BLACK ROCK

Black Rock Movie Review

Three women reunite for a trip to an island they visited as children. While there, they run into three men. When one of the chicks seduces one of the dudes and lures him into the woods, she teases him but kills him when he tries to take her up on her offers. At this point, you may be thinking this movie will possibly deliver a message of "maybe women shouldn't get drunk and all but promise drunk guys sex only to stop him when he tries", but alas, it's not to be. Instead, the other two dudes get mad, and with revenge on their minds, stalk the women all around the island, and Abby (Katie Aselton), the woman who could one hundred percent be blamed for everything that happens, is made out to be the hero.

"Thanks a lot, Abby!"

Now, before you go all crazy on me, no, I'm not saying women don't have the right to say no in these situations...of course they do, but this movie never gave the impression she was in any great danger before bashing the guy in the head with a rock, and everything leading up to that moment was Abby's friends telling her to stop acting that way--the guy even tried to get her to stop early on, and she kept going. All I'm saying, Abby, is had you not taken a complete stranger into the woods to fornicate, your friend wouldn't have been killed and you and the other friend wouldn't have been beaten and hunted. Oh yeah, the three guys were in the Army together, so naturally, Hollywood makes them nuts. This 2012 disaster is brought to us by writer Mark Duplass of Creep fame, and was directed by Aselton, who happens to be married to Duplass. Kate Bosworth (Straw Dogs) is here as Sarah, the only likable character in the movie--I'll let you guess her fate. A lot of what happens will make you laugh or roll your eyes--my personal favorite was the Army-trained guy who had previously accurately made shots from approximately the next county not being able to shoot one of the victims from about thirty feet. It's sad really, as the movie started off well enough, but as soon as they started the campfire, it was all down hill. There's some cool scenery throughout the movie, a fair amount of gore, and some weird sense we are watching the guys from Without A Paddle in an alternate universe where they are women, but there's really not much else to see with this one.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 4

Black Rock Movie Trailer

INTO THE DARK: UNCANNY ANNIE

Into the Dark: Uncanny Annie Movie Review

A group of college students celebrate Halloween by staying home to play a board game called "Uncanny Annie"--picture Jumanji, only a lot more sinister. This is the first episode of the second season of the Hulu series Into the Dark, and if you have read the couple other reviews I have done of this series, you know I'm not watching or reviewing them in any order at all--this doesn't matter, as each episode stands alone. Back to this episode--our gang of nerdy gamers discover this game in their basement, and having never known of it before, decide to check it out. They find that to win, they must complete tasks one at a time to spell out the name "Annie"--if they fail, they come face to face with evil, including the gal the game is named for.

Here she is now!

This movie pulls off the rare feat of making the college-aged characters somewhat likable from the start, building a bit of (gasp!) depth to them. Unfortunately, once the action gets going, the students--who have already been established as legit geniuses--devolve into profanity-dropping dopes. When I reviewed a different episode of Into the Dark recently, I explained how this shows a lack of creativity from the writers and why this is not effective--while the characters in this episode didn't rely on this one word as much as the characters in that episode did, it was distracting nonetheless when they did and it really helped kill what was building up to be a very good movie. As is the case with all the Into the Dark episodes, there is some comedy thrown in, but there was less here than in the other episodes I have watched to this point. The games the characters must play are fun, and while not overly scary, there are some creepy moments. Annie herself looks eerie enough, but the overuse of sound effects with the character take away from that. There are some twists and turns along the way, and the ending is a decent one. Of the handful of Into the Dark episodes I have watched so far, this one is the best...that's really not saying much. 

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 6

Into the Dark: Uncanny Annie Movie Trailer

HOME MADE

Home Made Movie Review

Filmmaker Jack Hess (played by this film's maker, Jason Impey) is on a mission to shoot the perfect snuff film. This one-man band production has almost no budget, and Impey is credited as not only the lead actor, but also the writer, director, producer, cinematographer, editor, stunt man, camera operator, and he did the music to boot. Incidentally, Impey has over one hundred directing credits to his name, so he's a busy dude. The movie starts off slowly, as we follow the every move of a woman who is eventually killed, and this seems to go on for an eternity. The interactions between the killer and the victims are less scary and more unintentionally hilarious, from the exaggerated falls down the hills to the fake blood to the fight in the woods, which is one of the greatest horrible fight scenes I have ever watched.

The whip sound makes it even better

The awfulness and hilarity don't stop there--the acting is atrocious, and the dialogue (what little there is) is mind-numbing. As I watched, I wondered how much better this movie could have been had it been made a silent film...but with better music than the song the plays on a loop throughout. Perhaps my favorite thing about the movie was near the end--Hess goes in for the kill, and there, under the victim's shirt, you can see a large bulge. As Hess digs in, we find out the purpose of this--it holds the fake organs Hess will soon remove and chop to pieces before his dramatic final cut call. From a technical standpoint, this movie is a train wreck (though considering the budget, Impey did a good job working with what he had). That said, it is inexplicably entertaining and will have you hooked until the end.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 5

Home Made Movie Trailer

WONDER VALLEY (2020)

Wonder Valley Movie Review

Four friends take a road trip, with the destination being a desert town called Wonder Valley. Once there, strange things happen. If you are a longtime reader, you may be thinking "Have you lost your mind, Josh? You already reviewed this movie", and for a good part of this film, I was thinking to myself "I swear I have already reviewed a movie called Wonder Valley, but this doesn't look familiar". Let me clear it all up for all of us--yes, I did indeed review a movie about four friends going to the desert town of Wonder Valley, and it was titled Wonder Valley, but this is an entirely different movie about four friends going to the desert town of Wonder Valley, and is also titled Wonder Valley.

"You're hurting my brain!"

This movie features four female friends. The lead chick is completely mental, one is completely deplorable, the two blondes are completely interchangeable, and all four are completely annoying. Once they arrive at the vacation home (which looks really cool), they take moonflowers, begin to hallucinate, then the rest is uneventful--it's pretty much up to you to decide if what you are seeing is really happening...if you care enough by this point. The acting is atrocious. There is Western themed music, which is fine, but it's the same few seconds on repeat, and played so loudly it's hard to hear what the characters are saying. There is nothing bordering on scary or suspenseful. If you have a love of the desert (as I do), you will enjoy the scenery and some of the shots, but honestly, there's nothing much more to this movie. Shot in 2017 but not released until 2020, this will be the first movie I have reviewed to get the 2020-2029 label...let's hope this decade's horror gets better.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 3

Wonder Valley Movie Trailer

COLOR ME BLOOD RED

Color Me Blood Red Movie Review

Artist Adam Sorg (Gordon Oas-Heim) discovers blood provides the perfect shade of red for his paintings, inspiring him to go on a murderous rampage. This 1965 splatter film is brought to us by Herschell Gordon Lewis, AKA "The Godfather of Gore", and he really lives up to that moniker with this one. If you watch this movie and think it reminds you of something else you have seen, but you can't put your finger on it, let me help you out--you're thinking of A Bucket of Blood. This movie is so similar to that one that I really couldn't take my mind off it, to the point I wrote Color Me Blood Red off as a cheap imitation. Eventually, I was able to look past that, however, as there is tons of gore to keep you watching. Some of the gore is extreme, especially for 1965--in one scene, Sorg disembowels a woman and squeezes her intestine to get more blood from her. Aside from the extreme gore, there's not a whole lot going for this movie--unless hot chicks from the 1960's light your fire, in which case you're really going to like this movie.

60's hot chick, the killer and...that other guy

The acting is really bad. The story doesn't ever go anywhere, and no characters are developed, so by the time you get to the climax of the film, you likely won't care about the fate of anybody involved. There is also some rather unfunny comedic elements to the film, especially in the end. All that said, if you're looking for a mindless old-school bloodfest, you could do a lot worse than Color Me Blood Red.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 5

Color Me Blood Red Movie Trailer

THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH

The Horror of Party Beach Movie Review

Time for a quick lesson in film and Americana history. In the early 1960's, surfing and hanging out on the beach became a huge favorite of the youth. This was the early days of teenage rebellion-- a sort of bridging between the James Dean and Jack Kerouac worshiping teens of the late 1950's and the hippies that would come along later in the 60's. From this, a new genre of music, dubbed surf music, was born, as well as what would be known as beach party movies. These movies would feature teenagers partying on the beach, surfing, driving muscle cars, and having a goofy good time, often set to the aforementioned surf music or poppier teenage stuff such as Frankie Avalon (who also starred in some of these films). At the height of these films' popularity, somebody must have had the idea of "Hey, what would happen if we made a beach party film, but also crossed it with Creature from the Black Lagoon?" and, voila, The Horror of Party Beach was born. The creation of the creatures is as generic as one can imagine--barrels of toxic waste are thrown into the water--but the result is a handful of sea creatures that look less Gill Man and more...

Hot dog eating master

The movie, made in 1964, certainly has elements of the beach party movies--we get extended scenes of teens on a beach, partying and dancing to the catchy tunes of live band The Del-Aires. Not content with what was already an odd combination of movie genres, the filmmakers also, just for the heck of it, I guess, decided to throw a bunch of other stuff in. We briefly have a motorcycle gang, resulting in one of the most hilariously bad fight scenes I have ever witnessed. Mention of zombies is thrown in, just because. Eulabelle (Eulabelle Moore), the maid of Dr. Gavin, the would-be hero, goes on and on about voodoo. There are feeble attempts at love stories, and apparently, to get a girl in this city, all you gotta do is just wink your eye. The movie is very enjoyable during the beach scenes and whenever we see the monsters, but you may lose interest when the focus shifts to the adults trying to figure out how to defeat the creatures and all the "scientific" mumbo jumbo is thrown at you. If you're a fan of catching movie mistakes, keep an eye out for all the times the scenes change from night to day and back again. Largely considered one of the all-time worst films, I found a lot to enjoy while watching The Horror of Party Beach--as somebody who generally prefers the rubber-suit monsters over the CGI ones, I loved the creatures in the film, I loved the beach scenes, and thought this movie was a lot of fun.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 6

The Horror of Party Beach Movie Trailer

MISERY

Misery Movie Review

Acclaimed writer Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is knocked unconscious in a car accident. He awakens to find himself in the home of Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), his self-proclaimed number one fan. Wilkes, a nurse, helps Sheldon recover from his injuries, but when she reads Sheldon's latest, unpublished novel, and finds the title character has been killed off, Wilkes kind of loses her mind, and Sheldon realizes he is in more trouble than he suspected. This 1990 movie, based on the 1987 Stephen King novel, won critical acclaim upon its release, and landed Bates a much-deserved Oscar for Best Actress.

I'm not a dirty bird! I promise!

It had been years since I watched this movie--so many, in fact, that as my girlfriend and I were watching the show Castle Rock and she pointed how similar Lizzy Caplan's portrayal of the character Annie Wilkes on the show was to Bates', I couldn't remember. We continued watching the show (as a side note, I recommend checking that out), making a mental note to watch the movie when we could find it. Months later, we discovered it on Hulu and yes, the similarities between the two performances are impressive. This movie is one that will have you on the edge of your seat--early on, we realize Wilkes is not all there, and for the remainder of the movie you are just waiting for her to inevitably snap. Caan also turns in a nice performance as the helpless Sheldon. Director Rob Reiner (Meathead from All in the Family and director of Stand By Me) does a fantastic job setting up the tension in this film, creating an atmosphere that leaves the viewer mentally on edge the entire time. This movie is known for one scene in particular--I won't go into detail in case you've never seen it, but if you don't know it's coming, it is quite shocking and very brutal. The ending creates a bit of a conundrum--while you know Wilkes is insane and extremely dangerous, you may find a part of yourself feeling sorry for her, making it tough to know who to cheer for. In the unlikely event you have never seen the movie Misery, do yourself a huge favor and track it down. It is one of the better horror films from the 1990's, and one of the best screen adaptations of a Stephen King story.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 8

Misery Movie Trailer