Showing posts with label horror films. Show all posts
Showing posts with label horror films. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

The Devil's Rock


Editor's Note: For those who have indicated that The Devil's Rock isn't a part of Netflix's database we do apologize for the mistake and hope that you nonetheless found the article enjoyable.

The Devil’s Rock

Written By: David Roden

“WHAT IN GOD’S NAME IS GOING ON HERE?!?!

I can assure you there is nothing in god’s name going on here.”

Of all the horror film clichés I must say I find the Nazi trying to use supernatural means to win the war to be one of the most entertaining. Nazis make the perfect villains, as we all already view them as such. Throw a demon into the mix and you are looking at one happy horror fan.

The film is about a two man Kiwi spec-ops team that is raiding a Nazi bunker on an island in the English Channel during World War 2. They come across a Nazi colonel who has found a way to summon a demon in hopes of having said demon fight for them.

We open the film with a beautiful shot of the beach our boys have landed on. Complete with barbed wire and tank busters, this looked like a shot of the beaches of Normandy on D-Day morning. We are introduced to our two commandos as they make their way up the minefield of a beach. Everything goes great from there. We get an early taste of the viciousness of this movie when our hero dispatches a Nazi with his knife.

Upon entering the bunker we are treated to some truly fantastic dead bodies provided by Weta Workshop. To be perfectly honest, this was my favorite part. It’s a fantastic way to tell your story without all that boring talking. You can read an entire story by using their wounds as words.
We then get to meet out villain, a Nazi colonel in charge of finding ways to use the occult to sway the war in their favor. This is where I felt the film stumbled a little bit. The big, bad Nazi colonel doesn’t have a German accent. I don’t know if this was explained and I just missed it but whatever the reason it was a bad choice. I really wanted to hear this man deliver his lines with a full, rich, thick accent. What I got was an SS officer that sounded like Clive Owen.

I won’t say much about the demon or it’s origins but I will say that I enjoyed every moment of it on screen. It had the perfect mixture of charm and danger.

For those Cthulhu fanatics out there, you will be treated to a solid reference to The Great Old Ones. It’s little things like that that speak to the level of care that was taken when writing this.

Overall, this isn’t something I’ll still be talking about this time next year but I did really enjoy myself. Aside from an accent mix up and some pretty serious pacing issues this was a solid genre film that will hopefully garner some attention for a filmmaker with a lot of potential.

The Devils's Rock






Saturday, May 5, 2012

Scary movies you got to love em- I know I do


Scary movies, everyone loves them. We go to the theater to see them and when were not doing that we watch them on television. Some of us can't get enough of scary movies.

I love scary movies because I grew up watching them. They have become a part of who I am as a person and I absolutely wouldn’t have it any other way.

My baptism into the eerie world of horror movies was a process that took place over the span of a series of Saturdays for me as a young boy as I would spread out in front of the television and watch those wonderful timeless classic scary movies that to this day hold a very special place in my heart.

One of the things that I love about scary movies, which I think, makes them somewhat unique from other movie genres are their various sub genres. There’s seemingly countless types of scary movies, which basically means that whatever your type of horror movie or kind of horror film fan you happen to be there’s probably something out there for your individual taste.

Some horror movie fans can only stomach some of the older more cheesier scary movies whose death scenes and the way they are depicted are decidedly tempered compared to some of the gory movies that we’ve seen put up on the big screen over the last few years. For example movies such as Ely Roth’s Hostel, which was an absolute blood bath, along with Hatchet written and directed by Adam Green.

Some scary movies can really be a white-knuckle roller coaster ride of an experience, which is one of the things that appeal to true fans. Sometimes the movie can captivate your attention to the point that you are not just fully engaged but fully invested in either one of the main characters plight or that of a group of characters, kind of what happened to us as moviegoers when we first were exposed to the group of teens in the original Friday The 13th.

How could you not feel sorry for the “horny little fuckers” that were slaughtered while having sex in the movie? I mean where is it written that if you are getting a little “head” when you should be doing something else, such as working, you should “lose your head” as punishment?

But all jokes aside, scary movies have had the distinct ability, unlike other movie types, in that they have become indelibly engrained in the collective psyches of horror movie fans to the extent similarly to my early experience with the genre, as fans live and grow as individuals the many movies that we all have seen and their respective images have in a weird kind of way become a part of who we are, who we become, and as for me, again I wouldn’t have it any other way.




Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Worse horror movies ever part 1

Here's my list:

1. The Exorcist Part 2
2. Motel Hell
3. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
4. Halloween 3: Season of the witch
5. HellRaiser
6. I Eat Your Skin
7. Screaming Skull
8. Fright Night (Although entertaining it was very bad)
9. Evil Dead: Army of Darkness
10. It’s Alive
11. The Boogie Man (The Original)
12. Pet Cemetery

Worse horror movies ever part 2

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Halloween Movie Review


Written By: "MonsterMan"

We’ve all seen certain movies that we don't mind watching over again, and each time we see them they remind us exactly why we liked them in the first place. Well, for me Halloween is that kind of movie.

Halloween is a story about a murderous-escaped mental patient, named Michael Myers, who returns to his fictitious home town of Haddonfield, Ill. on Halloween in order to continue his homicidal predilection discovered by his parents when he was six years old, after killing his older sister.

Halloween was made in 1978, but still remains one of the best horror movies ever made. Here are just a few reasons I believe why.


Halloween: The night he came home.

The first thing I must say was John Carpenter's and Debra Hill's decision to write a horror movie using Halloween as the backdrop. They figured out that if done right they could maximize the latent potential for terror, suspense and horror that creating a movie surrounding the holiday could present. And baby, was it done right. The result, 29 years later, the movie has become a cult classic and is considered by many to be the forerunner to most of the horror movies of the 80's and beyond.


A Star is born.

Jamie Lee Curtis played Laurie Strode, the wide-eyed innocent and awkward teen who took on Michael Myers, and although she along with movie-goers was absolutely scared out of our minds, she gave Michael Myers as much as he could handle. For someone who hadn’t had one single role on film to that point, and although Ms. Curtis was very critical of her performance, I can’t image this movie being as good as it was with out the young actress in the role.

Mr. Myers the Doctor will see you now.

It’s been said that, no matter the type of movie, you really don’t have a story without a well written antagonist. And as for Halloween, the role of the antagonist was played exceptionally well by late actor Donald Pleasance. Donald played Dr. Sam Loomis, the doctor who had the daunting task of treating Michael Myers when he was a kid. And because of his knowledge of his patient, he knew if he ever was set free from the hospital, he would without question return to his home town, and the end result, would be as predictable, people would surely die. You get the sense from watching the Dr. Loomis’ character on screen that he was very much obsessed with ridding the world of the “evil” that was Michael Myers. Christopher Lee, a very good character actor in his own right, if I’m not mistaken was originally offered the role but it obviously went to the man who with out a doubt did it justice.

The Man under the Mask

There have been many others to play the role of Michael Myers in the sequels that followed but none did it like Nick Castle. He was the perfect embodiment of John Carpenter’s vision for what he saw as “pure evil”. In order to really appreciate this man’s stellar performance one must only see him in all of his gory. Sorry, in all of his glory.

What’s the Boogey Man?

The main thing that made this movie so good was John Carpenter’s ability to capitalize on our “child-like” fear of the “Boogey Man”. The Boogey Man is every kid’s worse nightmare. Nothing scares children like the boogey man. Kids always believe that despite what their parents tell them, the boogey man does in fact hang out under their beds and in their closets, waiting and lurking in the shadows to snuff out their little lives. Kids revere their parents, at least most do, and may even be afraid of them from time to time but, as for the Boogie Man, they are truly afraid. And for this reason the Michael Myers character is in a sense an archetype, in that he is the fullness of the only individual who scares us like no other. This is how John Carpenter envisioned him. He did, however, refer to him differently when he was writing the part. The website, pitofhorror.com says of Michael Myers, The Shape is what John Carpenter referred to Michael Myers as in the script. Throughout the movie you only see the outline of Michael lurking in the shadows, non-descript and very much a "shape". Now you tell me, who does that sound like to you?

Ok, die already will you!

What I remember most about this movie, when I saw it for the first time, was that it was truly frightening, of course any 14 year old kid would think so. I guess it was something about the large imposing masked man wielding an equally large kitchen knife, looking to take any and everyone’s life, and do it with relative ease. A man, I might add, who refuses to die on more than one occasion. Clearly Lauie Strode was unaware of one simple fact about the boogie man and it was this, no matter how hard you try you absolutely cannot kill him. Okay Michael Myers may not have been the actual boogie man, the infamous purveyor of terror, but he was however, one scary ass dude. One I don’t mind watching over and over again in this terrific movie.

Halloween Movie Review

Saturday, February 24, 2007

What's the Scariest movie you've ever seen?

Here's the "Monster Man's" scariest movies of all time.

  • Poltergeist
  • Amityville Horror
  • The Sixth Sense
  • Carrie
  • Halloween
  • Aliens
  • The Exorcist
  • The Beast Within
  • The Devil's Rain
  • Tell me what you think of my list.

    The "Monster Man"