THE DEVIL’S TOMB – director: Jason Connery; starring: Cuba Gooding Jr., Taryn Manning, Henry Rollins, Ron Perlman

There is something about Cuba Gooding Jr. that just gets on my last nerve. Maybe it’s the shameless way he prances around and hams it up in insipid comedies. Or maybe it’s the way he strikes that stoic, misty-eyed pose in ham-fisted melodramas. Whatever it is, there is something about Gooding that really bothers me, and with the exception of maybe two films, I’ve never seen him in anything where I liked his acting. But no matter how much I may not like his acting—and I really don’t like his acting—the one “positive” thing I can say about Gooding is that he puts something into every performance (crappy though it may be). At least that was the one thing I could say until I saw The Devil’s Tomb, in which Gooding appears to put so little effort into his “performance” that it seems more like he accidentally wandered on to a set of a movie after having awakened from a week-long coma. (more…)

SPLINTER – director: Toby Wilkins; starring: Shea Whigham, Paulo Costanzo, Jill Wagner, Rachel Kerbs

The concept is about as basic as it gets: a small number of people, taking refuge from an outside force that threatens them. Agatha Christie used a variation of the formula in her classic mystery And Then There Were None (a.k.a Ten Little Indians), Alfred Hitchcock used differing versions of the formula in both The Birds and Rear Window, and most famously in the world of horror, it has been used in everything from Night of the Living Dead to Alien to The Thing. Sure, by now it isn’t exactly the most original premise, but if it is done right, especially under the guise of the horror genre, it can make for a damn entertaining movie. At the same time, when this time-proved concept is done poorly, the result is a laughable hodge podge of tired clichés and predictable conventions. And because this concept is so simple, it is easy for some less talented filmmakers to delude themselves into thinking that following the Night of the Living Dead model will be easy, when in fact, it can be the kiss of death. (more…)

POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN DEAD – director: Lloyd Kaufman; starring: Jason Yachanin, Kate Graham

Over twenty years ago I was in a video store with my good friend Kevin, and we saw this giant cardboard standee promoting a movie called The Toxic Avenger. There was a handwritten noted taped to the standee that said, “This movie is really violent and has a lot of nudity. No one under 18 can rent this movie.” Well, that was all Kevin and I need to get us to rent a little film made by a company named Troma, which neither of us had ever heard of. That night we watched The Toxic Avenger in the basement of Kevin’s mother’s house, and my life was forever changed. (more…)

ZOMBIE STRIPPERS – director: Jay Le; starring: Robert Englund, Joey Medina, Jenna Jameson, Roxy Saint

There are only two expectations when a film has the words “zombie” and “strippers” in the title. And those expectations are, quite simply, a ton of gut-churning gore effects and an equal amount of gratuitous nudity. Unfortunately, as the film Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! – Strippers vs. Zombies recently proved, it is possible to have a film with both zombies and strippers that fails miserably in delivering both the splatter effects and the nudity. Which is why I was somewhat apprehensive going into Zombie Strippers. The last thing I wanted to do was waste more of my time on a film that failed to deliver the most basic fundamentals that is promised in its title. Trick me once, shame on me, trick me twice, blah blah blah. (more…)

TRAILER PARK OF TERROR – director: Steven Goldman; starring: Nichole Hiltz

If you are a hardcore fan of horror movies, at some point you have to ask yourself, “How much am I willing to forgive?” By this I mean that all too often horror fans can be forgiving of a movie simply by virtue of the fact that it is horror. It’s like something turns off in their brains, or perhaps their brains were never turned on. Either way, these fans—and you know who you are—will pretty much accept anything as long as it has a scary moment or two and some splatter effects. Forget about story. Forget about originality. Forget about character development. And if you’re one of those people, you’ll really like Trailer Park of Terror. (more…)

BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF – director: Christohpe Gans; starring: Samuel Le Bihan, Mark Dacascos, Vincent Cassell, Monica Bellucci, Emilie Dequenne

French critic-turned-filmmaker Christophe Gans’ 2001 film Brotherhood of the Wolf was a cinematic wet dream for fanboys—a moving picture pastiche of genre films with a childlike love for all things cool. In much the same way Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon captured both directors love for the genre films they grew up watching, Brotherhood of the Wolf is Gans’ loving tribute to the spaghetti westerns, kung fu flicks and horror movies that inspired him in his youth. (more…)

TRIGGER MAN – director: Ti West; starring: Reggie Cunningham), Ray Sullivan, Sean Reid

Written, produced, edited, photographed and directed by Ti West, Trigger Man is the sort of psychological thriller that has a certain amount going for it, but runs the risk of not quite finding its audience. It is, above all else, a horror film, only without the conventional trappings of a horror film. With a total run time of 80 minutes, the film spends the first thirty minutes very casually setting things up before it gets going with a sort of pace that most horror fans expect. This can make a for a film that is both a challenge to watch in the beginning—at least for horror fans—and for non-horror fans a challenge to get through once the tension really kicks in. (more…)

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE - director: John Carl Buechler; starring: Tony Todd, Tracy Scoggins, Vernon Wells, Tim Thomerson, Steve Wastell

If director John Carl Buechler’s adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was just really bad, or just really stupid, then it might have been able to pass itself off as a bit of fun trash. After all, it isn’t unheard of that a film can be bad or stupid and still be entertaining. Unfortunately, this version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale of duality is both bad and stupid—two unpleasant cinematic tastes that do not taste great together. The end result is a film that sadly can’t even be compared to a train wreck so much as a car accident between a Ford Pinto and an AMC Pacer. (more…)

FIDO – director: Andrew Currie; starring: Carrie-Ann Moss, Billy Connolly, Dylan Baker

“Man, I know you don’t like that many movies, but you are going to love Fido.” That’s what everyone I know who saw Fido told me. They emphasized it so much, that I actually started to believe it. I mean here were people who seemingly knew my taste in film, so I figured they must be on to something. And then I started reading all of these reviews, and it seemed like if I didn’t love Fido, then at the very least I was going to like it a lot. But a funny thing happened about twenty-minutes in to the film, I started thinking about how much everyone told me I was going to love Wild at Heart, and how my friends dragged me to the theater to see it, and how I tried to walk out because I absolutely hated it. And the more I watched Fido, the more my respect for every person who sang the film’s praises diminished, until it got to the point where I wanted to call every person who recommended the film to me, and tell them to kiss my ass. (more…)

OUTPOST - director: Steve Barker; starring: Ray Stevenson

Every now and then horror fans are lucky enough to stumble across a great find—films like Dog Soldiers, Cube, or Audition. These are the type of films that seem to come out of nowhere, catch us off guard, and deliver the sort of horror flick experience that simply doesn’t come around often enough. Outpost wants to be that type of movie. Unfortunately, it is not. (more…)