House of 1,000 Corpse’s troubled past to be released is much like the plot of this movie, jumbled up into a mix that would take a highly skilled scientist to untwine. First Universal came to the table and agreed to release the film, but after seeing and monstrous amount of gore the movie presented they shelved the project fearing the dreaded NC-17 rating which basically tanks your film at the box office without even releasing it.

Next MGM took to the plate, but they bailed out after seeing nearly all of their 2002 movies suck badly at making money, all highlighted by the headliner of crap, Rollerball. MGM also feared the gore and the press surrounding the movie, so they too shelved the film in favor of some more crap. Finally, House was picked up by Lion’s Gate, a group known for releasing films that are usually too risqué for a traditional studio to release, or too surrounded in hype to avoid the free press that would entail such a high profile release.

House of 1,000 Corpses is Rob Zombie’s directorial debut. For those unfamiliar with the artists, Zombie is probably best known for his work in White Zombie before going solo with a string of hit CDs in the likes of Hellbilly Deluxe and American Made Music to Strip By. Sadly, where Rob Zombie’s music comes off as inspired works of art, his first movies falls into mediocrity very, very quickly.

House seems to want to do so much in so little time, and it does all of this without a streamlined plot, or enough believable characters to make you want to even care about them. The plot shapes up as a standard horror fare. Four twentysomethings on a cross country road trip stop off at a hilarious gas station where the proprietor, Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) makes money by selling gas, fried chicken, and taking the interested on a tour of serial killers. While most of the characters lack any sort of dimension, Spaulding is a shining point in the movie. The comic relief that he provides gives the movie a step up from the horror flicks of the 1970s, something Corpses is trying to pay homage to.

When the kids learn about the mystery of Doctor Satan, they set out on a trek to locate the tree where he was hanged and disappeared long ago. Since things never turn-out as planned, they experience car “trouble” and are captured by the most unusual family who celebrate Halloween Eve in the most bizarre ways. Mainly killing cheerleaders and and singing Betty Boop.

As much infused originality in this picture, it is a real shame that you never get the sense it is taking you anywhere. Between scenes you have transition effects that center around one character or are just a twisted jumble of old film clips satirized with different colors, or some of the more freakish characters dancing or murdering people in unusual ways. Every one of these transitions throws the flow of the movie out of sync to the point where you believe you are just watching short clips of a much bigger show. Even with these clips in place the movie only rolls in at 88 minutes. Take them out and your hovering at just over an hour in running time.

Still, as mentioned before, you never latch on to any of the characters, and why would you considering they are nothing more than canon fodder anyway. Yet the genuinely cool imagery and imagination give way to the lack of any plot and 2D characters. Rob Zombie has a gift for making throwbacks to the 1970s cult horror films that inspire the works of directors and writers today, but next time he might want to include something for the audience to follow, and someone for them to feel for.

For a movie with so much plot, Dreamcatcher fails to provide any substance to any of the movie’s characters to make anything meaningful or heartfelt. Imagine a gallon jug of water filled up to the brim. This would be a movie with so much plot, it is almost too much, but you know a lot about each of the characters, you know how they feel, why they feel what they feel, and you know why they do things they do. Now image a gallon of water poured into an empty swimming pool, this is how watching Dreamcatcher feels. From time to time you might get wet, but it is nothing more than a puddle at your feet.

I’m reviewing this movie without having read Stephen King’s best selling novel of the same name, but I can only hope that the book is much, much better than the movie, or Mr. King should seriously think about retiring earlier than planned.

Dreamcatcher centers around four friends who are always thinking of each other and share a gift given to them by a mentally handicapped boy, Duddits (Donnie Wahlberg) whom they came to the rescue of when they were children. Now they can communicate telepathically, and see things that could happen, as well as pinpointing car keys, interstates, and lost little girls. Hell they even get to have Johnny Smith-like visions a la The Dead Zone. Henry (Thomas Jane), Pete (Timothy Olyphant), Jonesy (Damian Lewis), and Beaver (Jason Lee) make their annual trip to a cabin where they have been coming for 20 years, but when a couple of strangers show up it takes each of them to try and use their gifts and get out of a bad situation alive while an elite combat team attempts to contain a crashed alien spaceship.

The biggest problem with Dreamcatcher is it doesn’t feel original. Previous Stephen King movies have had original thoughts and ideas that gave you something new when you stepped into the theatre. Dreamcatcher feels like a rehash of King’s previous work, namely The Dead Zone, and an added aliens-taking-over-the-world storyline ripped from Signs and Aliens. They even go as far as naming a skin rash caused by this invasion “The Ripley.”

Hollywood must have this thing about not having interesting characters in films anymore, because two of the best, more realistic characters are dealt away with as nothing more than sentimental plot devices, while the third, Owen Underhill (Tom Sizemore) is so drastically underdeveloped he appears as fast as he disappears from the movie.

Dreamcatcher turns into a race to see how many character’s storylines we can throw on to the screen and let the audience un-jumble them before a frightfully anti-climatic climax where nothing is explained and the movie ends. There are a few cool points. The visualization of the “memory warehouse” is nice, and gives you some insight into how your memory can work for, or against, you given the situation. But even this cool visualization, the movie still fails to impress on a higher level.

Somewhere I can see the screenwriter adapting this from King’s novel and thinking that he can easily cram hundreds of pages into a two hour movie that loses it’s wheels in the first half, and completely rusts over in the second as you are left wondering just what in the hell is going on. The entire relationship between troubled commander Abraham Kurtz (Morgan Freeman) and Sizemore’s Underhill is barely touched upon, as well as their pasts, and apart from a few fleeting lines about Underhill’s father, you get absolutely no justification for his actions in the movie.

I could go on, but it would prove useless because I’m trying to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but Dreamcatcher is nothing but a semi-funny, semi-horror movie that mixes fart gags with big grey aliens and expects us to fill in the blanks for most of the characters. Unexpected, to the audience, these blanks are the size of a Hummer. And unlike a Hummer being filled on the inside with all the amenities you could want while driving, Dreamcatcher is empty with no viable incentives for purchasing, or watching ever again.

Before I die I will see the ring, after all, you would want the last thing you see be the symbol that represents the circle of life, cue Phil Collins.

The Ring is a remake of one of the most successful movies ever released in Japan, at least one of the highest grossing. When I was tortured with Warner Bros. awful knock-off, FearDotCom, earlier this year, I could only hope that the true remake of the Japanese classic would do, what I had heard about the film, justice. The Ring not only does the original justice, but, by all accounts, adds up to one of the whacked out, scariest movies of the season with one of the most original storylines to come around in years.

I do seriously believe the writer of this movie must have had something bad in his Wheaties the morning he came up with the corrupt ideas that make this movie. For those of you who haven’t seen the preview, here’s a rundown. There is a video tape that, seven days after watching it, you die, of course, after you see the ring. While it would be easy for me to tell you just why you die, I can’t for two reasons. Number one, I just got back from the theatre and starting writing this review immediately, before I have completely digested what I just saw. Reason number two is the simple fact that I don’t want to ruin the movie for you, this is one of those movies that leaves you guessing till the very end, then turns around and makes you think it is over, yet it is just beginning.

I will give the cinematographer props for this piece of art, there is such an overuse of the “dirty-static” on the market today that seems to prevail itself on the web and on TV, it was nice to see it done with some craftsmanship. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, when was the last time you saw someone try to use static as an art, or use scan lines (those little lines you can’t see on your standard TV) to try and be “cool.” Film students and wannabe directors use these touches all the time to try and give their film and “edge,” but in all actuality the overuse of this effect was about to drive the movie-going public off of an edge.

Speaking of edges, The Ring manages to keep you on that part of your seat for a better part of the movie. After the main character, Rachel (the luscious Naomi Watts), views the aforementioned tape she has to set out on a quest to find out just what all of the symbols mean and find a way to reverse the curse that has been put upon her by whatever created the tape.

There are some genuine scares during the movie that even got me to jump, this coming from a man who can sit through just about anything with popcorn in hand and keep it that way. There is one part on a ferry with a horse (that fits into the main theme in a way you wouldn’t think) but the horse freaks out and what happens next is interesting to say the least.

It is fairly obvious that some editing had to be done to keep this one a bit tamer than it could have been. Some of the more disturbing shots are only flashed on the screen from time to time. Whether this is by the choice of the director or by the MPAA to keep the PG-13 rating it might never be known.

All I know is I have seen one of the better movies to come out this year, and with it kicks off the glorious Fall movie season that includes some of our anticipated sequels like Die Another Day, Star Trek: Nemesis, and the grand daddy of them all, The Two Towers.

I can die happy knowing that I have seen The Ring, and lived to tell you about it, for now at least.

I feel dumb for two reasons, reason number one is I actually went to see this movie, and reason number two is I didn’t walk out. FearDotCom has to be one of the stupidest movies I have ever seen. The movie isn’t even good enough to be featured on the lovable Mystery Science Theatre 3000, it is just that horrible. While it still isn’t as horrible as the god-awful Rollerball, it comes really damn close.

The biggest hurdle you must tower over when watching FearDotCom is the fact that the movie makes absolutely no sense, and the plot had so many holes a forty guy gang-bang couldn’t fill them all up, it just makes you think so much it is stupid.

Today’s word of the day is: stupid.

The movie’s plot is this. Mike Riley has been chasing a killer known only by the name, “The Doctor” (how original). Apparently The Doctor likes to kill people and record it from multiple angles and play it on the web for all to enjoy, and us silly humans seem to get our kicks from seeing someone killed live and online, so thousands of people watch each and every one of these deaths. There is this “other” site that is “inhabited” by one of The Doctor’s first victims and she wants revenge so whenever anyone logs on she seductively asks if they want to play, flashes their eyes, and they go insane and die within 48 hours. Clever.

The real problem is if this girl wants these people to help her enact her revenge on The Doctor why in the hell would she give them 48 hours only? Most people wouldn’t get off their lazy butts to do anything until it has been like 45 hours or so, it feels like she is defeating the purpose and it is just one of the many times the plot is about as thin as Kate Moss on a diet.

Riley (Stephen Dorff) teams up with a health official, Terry Houston (Natascha McElhone), after several teenagers and adults are killed by an unknown antigen, they think it is a virus, we know it is the “crazy” internet woman. After investigating one murder and ruling out a virus she sticks around when there is really nothing for her to do. Then the story jumps all over the place and even goes so far as to talk to characters that have no relevance in the story at all, it is amazing that someone can write a script this bad, unless you’ve seen A Walk to Remember.

Acting is subpar, and dialog must have been written by a fourth grader with a mental handicap. Stephen Dorff was a bad-ass in Blade, but now he is reduced to crap status with some really bad roles he has picked as of late, like Deuces Wild and this steaming pile. Natascha McElhone does a respectable job, but nothing can save this movie, even if she is really hot.

While FearDotCom does have some cool imagery here and there, and some very disturbing stuff you can’t help but feel “The Doctor” is a freaking wacko and when the movie’s message comes across as “technology is evil, use it and you will be f’ed” this isn’t a movie I am running into the theatre to see.

Surprisingly since I wasn’t looking forward to this film, I am now looking forward to DreamWorks’ The Ring which opens this fall, lets just hope it doesn’t leave a bitter taste in your mouth, or try to jam something else into it.

The original Jeepers Creepers was a surprisingly good horror movie two years ago when it was released. The cliché of the masked killer was brought to a new level by The Creeper (Jonathan Breck), a seemingly immortal being who collected bodies and made tools and wallpaper out of them. The scare factor of the first movie wasn’t jump-out-of-your-soiled-seat but the film did introduce us to a good time. Now, two years later, in a summer where sequels have continued to under perform and leave fans displeased Jeepers Creepers 2 continues the tradition.

Think about everything you liked about the first Jeepers Creepers, delete it, and you have Jeepers Creepers 2 a film lacking any of the coolest parts of the original, instead putting a group of teenagers (how original) in a situation where they are picked off one by one (again, how original). The innovation and originality of the first film were plucked from their happy home and replaced with standard horror-fare that leaves you groaning on just how bad a script can be, and still get made.

JC2 is nothing more than a B-movie wrapped in a franchise name and force feed to a set group of moviegoers who, not just two weeks ago, saw a much more impressive Freddy vs. Jason. Truth be told MGM is smart for releasing this film so close to New Line’s Freddy vs. Jason as to cash in on the inevitable demand for new horror after the two titans of terror fight to the “death.”

The main problem with JC2 is that it can’t even stand tall enough to even think about holding a torch to the original. Aside from a short cameo by Darry (Justin Long) you wouldn’t even know this movie is connected to the franchise. Gone is the immensely cool, fear-producing truck. Gone is the home of the Creeper complete with hundreds of bodies sown together on the walls, although the house is mentioned as having gone up in flames earlier in the movie. Gone is the creepiness of the Creeper who is now just flying around picking people off the ground while avoiding spears to the head. Hell, they don’t even play the infamous song associated with every death in the original film.

It doesn’t help that the script is full of enough holes to satisfy the porn industry. No name characters disappear and reappear from time to time. During the film’s climax a girl is pushed from a truck just before it crashes and explodes. We never see her again. Before the aforementioned truck explodes we see the driver crawl out of the wreckage, but we never see him again. Plus the entire side-plot of a farmer, Jack Taggart (Ray Wise) going after the Creeper because he killed his son looks as though it was tacked on to put more action in a film that only needs to be 20 minutes long to get the point across.

Try as I might I couldn’t find anything redeeming for my $6.50. The badness of the bad guy is gone. The coolness of the truck and hide-out are gone. The characters are nothing more than canon fodder, and while some other movies at least attempt to interject some story into the mix, JC2‘s writers don’t even give them names, and when they do, they are called Minxie (Nicki Lynn Aycox).

The whole film is just a very disappointing experience with it’s only bright spot being great cinematography, especially the opening cornfield sequence. Jeepers Creepers 2 should be avoid by fans and horror patrons as it leaves a sour taste in your mouth. See Freddy vs. Jason again if you just need some horror in your life, or venture to a discount theater and glimpse 28 Days Later once again.

Is Jason back? He most certainly is, but not in the form we have grown to know and love in the past editions of the Friday the 13th series of movies. Jason X is the first re-visit to the series in nearly ten years, and with that long bench warming plan, it seems as though the writers and producers of this series intend to take the movie, and the forth-coming series, into a new domain.

Jason X starts out in the near future. Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) is finally capture and brought to a scientific research facility on his old stomping grounds of Crystal Lake. Jason is being studied for his highly elevated regenerative capabilities that allow for him to take a beaten, and keep on coming. Through a minor mishap while prepping Jason for transport, he escapes lays ruin to several marines and doctors, and then is frozen in a cryogenic unit, that also freezes his lead researcher Rowan.

Flash forward 455 years in the future when a team of student finds the old facility while charting around on Old Earth, see us humans with our beer, pot, and pre-marital sex have destroyed the planet to the point where no one can even inhabit it. I’m glad I’m doing my part. The team finds the frozen Jason and Rowan and manages to revive her with their vast medical techniques.

The problem with Jason X is the story, and technology don’t seem to stay constant through the entire movie. In the beginning they are able to repair a severed arm and a stab wound to Rowan, but when one of them gets something as simple as scratch or flesh wound they are totally unable to help, or heal. Before Jason becomes Uber-Jason near the end of the film, he is literally blasted to pieces by the nipple-removable android, but manages to come back. Several marines are merely stabbed, yet seem to be beyond repair, the consistency is laughable at best.

Which, in some aspects, is what the writers appear to be going for. There are several times during the movie when there are some down-right funny lines delivered, and some funny moments, “He’s screwed,” just being one example. Sure it doesn’t appear to be funny now, but when you see how this guy died, it is laughable. The classic moment from the film happens almost at the end on a “holo-deck” of sorts where two women proposition Jason with some favorite 1980’s past times. The ensuing “death-sequence” is the funniest and most memorable part of the movie, hell I’m still thinking about it.

While Jason X isn’t anything new or exciting, it does bring the serial killer to a new and uncharted domain for him, and anything but Aliens and Predators. While rumors are circulating of two more in this mini-series of Jason, it remains to be seen. I found it both funny, and relieving, that writer/director Jim Isaac makes fun of the older movies in the series. This one was okay because if they actually expected us to take this seriously the whole way thought, they have another thing coming…like maybe a machete.

Resident Evil is one of my favorite game series to date. I didn’t have the curse of owning a PlayStation, so my first endeavor into the series was Resident Evil 2 for the Nintendo 64. Later I would try my hand at Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil: CODE Veronica for the Dreamcast, and later this year, gamers will we treated to two new RE games on the Nintendo GameCube. So with all of the background, and expectation, does Resident Evil (RE) make a successful video game to movie transition?

Holy Freaking-Yes!

Despite what some critics may say, and only some, the movie totally rocks. From the minute I stepped into the theatre, and saw the familiar Umbrella logo on the big screen, I was amazed, and overjoyed that this was finally happening. The movie starts off with a killer credit sequence setting up who the Umbrella Corporation is for non-fans. Constintin Films tried really hard to set this movie up for people who are not familiar with the series.

Fans of the series will recognize some of the monsters, such as zombies, zombie dogs, and the ever cool Licker who actually evolves before your eyes when given fresh DNA. While the story may not be too above average, it does present some nice twists and turns that keep you guessing, and the best part, the movie actually produces some legitimate scares, as well as some T and A.

The Marilyn Manson score has already received high praise in our soundtrack review, but on the big screen with a high decibel level, it is even cooler.

The best part of the whole experience is that you know a sequel is guaranteed. The movie ends in just the right spot where we could see Leon and Claire barreling down the street in a police car being chased by that blasted tanker truck.

In the end, Resident Evil was worth every penny it received this weekend at the box office (around 18 million dollars), and I can honestly say I will be making more than a few trips to the theatre to see some live action zombie movie. I know I seriously doubted Paul W.S. Anderson’s potential in doing this right, but I don’t think the movie could have had a better director.

Three months later…

Final Destination 2 opens with one of the best action sequences you will ever seen on film. The pile-up sequence puts this movie in a class with The Matrix’s lobby scene as just one of the coolest things ever shot on film. The writers of FD2 should be patting themselves on the back for thinking up such a clever, amazingly fun way to see a chain of events unfold with so much precision and absolute amazement from the audience. I was left with my mouth wide open as the cars exploded, crashed, and impaled members of the cast and opened the sequel to one of my favorite movies of all time.

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, the original Final Destination featured Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) seeing a premonition of his plane exploding just after take off one year before the events of this movie. By him seeing Death’s design and cheating his way out of that design he caused a rift of events the put everyone he saved in danger. This lead to some very creative death sequences and a generally great movie in a genre that had become stale with too many Scream-wannabe’s and slasher-bore-fests.

Final Destination 2 picks up, as mentioned, one year after the events of Flight 180 in the first movie (you will see a reoccurring theme of 180 throughout the film). Kimberly Corman (the beautiful A.J. Cook) has a premonition while waiting to get onto the freeway about a huge pileup that claims her life, and the lives of everyone behind her on the on-ramp. So she positions her car to block traffic and spare the people’s lives from a horrible death, but what she does is start a chain reaction that causes Death to catch up to each and every one of the survivors and take what is his.

Final Destination 2 left me with an overwhelming sense of awe as the movie played out better than I could have hoped. I knew it would be hard to top the original, in my mind, and the mind’s of the casual movie fans. FD2 managed to impress me, and everyone in the nearly packed theatre that I saw it in over the weekend. The script, clearly and cleverly done, features many throwbacks and acknowledgements to the first movie, something that I was initially worried about. For those of you who saw the first movie, you know that the ending was both open ended and closed at the same time, so would FD2 go back and explain what happened after Final Destination faded to black? Yes, and no.

Yes, comes from the fact that they acknowledge what happened to each of the remaining principle characters by way of references, newspaper articles, and what Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) explains to Kimberly early in the film. No, stems from the way they went about doing it. While the death of one character is completely obvious at the end of Final Destination, the death of another is unforeseen and it seems as more of a way to cop-out of having him in the movie than anything else. It feels like a cheesy off-screen death that is briefly mentioned and forgotten.

To those of out there that are worried about having no creative death sequences, let me assure you that Final Destination 2 tops the original in both creativity and gruesomeness. We have decapitation, disembowelments, crushings, skull penetrations (yes more than one), and drownings to contend with this time around and through several of these the audience all cringed at the same time, while highly enjoying the whole thing.

Final Destination 2 ranks very highly with me because of it’s excellent, creative nature and how it breaks the mold for the generic horror type movie. FD2 sports an unknown, but talented cast who are able to give some characterization before becoming canon fodder. The original Final Destination reached cult status fairly quickly and see the sequel doing the same as a very successful, and enjoyable follow-up to a very entertaining original.