Clownhouse Movie Review

Trailer here.

Clownhouse is a 1989 horror movie directed by Victor Salva and starring Sam Rockwell, Nathan Forrest Winters and Brian McHugh.

Casey(Winters) is a young boy who has a fear of clowns since a visit to the circus, years before. He has two brothers called Randy(Rockwell) and Geoffrey(McHugh). Their parents go out and leave them alone for the night. They go to a local circus and they encounter a fortune teller who tells Casey that his lifeline has been severed on his hand. She warns him to beware. Casey happens to see some clowns. The clown is called Cheezo. He picks Casey out of the crowd and Casey runs off. Something is happening at the circus later. The three clowns are all murdered by three escapees from the local mental institution. What are the odds? Of course, you get an idea of what will happen next.  The three lunatics dress as the clowns. They show up at Casey's house. Such a coincidence that they target the house of the one boy in town who is scared of clowns....

Randy and Casey go to the local shop but they get separated. Casey meets one of the killer clowns, who chases him. He tells Randy, but Randy doesn't believe him. They arrive home and the power goes out. Oh no. The killer clowns are outside. The rest of the film is cat and mouse between the brothers and the three psychopathic clowns. The boys manage to kill all three clowns and they survive. This film was okay. I didn't love it. Clowns are always creepy so there were some moments in it to creep you out but nothing amazing. I know there was controversy over the director and all that, but I just want to include this as a creepy clown film. It is worth a look, but there is nothing that great about this one. It is worth a look to see a young Sam Rockwell, though. I will give it a 4/10.

Kingdom of the Spiders Movie Review

Trailer here.

Kingdom of the Spiders is a 1977 horror movie directed by John Cardos and starring William Shatner and Tiffany Bolling.

Something attacks a calf in Verde Valley, Arizona. The local vet, Rack Hansen(Shatner) is called by a farmer, Walter Colby(Woody Strode) to look at his calf who has taken ill suddenly. It is a mystery and Dr. Hansen sends a blood sample off to have it analysed. The calf dies. A woman called Diane Ashley(Bolling) arrives in town to talk to the locals about what has happened. She informs Rack that the calf died from a poisonous spider bite. This is most unusual and Rack doesn't think that it is possible. Diane studies spiders and is considered an expert. She wants to look at the calf's carcass and see what happened. Diane and Rack go to Walter's farm and discover that his dog is dead. Walter tells them that he has spotted a spider hill on his property. Diane thinks that maybe they are becoming aggressive because their food source has been eradicated by insecticides. The spiders are looking for a new source of food.

Diane and Rack decide to burn the spider hill. It is covered in tarantulas. They burn it, but some of the spiders escape. They are heading into town. Walter is driving in his truck when he gets attacked by the deadly eight-legged horrors. He crashes and dies. Rack and Diane happen to find him. The local Sheriff looks into it. Rack sees that Walter is wrapped in a spider cocoon. They visit the farm and discover lots more spider hills. At this point, I think I would just nuke the whole place. The mayor wants to spray the area with insecticide to kill them. A local man is going to spray the area in his plane. Unfortunately for him, he gets attacked by the spider posse. His plane crashes and burns. Walter's wife gets surrounded by the eight legged terrors and she perishes. Rack's sister in law gets attacked also. She dies. Rack and Diane rescue Linda, Rack's niece. They go to the Washburn Lodge and barricade themselves in. They are in contact with the Sheriff.  They try to seal up any holes to keep the spiders out.

The spiders launch an attack on the town. They start biting at will. There is total panic. Everything goes crazy. The spiders get to the Sheriff and he ends up dead. They head for the lodge next and they try and break in to get Rack and the others. They manage to turn off the power and the lodge is left in darkness. Rack goes to the basement to find the fuse box. It is surrounded by spiders. He manages to fix it, but gets covered in spiders. He is okay. The next morning, they all wake up and they take a look out of the window. They see that the whole area is covered in spider silk cocoons. The whole town is covered....

I liked this film. It was a lot of fun really. The cast were fine and the story was interesting, if not nightmarish! The idea of spiders taking over a town is horrible and this film would scare any arachnophobe. It scared the hell out of me because I can imagine nothing worse than loads of horrible spiders crawling around, killing people. Somehow, I like these spider movies though. They are always fun. I recommend this one. It is definitely worth a look, It has William Shatner and killer spiders!!! I will give this one a 5/10.