I REALLY wanted to like this one....

The Dead Want Women (2012)
Starring: Jessica Morris, Ariana Madix, J. Scott, Robert Zachar, Jean Louise O'Sullivan, Circus-Szalewski, Jeannie Marie Sullivan, and Eric Roberts
Director: Charles Band
Producers: Charles Band, Dustin Hubbard, Tom Landy, and Rick Short
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

A pair or young realtors (Madix and Morris) think they've finally managed to unload the supposedly haunted mansion of long-dead silent movie star Rose Pettigrew (O'Sullivan), but they instead learn that the legendary hauntings are all too real.

I'm starting to know what fans of Dario Argento feel like when they keep hoping for another "Deep Red" or "Cat o' Nine Tails" and instead get "Do You Like Hitchcock?" or worse. Because I keep hoping and hoping for Charles Band to bring me another "Trancers" or "Puppet Master" or "Head of the Family" or even "Crash and Burn" or "The Creeps", but he brings me stuff like "Gingerdead Man" and his latest effort "The Dead Want Women" instead.

And I really thought I would like "The Dead Want Women". First of all, it's a great title. Second of all, it's rooted in old-time movies, a topic I love so much I write reviews whenever I watch a old-time movie. Thirdly, it stars Jessica Morris who was one of the best things about "Haunted Casino". And, last but not least, I LOVE haunted house movies--and, again, I love them so much I write about it whenever I watch one!

And make me even more excited about the film, I loved the approach Full Moon took to marketing it. Once again, it had fabulous preview/trailer and the "who is the secret big-time movie veteran in our new movie?" teasers on the web-site were nicely done.

And the main titles sequence is also extremely well done. It is perhaps the best credits sequence for any Full Moon film... and long-time fans know how Full Moon loves its long main title sequences.

Unfortunately, once the credits run their course, this turns out to be another one of those Charles Band films that doesn't live up to my expectations. It's not the worst he's done, and it's far from the worst that's been released under the Full Moon logo, but it's a disappointment.

It's not the actors' fault. They all do the best they can with what they have to work with, but the problem is they don't have much to work with. In fact, it's a testament to the great degree of talent of everyone on the screen that the film comes across as entertaining as it dopes, because the actors are dealing with a pretty awful script here.

When I reviewed the last film Band directed--"Killer Eye: Halloween Haunt"--I complained that the script was flimsy. That complaint applies here as well. In fact, worse, "The Dead Want Women" feels like it was shot using a partially finished first draft that was missing part of Act One and all of Act Three.

This may, hands down, be the worst script that has ever been the basis for a Charles Band moviem and it's a testament to the talent of the actors that it doesn't come off worse than it does. The preview for the film has a better dramatic structure than the film itself, because the way the real movie unfolds it's hard to tell where the focal point of the story was supposed to be... and not just because the characters are universally badly defined. In fact, just as the film seems like it's finally starting to get going--after opening with one of the most listless Roaring Twenties parties you'll ever witness on film, a secret Satanic sex orgy that makes me wonder if Band is longing for the days of Surrender Cinema, and some truly dull bits with Jessica Morris and Arina Madix playing the BFF realtors getting the house ready to show to their mysterious client--with the evil ghost of Miss Pettigrew and her sidekicks doing their thing, the film ends. Like most Full Moon pictures these days, the film barely breaks the one-hour mark... and in this case the run-time is not only half of what we expect from most movies, but the MOVIE is half of what we expect from most movies.

Viewers looking for lots of female nudity will enjoy the film--there is an actress who is naked for literally 99% of her time on screen. Hardcore Full Moon fans will also be able to enjoy a few of those Charles Band touches we know and love--but they will mostly be outweighed by truly awful moments of lazy writing and lazier direction. (Ohmygod... the ghosts have our hapless realty ladies chained up and they are about to do horrible things to them. Oh wait. One of them just undid her shackles easier than I undo my belt when I need to take a dump. And now she's freeing the other chick just as easily. WTF? When did she get possessed by the spirit of Harry Houdini?! And where did the ghosts suddenly disappear to? WTF?!)

The Two Rating might be a little harsh... it film really is teetering between Two and Three. But in this case, I am being miserly with my rating, because this film could have been so much more with just a little more effort. Meanwhile, here's the preview for the film. If the finished product had followed its flow, it might have been a little stronger....



(By the way, is it coincidence that in the past month, I've seen two movies with Eric Roberts doing a goofy accent? He does a Texas/Oklahoma kinda accent in this film, and he did Russian in "The Tomb." Is that something he's known for, and I've just not noticed until now?)

'Ghost Whisperer' got off to a strong start

I was gifted with Seasons 1 and 2 of "Ghost Whisperer" some time ago, and I recently got around to start watching them. So, I will be reviewing the episodes in this space. I only watched the show once in a blue moon during its five year run on CBS, but every time I did, I was impressed by Jennifer Love Hewitts two great talents. She's also quite an actress.


Ghost Whisperer (Untitled Pilot Episode) (2005)
Starring: Jennifer Love Hewitt, David Conrad, Aisha Tyler, and Wentworth Miller
Director: John Gray
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Her entire life, Melinda (Hewitt) has been able to see and communicate with ghosts. As she grew up, she began to pass messages from them to the living, so the restless spirits would feel relieved of their earthly duties and finally be able to move onto the afterlife. Even on her wedding night, she spends time with both the living and the dead... when for the first time one of the dead (Miller) invade her very home in search of help.

"Ghost Whisperer" got off to a strong start with its 2005 pilot episode. A deftly written script that introduces us to likable newly-weds Melinda and Jim--she sees dead people and tries to help them move onto the next life, he is a paramedic and tries to help people stay in this one, which is an interesting arrangement that I'm sure will get play as the show unfolds--and Melinda's sassy employee at the antique store she runs. I expect Melinda's doting and supportive husband will give rise to nearly as many plots as the ghosts he will help as I watch this series... and I expect her employee will come in at a close second, probably not directly but rather through antiques that she brings into the shop that Melinda owns and operates.

The pilot also presents what I know to be the show's formula from what few I've already seen: Melinda encounters a ghosts here and there, but one or two become her focus. After some initial sleuthing and plot complications, she finds the key to helping them resolve the issues that are keeping them in this world. After a tearful goodbye with family members and loved ones, the ghost moves on, and Melinda returns to the arms of her loving husband.

But the pilot also features a near-perfect mix of sappy and creepy that made the best episodes of the show that I've seen so much fun. Just when you think the schmaltz might be going on just a little too thick, scary ghost stuff starts happening.

What I found most entertaining about the pilot episode was the way it time and again made me wonder what it would be like to go through life never knowing if the person sitting across from you is alive or dead... until you realize that you're the only person who can see him. If the show keeps that aspect alive, I think this is going to be lots of fun.

--
Things Learned About Ghosts and The Afterlife in This Episode: Major life-changes for those the departed care about may "awaken" their slumbering, lingering spirits and draw them to the location, even if they don't know why. Ghosts somehow communicate even with the ghosts who are stuck in this world... and sometimes they tell those who are stuck to seek out Melinda for help.

'Legend of Sorrow Creek' has a few good moments

The Legend of Sorrow Creek (2007)
Starring: Christina Caron, Freya Ravensbergen, Joe Deitcher, Matt Turner, Stephen Walker, Russell Sangster, and Michelle Caron
Director: Michael Penning
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

Four friends (Caron, Deitcher, Ravensbergen, and Turner) cut through a patch of haunted forest and draw the attention of wrathful spirits.

"Legend of Sorrow Creek" is a well-acted and well-filmed horror movie that shoots for a "Blair Witch Project" sort of vibe within traditional filmmaking approaches instead the "found footage" route. It's a low-budget horror film with a professional look to it, mounted by a director who obviously understood how to work within his means, and which delivers several genuinely scary moments.

However, the film is done is by an underdeveloped script (by director Penning) which relies on the characters behaving in idiotic ways in order to keep the plot moving forward, and which just sort of fizzles to a close (after perhaps the most astounding display of Stupid Character Syndrome ever put on screen) instead of ending with an explosion of horror. Perhaps even more damning, the film has a wrap-around sequence that features its worst actors and lamest dialogue, and which makes little sense in the context of the rest of the movie. I think something like it was needed for the film, but this wasn't it, and it's the most blatant sign that the script needed a lot more attention that it got.

If you like horror films with a "spooky forest" motif, or ones that revolve around "beautiful young people in trouble," this might be a film worth checking out. It's not exactly awful, but the shaky script foundation that supports the respectable efforts of the cast and crew result in a film that's not worth going out of your way for either. (I came across it in a set of eight different movies, among which were gems like "Prom Night", "Below" and four Charles Band productions. and in that context it's harmless filler. But I wouldn't bother with a stand-alone DVD unless you were renting it cheaply.)

'Unborn Sins' is a concept that deserved better

Unborn Sins (2005)
Starring: Michelle L. Harris, Sean Contrearas, Jim Barbour, and Paul "PJ" Peneloza
Director: Elliott Eddie
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A psychic detective (Contrearas) and his partners attempt to stop the deadly rampage of the spirit of an aborted baby (Peneloza) that has been summoned into the world by cultists so it can take revenge on everyone involved it having it aborted, including its would-have-been mother (Harris).

"Unborn Sins" is one of those movies that has an intriguing idea at its heart--what happens to the souls aborted babies?--that deserved a far better execution than the means available to writer/director/producer Eddie Elliot. With decent sound work, decent lighting, better cinematography, better actors, and a script that had been taken through a draft or two more--or perhaps revised by a more experienced writer--this could have been one chilling movie. As it stands, it's a movie that I really wish I could like more than I do, and a movie that I wish could be remade in stronger hands.

Lighting and sound problems aside, the biggest weakness of its film is its running time. There are several scenes that are near-pointless (such as the one where Harris' repulsive boyfriend dances by himself to rap music for what seems like forever, or the basketball game at the park that likewise went on and on and on) and a subplot involving some sort of kidnapping/drug deal that doesn't have anything to do with anything else in the movie, except that the detective agency was somehow involved with that case. If the film had been tightened up from and its running time of nearly two hours shortened to 80 or 90 minutes, I think it might have rated as much as a 4 on its ideas alone.

(The technical problems and the running time aren't the only problems. There's also quite a bit of unintended hilarity in the film, such as when the obnoxious boyfriend is prowling through his apartment trying to look all Gangsta with a gun in each hand, holding them right next to his face. I kept hoping he'd fire, because watching the ejected cartridge smack him in the face would have been very amusing. Similarly, the Big Fight between the heroes and the angry spirit is more ridiculous than suspenseful because everyone starts behaving as if they just escaped from a Kung Fu movie made in 1973. These elements might make the film worthy of inclusion in the line-up for a Bad Movie Night, so long as you keep in mind there will be long stretches of overly padded scenes.)

"Unborn Sins" is one of the most intriguing films I've ever given a low rating to, and I wish I liked it more than I do. As I said at the top, the whole abortion angle is an intriguing jump-off point for a horror film and I wish this had been a more solid film. Therefore, despite its many flaws, I think it might be worth checking out for those who are able to look at low-budget films with kind eyes and forgiving hearts.

"Unborn Sins" is available as part of the inexpensive "Sinister Souls" 6-movie pack, the even-cheaper-by-the-movie "Tomb of Terrors" 50-movie pack, or as a stand-alone DVD. I think you'll find your money better spent if you acquire it along with 5 (or 49!) other low-budget indie movies. I think it's worth seeing, but it's not worth full price.

Mediocre Gothic Thriller with a Goofy Title

Terror Creatures from the Grave
(aka "Cemetery of the Living Dead")(1965)
Starring: Walter Brandi, Mirella Maravidi, Barbara Shelley, and Alfredo Rizzo
Director: Massimo Pupillo (credited to producer Ralph Zucker)
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

An attorney (Brandi) answers an urgent request to prepare a will for a country doctor living at an isolated estate. When he arrives, his strange wife (Shelley) and neurotic daughter (Maravidi) tell him the doctor couldn't have written the letter as he's been dead for over a year. Before he can sort out the mystery, the doctor's old friends start dying as well, apparent victims of the ghosts evil sorcerers who spread a plague across the land 500 years ago.

We are informed during the main credits that "Terror Creatures from the Grave" was inspired by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe; it certainly bears more resemblance to them than several films that have claimed to be based on them (such as several Lugosi vehicles from Universal), I think I'll still have to go with the Real Thing over this movie.

The film's hero, an attorney visiting a house of secrets and madness, certainly feels like he stepped out of a Poe story, and Barbara Shelley, yet again playing another two-faced, treacherous bitch who causes not only her own downfall but also that of pretty much the entire cast, also could easily have been a Poe character, but the film never quite manages to be as creepy as a Poe story. It has some nice moments, but in general in plods along too slowly to generate any real sense of dread and fear in the viewer. The mystery of a dead man writing letters in intriguing, the array of characters present clearly set the stage for some Very Bad Things, but the film wastes too much time with overlong establishing shots and with too many meandering scenes for it to really add up to anything.

Except for roughly the last ten minutes. When the Plague Spreaders FINALLY make their appearance, we finally get some real spookiness. Although the climax is ultimately a bit rushed and relies a bit too much on the Deus Ex Machina, it's a pay-off worth waiting for. Steele's death scene is especially chilling and well-filmed.

(Oh... I don't think it's much a spoiler to reveal that Steele is the villainess and that she comes to a bad end. It's her place in most films she appeared in, and it's pretty obvious from the outset.)

There's nothing in "Terror Creatures from the Grave" that you haven't seen done better elsewhere, but it's main offense is its mediocrity. Fans of Barbara Steele will enjoy it more than most, but even for those it's not worth going to far out of your way for. But if present in one of those movie mega-packs, which is where I came across it, it's a bit of harmless filler that's worth checking out when you're in the mood of nightgowns and candlesticks and creepy castles.

'The Demons of Ludlow' is one of Rebane's best

The Demons of Ludlow (1975)
Starring: Paul von Hausen, Stephanie Cushna, Carol Perry, James R. Robinson, C. Dave Davis, and Angailica
Director: Bill Rebane
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A curse that's haunted a small New England town since its founding two hundred years ago is brought fully to horrible life when a piece of its secret history--a piano that sounds like a harpsichord (or is that a harpsichord that looks like an upright piano?)--resurfaces. Will the town preacher (Von Hausen) and a pair of young journalists (Cushna and Robinson) stop the curse, or will they fall victim to it?

I watched several of Bill Rebane's movies, and I don't know whether my ability to tell crap from quality started to erode when I got to this one, but I think that "The Demons of Ludlow" is actually pretty good for a low-budget horror film. Compared to some of Rebane's other efforts, it's downright brilliant.

Unfortunately, like another of Rebane's almost-good movies--"The Game" (aka "The Cold")--he and his writers simply can't seem to pull off the ending. Remember my question im the summary above as to whether the preacher and the journalist escape the curse? That remains a question at the end of the movie, and it's not a question that hangs there in a good way. The ending is so abrupt that seems as though Rebane ran out of film and had no money to buy more. The film simply feels like the ending was left off.

If a little more care had been taken to construct a story with a decent end, this could have been a solid 5 rating. The soundtrack is decent, the acting is better than most of what you see in films of this kind, and there are even some pretty scary scenes--the sequences where the preacher's alcoholic wife is being tormented by the ghosts' of Ludlow's past are particularly well done. But, again, Rebane screws up the ending.

'Trailer Park of Terror' is trashy, gory fun

Trailer Park of Terror (2008)
Starring: Nichole Hiltz, Jeanette Brox, Brock Chuchna, Stefanie Black, Matthew Del Negro, and Trace Adkins
Director: Steven Goldman
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When a bus-load of troubled teens on a church retreat crash during a rain-storm, the passengers and their chaparone (Del Negro) take refuge at a nearby trailer park. Unfortunately for them, the trailer park is merely the ghostly reflection of a murderous den of hillbilly criminals that died in a gory, revenge-fueled massacre decades earlier. They now re-inact their brutal ways on hapless travelers, under the command of Norma (Hiltz), one of their victims who has turned victimizer thanks to a deal with the devil (Adkins).

"Trailer Park of Terror" has something for just about every horror fan. It takes nearly every disgusting thing you've seen in a Killer Hicks movie from the 1970s forward and combines them with a sadistic sense of humor that will put you in mind films like "Spider Baby" and "Re-Animator", as well as slightly more modern off-kilter horror features like "From Dusk 'Til Dawn". Further, the ghosts mostly manifest themselves as disgusting walking corpses, so lovers of zombie films will have something to sink their metaphorical teeth into, while admirers of Torture Porn flicks will get to watch one victim get her arm sawed off while tripping so high she doesn't notice until after the fact, and another victim is turned into jerky meat while still alive. And then there's the horny teens that are forced to be the stars of a snuff flick.

I'm not a big fan of mean-spirited and sadistic horror films, so there was quite a bit about "Trailer Park of Terror" I didn't care for. I also like my gory ghost movies and slasher flicks to have a "morality tale" aspect to them, and when they don't--or it's a weak part of the film, as it is here--the film invariably loses me, so that was another reason for me not to like this flick.

However, this thing is so well-written and so finely acted by everyone involved that I couldn't help but like it. Virtually all the characters are so purely one-note and cliched with the hillbilly ghosts  that combining them all in one place manages to breath a form of demented freshness into the film--the writers didn't even try to expand the victims beyond horny teen, asshole teen, druggie teen, and so on; nor to give the ghosts more definition than rapist redneck, robber redneck, cannibal redneck, and so on.

The only character with even the slightest depth to her is Norma, who in life was the only non-psychotic inhabitant of the trailer park... at least until she decided she had enough of them and gunned them all down and killed herself. But the facets to the Norma character never manifests itself quite in the way one expects as the film unfolds, something which becomes which is highlighted and becomes even more interesting due to the plethora of one-note stereotypes that otherwise inhabit the film. It also helps, of course, that Hiltz is a better actress than her repeated casting as a white-trash bimbo (here, and in the television series "The Riches" and "In Plain Sight") warrants. I'd like to see in more horror movies, and in different roles than what she seems to be playing over and over.

The only real down-side that I saw to this film is its somewhat disorganized structure. It starts with an extended sequence in the past and then interrupts the present with a couple of extended flashbacks that both fill in back story but also stand alone to some extent, giving the film the fell of a half-baked anthology. Given the film is based on the anthology comic book series "Trailer Park of Terror", I understand why the filmmakers wanted to make a nod in the direction of their source, but I just wish they had done it in a less choppy fashion.

In the final analysis, though, "Trailer Park of Terror" is well worth watching.

'Drag Me to Hell' is a spectacular spook show

Drag Me to Hell (2009)
Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Dileep Rao, Lorna Raver, David Paymer, and Reggie Lee
Director: Sam Raimi
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

When a loan officer hoping for a promotion at the bank (Lohman) forecloses on an old gypsy woman's house, she is put under a terrible curse: She has three days to find a way to reverse it, or a powerful demon will drag her bodily to Hell.


"Drag Me to Hell" is the sort of horor movie that most filmmakers seem incapable of making these days. It's a got a to-the-point script with a well-constructed story, it's got characters the audience can root for (despite their flaws) and, most importantly, it's got plenty of scares. It's a horror movie the likes of which we haven't seen on the big screen since... well, "Cursed" came close, but it was moreof a classic monster movie than a horror fim. This one is a throwback to a time when horror movies were actually good!

In fact, the film even acknowledges it's a reminder of a lost time for horror fillms by starting with the Universal logo from the 1970s and 1980s. And what follows is a film with the spirit of those days but in a thoroughly modern body. Whether you love the movies from back then--like me--or whether you're a kid who has only been exposed to the garbage and crappy remakes that are being passed off as horror movies today, this is a movie you'll get a kick out of.

With its well-mounted scares and finely crafted script, this is a movie that was made with care from the very beginning. It's enhanced even further by excellent performances by every featured actor, with star Alison Lohman earning every dime she was paid to be in this film.

Fans of Raimi's first big hit, "The Evil Dead", are also well-served by this film. It is, literally, the first time that Raimi returns to a movie of that kind. Like the "The Evil Dead", the film starts as a fairly standard horror flick, but then goes crazily over the top as it reaches its climax. But, with 30 years of experience under his belt, this return to the style of that first outing is far more effective than he's ever done it before. (He sort of did it with "Evil Dead 2", but that was a horror-comedy from the outset and was actually very different from both what he did in the original film and what he does here.)

If you're one of those people who habitually turn their nose up at PG-13 horror movies because their not intense enough for you, and therefore haven't seen this film yet, you need to get over your bad self, or at least check out the "unrated director's cut". This is one of the very best big studio horror releases in the past decade, and it gives me hope that maybe there is still a future for the horror film on the big screen. (But don't just take my word for it. The people who put together the countdown show "Chiller 13: The Scariest Movie Moments of the Decade" include several scenes from the film on their list. The show premieres tonight, Friday, on the Chiller cable channel. Check your local listings.)

'Shutter' director didn't know when to quit

Shutter (2008)
Starring: Joshua Jackson, Rachel Taylor, and Megumi Okina
Director: Masayuki Ochiai
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A fashion photographer (Jackson) and his wife (Taylor) are on a working honeymoon in Japan when his past literally comes back to haunt him. The ghost of a woman he dated years earlier (Okina) starts appearing in photos he takes and manifesting in increasingly threatening ways.


"Shutter" is for most of its running time a fairly decent ghost movie that is a nice cross-pollination between Western and Eastern ideas about the what, why, and how of hauntings and vengeful spirits. Unfortunately, it starts to break down as the story builds to the Great Reveal when the girlfriend is shown to have been dead for several years yet no-one has checked on her... despite the fact her front door has been standing open for all that time.

(I suppose one could argue that the ghost has been wandering around the house and neighborhood so no one knew she was dead. But does that mean she also went and got a job at another firm after she had died? What about friends and family? The way the discovery of Megumi's corpse was handled in the film was such an extreme example of bad writing that I've knocked off a whole point on the ratings scale.)

In all other aspects, the film is very well done. The filmmakers make a particularly excellent use of sound throughout the movie, using it to enhance suspense in subtle ways as well as during the film's few "Boo!"-type moments. The lighting and cinematography is likewise very well done. The script is also well-written, and I was particularly happy to see they did more with the denouement than the now-expected "let's toss in one more scare." (In fact, what you THINK is the denouement is actually the beginning of the film's true ending.)

The acting is all-around decent, although I would have liked to have seen a slightly more sympathetic and charming actor playing Ben Shaw, the photographer who is the focus of the ghost's attention. Joshua Jackson has a villainous air about hm that never quite allows the viewer to be on his side. If the actor playing Ben had been just a little more charismatic, the sense of horror and dread in this film would have been ar stronger, particularly at the end.

"Shutter" is worth seeing if you enjoy ghost movies, so long as you can accept an annoying instance of no one thinking a particular sequence through. It's high on creepiness but low on blood, so gore hounds should stay away. (Oh, and if you're sick of the whole "isn't long black hair really creepy?!?" standard in these sorts of movies, you'll be glad to hear that we DON'T have that particular trope to sit through here. We got the pale, barefooted ghost chick, but at least her hair isn't everywhere!)

'Lost Voyage' should stay lost

Lost Voyage (2001)
Starring: Judd Nelson, Janet Gunn, Scarlett Chorvat, and Lance Henrickson
Director: Christian McIntire
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

In "Lost Voyage", a cruise ship that mysteriously dissapeared in the Bermuda Triangle over 25 years ago just as mysteriously reappears in perfect condition, but seemingly completely devoid of life.


Television tabloid reporter Dana Elway (Gunn) convinces paranormal investigator Aaron Roberts (Nelson) to join her and a camera crew on a salvage expedition headed by the sinister David Shaw (Henrickson). Everyone on the expedition has hidden agendas and dark secrets, but whatever caused the ship to both vanish and reappear is still onboard, and that mysterious presence starts to exploit these secrets, destroying the expedition members one by one.

"Lost Voyage" follows the pattern of countless haunted house movies, adding no twist other than placing the action onboard an abandoned cruise ship. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad movie, just average. There are other factors that insure its low rating.

While the actors turn in fairly decent performances (Gunn and her sharkish, slutty assistant that is after her job, Scarlet Chorvat, are particularly good), but they are hampered by a script that is so full of characters doing stupid things because the plot would fall apart if they didn't that is was impossible to keep count. This is either the laziest haunted house script produced since the turn of the century, or it was actually a tale of people so dumb they deserved to die just to preserve the integrity of the human genepool.

An even greater flaw in the film is the digital effects. The film takes place aboard a ship adrift in a storm. The characters are delivered to it by a cargo helicopter. The ship, the waves, and particularly the helicopter are so badly done that one finds oneself longing for the days when models would have been used for those shots. Even the cheapest B-movies with their planes dangling oddly on wires looked more real that the computer animated helicopter in "Lost Voyage." The obvious fakeness of the establishing shots of the ship, and just about any other digital effect in the movie, drag it down something fierce. (Although, while harping on the digital effects, I have to congratulate the sound crew. There is a very impressive use of sound throughout, especially wind and rain effects. The lighting crew also does a decent job, with many scenes appearing to be lit realistically with ambient lighting. These exceptional technical aspects don't make up for the film's other problems, however.

Despite some nice (if pedestrian) chills, I think even the biggest fans of haunted house movies will walk away dissapointed from this one. It's better if "Lost Voyage" stays missing.

The Sarah Landon Franchise: DoA?

Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour (2007)
Starring: Rissa Williams, Brian Comrie, Dan Comrie, and Jane Harris
Director: Lisa Comrie
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Teenaged Sarah Landon (Williams), shortly after losing her best friend to a drunk driver, spends the weekend in a town she hasn't visited in ten years. While coping with her memories, she reconnects with a boy she used to play with as a child (Brian Comrie), and learns that his older brother (Dan Comrie) believes a vengeful ghost will kill him on his 21st birthday... which is coming up Monday. Sarah sets out to find the truth of what is going on in the small California town.


"Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour" is a film that's part mystery and part supernatural thriller and intended primarily at young girls who would enjoy material like "Nancy Drew" books, the "Clubbing" graphic novel by Andi Watson and Josh Howard, or whatever series featuring girls playing detective and coming up against supernatural forces (or the appearance of supernatural forces is popular these days).

Given that I am not the target audience, the film is a little hard for me to judge. For my tastes, the film was a little slow in getting started, because of the artificiality of the stories Sarah was being told when she first arrived in town. It wasn't that a dark chapter of the town's past was being revealed to her that didn't ring true, but rather the way the people were relating it to her. It sounded like they were telling her a ghost story instead of relating something they considered to be tragic facts. Now, young girls may not mind this, but to me it gave the opening parts of the movie a stilted, artificial quality that even old and stilted mystery movies don't have.

Some things I am capable of judging are the qualities of the movie that apply to all films, no matter who the target audience might be.

In some of those areas, "Sarah Landon" is what I would expect. The story, once it gets past the tediously executed setup phase moves along at a nice pace, the camerawork is decent, the film feels well-researched (the paranoid, deathmarked brother sounds and behaves like he's been spending entirely too much listening to "Coast to Coast AM"), and there are even a couple of well-done "boo!"-type scares and a genuinely scary sequence where one of the characters is confronted by what appears to be a ghost.

However, in other ways, the film is severely lacking. The dialogue is very clunky and what few lines that sound like they might be spoken by a real person are ruined by wooden delivery. None of the performers are especially good, but for a cast of first-time screen-actors being guided by a first-time director, they aren't as terrible as some I've witnessed, except for Brian Comrie. It's not that he was particularly bad, but the role he plays really needed to be performed by an actor with more experience and greater emotional range than Brian Comrie shows in this film.

"Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour" was obviously intended as the first installment in a franchise that was to continue either in future movies, novels, comics, or all of the above. I liked what I saw here to the point where I might give another film a try, or perhaps even pick up a graphic novel if the art is decent.

However, as I mentioned when I originally reviewed this film back in 2007, I doubt there will be a follow-up. And given that it's almost three years later and Sarah Landon hasn't been seen anywhere, I think this film performed badly enough to not warrant any follow-ons.

College kids don't summon smarts in 'Seance'

Seance (2006)
Starring: Kandis Erickson, Tori White, Chauntal Lewis, A.J. Lamas, Joel Giest. Adrian Paul, Bridget Shergalis and Jack Hunter
Director: Mark L. Smith
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When a group of bored college students (Erickson, Lewis, Lamas and White) hold a seance to contact the ghost of a little girl that is haunting their dorm (Shergalis), they end up rasing the spirit of the man who murdered her (Paul). Naturally, he picks up where he left off, and the hapless students are at the top of his target list.


"Seance" is a straight-forward ghost movie with a script that's better than I've come to expect given the lack of effort that goes into writing horror movies these days. Not only do the characters behave fairly intelligently--allowing for the fact they're not very bright to begin with--but the overall story is solid and even stays away from the non-surprising suprise twist ending that so many writers employ in vain attempts to spruce up their badly done scripts.

All other apsects of the film are competent if unremarkable, including the quality of the effects, the acting and the use of sound and lighting throughout the picture. All-in-all, if you enjoy a well-done chiller featuring murderous spirits, you should find this film worth your time.

Dark Waters can't cover bad writing

Dark Water (2005)
Starring: Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Ariel Gade, Pete Postlethwaite, Tim Roth and Dougray Scott
Director: Walter Salles
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A mother and her young daughter (Connelly and Gade) shortly after they move into their new apartment, in a building with a creeper super (Postletwaite) and strange plumbing problems. This go from mildly unsettling to nightmarish when the girl gets an imaginary friend... who is actually a vengeful ghost.



I came to this film knowing nothing more than it was a horror movie and that it probably involved water. Barely twenty minutes in, I knew pretty much everything that was going to happen, thanks to foreshadowing so heavy-handed that I'm surprised the projector could support its weight, and a storyline that not once deviated from a paint-by-numbers ghost movie plot. Sure, there were some half-hearted attempts at misdirection, but they were too little and too late and too disconnected from some of the events that had already occurred to work. The end result is that unless this is the first ghost movie you've ever encountered, you're going to spend more time wishing the story would move forward than being scared or apprehensive.

If the goal was to produce a ghost story that plods through all the expected standards step by predictable step, the creators succeded. I kept HOPING that they'd take an unexpected turn somewhere, but they never did. The only decent thing about the film is that all the performances were appropriately understated. Connelly is great in her part, and Tim Roth shines as her quirky attorney.

My bottom line: Save your time and money. There's not enough worthwhile here for you to spend either on "Dark Water."

'Nine Lives' isn't worth part of one life

Nine Lives (2002)
Starring: Amelia Warner, David Nicolle, and Paris Hilton
Director: Andrew Green
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A group of idle rich college friends get together at a remote Scottish manor house to celebrate a birthday party. However, when one of them discovers an old book that has been hidden for centuries, a restless, murderous spirit is unleashed. One by one, the friends start dying.


"Nine Lives" had the potential to be at the very least an average slasherflick. It's got a great location, it's got a cast of talented young actors and actresses (although Paris Hilton basically seems to be playing herself... but she does a better job at it than, oh, 50 Cent did), and it's got an interesting threat. However, just about everything about the film is executed badly, and the result if a movie that's more boring than scary.

Every horror film has to have pointless bickering among the characters, but in "Nine Lives", the pointless bickering is excessive, repetative, and drones on and on and on. The film relies more on Stupid Character Syndrome (where characters do idiotic things because if they didn't, the plot would grind to a halt and everyone would be safe from the monster) than any other movie I think I've seen. A couple of the worst examples:

*The characters think a room that's got giant windows and French doors along the entire outer wall is a safe place to "lock" themselves in.

*They IMMEDIATELY split up into small groups to search the house, and the idiocy that is compounded upon this is so gross that words fail me).

Aside from inadvertantly painting its protaganists as Gold Medal winners in the Upperclass Twit Olympics, the script for "Nine Lives" has the further problem of not explaining the "why" of the angry ghost. How did it come to be in the book? How did being housed in burned out pages relate to his eyes being plucked out and force-fed to him? Who made the book? (The implication is that it was the Angry Ghost himself, but that makes absolutely no sense.) How did reading it release the Angry Ghost? Why did it jump from person to person in the way that it did? Why did the screenwriter not bother giving the Angry Ghost some personality toward the end? Did the filmmakers really think the voice-over bit in the end was a decent wrap-up to the film, or make any sense as to what came before it?

"Nine Lives" also commits one of the greatest sins of the modern slasher flick: It has boring kills. Characters get stabbed, they fall down, and they die. That's it. That's simply not good enough, iif you already have a story that relies on the characters being braindead to work and you have a killer than makes Michael Myers look like he has a magnetic personality.

Like so many substandard horror movies, "Nine Lives" is first and foremost a parade of missed opportunities. It's particularly sad to see it happen here, because of the good cast and the nice set-up.

'Tomie: Forbidden Fruit' can be left alone

Tomie: Forbidden Fruit (aka "Tomie: The Final Chapter") (2002)
Starring: Nozomi Ando, Aoi Miyazaki and Jun Kunimu
Director: Shun Nakahara
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

The lives of middle-aged widower Kozu (Kunimura) and his lonely, outcast teenaged daugther (Miyazaki) are turned into a morass of nightmares and violence when she is befriended by a new girl at school, Tomie (Ando).


"Tomie: Forbidden Fruit" is the fifth movie based on Junji Ito's supremely creepy "Tomie" horror comics about an unkillable girl/ghost/demon who uses her women wiles to lead men to cause suffering, mayhem, and death whereever she goes. More often than not, Tomie herself dies horribly during the mayhem, but she always comes back from death in ways that are more horrific than the time before.

Like most of the "Tomie" movies, "Forbidden Fruit" never manages to inspire in the viewers the horror and dread that Ito's tales do. In fact, the emotion you'll feel most often while watching this film is boredom. particularly if you've read the comics or seen any other of the "Tomie" films.

There is very little new that's brought to the Tomie tales with this film. The only interesting aspect of the story is that Tomie is two generations of the same family in the film, trying to twist both father and daugther to her will. But this is really too small of an aspect to make the film worth your time.

The film is further dragged down by some very bad choices on the part of the writer and director. Tomie has never come across as the smartest of demons/temptresses, but here she comes across as downright stupid. Early in the film, she tries to get Kozu to kill his daughter "so they can be together like before" but this causes him to turn on her and cleave her skull with an axe--it makes him see her for the monster she is. Later, during the movie's climax, she tries the same trick again. It didn't work the first time, so why does she think it'll work the second time?

To make it even worse, this replay of the "kill your daughter so we can be together" ploy is part of a a final five-ten minutes of run-time that ruins what could otherwise have been an incredibly creepy "happy ending" with both father and daughter gazing upon Tomie frozen inside an ice block while eating potato chips and agreeing on how pretty she is and how much they both love her.

It could be the filmmakers were trying to illustrate that Tomie is all about repeating patterns, but all they ended up doing was screwing up a potentially great ending, a screw-up so bad that it cost the film at least one Rating point, perhaps even two. (Heck, if they'd gone with the movie's REAL ending--with Tomie frozen in the ice block--it could even have lived up to the film's title.)

Although well-acted and featuring moody and well-executed camera work, "Tomie: Forbidden Fruit" is done in by a weak script that fails to live up to the potential of the source material and a desire to heavy-handed drive home the point that there is never a "final chapter" where Tomie is concerned. (BTW, I don't really spoil anything by revealing that Tomie gets frozen in an iceblock toward the end of the film. It's an event that's telegraphed early on, and you'd have seen it coming even if I hadn't mentioned it.)

Love conquers death and demons

A Chinese Ghost Story (1987)
Starring: Leslie Cheung, Joey Wang, Ma Wu, Wai Lam, and Tsui Ming-Lau
Director: Siu-Tung Ching
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

In ancient China, a young tax collector (Cheung) takes refuge from a rainstorm in an abandoned temple. Here, he meets and falls in love with a beautiful girl (Wang). There's only two things standing in the way of their great romance: She's dead, and she's to be married to a tree demon. Will love find a way even in this case?


"A Chinese Ghost Story" is a wild supernatural martial arts period comedy. It mixes equal amounts of horror, comedy, and tragedy wrapped in great costumes, spectacular sets, mindboggling special effects, and presented with brilliant camerawork, exceptional lighting, and a great musical score. There is literally not a dull moment, as the film careens from magical martial arts duel to terrifying spirit attack to sweet romantic moments to a magical martial arts duel with terrifying spirits who are interrupting a tender romantic moment.

While the wild action and special effects are going to keep you watching in amazement, it's the touching love story at the center of the film that is going to sell you on it. Even if you think romance is "icky", you will, like the bumbling hero of the film does, fall in love with the beautiful, kindhearted spirit, and you will root for her to be liberated from the demons and evil ghosts keeping her trapped.

Both an expertly crafted haunted house movie and a romantic melodrama, "A Chinese Ghost Story" is bound to enliven any ghost-themed Home Film Fest at your house.

Tomie carries a grudge like no-one else!

Tomie: Rebirth (2001)
Starring: Miki Sakai, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Kumiko Endou, Masaya Kikawada and Yutaka Nakajima
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A group of friends (Tsumabuki, Kikawada, and Endou) are stalked by the undying Tomie after two of them cover up one of her deaths.

"Tomie: Rebirth" is a drab and boring entry in the film series based on Junji Ito's classic "Tomie" horror comics. The characters are uninteresting, Tomie is more irritating than scary, and the chills and terrors are so few and far between so as to be barely worth mentioning. In fact, the post image is more interesting and disturbing than anything in the actual movie.


This sequel is almost as bad as the original "Tomie" movie, being elevated only slightly above it thanks to a creepy plotline where Tomie returns from the dead by possessing cute, innocent Hitomi, and a sequence where Tomie is reborn from the surface of a painting that had been smeared with her blood. These are also the only elements of the film that come close to matching the chills that Ito's "Tomie" comic book tales inspire when read.

"Tomie: Rebirth" is a film you can skip, even if you're the biggest fan of the "Tomie" series on the planet. It's definately not the first of the series you should watch... that should be "Tomie: Replay" or "Tomie: Another Face", both of which are superior efforts to this one. (The "Tomie" films can be watched in pretty much any order; they are indepedent of each other, and they even have all different casts and directors each time.)

(As of this writing, all the "Tomie" movies and graphic novels are out-of-print in North America.)

'The Return' isn't really worth the trip

The Return (2006)
Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Peter O'Brien, Sam Shepard, J.C. MacKenzie, and Adam Scott
Director: Asif Kapadia
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A traveling sales-rep (Gellar) starts having strange dreams and visions when she returns to Texas for the first time in years. When she tries to unlock a mystery that dates to her childhood, she finds herself remembering places she's never been before, and eventually being haunted by phantom voices and stalked by a phantom killer. Will she uncover the truth before she completely loses her mind?


"The Return" had a lot of potential. It still does, if someone were to edit it down to about 53 minutes. It's got good acting, gorgeous cinematography and production design, and a decent (if obvious and predictable) story... but everything is draaaaaged out and the result is that the movie is boooooooring. What tension is built disspates over drawn-out sequences, and subsequently any pay-off feels either pointless or forced.

In fact, because the movie is such a meandering mess, the whole experience is one of emptiness and pointlessness. It's neither scary nor romantic enough to birng about the sort of emotions in the viewer that it is hoping to inspire. Even the climax--where this feeling should dissipate and be replaced with relief and maybe even happiness--has an empty sort of feeling to it. (I wish I could explain more, but doing so might give the movie away completely... and I try not to give too many spoilers in this forum.)

The film also suffers from the fact that we don't really get to know any of the characters in it. Even Gellar's character is a bit of a cypher... although given her nature that's forgivable. But her father, her "rescuer", and even her pursuer should have been developed more. This might have helped to raise the tension a bit, and it might even have helped justify the running time.

"The Return" would have made a great "Twilight Zone" or "Night Gallery" episode. It could even have been a decent movie--all the elements are here, they're just not used properly. As it stands, the film is worth seeing so you can admire the beautiful camerawork and production design. Just don't expect an exciting viewing experience.

Journalism student receives tip from ghost

It was a toss-up whether to post this review here or at the Watching the Detectives blog. The presense of the ghost made me choose to post it here.

Scoop (2006)
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman, Woody Allen, and Ian McShane
Director: Woody Allen
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Sondra (Johansson), a bubble-headed journalism student, is contacted by the ghost of recently deceased journalist Joe Strombel (McShane). He wants her to write the scoop he didn't have a chance to: That the dashing and handsome man-about-town Peter Lyman (Jackman) is actually a serial killer. With the help of a third-rate magician (Allen), Sondra goes about getting close to Lyman in order to gather the evidence needed to prove Strombel's accusation from beyond the grave, and get her scoop of a lifetime. But what will Sondra do once she starts falling in love with Lyman?


"Scoop" is a lightweight mystery comedy. The mystery isn't really much of a mystery, and the comedy is of a type that will make you smile rather than laugh.

The characters are, for the most part, well enough acted and the story moves along in a straight-forward fashion, unburdened by a desire on the part of the writer/director to show off his cleverness by throwing in either painfully predictable "twists", or developments that are completely unsupported by the plot. Allen avoids the very thing that dooms many movies of this type that are being made by younger, hipper filmmakers. My hat is off to him for not trying to make this movie seem any deeper than it is, but simply letting it stand as the plain little movie that it is.

I am also impressed by the way that an element of the film that bothered me at the beginning turned out to be one that I very much enjoyed by the end. There are scenes of characters on board Charon's barge as it crosses into the Afterlife, and the first couple of times Allen cut to this mystical scene, I was irritated, because I didn't feel it fit the nature of the film, despite the fact thee's a ghost popping in and out of the story. I felt it was too much of a fantasy element for a film that is, basically, grounded in the modern, everyday world.

However, by the end of the film, Allen pays off the River Styx scenes to the point where, looking back, they're probably the funnest part of the film.

One thing that isn't as fun is the character Allen plays in the film. His character is so socially awkward and downright dumb that it's painfully embarrassing to watch him attempt to mingle at the parties Sondra drags him to in her quest for dirt on Peter Lyman. It also doesn't help anything that there doesn't seem to be a connection between Allen and Johansson on screen--yes, they are delivering lines from the same script on the same set, but there's no sense that either actor is really paying attention to what the other actor is saying or doing. There's no spark between the two, and the comedic timing of every scene they have together is likewise off.

(It's tempting to say that Allen has "lost it" now that he's in his 70s, but this isn't so. He does fine in his scene with McShane, and he's okay when interacting with bit players and even Jackman... there simply seems to be something absent between him and Johansson. However, Allen must be happy with the result, because Johannsson is starring in at least one more Allen production.)

I think anyone who enjoys watching the lighthearted mysteries from the 1930s and 1940s will get a kick out of "Scoop". Those out there looking for a film with "twists" or lots of sex and violence are going to be bored. (Although Johansson fiills out a swimsuit quite nicely.)

Why ask why when the ghosts start killing?

Ju-On: The Grudge 2 (2003)
Starring: Noriko Sakai
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Famous horror actress Kyoko Harase (Sakai), her unborn child, a TV news-magazine crew, a couple of high schoolers, and a handful of random bystanders fall victim to the curse of angry, homicidal ghosts.


"Ju-on: The Grudge 2" is one creepy movie. From beginning to end, it's got an unsettling air about it, and the ghost attacks are all nightmarish and flawlessly executed.

What is not so flawlessly executed is the script. It's no problem that the story is told out of sequence, but about 2/3rds of the way through the movie, the timeline completely disintergrates. Until the two high-schoolers are introduced (who I assume must have been around in the first Japanse "The Grudge" to which this film is a sequel), all the pieces fit on a timeline that makes sense--Kyoko and the filmcrew are cursed when they viisit the house for a TV segment, and the ghosts then start picking them off, just as they did in the American versions of the tale. But, the teeny-boppers must have been cursed by the house BEFORE the filmcrew went there... although one of them appears to never have escaped it, yet she's walking around and....

The bit with the school girls makes no sense when viewed on the timeline of the film, or as a seperate event. It further causes the question to arise: How and why Kyoko was targeted by the ghosts in the first place? What exactly was the whole baby and birth thing about, particuarly when viewed in the context of the ending? And why WERE those school girls in the film? Is there a law that every Japanese horror film must include at least one girl in a school uniform?

Either the plot is so tangled that it trips over itself (bad writing) or Simizu is assuming that everyone in the audience has seen the first film in the series and he further intends to explain the tangle in a third movie (bad filmmaking), or I'm not as smart as I like to think I am (not possible). Whatever the reason, this movie is a masterful excersize in makiing the viewers feel freaked out, but a failure as an excersize in story-telling. The posives and negatives here end up placing this film on the very low end of average.

I also think this will be the last entry in "The Grudge" series that I'll be sampling. The best thing about these movies appears to be their marketing campaigns.

(That said... the birth scene and its aftermath is one that will stay with me for awhile....)