Phantasma-gore- ia

Because this movie was made in '74 and I wasn't made until '82 and didn't see it until last week, its characteristic, inspired themes became passe and considerably old hat in just the ensuing years, i.e. the end of the 70s, much less into the great-great-great-great-(etc.)-grandchildren: I Know What You Did Last Summer, Wrong Turn, et al.  The core ideas (the killer being in the house, gatherings of nubile, vulnerable girls, obvoius distractors (red herrings like Keir's character) and such became textbook lesson, sure-fire blueprints for a killer movie a long time before I saw it, and consequently I just didn't get jived by it.  The discordant voices on the phone were unnatural and haunting, but the killer being in the house was suggested aready by the fact that he used the same phones the girls had.  I hated how we didn't see this "Billy" nor understand why in heaven's (or hell's) name he tore into his deadly rage.  Had I seen this in '74, however, it would look and sound different today, but I missed it by...33 years.

This decidedly offbeat flick starts with a man taking his disjointed family to KFC, leaving them clues to a kind of treasure hunt of sorts left in ever-smaller bags like fast-food Chinese nesting boxes.  As they embark on his peculiar odyssey, they start to weld bonds that bridge the gaps they let grow in preceding years.  An unsual sort of family film, it's my idea of a cool way to spend an hour and a half.

Just that.  Like any Christie masterpiece, it's a total guessing game with a frustrating lack of answers for its hapless cast of characters.  Essentially, ten people find themselves on an island with a record that accuses them individually of varying crimes.  They get knocked off successively with an ending that, while not in keeping with Agatha's original story due to the dictation of the Hayes code, is still a "wow" moment.  It's similarities to Identity (2002) can't be ignored, but that doesn't mean by any respect that the latter isn't a great movie or even derivative, managing to devise new and smart connections between the characters as reasons for them all to be held down and picked off, one by one.

Not overly spectacular but not terrifically bad, this fare (ahem) was a good time at the movies, if you can get a hold of it.  Expect similarities to Turbulence and Turbulence 2: Fear of Flying, Die Hard III and, to a degree, Red-Eye.  ;)

Living up to the decidedly fatal and morbid appeal of its namesake, the Tales series, this anthology mix features five stories that explore the lives and deaths of as many new souls as inducted into hell.  They are firmly in keeping with the structure of the show in that they are ultimate examples of dire poetic justice and no one getting away without recieving their final comeuppance.  If you liked this title, I recommend Tales from the Darkside and Necronomicon, also collection-style flicks.

About as grim and bleak a movie as you could get (people conscripted into a goverment-run game show where contestants must kill each other to be the only to survive), it completely works and, if I may be so blunt, sticks it in and breaks it off for reality TV, something years overdue when this movie came out, much more so now.

"There really isn’t much to say here critically except that this is a dreadful movie that has nothing to say, nothing to prove and nothing to mean.  I watched it out of curiosity, and that was satisfied a while back, the FFW button becoming a close friend for the remainder.  A glacial pace, irritating and grotesque characters, an impotent and miserable shot at a story and an inferior, irrational conclusion even given the fracas gone before landed this a sure place on my Worst Films Ever Made list in Top of the Heap elsewhere on the site."

Fifth worst on http://bloodgutsandgore.com and it's not worth saying any more than that.

Just that...Severed adds nothing to the genre, using a tried technique of altered chemicals to drive the dead bonkers (other mainstay methods are lightning strikes and extraterrestrial influences, i.e. meteors), leading them to chew the scenery and the characters they share the movie with.  It's filmed in a 28-Days-Later style, herky-jerky format that makes for an interesting atmosophere, spicing up an otherwise standard throat-ripping, gut-munching horror flick.

Let me quote myself from http://bloodgutsandgore.com:

 

"Stupid.  Insane.  Asinine.  Terrible.  Disjointed.  Pointless.  Irrelevant.  Brainless.  Sloppy.  Miserable.  Disastrous.  Repulsive.  Off-putting.  Confusing.  Revolting.  Pathetic.  Ridiculous.  Retarded.  Wasteful.  Idiotic.  Moronic.  Juvenile.  Artless.

"Every one of those adjectives and a fair number more are qualified for this picture, none of them able to be overstated.  It’s always a guaranteed night to remember when one sits down and dares to take in something like this for its putridity, senselessness and sensationally low quality utterly mesmerize that they made it out, i.e., managed to escape from their misguided creator’s hands.  Empires collapse, races are wiped out, movies like this are made.  You were dragged through Carnivore like through hot tar and glass shards.  You were abused with Skinned Deep like being beaten with a cat-o’-nine tails.  Now, for your viewing displeasure, we bring you The Item.  Consider yourself warned to no end.  You just won’t believe how bad it is."

On my website http://bloodgutsandgore.com, this is the #1 poorest, most awful, despicable, amazingly incompetent and mentally handicapped movie I've ever seen.  What follows are direct quotes from this pile of dung's entry on said site:

"This has got to be one of the most painfully insipid piles of garbage ever put together."

"What a simple-minded, asinine exercise in stupidity and incompetence."

"Dying is the best thing to happen to this cast of miserable characters."

"The dialogue is inane; the characters simply stupid, the situations are as logical as picking your nose with a fire poker and the whole meaningless adventure is a true test of will to sit through."  (It's not perfectly punctuated, but I was angry when I was typing that.)

"It's an inexcuable, disorganized, hapless miscellany of half-baked ideas."

and

"It's a personal belief that a bad movie starts with a bad idea.  The idea here, apparently, was to make as little sense as possible and upset more people than John Waters.  Skinned Deep is a putrid, godforsaken pile of excrement.  As I always like to say," and do often on the site, "I'm no Roger Ebert but I've seen a lot and this 1.5hr+ mistake undisputedly wins the joint awards of STUPIDEST MOVIE I'VE EVER SEEN and WORST MOVIE EVER MADE."

Just that.  There is literally nothing to say about this dreadful, tiresome, keenly overworked yawn-fest except that's it's as terrible as the other terrible movie of his I was forced to see for film class in college, to wit Down by Law.  The only worthy scene in this miserable thing is an interesting sequence where the girl in the cover image takes out and lights her boyfriend's cigarette with her bare feet, manipulating the pack and lighter with her prehensile toes.  See if you dare, but don't say I didn't warn you about this hack's dismally vapid drivel.  He might be able to operate a camera, but the typewriter should have been taken away from him years ago and in fact used to beat him severely about the head and shoulders.  That I would pay to see.

This movie was a strange experience.  I had never seen a filmed monologue and wasn't sure what to expect when, save for the B & W anecdotal interludes, this crazy man kept engaging his unhinged theatrics sequence after sequence.  However, the more I thought of it and the closer I examined it, I noticed it wasn't just a Monk-style head case pontificating about his wildly diverse experiences, but rather all that and more.  It was a decidedly non-standard exercise in artistry and aesthetic gymnastics chronicling the larger-than-life, manic-depressive, keenly erudite observances of a complicated, cultured life and a haywire, pinball-machine mind.

Eminently enjoyable and not a little bizarre, this unplugged documentary probes the conceivable limits of hysteria and nueroses to the event horizon, the core point being that an eye condition drove this man, Spalding Gray, through several countries over the course of many months along thousands of miles with a dollar for every step of the way , all in a remarkably fever-pitch case of avoiding surgery at all costs.  The ultimate last thing in the world he wanted was someone probing around in his eyeball, especially after several less-than-encouraging horror stories he'd heard from family and friends.

Touted as the "high priest of high anxiety," Spalding Gray is as unapologetic about his approach and delivery of as he is candid about the panoramic spectrum of his uncommon experiences, quirky choices and the almost mythic magnitude of the odyssey avoiding the scalpel had propelled him to commit himself to.

Spalding Gray (R.I.P. 2004) was an asset to the performing world, a capital writer and a uniquely expressive sort.  If you get the chance, see this, buy it, see it again and then see where it leaves you.  If you so choose, contact me either through my email at thehonestpoet@aol.com or through my website http://bloodgutsandgore.com and let me know what you thought.  Over and out...:)

Rarely, noticeably so, are sequels on par with their originals and even more so have sequels trumped the original.  This is neither case, but it's still a good watch with good dialogue and workable characters.  Check out a full write-up of the gore at http://bloodgutsandgore.com for more on this and 360+ others.  ;)

Appropriately gory, gruesome and with cameos from Shaun of the Dead's main troublemakers, this 4th volume in the Dead series pushes things another few notches by giving the zombies, if you will, brains.  A pump jockey, of all of them, starts to get ideas and develop plans, ones his mindless entourage are all too happy to follow.  The unrated cut has some staggering visuals such as a man getting his face ripped off over his head like taking off a ski mask and a zombie reaching up a guy's throat and yanking out fistfuls of guts.  If you're a big fan of heavy gore, not only watch this, but visit http://bloodgutsandgore.com to find many more examples of extremely graphic bloodshed.  :)