Still, the novel – with all its shortcomings – was really only the beginning.  It would take the genius of then little-known director Stephen Spielberg, a spine-tingling underwater POV, and a terrifying two-note score by John Williams for Jaws to fulfill its potential and terrify people in a way that Benchley’s book never could.

At its core, Jaws is a visual story with a simple message: don’t go in the water.   It taps into that innate human fear that something is lurking out there, waiting to gobble us up, and it’s because of this basic recipe that it succeeds as a movie where other big-screen adaptations of critically acclaimed stories have failed.  If anything, Spielberg’s decision to skimp on the underlying small-town drama and nonessential character development that characterized Benchley’s novel works to the film’s benefit.

The performances from Richard Dreyfus, Roy Schneider, and Robert Shaw are solid and, while Schneider’s “We’re going to need a bigger boat” is one of the most memorable lines in horror movie history, it’s the haunting presence of the shark that steals the show.

As Spielberg demonstrates, the scares are scariest when they’re suggested, and his decision to give the audience a shark’s-eye view of what’s going on beneath the waves packs more of a punch than anything the animatronic figure – affectionately nicknamed “Bruce” – can manage for all its onscreen teeth-gnashing.  Even when the shark isn’t seen, or when the audience isn’t looking through its “eyes,” its presence is felt by the slow buildup of John William’s brilliant two-note score.  What begins slowly quickly turns frantic, and the tension becomes as palpable as the unfortunate swimmer on the receiving end of big, bad Bruce’s teeth.

All in all, Jaws is a phenomenal film, the likes of which have not been seen since suggestion gave way to CGI.

Discerning viewers will find plenty of flaws and inconsistencies but I don’t think director Ben Rock was aiming too high with this film – it’s a straightforward action/thriller with an alien theme and a few interesting characters. Simply turn off your brain and enjoy.

It opens with a camcorder-shot montage showing a tense group en route to Buck Lake, Arizona, where they’re hoping to find something. We then turn to Hastings Market, a grocery store, at closing time. The remaining employees are waiting for the end of their shift when a heavily armed group of masked infiltrators, led by Aaron Ritter (Carlos Bernard), takes the store hostage, refusing to let any shoppers leave and threatening to shoot anyone who tries. An off-duty cop manages to dispatch a few of the gunmen, including a guy named “Spooky”, before he’s shot himself.

The group eventually reveals their purpose: to stop an alien infestation that’s been traced to the store by their “psychic” (the now dead Spooky) and to kill the “King” so they can stop further infections. The only problem is that, without Spooky, they have no way of detecting who’s been infected or locating the “King”, and have to resort to some grisly methods before time runs out.

This has all been done countless times before and Alien Raiders really doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Apart from Aaron Ritter’s back story and the way the group formed, there’s a lot borrowed from classics like The Thing and Alien and probably a dozen other alien movies. But (judging by the title) I don’t think you’re supposed to be taking this seriously.

Many have complained that the setting of a supermarket got boring after a while but I think it worked well to create a sense of paranoia. It reminded me of Splinter (2008) in that the director used a minimalist approach to get a surprising amount of tension out of the environment he was working with. As a result, the freezer becomes a makeshift morgue, the inventory room becomes a holding cell for hostages and, towards the end, the supermarket aisles became dark, foreboding corridors as you wait for the showdown. The film is very, very dark in places, though I suppose this was to cover up the rough special effects.

Certain characters are surprisingly fleshed-out (for a low-budget flick) and the acting is good even when the dialogue makes you laugh. The fact that they got a bunch of unknown actors to deliver these lines adequately is an achievement in itself, but some of it is pretty bad. It makes the sporadic humor a welcome release in this average action/thriller.

Which is why Tobe Hooper’s film adaptation of The Mangler comes as quite a surprise. No, it’s not scary, not even in the slightest and you won’t be woken up at night with nightmares of possessed laundry chasing you. Suffice to say, it doesn’t do for your dryer what Psycho did for showers, but it is quite entertaining nonetheless. And it’s probably the best possible adaptation given the source material. Most of the short story’s problems – beyond the premise itself – have been corrected, most importantly the ridiculous serious tone. In the film, there’s an acknowledgement of the premise’s silliness. The almost eager acceptance of kooky demon-possession theories by Officer John Hutton to explain the laundry’s malfunction in the story is replaced with initial skepticism and ridicule at the outrageousness of such an idea. In other words, he’s just as amused as we are. Even the tone seems to acknowledge how ridiculous the whole idea is, throwing in loads of over-the-top gore and Robert Englund hamming it up in double leg-braces and an eye-patch. Hooper has recognized the idiocy and adapted accordingly.

The movie sees Officer John Hutton, played by Ted Levine, investigating a series of deaths at the Blue Ribbon Laundry, where several women have been sucked into the industrial steam ironer, chewed up and folded out on the other side like a piece of clothing. What at first appears to be a series of baffling accidents turns out to be something more sinister, involving demonic possession, the owner of Blue Ribbon Laundry and a young girl.

As has been mentioned, The Mangler is never scary, but it is very interesting, a considerable feat for a film centered around an industrial machine grounded into a cement floor. There’s some great gore set-pieces involving the machine, but even when the gore falls to a standstill, the over-the-top characters keep it fun and lively. Levine’s officer is a prick who storms through the movie throwing curse-words left-and-right, his best friend is a kooky new-age hippie obsessed with the occult and the Laundromat owner is a senile cripple who never drops a decibel below a scream the entire film. It’s silly, highly theatrical and doesn’t get boring. It’s never scary, creepy or even very funny, but there are enough little oddities piled in to keep up ones interest. A steam-ironer-exorcism doesn’t feel as out of place here as it did in the story.

And beneath all the mayhem and hamming, there is actually something going on in this film. Several additions to the film, particularly a new ending, reveal a commentary on the corrosiveness of capitalism. By the end of this Laundromat-gone-evil flick, there’s more substance than not only the story and its cheap carnal thrills, but probably most other horror works of similar nature. It’s not the most nuanced commentary, but there are some interesting developments along the way and it seems to have flown over the heads of most who watched it.

The Mangler is typically regarded as one of the worst King adaptations. It certainly isn’t the best, but most of the criticism surrounding it stems from the ridiculous premise. Indeed, it is ridiculous and I’m not quite sure why this was made in the first place. However, Hooper has crafted the best possible film out of this silly idea, by not taking it to seriously and turning the focus from the inanity of evil laundry to something of more substance. I wouldn’t rush out to get The Mangler, but if you find an old VHS sitting around the house (as I did), it’s worth a watch.

There is quite a difference between Freddie Francis the DOP and Francis the director. It is a paradox of his career that he was able to excel himself visually in the films of others and produce such indifferent results in his own films. The low budgets didn’t help of course, nor the interference of know it all producers. The only horror film he made that can compare to the visual brilliance of The Innocents (1961), The Elephant Man (1980) and The Straight Story (1999) is the Amicus production The Skull (1965). He had a very low budget then, so really there is no excuse for the flat, drab, unadventurous and unattractive horror films he made. Perhaps it was a case of contempt for the genre, or perhaps ineptitude? The Evil of Frankenstein does suffer from this drabness and paucity of visual enjoyment, but it is also a failure at a narrative level. A pointless flashback sequence which questions the continuity and thus the veracity of the first two films is one such blunder. A blunder on this occasion that can be attributed to the screenwriter Anthony Hinds. The film isn’t a total aesthetic failure though. The Baron’s laboratory in the flashback is the most impressive seen in the cycle, but this is mere decoration that fails to cover up for the stupidity of the sequence in the first place.

Any film featuring Peter Cushing has some redeeming qualities, but even the ever dependable Cushing struggles with the liberties taken with the Frankenstein character. He comes across as a petty crybaby, his quest this time merely a childish vendetta against those that destroyed his work and drove him into exile. On this occasion the Baron seems as much if not more concerned with the theft of his possessions than he does with discovering the secret of life. His relationship with the hedonistic hypnotist Zoltan is an interesting angle that remains unfulfilled. The make up for the creature isn’t a patch on The Curse of Frankenstein, but its not a disaster. It affords the film a very striking moment when we see the Creature entombed in a glacier (a plot development that is however utterly ludicrous). The inclusion of a feral deaf mute girl intended to function as a double for the Creature is also another half baked avenue. All these elements could have provided the film with interesting themes, but when left to limply hang as they do, they function more as pointless baggage. Even the usually reliable set design and art direction feels dated and tired adding little to the proceedings. In 1967 Terence Fisher would return to helm the fourth film in the series Frankenstein Created Woman, a far more successful and rewarding venture all round and The Evil of Frankenstein would begin its slow drift into the semi-obscurity it deserved. However its status as an ill conceived aberration makes it worth viewing.

The set up takes far longer than it should for how little it matters. This time instead of a movie theater, the action takes place in an apartment building where the tenants are all going about their normal business. A young girl is having dinner with her parents, a young boy is left home alone, an expectant couple talk about their day, a bipolar woman flips out at her birthday party, and a group of muscle men led by Bobby Rhodes (who’s back in a different role) are hitting the weights. Most of these people are connected by the fact that they’re watching what seems to be a bad PBS re-enactment of the events following the first film. They’re glued to the screen as the survivors inadvertently revive one of the demons and are chased down one by one. The unstable birthday girl, who has locked herself in her bedroom, seems to be especially terrified, so perhaps the TV demon sees this as an opportunity when (in one of the best effects shots of the movie) he walks straight through her screen and into the “real” world. The already awkward party quickly goes from bad to worse and the chaos soon spreads throughout the building.

If you remember how the first film played out then you have a good idea of what’s going to happen here. I’m not sure how it’s possible, but the people are even dumber this time around and they’ve doubled the excessive shrieks and screams to keep up with the extra stupidity. The excellent gore is noticeably absent this time around, instead we get longer shots of snarling demons approaching their victims with all of the attacks taking place off camera. How is that a fair trade? I suppose the make-up is an improvement, but it seems like such a waste if you’re not going to do something with it. I found myself almost completely disinterested in the people trying to make it out alive and even more disappointed that their deaths weren’t the least bit gruesome.

It was nice to see the filmmakers had the balls to turn a kid into a demon and into a mean little bastard at that. I really wish they would have gone through with their original plan to have Hannah’s baby turn into a demon and claw it’s way out of her stomach, instead of the happier alternative. That would have helped take it that extra step and given it a little more edge. As it stands, the only thing making this a worthwhile effort are the visuals. The film is filled with stylish set pieces and it has more than enough of Bava’s signature shots with the glowy-eyed creatures walking slowly through the long shadows and mist. Although, there’s not a whole lot that fancy sets and lighting can do for a film that tries to copy its predecessor but forgets to carry over all the cool bits.

The film is basically centered in a carnival. The ghoulies take over the haunted house, and basically cause nothing but mayhem and murder. If you’re wondering what the hell a Ghoulie is, it’s just basically an uglier Gremlin rip-ff. This is a sequel to the quickly rushed out first film, which of course was trying to capitalize on the huge success of Gremlins, and did make a decent return. More then decent, as it earned enough to warrant a sequel.

As they begin to tear apart some idiots (and Band makes sure they aren’t too sympathetic of characters) some other Carnival viewers happen to see them at work. Oddly enough, more crowds begin to go into the haunted house, as when the Ghoulies are discovered the happy carnival goers think they are part of the ambience. Only a few patrons and some of the ride attendants figure out something may be amiss, and that the torture show in the haunted house may be real.

That’s basically the plot: but how’s the film itself?

Actually, it’s not that bad. Sure it’s limited as far as budget and sets go, but it’s not bad in a guilty pleasure, ‘USA up all night’ sense. Albert Band manages a rare feat however:

This film is better then it’s predecessor.
Not sure if this was intentional, as “Full Moon”’ studios, much like Corman, was always about the bottom line. But the original was not too good, and what Band wisely does is center the film much more on the Ghoulies themselves, and throws in much more sex and violence. Well, mainly violence. The title and box of the original Ghoulies on VHS made it a hit, but it’s an abominable film, with hardly any of the title creatures in it. This film goes the full blown Gremlins 2 route, with having the creatures pretty much going non stop. There are a few stop motion sequences, the acting isn’t hideously bad, and Band wisely went the “Evil Dead 2” route and threw a lot of humor in it. Much like Joe Dante in “Gremlin’s 2”, the emphasis is squarely on the little creatures, and the mayhem they cause. It’s definitely not in the class of “Gremlin’s 2”, but it’s a pretty good way to waste a couple of hours.

The plot is very simple: A young man who goes to New York City carries a wicker basket with him everywhere. This basket contains his deformed Siamese twin brother, who wants vengeance on the Doctors who separated them. When the ‘normal’ young man meets a girl who he falls for, and she begins to intrude on his relationship with her brother, tragedy ensues.

What sets this film apart is the great gore and violence, to say nothing of a pretty funny (if dark) sense of humor that pervades the film. Henenlotter knew enough to throw a great amount of blood up on the screen, but it never feels gratuitous: it’s not gore for the sake of gore, but to punish the doctor’s who ripped them apart. The deformed twin is made to by sympathetic, despite his killing spree. There is one particularly famous scene (Joe Bob Briggs wrote about it enough, and I’m not going into details and spoil it for you guys) that can upset casual horror viewers, and even have true horror buffs(like, oh I don’t know, people who read this web site) drop their jaws in disbelief.

The acting is either pretty amateur or just flat out terrible, but mention must be made of Kevin Van Hentenryck, who comes off really well. More then anything, he seems very authentic as a ‘new kid’ in New York City, and he seems very natural. Unfortunately, per IMDB, he never really went on to anything else other then the sequels to this film.

The true hero of this film is director Henenlotter though. He pretty much perfectly captures the New York City of 1982, including scummy characters (the Superintendent and the hooker are almost dead on) and every location shot looks like they went out on the streets of NYC and just shot as they went. And considering this is a low budget film, they probably did shoot everything local and without permits. Henenlotter did a few films after this one, including the pretty good ‘Brain Damage’ which features a cameo of Kevin Van Hentenryck with a basket on his lap during a subway scene, and the under rated ‘Frankenhooker’ which is a lot better then the title implies. Still, you would have thought that a director who shot out the gate with such a good film would have been able to get some more work.

To me, this film along with Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2 was the start of the great gore-comedy genre. While there has been comedy and horror intertwined since Abbot and Costello, real gore horror which is funny but also scary is real rare. This is that rare blend where a film can be horrific and funny.

We all have those moods where we want to sit down and watch a film that offers little more than some cool visuals and a lot of gore. Well, straight from the minds of Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava (yep, that’s Mario’s son) we are presented with a film that does just that. Demons is simply an excuse to stylishly slaughter a group of people trapped in a movie theatre, and really, that’s all it needs to be. It has about as much use for a plot as audiences do for another Saw sequel, but the nature of the film is so completely ridiculous that it works.

Set in Berlin, the film begins with college student Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) on the subway attempting to elude an ominous ‘Phantom of the Opera’ character who has been following her. She eventually does bump into him only to find that he’s giving out tickets to a free screening of an unnamed movie. She gets a second ticket for her friend Kathy (Paola Cozzo), whose response is “I hope it’s not a horror movie.” The two girls decide to skip class to go see the movie at the new ‘Metropol’ theatre. The venue itself offers no hints as to what movie they’ll be watching, the only thing in the lobby is a medieval suit of armor riding a dirt bike holding a samurai sword and a demon mask. I wonder if those items will come into play later in the film..

In the lobby, our diverse group of moviegoers start to trickle in which, among others, include: two strapping young college boys, a blind man and his assistant, a young couple looking to make out, an older couple, and Tony the Pimp (Bobby Rhodes) with his two hoes. On the way in one of the hookers decides that it’d be fun to try on the demon mask, which cuts her face when she takes it off. “That will teach you to touch things.”

Once the movie begins it is, in fact, a horror movie. An obviously low budget Italian film about two couples that go in search of the tomb of Nostradamus. This film includes the very same mask from the lobby and when one of the characters cuts himself in the same way, we know that something isn’t right. Things start to parallel what is happening on screen and when the hooker goes to the bathroom, her face pulsates and bursts with green gooey goodness turning her into a demon. Well, “demon” isn’t really right in this situation since these things are more like zombies in every way, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there. All hell breaks loose when the demons, literally, burst through the screen merging the two worlds into one chaotic bloodbath.

One by one the theater patrons are attacked and mutilated in incredibly entertaining ways. There is enough biting, slashing, gouging, and decapitating to satisfy most any gore hound. The filmmakers have some fun with the different demon metamorphoses and one of the best moments has to be the teeth transformation, where the demon’s gnarly teeth protrude out from its gums. After the first wave of demons have spawned, a small group of survivors band together to try and stay alive. As you can imagine, that goes really well, and things only get worse after a bunch of coke-heads show up (and leave the door open).

There really is no reason Demons should be as good as it is. Aside from the absurdity of it all, the dubbing is bad, the acting is worse, it has about as much interest in story as it does in logic, and it has the most random deus ex machina you will ever see. And yet, it is pure awesome. Basically going from set piece to set piece, the film is brimming with atmosphere. With Bava’s love of long shadows and the combination of 80’s metal and a synth score from Claudio Simonetti (Suspiria and Tenebre) the hyper-stylized experience is complete. Right about the time they gouge the eyes out of a blind man, you know you’re watching something special.

It’s hard to describe the appeal of a film like this, it’s something you have to experience for yourself. I’m not sure how big of a part Argento played in production, but his influence is definitely here. Although, it’s Bava who really steps up and makes this one his own, it’s hard to even compare it to another horror film (save the sequel Bava directed in 1986). Sure, there are other films that are just as silly (Evil Dead) and equally as gory (Braindead), but I think Demons is playing on a whole other level because of the pure lunacy of it all. It’s not a great film by any means, but I would easily put it in my top 10 Italian horror films.

The New York City Police Department has been flooded with reports of missing persons, but since most of them are homeless no one really seems to care. That is, no one except former fashion photographer turned serious artist George Cooper (John Heard) and paranoid hippy soup kitchen owner A.J. ‘The Reverend’ Shepherd (Daniel Stern). Both men have taken an interest in their “undergrounder” friends and both men start to feel like there is something else at play. Along the way they are joined by police Captain Bosch (Christopher Curry), who takes an interest after his wife goes missing, and together the three men find that they’re in for a little bit more than they bargained for.

You see, C.H.U.D. also stands for something else, “contamination hazard urban disposal”. As it turns out, the Nuclear Regulatory Committee has been dumping their toxic waste in the sewers of New York City turning the city’s homeless into disgusting, mutated creatures with an appetite for human flesh. As the truth, and the monsters, start to leak out into the city streets leave it to the N.R.C. to respond to a bad situation with an even worse plan. A plan that traps Cooper and ‘The Reverend’ in the sewers scrambling for their lives.

Douglas Cheek didn’t do much as a director, but his only feature is an admirable attempt to bring social issues into the B-horror realm. Using America’s treatment of the homeless as an underlying message, the filmmakers attempt to bring a little more meat to the table. Unfortunately this results in an often overly talky film that is not helped by its absence of gore. It’s not all bad, mind you. Daniel Stern is a riot, he plays ‘The Reverend’ with such a sincere ferver that he’s not only convincing, but he helps to make the film work as a whole. You can tell the goal here was to create atmosphere and it’s a mostly successful attempt to do so. At a budget of just over $1 million, it obviously does not have the production value of a bigger film, but I’d say it just adds to the charm. I wouldn’t necessarily call this a “must watch”, but if you can appreciate films like Critters or Killer Klowns From Outer Space then you can probably enjoy C.H.U.D. on some level.

It all starts in a mortuary in 2002; a mortician and his assistant are cleaning the lab. The mortician is a clean freak and orders his assistant to dump dirty bottles of formaldehyde down the sink. The assistant protests, he knows that the sewers dump into the city’s main river, Seoul’s Han River. Despite his protestations the assistant carries out his duties and empties the bottles down the drain. Not just a few, but, as the camera pans a table top full of empty brown bottles, it seems there are hundreds.

Four years later, 2006, the Han River. We meet a father Park Hie-Bong (Hie-Bong Byeon) and an idiot savant son Park Gang-Du (Kang-ho Song) who own and run a mobile food store on the rivers bank. The idiot savant has a daughter Hyun-seo (Ah-sung Ko) who comes home from school embarrassed that her father didn’t come to parent’s day. The father sent the drunken uncle, Nam-il (Hae-il Park) instead. The grandfather is running the food shop while father and daughter watch their sister/aunt Nam-Joo (Du-na Bae) compete in a televised archery competition. The Park family is spread out and dysfunctional.

Moments later Hie-Bong makes his son deliver some beer to one of the mats on the rivers bank. Everyone is staring across the river at a strange object hanging from the underside of a bridge near by. Before anyone can figure out what it is, the object dives into the water and swims to the bank. Gang-Du throws a beer at it and the thing pulls it under. The thing disappears, but not for long, it has immerged farther up the river bank and is running toward the group near Gang-Du. It’s a mutated slimy deformed fish thing…it’s pretty friggin awesome. What follows is a fantastic monster stomp on the riverside reminiscent of a Godzilla rampage. The monster grabs people, smashes people and swallows few. Gang-Du and a random American try to fight the beast.

Meanwhile after seeing Nam-Joo’s defeat on TV, Hyun-seo walks outside the food shop to witness masses of people running and screaming, her father is running toward her, he grabs her hand and she stumbles and falls. Without looking Gang-Du reaches for his fallen daughter, grabs her wrist and keeps running. A few feet later he realizes he’s grabbed the wrong girl and Hyun-seo is still struggling to get to her feet the monster right on her heels. Gang-Du witnesses the monster sweep up his little girl with its tail and dive back into the river. Hyun-seo is presumed dead.

Later at a memorial for the dead the Park family assembles and has a very funny overdramatic cry over the dead Hyun-seo. Men show up in bio-containment suits and demand that anyone at the riverside during the occurrence and anyone having contact with these people are to come with them immediately. During their quarantine Gang-Du’s cell phone rings in the middle of the night. It’s a call from Hyun-seo. He can barely hear her, but she says she doesn’t know where she is and she’s alive.

Hyun-seo is in fact alive. She’s trapped in a very deep drainage pit in a sewer. It’s too tall for her to get out. The monster is bringing his swallowed food supply here and regurgitating the swallowed bodies onto the sewer floor for later digestion. Eeew.

The remaining Park family bands together for the rescue of Hyun-seo. They bust out of quarantine and search all of the sewers in the Han River area. In one of the most touching moments in the film, the family sits to have a hasty meal before continuing their search and as they eat a ghost of Hyun-seo appears who they feed out of guilt that she maybe starving to death as they feed themselves. Sadly they find the creature who quickly kills their father for shooting at it. The family is once again disbanded and it seems all hope is lost.

The government has announced that a virus is being spread by those who have come in contact with the creature, and Gang-Du is going to be experimented on. Nam-il, contacts a friend to help him triangulate the cell signal so he can find Hyan-seo’s location. Nam-Joo grabs her bow and arrow and continues her search for her niece and comes pretty close but is knocked into a deep pit by the creature before she has the chance. Hyan-seo discovers a new regurgitated companion in the sewer pit and she tries to find a way for both of them to escape, but ends up getting both of them swallowed by the monster. Korean officials have decided to dump an American made chemical near the river called Agent Yellow to destroy the monster, and once again the Park family has found one another just in time to defeat the monster and hopefully save Hyun-seo.

“The Host” is a brilliant monster comedy. Some of the most stunning scenes are the CGI effects of the monster running after crowds of people. It kinda makes you long for a GOOD Godzilla remake. For the most part it’s a charming comic story about a disenfranchised family that finds each other through the destruction of a fish mutant. Try and put that on a movie poster. You can get a dubbed English version on DVD if you like, but I would recommend seeing the film with it’s original language and subtitles. Maybe this will ring in a new trend of monster films. Since they’re done stomping Tokyo, the monsters I mean, maybe Korea is next.