Sunday, June 21, 2015

The Demon Movie Review 361







The Demon is a 1981 South African horror movie directed by Percival Rubens and starring Cameron Mitchell and Jennifer Holmes .


This movie is about a maniac who breaks into a house and kidnaps a young girl called Emily and murders her. Her parents are very angry because the police have not been able to come up with anything. They hire a former Colonel in the U.S. Marines called Carson(Mitchell)who now works as a psychic detective. They want him to find some clues that might lead to their daughter's body being found. Meanwhile, the killer is in the city at a seedy motel.  Carson looks through Emily's room and her belongings. He can see the killer and he can see what he is doing. The killer has his eye on a young teacher called Mary Jones(Holmes). He also goes around attacking women in the meantime. He begins to call Mary and follow her around. She begins to get scared.


Mary lives with her cousin Jo and Jo is seeing some rich guy and she doesn't believe that Mary is being followed by a maniac. Carson discovers where the weirdo is hiding out and he tells Mr. Parker. Parker gets his gun and goes to get the creep. Unfortunately, the maniac kills Mr. Parker and throws his body off of a balcony. Emily's body is finally found and Carson goes around to visit Mrs. Parker who is alone now. In a bizarre twist, she pulls her own gun and shoots Carson in the head. Mary is out with her boyfriend one night and the killer comes to her house and disposes of Jo and her boyfriend. He lies in wait for her. She is alone as her boyfriend leaves. She finds the dead body of Jo and she is horrified when the killer comes out. There is a cat and mouse chase and Mary ends up locking herself into the bathroom. She looks around for something to injure the killer. When he breaks through the door, she blasts him with hot water and she stabs him with scissors, leaving him to bleed out in the bath. Her boyfriend has come back along with her neighbour to help her as she screams.


This film was very cheaply made. I thought that it was a bit silly in places, but it is watchable. It is not one that I had heard about and that is why I wanted to have a look at it. It is not a well known horror movie, but if you like a really cheap movie with a dodgy story, then you will like this! I will give it a 4/10.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Christopher Lee- A Tribute




I suppose that everyone has a picture of Christopher Lee as Dracula in all of those Hammer movies and I do too. Christopher Lee made that role his own as well as many others during his long career. Let me discuss those films that I like. Lee starred in his first Dracula movie in 1958 with Peter Cushing who was a lifelong friend of Lee's. He went on to star as Dracula in another ten movies! It is no wonder that people associate him with the role. He was a versatile actor and he played roles from Sherlock Holmes to Fu Manchu.


I remember him as being in Death Line(1972), a 70's horror movie starring Donald Pleasance and Dark Places(1973)  in which he had a lead role. I enjoyed that movie. But, my favourite Christopher Lee film has to be The Wicker Man(1973). His role as Lord Summerisle was very well played.  He seemed like a normal man who lives on the island and you would not guess that he is the leader of this pagan cult that burns people alive in the giant Wicker Man. Lee also appeared in the sequel The Wicker Tree but the less said about that movie, the better.He also did lots of voice work and if you can believe it music as well!


Lee was in a James Bond movie- The Man With the Golden Gun(1974), as well as The Three Musketeers(1973)which I enjoyed. He starred in House of The Long Shadows in 1983 which was famous as he starred with Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and John Carradine! What a cast! He was also in Howling 2 as a vampire hunter!! He had roles in Gremlins 2 and Police Academy:Mission to Moscow, Sleepy Hollow and Star Wars Episode 2 and 3. I could list all of his movies but there isn't enough time for that.


The role that I really enjoyed him in is a role that millions of people will know him for- the role of Saruman in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy. He was brilliant in the role as the sorcerer gone bad and I don't think that anybody else could have done better. Lee also starred in many TV shows including The Avengers, The Alfred Hitchcock hour and many many more. He had such a great career and he left so many great movies behind that he will never be forgotten.


He was 93 when he passed away last week, so he had a good long life and I think that his films will live on forever. Whichever films you enjoy, there is bound to be at least one Christopher Lee movie in your collection.A great actor and he will be sadly missed. R.I.P Christopher Lee(1922-2015).

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Popcorn Movie Review 360









Popcorn is a 1991 horror movie directed by Mark Herrier and Alan Ormsby,  It stars Dee Wallace,Jill Schoelen and Tony Roberts.


The movie begins with a young woman called Maggie(Schoelen) who is having nightmares about a girl called Sarah. The girl is being chased by some madman and he catches her and tries to kill her. She records her dreams on her tape recorder as she might want to make a movie out of it. She lives with her mother, Suzanne(Wallace) and she has been getting weird calls so something is going on. Maggie is in film class at the university and she and her fellow students want to put on a horror movie festival. Professor Davis(Roberts) encourages them. They need the money for the film department. They choose three old movies and one of the students Toby(Tom Villard) knows a guy who owns a film memorabilia store and he will give them some film gimmicks to go with the movies.


They arrive at an old movie theatre called Dreamland that will be demolished soon. They tidy up the place and go through some old stuff that they find. They discover a very weird and psychedelic movie from the '60's called The Possessor. It was made by a film cult leader called Lanyard Gates and he murdered his family live on stage during a showing of his movie and then trapped the audience inside the theatre and set it alight. People died and he was supposed to have perished also. Maggie is interested in Gates and the film as it is very like the dreams that she has been having and she mentions it to her mother who looks uncomfortable about it. She wants Maggie to come away with her and forget all about the festival. Maggie will not do that. Suzanne receives a call from someone and she thinks that it might be Gates. He tells her to go to the Dreamland theatre and she does. She wanders around and then someone jumps out at her.


Maggie and her friends set up the movie night and everything seems to be going well. There is an uninvited guest- is it Gates? Someone is sneaking around murdering Maggie's pals. She wants to find out what is going on. She thinks that Gates might still be alive and he is the one responsible for it all. She has some sort of memory recall and she knows that she is the daughter of Gates and her mother is actually her aunt. She was at the theatre when Gates went mad but her life was saved by her aunt. She and Toby wander around trying to put the power back on when it goes and then Maggie finds herself captured. It is the big reveal....
Toby is the killer. He was also at the theatre the night of Gates' meltdown but he didn't escape so easily. His face was burned so badly that he has to wear a mask. He blames Maggie and her aunt for everything.He wheels out Suzanne who is a full body cast and then he tells them that he is going to reenact Gates' film but this time, it will end as it should. He takes Maggie and puts her into a metal thing so that she can't move and puts her on stage with her aunt in front of the audience who think that this is another part of the festival. Maggie's boyfriend swoops in to save her and kills Toby and Suzanne and Maggie live.


This movie wasn't bad. There are good parts and bad parts. I like the idea of it and I think that it is a pretty
clever slasher movie. Don't get me wrong, it isn't brilliant by any means, but it is watchable and the ending is pretty good. I enjoyed this and it was worth a watch. I will give it a 5/10.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

The Devil's Hand Movie Review 359






The Devil's Hand is  a 2014 horror movie directed by Christian E. Christiansen and starring Rufus Sewell, Colm Meaney and Jennifer Carpenter.


This film is based in the Amish community of New Bethlehem. In the past, there were six baby girls born at the same time and there is some prophecy that states that one of them will become the Devil's Hand. One of the mothers kills her baby and herself to stop this happening. The other five girls grow up as normal, not knowing about the prophecy. They are all fine until an unknown killer begins to pick them off, one by one.
The Elder Beacon(Meaney) is aware of the prophecy and he thinks that there is evil in their community.
Mary(Alycia Debnam-Carey) is having strange fits. Nobody knows why this is. Her dad is Jacob(Sewell) who stopped Elder Beacon from killing the five babies at birth. Mary's mother left is supposedly dead, but Mary discovers that she is alive and living near the community. Jacob has a new wife,Rebekah(Carpenter) and she and Mary do not get along.



After one of Mary's friends is found murdered, Elder Beacon tells everyone that there is an evil presence
in their community. He wants the check the remaining girls physically to see if there are any marks of the Devil. Jacob tells Mary about the prophecy and he tells her that on their 18th birthday, one of them will become the Devil's Hand. He tells her that Elder Beacon was going to kill them all, but he stopped him.
The community is in turmoil as more bodies are found. Mary runs away to find her mother and Elder Beacon and the others try to find her. The cops try to find out what is happening, but the community will not tell them anything. Mary's pal, Ruth tries to talk to them and is shunned as a result. She has to leave.Mary and Ruth return to New Bethlehem to save their families from evil. Jacob hides them. Elder Beacon discovers them and chases them. Mary's fits get worse. Beacon tries to exorcise her but her father saves her. He takes her to hospital. She is worried that she is the Devil's Hand. Is she? Her mother turns up at the hospital and she tells Mary that she made sure that Mary was the last girl alive. She was the one who killed the others. Mary turns evil and she goes to New Bethlehem, leaving a bloody trail after her. She finds Elder Beacon and kills him.


This film was okay. I thought that it would be better as it had a good cast, but it was just mediocre. I would say that it was interesting to have a horror set in an Amish community like Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing, but unlike that film, this was not very good. I wanted to like it more, but I didn't. I will give this a 4/10.
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