shrewdly exploits the fears and frustrations of parents while disturbing religious implications merely provide portentous window dressing. The film is an intense rollercoaster ride, a marvel of audience manipulation, with director William Friedkin pushing all the right buttons to make this a genre landmark.

A film of such horrifying power that audiences are apt to be visibly shaken.

Absolutely timeless horror in its purest form.

IMDB Info :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070047/

Monday, March 24, 2008

The Changeling (1980) - CANADA




The Changeling is a 1980 horror film directed by Peter Medak and starring George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere (Scott's real-life wife). The story is based upon events experienced by writer, Russell Hunter, while living in the Henry Treat Rogers Mansion of Denver, CO.

Regarding the plot : After the death of his beloved wife and daughter, hit by a truck in a snowing road upstate New York, the composer and music professor John Russell (George C. Scott) moves to Seattle to teach music in the local university. He leases a huge mansion in Chessman Park that belongs to the Historical Society and has been empty for twelve years. John hears some weird noises always at 6:00 AM and later he experiences the contact of the ghost of a child that lived many decades ago in the house. He researches the history of the house, and discloses a despicable secret.

This movie has everything. Dark, spooky stairways draped with dusty cobwebs, a boarded up room with a terrible secret, a shadowy seance scene, ghostly voices and frightening noises that echo through the huge house, political intrigue and a very solid looking ghost who scares the absolute hell out of anyone he shows himself to. It boasts a well thought out plot with several great twists and a very angry murder victim, who doesn't want to be at peace - he just wants revenge, and boy does he get it.

Fans of "Ringu" will enjoy this tale of murder, ghostly revenge and bodies thrown down wells.

This film has very few gory moments or F/X. It scares with great story telling, sounds and dark corners. The acting is excellent and the director is quite accomplished.

This film was #54 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

IMDB INFO :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080516/

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Poltergeist (1982) - USA




Poltergeist is the first and most successful Poltergeist film, released on June 4, 1982 and nominated for three Oscars. The film was directed by Tobe Hooper and was co-produced and co-written by Steven Spielberg along with Michael Grais and Mark Victor, his first major success as a producer. The plot revolves around the haunting of a suburban family home that is suspected to be the work of poltergeists.

The film is often referred to as cursed because of the murder of Dominique Dunne and early death of Heather O'Rourke, as well as the fact that actress JoBeth Williams has pointed out in television interviews that she was actually told that the skeletons used in the well-known swimming pool scene in the first Poltergeist film were real. This has been the focus of an E! True Hollywood Story on the Poltergeist Curse.

This film was ranked as #80 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

There are two types of "horror" films:There are the scary ones, which is what the word "horror" means in the first place,and then there is the bloody,gory kind.Perhaps the latter kind should be categorized under another name.At any rate,Poltergeist is a good horror film.It goes beyond the idea of typical ghosts in sheets jumping out of nowhere and saying "boo!".Most of the adventure takes place in their world rather than ours,although we cannot see what is going on there.This is a very thrilling movie.It has great special effects and all of the scare elements that make a horror film what it is supposed to be.

After a quarter-century, Poltergeist remains one of the most popular movies whose reputation rests almost exclusively on behind-the-scenes diversions.

In the suburbs, a young girl (Heather O'Rourke) begins hearing voices from the television set, and is soon abducted into the screen. Her father (Craig T. Nelson), mother (JoBeth Williams), older sister Dana (Dominique Dunne) and brother Robbie (Oliver Robins) attempt to find her. They hire a medium (Zelda Rubinstein) to clean the "possessed" house, and each experiences spooky occurrences of their own. Robbie battles a demon tree, while other characters are plagued with things like steak. (All of these terrifying things are found in any suburban home.) Hooper and Spielberg spend a great deal of time setting up the suburban world of the characters, and we know them each intimately before the terror starts. (Parts are actually pretty funny!) The filmmakers also understand the value of a good resting point before things fire up again. The special effects may overwhelm the ending, but they do little to dull the power of the whole. The film spawned two sequels, and each of the films were plagued with creepy events. Dunne was murdered a few months after the first film opened, actor Julian Beck died after making Poltergeist II, and little O'Rourke died at age 12 after completing Poltergeist III.

This is a must watch for Horror Movie Fans .

IMDB Info :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084516/



Tuesday, March 18, 2008

THREE EXTREMES ( 2004 ) - Hong Kong , Japan . South Korea





Three... Extremes (三更2 Saam gaang yi) is a 2004 international Asian horror film collaboration consisting of three segments by three directors from three countries. It is a sequel to, and follows the concept of Three (2002), this time with more established directors. The three segments are, in the following order:

* Dumplings, directed by Fruit Chan (Hong Kong)
*Cut, directed by Park Chan-wook (South Korea)
* Box, directed by Takashi Miike (Japan)

“Three…Extremes” on DVD comes as a bit of a dilemma to international moviegoers who had already seen one of the three stories, Fruit Chan’s “Dumplings”, when it was released earlier in full-length version. As with the original “Three” two years ago, the sequel consists of three horror tales from three different countries directed by three noted men. (As of right now, all six directors have been men. If there is a third anthology (and really, why wouldn’t there be, considering the success of the last two?), it would be interesting to see a horror tale from a female’s point of view.

Director Fruit Chan's "Dumplings" is about the disgusting lengths to which one married woman goes to regain the attention of her older husband. The not-so-secret ingredient in the titular food -- the element that restores her youthful beauty -- is human embryos! But such Faustian bargains inevitably have a price: the wife develops a cadaverous body order, and when your source for the dumplings dries up, she is forced to take extreme measure on her own, including a self-induced abortion. The final fadeout is a sick little visual joke, indicating she has become physically as well as morally a monster.

Writer-director Chan-wook Park's "Cut" begins with an amusing fake-out: bloody, modern-day vampire movie that turns out to be the work of a director who goes home after the shoot and finds himself the victim of a home invasion. Dressed up in settings that look like something out of a Dario Argento horror-thriller, the story plays out like a sequence from SAW, with a psycho killer forcing him into a horrible decision: either strangle a child or watch his pianist-wife's fingers cut off one by one at five minute intervals. Despite a good start, the episode drags on too long, descends at times into foolish comedy, and then winds up with a just plain bad twist ending. It doesn't help that the actor playing the tormentor is not convincingly frightening, and Park lets him chew the scenery in a way that undermines the horror (at one point, he even does a lip-synch song-and-dance routine).

Director Takashi Miike's "Box" is the best of the bunch -- a disturbing, dreamlike tale of a woman novelist haunted by dreams of her twin sister who died long ago. Through a series of flashbacks and/or dreams, we see that the sisters worked as sideshow contortionists with their stepfather long ago, until jealousy led to the accidental death of one of them, burned to death in the titular tiny box used in their stage act. With hints of pedophilia and incest, this one is genuinely disturbing; the only way to "read" it is as a psycho-drama playing out in the lead character's head. Miike perhaps overplays the ambiguity of the story: the stepfather in the flashbacks is played by the same actor who plays the novelist's editor in the present, leaving us to wonder whether he isn't just a projection from her imagination, and the distinction between dream, reality, and flashback is never clear. However, the episode looks absolutely beautiful, and Miike seems in complete control of the effects he wants to achieve, including the film's only moments of traditional supernatural-type horror, when the dead sister briefly reappears to haunt her sibling, like a manifestation of a guilty conscience.

Don't go to THREE...EXTREMES looking for traditional Asian horror (ghostly girls with long black hair covering their faces), because that is in short supply here. For the most part, the stories here are geared to generate a thrill of horror rather than fear (if by horror we mean disgust that makes you squirm rather than a shock that makes you scream and leap out of your seat). The film may well live up to its title: it is perhaps too extreme for some viewers, perhaps even in bad taste at times, but you have to give all the episodes credit for being bizarre and effective. You may not always like what you're seeing, but you have to admit it's down well.


IMDB INFO :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420251/





Identity (2003) - USA




Identity is a 2003 psychological horror film, directed by James Mangold and written by Michael Cooney. The film stars John Cusack, Ray Liotta and Amanda Peet. The plot was inspired by Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None.

Identity starts with a scene that gives too much away too quickly, although you won't know it until you realize all of the central plot's characters have been introduced and the guy at the center of the opening expository monologue is nowhere to be seen. As the coincidences and strange occurrences build, it's essentially a given that nothing is as it seems and there is no rational, realistic solution to the plot. From then out, it's just a matter of figuring out the potential shocker of a twist before it happens. There are a few options, none of which I can go through without giving anything away. While it's entertaining watching the pieces of the puzzle fall the together, the only problem is that screenwriter Michael Cooney only leaves a limited number of pieces out of his puzzle, showing us more of the picture than we'd care to see. A better approach would have been either to keep us completely in the dark and pull the rug out from under us or to reveal everything straight away and begin to deconstruct the proceedings. Identity still works as a thrilling scare machine and an ambitious but structurally flawed gimmick.

A group of ten travelers is about to have a chance meeting at a roadside motel during a torrential rainstorm. Ed (John Cusack) is driving the formerly famous actress Caroline Suzanne (Rebecca De Mornay) when he accidentally hits someone standing on the deserted, darkened highway. The Yorks' family car gets a flat tire, and while father George (John C. McGinley) works, mother Alice (Leila Kenzle) and son Timothy (Bret Loehr) wait patiently. Alice steps outside and is subsequently run down by an oncoming vehicle. Paris (Amanda Peet) is a Vegas prostitute on her way to sunny Florida to start anew. She comes across an impassable section of flooded road and loses the use of her car. A man on his way to the hospital to get an ambulance for a woman comes along and gives her a ride the other way, where that side of the road is flooded as well. Ginny (Clea DuVall) and Lou (William Lee Scott), a newly married couple, are stopped by a man and a woman whose car has been driven into a deeply flooded section of the highway. The other way is the same, so they all arrive (back, for some) at a desert motel, run by Larry (John Hawkes). Soon after, Rhodes (Ray Liotta) shows up and needs a room for himself and his prisoner Robert Maine (Jake Busey).

Director James Mangold introduces this setup in one of those bait-and-switch jobs of editing in which we see an event from one perspective then get a second then a third and eventually see the whole picture. Once everyone is settled in for the night (or so they think), there's another fantastic editing trick (I feel the need to mention the editor is David Brenner after commending his work twice) which seamlessly goes from one room to another so we can see what these people are up to before the proverbial shit hits the fan. And, boy, does it. Soon the actress goes out looking for a strong enough signal to reach her cell phone, and soon after the shower curtain she used to cover herself is splattered with blood. Yes, this is essentially a horror movie where each character is a potential and eventual target, but Mangold has learned well from the masters of the genre. The actual onscreen violence is kept to a severe minimum, but the end results are captured with a chilling effectiveness. Mangold and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael create a hauntingly tacky and typical atmosphere of florescent and neon lights and tight corners around which anyone could pop out. The film's suspense works primarily because Mangold has successfully turned ordinary things, like the odd sounds dryers occasionally make and intense arguments separated by a closed door, into the designs of horror.

Cooney's mystery, on the other hand, has too many points of revelation before everything is pulled together to keep the whole thing a complete mystery. I'm not suggesting that I knew exactly what the mind-bending twist that explains why all of this is happening after the opening scene, but I certainly had a fairly good idea of the route it was heading. There's also an obligatory final shock, which the film does give away in at least one scene where a character's exit is announced and his or her return immediately precedes the discovery of another victim. The thing that Cooney has admirably succeeded at is staying true to the rules of his game. He subtly drops tiny details that hint not at the ultimate disclosure of the mystery but at points of depth about the overlying structure. His characters are all types, which is, of course, usual in a horror movie, but here it means much more. The actors fit these roles just right. John Cusack particularly stands out as his understated persona is used to great effect as the calm voice of reason.

So highly recommended by me if you haven't watched it yet .



IMDB INFO :


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309698/




Saturday, March 15, 2008

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders ( 1970 ) - CZECHOSLOVAKIA





Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a 1970 Czech fantasy- horror film directed by Jaromil Jireš and based on the novel of the same name by Vítězslav Nezval.

This dreamlike fairytale captures the coming-of-age of a young Czechoslovakian girl. After receiving a pair of earrings, strange things begin to happen to Valerie. As her burgeoning sexuality sparks even more haunting escapades, Valerie must contend with an explosively surreal world that challenges and inspires her. Jaromil Jires' film is a surprisingly sensitive and visually spectacular.

With its shifting moods and its fairy tale symbolism of youth and age, sexuality and death, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is part opaque folk tale and part Gothic horror.

The plot of this heavily symbolic, sometimes surrealist piece is rather difficult to sum up in a brief way. A young female (Jaroslava Schallerova) is introduced at the opening as she drinks from a burbling fountain, gobbles ripe red cherries and enjoys the wafting aroma of the flowers of the land. Though nubile, it's clear from the first that this fair maiden is bursting with sensuality, poised on the edge of womanhood. As the camera follows her through her day-to-day life we meet the principals who fill her life: her stern, pallid grandmother, a boy who may or may not be her brother, and the vampirish constable of the town whose relation to Valerie may in fact be paternal.

What passes for a plot here mainly centers around a pair of magical earrings that Valerie has inherited from her no longer extant mother. What sort of power these talismans hold is unclear, though the ringing sonic signature that accompanies their appearance onscreen (which to these ears was painfully similar to a game show chime) certainly is meant to point up their significance. Valerie's grandmother tells her to throw away the baubles as they will cause her naught but pain; her "brother," on the other hand, insists that their magic is protective and that the cruel cop seeks to steal them so as to prolong his zombified life. But the overt fairy tale nature of this film comes quickly to the fore when the earrings are stolen from Valerie's possession on the very day that she experiences her first menstruation; following these nearly simultaneous incidents, the girl-now-turned-woman finds herself exposed to all the desirous machinations of the adult world, with her youthful naivete sent spinning away into the past.

Much of the film's attraction lies in the artlessly simple performance of its star and the expressive use of fantastic signs and symbols to put forth its themes of change, duality and burgeoning eroticism. At the awakening of adult life there also lurks the spectre of death; people are not at all what they appear at the surface; within the family itself lurk bewildering demons of untold strength. Some of the imagery here is startlingly overt -- the pure white of Valerie's bedroom, the appearance of masked figures, the constant use of flame red fire, and her "father's" propensity for turning into a weasel as well as his iniquitous, smoldering lair. Viewers of a more political bent may want to read many of the signs shown here as related to ongoing historical events; for my part, I think the film plays much more simply as a modern fable. But Valerie and Her Week of Wonders seemingly has much more in common with the original tales of the brothers Grimm than the sanitized versions that came along after their death. In more ways than one, this is a fairy tale that has teeth.

Though obviously a period piece in many ways, this gorgeously sumptuous example of post Soviet Czech film is an astonishing curio that succeeds by bringing a coming-of-age tale into the jet set age with a spectacular flourish of chromatic and sonic style. The sometimes puzzling and disjointed narrative is carried along by the ample tactile charm of its young star and the visual wizardry of its helmsman. Along with some of the other films included in the traveling Czech Horror and Fantasy Festival, Jires' film offers a unique glance at the sort of work that filmmakers in Prague sometimes turned to in the wake of Soviet tank treads. No longer able to operate freely as artists, those who stayed on to create cinema after 1968 often turned to the phantasmagoric as a simple way to avoid heavy handed political censorship. Though the results were not uniformly excellent (and the loss of some talent hurt the industry such that it has not yet returned to its mid '60s level), the example of Valerie and Her Week of Wonders demonstrates that such restrictions do not always bind so tightly that they cannot be transcended. That such artistry can't just be stamped out represents a great triumph of the human spirit, and when a film like this one resurfaces after three decades of absence it's a pleasure that shouldn't be foregone.


IMDB Info :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066516/


Saturday, March 8, 2008

Tetsuo I &II - JAPAN


TETSUO I - The Iron Man ( 1989 )







TETSUO II - The Body Hammer ( 1992 )






Tetsuo: The Iron Man ( 1989 ) & Tetsuo II: Body Hammer ( 1992 ) are the two Japanese Horror Films Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto . Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo has been one of the best ultra underground Japanese films . This film is always as effective, stunning and outstanding as it was .

Tetsuo: The Iron Man ( 1989 ) :The "plot" and premise is simple. A metal fetishist (played by the director himself) inserts pieces of metal into his own body with often bloody results, understandably. He becomes run down by a car after which the fetishist starts to have very severe changes in his body and starts to mutate into human/metal monster and the man who ran him down starts to have similar changes in his body, too.. What follows is 60 minutes of total surreal mayhem, nightmarish imagery and use of perhaps all the imaginable cinematic techniques in editing, photography and music. You have been warned!

It is hard to describe with words the power of this film, which has often been referred as a combination of Lynch, Cronenberg and of course Anime and Sci-fi. The photography is stunning to say the least as director's 16mm camera twists, turns, runs, falls, climbs, zooms and does all the possible ways the director could invent to create this kind of atmosphere. The film consists of (very) fast edits, flashbacks, nightmare sequences and images and fast forward photography that spiced with incredible soundtrack is something never before seen. The soundtrack is made with different sounds of metal hitting together, scratching against something and most notable, there is also synthesizer use to create very ominous and threatening atmosphere that never stops, and the music is again one of the most important elements of this film.
The effects are totally outstanding as the director made them by himself.

The theme of the film is obviously the fear of technology and how far it will be developed. The film ends pretty pessimistically and it underlines the fears and threats that are in the air and were in Tsukamoto's mind, too. The images of huge metal machines and motors at the beginning of the movie, are very ominous and the machines seem to be alive and are very nightmarish overall, even though they should be DEAD machines because metal doesn't live, at least yet. This reminded me of work of David Lynch and his Eraserhead and Lost Highway, which both create something very ominous, dangerous and very scary with these similar techniques of close ups of water spilling, engines working and smoke coming closer. Just remember the images of radiator and coffee-pot in Eraserhead and mystery man and smoke (among many others) in Lost Highway. The feeling in Tetsuo is exactly similar, even though the things themselves are not scary or threatening, because they should be only dead pieces of metal and plastic, products in other words.

Tetsuo II: Body Hammer ( 1992 ) : Sequel to "Tetsou" this time has the Iron Man transforming into cyberkinetic gun when a gang of vicious skinheads kidnap his son.

Some may find this superior to original , some not . All comparisons aside, basically to explain this movie in any logical sense is absurd. But what the heck; If you took a boiling pot of water, threw in an episode of the INCREDIBLE HULK, added a tablespoon of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and mix it with generous portions of THE TERMINATOR, you would have TETSUO 2: BODY HAMMER. A hyper-kinetic, yeah that's the word, stylish sci-fi movie done in the tradition of Japanimation, only its real-life.

These Two Movies of classic horror cinema . Highly Recommended .


IMDB Info :


Tetsuo: The Iron Man : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096251/

Tetsuo II: Body Hammer ( 1992 ) : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105569/

Thursday, March 6, 2008

À l'intérieur (2007) - FRANCE





À l'intérieur ( INSIDE ) is a 2007 french horror film directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury .

Now what can i say about this movie .... I just finished this movie watching and I must say that this is one of the goriest movies ever made . Lots of blood from starting till the end of the film . You know how certain amusement park rides (usually the really scary or herky-jerky ones) have warning signs that say "Look, if you're pregnant enough that you can rest a mug of coffee on top of your belly, then you're definitely not allowed to get on this ride"? I'm paraphrasing there, but already you get my point: Certain rides are too physically strenuous for pregnant women to deal with. Well, I'd like to propose that the ferocious French horror flick
À l'intérieur (aka Inside) get one of those signs. Bottom Line: Not since Rosemary's Baby has there been a film to freak out the preggos.

The plot is a wonderfully stripped-down affair: An extremely pregnant young woman (who recently lost her husband in a terrible car accident) is scheduled to have her baby the next day. So her plan is to spend Christmas Eve alone at home -- miserable gal that she is -- and then check into the hospital in the morning to give birth. Sounds simple enough. Unfortunately there's this outrageously crazy psycho bitch who's entirely convinced that our heroine's unborn baby ... is hers. And let's just say our villainess is not averse to getting her hands (ahem) dirty while extracting the unborn child. That's pretty much it: Two women, one night, several unlucky bystanders, and more fake blood than Herschell Gordon Lewis ever dreamt of.


Some may call it sick and others may call it shamelessly ugly garbage, but as someone who's seen hundreds of horror movies from every corner of the globe -- I'm convinced that À l'intérieur is some sort of maniacal mini-masterpiece. Or if it is just 85 minutes of well-polished genre crap, then it's crap that had me cringing, cheering, clapping, howling and gaping slack-jawed at the screen. It's an audaciously gruesome little flick, there's no doubt about that

But make no mistake: This is one hardcore horror film. If your 59-year-old mother was proud of herself after sitting through Saw 2, make sure she realizes that she's never even dreamt of a movie as graphically distressing as À l'intérieur.

So , If u are a fan of gore or blood in horror movies then this is a must watch .

NOTE : A warning for women before watching this flick as most of the ladies may not like this movie because of its extreme violence .

IMDB Info :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0856288/

Monday, March 3, 2008

Ginger Snaps (2000) - CANADA



Ginger Snaps is a 2000 Canadian werewolf film directed by John Fawcett . This movie is not that perfect horror , yet it is a fresh horror movie to watch and one of the best werewolf movies of recent years.

It is a story about a girl named Ginger who is 16, edgy, tough, and, with her younger sister, into staging and photographing scenes of death. They've made a pact about dying together. In early October, on the night she has her first period, which is also the night of a full moon, a werewolf bites Ginger. Within a few days, some serious changes happen to her body and her temperament. Her sister Brigitte, 15, tries to find a cure with the help of Sam, a local doper. As Brigitte races against the clock, Halloween and another full moon approach, Ginger gets scarier, and it isn't just local dogs that begin to die.

I said not totally perfect because the climax was a let down. The last 20-25 minutes of the film lost its way a bit, and dragged in places. A bit more tightening up and a stronger ending could have made 'Ginger Snaps' a classic. As it is it's an original spin on an old concept, and highly recommended viewing!

IMDB Info :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210070/

ALIEN Series - ( 1979 , 1986 . 1992 , 1997 ) - USA











I Think there are very few people out there who doesn't know about this series . A classic entry in the Sci-fi Horror genre . There are total of four parts - ALIEN , ALIENS , ALIEN(3) , ALIEN RESURRECTION .

The first two are definitely the best . First one was directed by the director of Gladiator - Ridley Scott

The second part was directed by the director of TERMINATOR - James Cameron.

First Part - When a mining ship lands on a planet to investigate upon a suspected SOS, the entire crew are unaware of the terror which they would unleash upon their ship. When a alien life-form attach's itself to the face of crew member, Kane (Hurt), the rest of the team act fast to try and separate the two organisms. Unbeknownst to everyone, this is the start of the terror which would affect every member of the seven person crew



The Second part tells the story about the only survivor of the Nostromo, Ripley who is discovered in deep sleep half a century later by a salvage ship. When she is taken back to Earth, she learns that a human colony was founded on the same planet where the aliens were first found. After contact with the colony is lost, she finds herself sent back to the planet along with a team of warriors bent on destroying the alien menace forever, and saving any survivors -- if any remain.

The other two are also good but not as good as the first two parts .
Sci- Fi horror fans should check this out .


IMDB Info :

ALIEN ( 1979 ) : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/

ALIENS ( 1986 ) : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090605/

ALIEN (3) ( 1992 ) : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103644/

ALIEN RESURRECTION ( 1997 ) : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118583/




Braindead (1992) - New Zealand




Braindead is an extreme Zombie comedy film directed by Peter Jackson . It is a story about a young man whose mother is bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey. She gets sick and dies, at which time she comes back to life, killing and eating dogs, nurses, friends, and neighbors.

Crazy, visceral, over the top, quirky, violent, gory, silly, extreme and (in it's own way) sweet, are just a few words that can describe this visual extravaganza.

What makes it such a good movie? It's fast paced, it's witty, it's charming... and it is GROUNDBREAKING,it's an important movie of the genre.

Everyone who considers himself (or Herself) a Horror Lover, a GoreHound, a rare-movie seeker or a Three Stooges fan should get their hands on this unusual flick.


IMDB Info :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103873/



NOTE : Keep Voting on the poll which i have created in this blog so that i can post horror movies according to your taste . I will add the movie torrents also ( mostly in RMVB) .


The Descent (2005) - UK



THE DESCENT is a 2005 British Horror film written and directed by NEIL MARSHALL .

The story concerns a group of friends on a Caving expedition only to find themselves trapped and hunted by inhuman creatures.

It was a big hit .

After a tragic accident, six friends reunite for a caving expedition. Their adventure soon goes horribly wrong when a collapse traps them deep underground and they find themselves pursued by bloodthirsty creatures. As their friendships deteriorate, they find themselves in a desperate struggle to survive the creatures and each other.

You will see lots of blood and gore in this movie . Very good refreshing horror from UK .
The Descent keeps you at the edge of your seat throughout, struggling for breath as you feel the walls in the cinema closing in. This is a film to watch in a very dark cinema with great surround sound. You almost feel the creatures closing in around you.this is a must watch film for those who complain that horror films just aren't scary anymore. Just make sure that whoever you take with you is prepared for the experience. Word of mouth is sure to make this film a success.

Highly recommended for those who likes gory and bloody horror with creepy sounds .

IMDB Info :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435625/


NOTE : Keep Voting on the poll which i have posted in this blog so that i can post horror movies according to your taste . I will add the movie torrents also ( mostly in RMVB) .