Movie Scum

Written by: Digger Is it Full Moon Studios time again? Already? Yep. This is another film from the not-so-proud direct to DVD tradition. But I have to warn everybody, this one makes Subspecies look like an Oscar winner. While the box art shows Zarkorr the invader, a giant dragon-like monster that shoots lasers from his eyes and wrecks cities for kicks, we rarely ever get to see it in the film. A giant monster wrecking stuff is not in and of itself a bad premise for a movie, but we soon move on to introduce this film’s worst element, the plot. Earth has been chosen by a collection of intelligent alien races, which we never actually see, to undergo a test. The aliens release a massive, planet crushing monster, Zarkorr, and contact one representative of the human race that they choose based on being the most average human specimen they can find. That average human is Tommy Ward (Rhys Pugh) a postal worker who likes to watch old cartoons that are probably in the public domain. The alie

Written by: Digger H.P. Lovecraft is called the father of modern horror and is credited with creating the Cthulhu Mythos and the ‘weird fiction’ sub-genre. Although there have been several adaptations of his various stories (most of them directed by Stuart Gordon) the highest any of those films have ever climbed in the mainstream consciousness is the movie Re-Animator, and that’s not a very well-known film. In 1995, the fans of John Carpenter (one of the more iconic horror directors working today) were treated to the giant H. P. Lovecraft tribute film In the Mouth of Madness. The movie opens with Sam Neill as a raving lunatic in a straight-jacket being dragged into a padded cell. Doctor Wrenn (David Warner) is called in to find out what made Sam’s character, named John Trent, go insane. John, who has covered himself and the walls of is cell with the images of crosses, sits down to tell Wrenn about his most recent case. John was a private investigator that specialized in cases of in

Written by: Digger Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus , is considered to be the first science fiction novel ever. The monster from this story is the first fictional creature to be created not from mysticism or occult rituals, but from scientific hubris. There has been a legion of film adaptations of this story, in fact, one of Edison Studios' first motion picture is a retelling of the Frankenstein tale. There have been many other attempts to translate the tale to film since, the most famous of which is the Universal Studios version from 1931, but in 1994,  Kenneth Branagh  directed what is possibly the most faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley's original novel.  The movie  begins with a voice over quote written by Mary Shelley talking about 'speaking to the mysterious fears of our nature' or some such, then opens to Captain Robert Walton ( Aidan Quinn ) leading an expedition to the north pole and getting many of his crew killed in the process. Once the ship is t

Written by: Digger In 1955, Jack Finney wrote a science-fiction novel about a race of alien seed pods that traveled through space and landed in Mill Valley, California. Those pods hatched into emotionless duplicates of the town's citizens and replaced them while they slept. A year later, this story would be adapted into the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers and would go on to become an American science-fiction classic. This was the first of four movie treatments that the original novel would receive over the next 55 years. The third of these adaptations, simply titled Body Snatchers, was directed by Abel Ferrara of Bad Lieutenant fame and features B-movie legends Larry Cohen and Stuart Gordon on the writing staff. Unlike all previous versions of this story, this film does not take place in California, but at a military base in Selma, Alabama. It begins with a family driving to the base. Steve Malone (Terry Kinney) is an agent with the Environmental Protection Agency th

Written by: Digger Anyone who has ever been to a Halloween party has heard of the 'Bloody Mary' game. You go into the bathroom, face the mirror, turn off the lights, say Bloody Mary three times, and turn on the lights. Supposedly, the spirit of Bloody Mary would appear behind you and kill you, or give you a back rub, or something. This, of course, never happened, but there would always be someone who knows someone who has a friend whose brother was killed by Bloody Mary, and a most kids that try this get fairly freaked-out about the legend. The film Candyman takes the legend even further by by replacing the ghost of Mary with an angry Tony Todd with a hook for a hand and shoots bees out of his mouth. Now that's scary. Based on the short story The Forbidden, by Clive Barker, the movie follows Helen (Virginia Madsen) a grad student writing a thesis on local folklore and urban legends. She comes across the legend of a black artist who had his hand cut off then was s

Written by: Digger The vampire is one of the most prevalent monster archetypes in film history. Ever since Nosferatu premiered in 1922, vampires have always occupied a special place in horror films. Subspecies is a Full Moon produced vampire film that never saw a theatrical release, but still has a dedicated cult following. The story starts with Radu (Andres Hove) walking though an authentic-looking castle to confront his father, King Vladislas (Angus Scrimm) and challenge him for control of the castle and an artifact called the Bloodstone. Radu’s look in the movie is actually one of the highlights of the film for me. He’s got unkempt rock star hair, powder-white skin, fingers that are twice as long as they should be, and the actor always has a sting of red drool trickling out of his mouth. He is very reminiscent of Count Orlock visually. The King explains that Radu cannot inherit the Bloodstone as it will give him too much power, and since Radu is evil, him having too much power w

A few years ago, I wrote a paper in college about real-life violence and how some people, erroneously in my opinion, try to blame movies and other mediums of entertainment for corrupting young minds. One of the films that was called out was Natural Born Killers for its glamorized presentation of the lives of a murderous duo. Kalifornia has a similar story but is told in a more sinister fashion. As David Duchovny muses in the film as aspiring author Brian, some people are born without the sense to know when they cross a line from the what-ifs of possibly hurting someone to actually doing so. Early Grayce, as played by the always awesome Brad Pitt , is one such person who enjoys life in the moment without much pause for consequence or reflection. When Brian and his other half Carrie ( Michelle Forbes ) plan to travel cross-country visiting murder scenes for Brian’s book, they hook up with Early and his girl Adele ( Juliette Lewis ) as a way of splitting gas money as both seek refu

Written by: Digger In sharp contrast to yesterday's DeepStar Six, today's film is well written, well acted, well paced, and enjoyable from top to bottom. Tremors is a modern monster classic carries the spirit of fifties science fiction and perfectly balances horror and comedy. Directed by Ron Underwood and staring Kevin Bacon as Val and Fred Ward as Earl, two down-on-their-luck handymen trying to escape their dead-end existence in Perfection Nevada. When they try to leave their tiny, isolated town, Val and Earl discover the body of a resident high on an electrical tower, dead from dehydration. The deaths outside the town begin to pile up as the surviving residents try to piece together just what exactly is killing so many people. Burt ( Michael Gross ) discovers a snake-like creature attached to the back of Val and Earl's truck that had stalled it out previously. With the only road to the closest signs of civilization blocked and all communication outside the

Written by: PBF Beerfest is the fourth film by comedy troupe Broken Lizard . I watched the unrated version on DVD and found it to be more humorous than I remembered. I assume that this is because most (if not all) of any recent viewings before this were on Comedy Central or some other basic cable channel, thus it was edited in to being unfunny. Johann von Wolfhouse, grandfather to Jan and Todd Wolfhouse, dies, and the brothers are sent to Germany by their Gam Gam (great grandmother) with his ashes. It’s Oktoberfest, and the Wolfhouses accidentally destroy a drunken celebration under a tent. They are taken to Beerfest, which is a drinking competition run by Wolfgang von Wolfhausen. Like the Olympics, teams from many different countries compete, and (unlike the Olympics) the Germans are the best. The German team are also Wolfhausens and it is discovered that they are the cousins of the Wolfhouses. However, the Wolfhausens are less than hospitable, claiming that Johann was a stable

Written by: Digger In 1989, all the cool movies were taking place under water. The most famous of these films was James Cameron’s The Abyss, but there was also a gaggle of much less memorable films, like Leviathan, Endless Descent, The Rift, and one that bares several striking similarities to Cameron’s film called DeepStar Six. In this movie, directed by Sean S. Cunningham who is most famous for gracing the world with Friday the Thirteenth, a group of submarine-driving roughnecks are contracted by the Navy to construct an underwater silo capable of launching long-range nuclear missiles. The rag-tag group includes B-movie regular Matt McCoy as James, Miguel Ferrer as a guy named Snyder, (you just know he’s going to be a bastard with a name like Snyder) and a ferociously hot Nia Peeples as Dr. Scarpelli. This crew works on the ocean floor in a scientific research station named, surprise surprise, DeepStar Six. While a pair of engineers are bombing out an undersea cave to construct th

Written by: Digger In spite of what you may think from the title, this movie has nothing to do with pumpkins. There is never even a good shot of a pumpkin in this film. I mentioned the late Stan Winston in my Predator review, and he is considered a legend of creature special effects. Pumpkinhead is his directorial debut and features his creepiest creation in the title roll. The story takes place in what can only be called the back woods of the Appalachians. Here is where Ed Harley ( Lance Henriksen ) lives with his son Billy. ( Matthew Hurley ) One day, Ed must leave his son at his general store when a group of teenagers on vacation ( this sounds familiar ) stop for a while on their long trip. The guys of the group decide to mount up on their dirt bikes for a little mid-afternoon motocross, but Joel ( John D'Aquino ) who has been drinking, runs over little Billy and kills him, then freaks out about it and takes off with most of his friends. Steve ( Joel Hoffman ) sta

Written by: Digger Arnold Schwarzenegger has had several notable costars in his movie career, such as James Earl Jones, Michael Ironside, and Tom Arnold. But his most memorable costar, for me anyway, was a seven-foot tall alien with a crab-mouth and dreadlocks.  Predator is, without a doubt, one of the greatest action movies of all time. It has an all-star cast of thick-necked dudes headed up by Arnold as "Dutch,"  Carl Weathers as Dillon, Bill Duke as Mac, and Jesse 'the Body' Ventura as Cooper. The movie opens much like John Carpenter's The Thing, with an alien ship cruising through space, the dropping a pod as it passes by Earth. Man, Earth is like the all night truck stop to the whole galaxy, apparently. An random alien flying by sees our planet and thinks "That looks like a good place to stretch my legs, maybe grab a bite to eat." Anyway, we soon cut to Dutch and his commando team being flown in to a military outpost in Guatemala. He