What we think of that...
Tenebre - Reviewed by Michael
West
The Cottage - Reviewed by Michael
West
The Orphanage - Reviewed
by Stephen M. Wilson
The
Fifth Child *
Death Sentence *
Awake *
Intruder *
* Reviewed by Brian Yount
Tenebre
(AKA Unsane) (1982)
Directed by Dario Argento
 Synopsis:
Best-selling author Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa),
in Rome to promote his latest novel, suddenly finds
himself at the center of a murder investigation when
someone uses his books as the inspiration for a string
of grisly slayings.
Final Assessment:
Dario Argento’s Tenebre is a shining example
of how good a slasher film can be. Yes, my friends,
in its infancy, before it became the stable of unstoppable,
unkillable boogeymen, the slasher film was nothing
more than psychological thriller with gore, a mystery.
The audience was supposed to try and figure out “who
done it,” rather than simply wonder “how
are they gonna do it?” Armed with one of his
most coherent and cohesive screenplays, Argento gives
us clues and a multitude of suspects, but even if
you think you have it all figured out, nothing can
prepare you for the twisted finale.
Favorite Quotes:
Peter: “If someone is killed with a Smith &
Wesson revolver, do you go and interview the president
of Smith & Wesson?”
Killer (in hissing whisper): “Pervert! Filthy,
slimy pervert!”
Detective Germani: “I figured it out on page
30.”
Peter: “Somebody who should be dead is alive,
or somebody who should be alive is already dead.”
Sick Scenes:
An unseen assailant holds a woman at knifepoint. Pages
of a horror novel are shoved into her screaming mouth
and her throat is slit.
Chased by a ferocious dog, a mauled woman takes refuge
in the killer’s house. She is soon discovered
and killed with an axe.
A man has an axe buried in his skull.
A woman has her arm cut off. The stump sprays arcs
of blood across a white wall, creating a work of modern
art on the blank canvas.
Another bit of art--a sculpture constructed of long,
sharp metal cones--falls on a man, impaling him to
a wall.
Special Features:
Until now, Tenebre has only been available as the
hatchet job Unsane. Thankfully, Anchor Bay has done
some sleuthing and restored 19 minutes of missing
footage to this new unrated Collector’s Edition
DVD. The picture is vibrant; solid blacks, bright
whites, and glorious splashes of color. The 5.1 surround
mix gives every hack and slash clear resonance, but
leaves the dialogue a bit too low at times. Extras
include informative behind-the-scenes featurettes
that dissect the film’s visual style and sound
design, provide alternate music cues, and last but
certainly not least, deliver a feature-length commentary
track with Argento, composer Claudio Simonetti, and
journalist Loris Curci. As they discuss the creative
process in detail, we learn that Argento’s script
was inspired by an experience the writer/director
had with a real-life stalker. Hmmm...a film about
life imitating art is really art imitating life.
Rent/Buy/Stay Far Away from:
By all means, buy! Still banned in many countries,
this beautifully restored and totally uncut version
is finally available for viewing in the United States.
Not only is this a must-own for any horror fan, it
will serve as a good “gateway film” for
those who have never beheld the grotesque spectacle
that is the Dario Argento experience.
My rating, 1-5 stars:
Storyline: 4/5
Directing: 4.5/5
Soundtrack: 3/5
Acting: 4/5
Features: 4/5
My Over All Rating: 4/5
Total Score: 23.5 out of 30
The
Cottage
Directed by Paul Andrew Williams
Synopsis:
A bungled kidnapping leaves feuding brothers
David and Peter (Andy Serkis and Reece Shearsmith)
stranded in the English countryside with a deformed
psychopath (Dave Legeno) who collects heads and has
a taste for human flesh.
Final Assessment:
The horror comedy is a tricky thing to pull
off. Too much comedy, the audience won’t be
frightened, but if you make it truly terrifying, your
viewers might scream more than they laugh. Last year,
writer/director Christopher Smith tried the mixture
with Severance, and ended up with an uneven mess.
Fellow Brit Paul Andrew Williams, however, has found
the perfect blend. Paying homage to Tobe Hooper and
Quentin Tarantino, The Cottage begins as a funny crime
caper and morphs into something much darker fairly
quickly. The script is witty and as sharp as the knives
wielded by its madmen. And the performances, particularly
Serkis (Lord of the Rings/King Kong) and Shearsmith,
are first-rate. This is pure gory fun from beginning
to end. If you have grown sick of the endless remakes
and watered down PG-13 shockers that Hollywood has
turned out in recent years, this bloodbath from across
the pond is the medicine you seek.
Favorite Quotes:
Peter: “We’re going to Hell for
this.”
David: “How’s your phone?”
Andrew (Steve O'Donnell): “It’s run out
of battery.”
David: “Okay, have you got charger?”
Andrew: “Yes.”
David: “Great. Where is it?”
Andrew: “In the club.”
David: “What the fuck is it doing there?”
Andrew: “It’s plugged in the wall.”
Old man (Hellraiser’s Doug Bradley): “You
make sure you lock your doors. Strangers don’t
fair well in these parts.”
Tracey (Jennifer Ellison): “We’re in
a creepy house in the middle of nowhere. There’s
a trapdoor in the kitchen with a weird noise comin’
from underneath. What the fuck do you think is gonna
be down there?”
Tracey: “Why are the hands in the freezer?”
Peter: “Oh, you must be joking.”
Sick Scenes:
A captive’s belly is sliced open and his intestines
spill out onto the floor.
A shovel slices a man’s foot in two and lops
a woman’s head off at the mouth.
In a scene that pays tribute to the Predator films,
the farmer reaches into a man’s back, yanks
out the spinal cord and head, and roars at the moon.
Rent/Buy/Stay Far Away from:
By all means buy! This is one of the best horror films
in recent memory. Run now to the nearest video store
and add it to your collection.
My rating, 1-5 stars:
Storyline: 4/5
Directing: 4.5/5
Soundtrack: 4/5
Acting: 4.5/5
My Over All Rating: 4/5
Total Score: 21 out of 25
The
Orphanange (Orfanato, El)
By Juan Antonio Bayona
 Un
cuento de amor. Una historia de terror.
(A tale of love. A story of horror)
When done right a ghost story can illicit many emotions:
fear, mystery, and sadness chief among them. The Orphanage,
directed by first-time Spanish filmmaker Juan Antonio
Bayona from a screenplay by Sergio G. Sánchez,
delivers all three in spades. With strong similarities
to predecessors such as The Changeling, The Innocents,
The Others, and producer Guillermo del Toro’s
own brilliant The Devil’s Backbone, The Orphanage
employs many horror film tropes: mysterious noises,
a medium contacting the dead, slamming doors, creepy
children, creepy soundtrack, creepy masks, creepy
strangers, and bereft parents to tell an intelligent,
emotionally
wrenching and very scary tale.
With the dream of adopting special needs children,
Laura (Belén Rueda) and her husband Carlos
(Fernando Cayo) purchase and move into an orphanage
on the Spanish coast in which she was raised before
being adopted at the age of nine. They bring with
them their first adopted child, Simón (Roger
Príncep) who is HIV+. Simón is unaware
of both the adoption and the illness until he is told
by his newly acquired imaginary friend Tomás.
After an emotional confrontation with Laura, the young
Simón disappears.
Laura refuses to believe that her son is gone to
her forever and embarks on a quest to reunite with
him. Not since Rosemary’s Baby has a script
been as ambiguous as to whether what is really happening
is of a supernatural nature or a psychological one
as Laura unravels mysteries from her past to find
her son.
Themes such as lost youth and the maternal instinct
permeate the story and are exemplified in the many
mentions of and parallels to the classic stories of
Peter Pan.
The scares are plenty—never in a film have I
seen the use of a simple mask so brilliantly chilling—but
what raises it above the average freight flick is
the emotional intensity of Laura’s loss superbly
captured in Rueda’s portrayal of the grieving
mother. This, I’m sure, is why Spain chose it
as its Official Submission to the Best Foreign Language
Film Category of the 80th Annual Academy Awards (2008).
The final ten minutes of The Orphanage are both heart
wrenching and strangely uplifting as all the pieces
of the mysteries of both Laura’s past and Simón’s
disappearance are neatly tied together in a satisfying
conclusion.
The Orphanage is in limited release.
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Spanish with English subtitles
The
Fifth Child
by Doris Lessing
 Being
the father of two normal kids, I am happy to say that
I've never had to go through a situation like Doris
Lessing describes in 'The Fifth Child.' The majority
of the tale is told from the viewpoint of the mother,
Harriet Lovatt.
Synopsis:
Doris really takes us inside of the head of Harriet,
showing in the first half of the book how she acts
with four perfectly normal kids and then, by the middle
of the novel, the terror she experiences at having
Ben, the “hostile little troll,” as she
refers to him.
It doesn’t take long for Harriet to realize
there is something wrong with Ben. When breast-feeding,
he suckles until his mother’s tits are badly
bruised, and he never seems to get full. When he gets
older, he bends and sprains his little brother's wrist.
Things really get out of control when he kills the
family dog and cat. His siblings are afraid of him
and his father, David, wants nothing to do with his
son. So what's the mother to do? She finally gives
into David’s request and has Ben sent away to
an institution.
Later she starts to feel guilty and goes to the institution
to get Ben back. These ten pages are probably my favorite
in the book. She demands to see her son and finds
him drugged, wearing a straightjacket and lying in
his own bodily waste. Harriet saves him by taking
him home.
Will the family accept Ben finally, or will Harriet
lose everyone she loves in order to protect her monster
of a son?
Final Assessment:
I'll warn you that this novel has a slow start. It
takes fifty pages before Ben is introduced. The pages
before that point describe the birth of the other
four children and we meet some of the other family
members. While this section isn’t exciting,
I feel it is necessary so that we can see the family
before the horror begins. Then, from pages 50 to 100,
I couldn't put the book down. Pages 100-133 disappointed
me. After Harriet rescues Ben the story got stale.
I say that because I could see what was going to happen
next, and the part about Ben ending up in a gang was
just odd.
I like how Doris shows what happens because of Harriet's
decision to save her son, but to me it could have
been pulled off a whole lot better. It lacks an ending
that would make you think, 'Yes, I just read a great
book.' With that being said, it is still well worth
checking out – seventy percent of it had me
on edge. But I do not agree with those who’ve
said they consider this book a classic.
My rating, 1-5 stars:
3.5 out 5.0 stars
Death
Sentence (2007)
Directed by James Wan
 Synopsis:
Nick Hume (Kevin Bacon) is a proud father/husband
who is pushed over the edge after his oldest son gets
brutally murdered with a machete – all because
another young man is forced to kill as an initiation
into his older brother’s gang. Nick wants revenge
for his painful loss. Nevertheless, when he kills
the man who did away with his son, he feels guilty
– and he doesn’t realize he has set a
chain of bloody events into motion that will pull
the rest of his family into the deadly crossfire.
As the movie moves to an action- packed ending, it’s
plain to see that Hume has become the very thing he
despised before – a cold-blooded killer.
Final Assessment:
It actually took my heart an hour to slow down after
watching this movie. James Wan, the director and writer
of ‘Saw,’ is also the man behind ‘Death
Sentence.’ He proves this time that he can create
a grind-house film better than Quentin Tarantino.
Kevin Bacon and John Goodman give noble performances.
Some of the scenes are over the top, but none of it
really bothered me because twenty minutes into the
movie I knew the director was aiming for an exploitation
film, full of wanton violence. If you decide to check
this film out, just remember you’ll need to
throw all logic out the window in order to properly
enjoy it.
Favorite Quotes:
'Do you know how much I gotta wipe your fucking nose?
'
"That is why you're a bunch of fucking punks,
because you would rather drink up and toke yourselves
fucking witless. Witless and scared shitless!'
'You're in my end of the fucking sewer, buddy. I
say who lives. I say who dies. Now you better get
that through your fucking skull, because there's no
more warnings. I'm coming for some fucking family
time. '
'Don't let me smell fear on you. Fear is for the enemy.
Fear, and bullets. Lot's of fucking bullets. '
My rating, 1-5 stars:
Storyline: 3.5/5
Directing: 4/5
Soundtrack: 5/5
Acting: 4/5
My Over All Rating: 3.5/5
Total Score: 20 out of 25
Awake
(2007)
Directed by Joby Harold
 Synopsis:
Each year, over 21,000 people receive general anesthesia.
The vast majority go to sleep peacefully and remember
nothing when they awake. However, a number of patients
are not so fortunate - they find themselves unable
to slip into unconsciousness and they remain trapped
in a phenomenon known as “anesthesia awareness.”
These victims are completely paralyzed; they cannot
scream for help and they remain totally aware of what
is happening to them during surgery.
Clayton, a Wall Street whiz kid, is in need of a heart
transplant. On the day of his first major heart attack,
a surgeon named Jack was there to revive him. Now
Clayton will have no other doctor perform the heart
transplant, even though his mother wants him to use
a topnotch surgeon. Clayton not only ignores his mother’s
advice, he is also dating her secretary, Sam, behind
her back. As the day of surgery nears, he decides
he must marry Sam before he goes under the knife.
He wants to try living life to its fullest, just in
case the worst happens.
Finally, a heart is available and his life is about
to change forever. He goes under anesthesia, but he
can still hear and feel everything that is going on.
It doesn’t take long before dark secrets are
revealed as he lies there helpless and suffering.
Will he survive the nightmare?
Final Assessment:
There are a lot of problems with ‘Awake,’
Jessica Alba being one of them. The first thirty minutes
are effective, with Clayton being under and feeling,
hearing, and smelling what’s going on. Even
though that part of the movie works well, it’s
not enough to save it from the far-fetched situations
that occur. Another problem is that too many twists
are crammed into the plot. I won’t say the movie
isn’t worth watching, but it’s more like
a movie made for TV or one that has gone directly
to DVD.
Favorite Quotes:
None
My rating 1-5 stars:
Storyline: 3/ 5
Directing: 3.5 / 5
Soundtrack: 3.5 / 5
Acting: 2.5/ 5
My Over All Rating: 2.5 / 5
Total Score: 15 out of 25
Intruder
(1989)
Directed by Scott Spiegel
 Synopsis:
Ranch Market is your average, boring small-town grocery
- until one evening at closing time when Craig, just
out of jail on parole, shows up at the store. He’s
there to confront his ex, Jennifer, who works there
on the night shift. He aggressively demands that she
take him back. The store managers rush to her aide
and what I would call a “comic book fistfight”
transpires. You know, the kind where the sound effects
are added to make the punches sound exaggerated? Eventually
Craig is kicked out of the store. The managers call
a huddle and the night crew is told that they handled
the situation well, so one of them asks for a bonus.
That’s when they learn that the store has been
sold and will be closing in a month. They get back
to work to finish their shift. Craig is not done though;
he’s locked out but he continues to taunt Jennifer
outside of the store, and by phone. Finally the police
are called to take care of the situation, but before
they arrive the crew starts being slaughtered one
by one. Is it Craig or someone even more sinister?
Final Assessment:
The first thing I wanted to know after this film ended
was who directed it. Scott Spiegel is that person.
There are a number of shots that are very original,
but some of the camera work reminded me of the style
used in ‘Black Christmas.’ Still, this
movie had some unique angles and setups that I’ve
never seen before. The death scenes in ‘Intruder’
make ‘Black Christmas’ look like a PG-13
flick. Intruder rivals any slasher movie I’ve
seen. The storyline wasn’t great, but that’s
to be expected. Bruce Campbell is listed as one of
the stars, but really his name is just being used
to sell the film - he’s only in it for two or
three minutes. Most of the acting is sad, but Sam
Raimi’s character was hilarious, and he hardly
says a thing. I think the characters in this movie
are what set this apart from other slashers. Time
is spent giving each one a personality.
This flick has it all: humor, horror, and gore. If
you’re a horror movie fan and haven’t
seen this, check it out. If you can’t find it
at a video store, I’m sure you can find a copy
online for a reasonable price.
Favorite Quotes:
‘I'm just crazy about this store.’
‘I swear to God, if my brother hadn't hit him
repeatedly on the head with a blender he would have
killed me!’
‘Here comes fucking Parker, walking down nine
miles, swinging the goddamned head by the hair in
one hand and his sandwich in the other.’
My rating 1-5 stars:
Storyline: 2/5
Directing: 5/5
Soundtrack: 4/5
Acting: 2.5/5
My Over All Rating: 3/5
Total Score: 18.5 out of 25
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