“The Midnight Meat Train” on IMDB
Horror, 98 Minutes, 2008
This is a theatrical version of Clive Barker’s 1984 short story of the same name (found in the “Books of Blood” volume One). While the story was greatly extended (the original story encompassed only a single evening) and several characters added the basic message and drivers remained thankfully untouched. While Barker definitely isn’t to everyone’s taste at least the movie allows his story to stand fundamentally unscathed.
Horror, 83 Minutes, 2012
The first Piranha movie was actually pretty good, this one not so much. The first one had some decent actors, some fun cameos and a lot of classic monster movie mojo. It was fun, sexy and well worth wasting 90 minutes of time if you had nothing better to do.
Horror, 80 Minutes, 2008
The original “It’s Alive” [1974, IMDB] is a camp-horror classic. It was over-the-top, silly and just serious enough to keep it from completely disappearing into obscurity. The idea is simple: a woman gives birth to a mutant baby that kills people. This 2008 remake take the same premise and tries to make a straight, emotional horror movie. It pretty much fails completely.
“Birdemic: Shock and Terror” on IMDB
Horror, 90 Minutes, 2010
My son made us watch this. Apparently some guy on YouTube did a review and he just had to see it. It was on NetFlix which fooled us into thinking it was actually a movie. So we watched it.
“Mongolian Death Worm” on IMDB
Horror, 89 Minutes, 2010
[This is the third review for this edition of my semi-regular “my-wife-is-visiting-relatives-so-I’m-watching-loads-of-crappy-movies” film festival.]
Horror / Comedy, 77 Minutes, 2011
While far from good this was actually, amazingly, pretty good. While you’ll get a lot of laughs from the acting (all bad but some was truly, horribly, hilariously bad) you’ll also get some from the actual script from things the writer wrote down then made his friends say on camera. You laugh at things actually intended to be funny. None of it is genius but just the existence of competence at this level goes a hell of long way.
Drama/Comedy, 97 Minutes, 2001
As my hordes of imaginary regular readers know I watch a lot of bad monster movies. So many, in fact, that when an actual good monster movie sneaks in I sometimes have to consider: is it truly a good movie or have I abused my pallette to the point where even mediocre seems good by comparison? Can a dog that eats cat-turds truly appreciate filet mignon?
It’s been a while since I’ve treated myself to a nice, relaxing crappy-movie marathon and I decided to, since I’d queued several, set my will against a trio of shark-themed fin-fests. Will I survive? Will I turn them off in disgust and return to “Skyrim” (they do need me there, what with all the dragons and unpludered crypts)?
[This is the eighth through twelfth review for this edition of my semi-regular “my-wife-and-kids-are-visiting-relatives-so-I’m-watching-loads-of-crappy-movies” film festival. Since these are all basically the same movie I combined them into one review.]
