Dark Ride is one of the After Dark Horrorfest movies from 2006. And, I gotta tell you, it's just not that scary. A group of college kids who never utter a word of realistic dialogue, take a detour from their spring break vacation to visit a carnival ride in the middle of the night. Great idea. The kills are sort of good . There are a couple of creepy moments, but this was pretty much one ridiculous thing after another.
Penny Dreadful is another of the After Dark movies, but this one is actually really good. A girl who has an intense fear of cars takes a trip with her doctor to try and over come her terror. They pick up a hitchhiker and things go very, very wrong. This movie is creepy and extremely tense. The acting was pretty good. Rachel Miner ("Tooth & Nail") really sold the anxiety and the fear. Loved it.
Night of the Iguana is based on a Tennessee Williams ("The Yellow Bird") play. So, of course, it's quite a bit messed up. A minister, Richard Burton ("Nineteen Eighty-four"), freaks out on his congregation and ends up leading tours of Mexico for church groups. A young girl in the group keeps coming onto him, and , despite his efforts to rebuff her, her crazy, harpy guardian is sure he's taken advantage of her. Burton hijacks the tour and they end up at a remote villa where things come to a head. The acting is top notch. The dialogue is great, and the emotions are out of control. Very interesting, but not always easy to sit through. People freak out a lot.
Poltergeist II: The Other Side is actually pretty good for a sequel. The original players are back and the story picks up right where the first film left off. The ghosts have gotten a taste of Carol Anne, and they want some more. Creepy, creepy man (Julian Beck, "9 1/2 Weeks") who is enough to give me nightmares, comes after the family and Will Sampson ("Firewalker") who always plays the sage Indian, tries to protect them. The effects at the end of the movie are pretty dated, but everything up to there is quite good.
No End in Sight tries to tell the story of how the U.S. got into the Iraq war, and, once there, how we botched the operation. There's a lot of information to examine. The filmmakers did a good job of presenting it and of trying to be fair. Many of the top people involved in the Iraq decision making declined to be interviewed for the film, and I think that would have made it a more enlightening experience. As it was, the film made me think. And that's always good.