Topic: Jimmy's - 2011 Ooctober Horror Marathon

[Jimmy]

MOVIE / DVD INFO:

Title: Night of the Bloody Apes (1969)

Genre: Horror
Director: René Cardona
Rating: NR
Length: 1h24
Video: Full Frame
Audio: English
Subtitles: None

Stars:
José Elías Moreno
Carlos López Moctezuma
Armando Silvestre
Norma Lazareno
Agustín Martínez Solares

Plot:
A female wrestler is injured in a wrestling match and taken to a nearby hospital. At the sime time, Dr. Krallman and his sidekick Goyo are planning to do the first ape-to-human heart transplant in an effort to save the doctor's son Julio. Once they perform the surgery, Julio's body begins to change and his head transforms into that of an ape. Julio escapes from the lab and begins to terrorize the neighborhood. Krallman and Goyo eventually manage to hunt down Julio, drug him and get him back to the lab. They plan to remove the ape heart and replace it with another heart. The two plan to steal the body of the injured wrestler from the hospital, but will this new heart save Julio and tame the savage beast.

My Thoughts:

OK for this one I've cheated as I watch the US version even if I have the mexican one on the disc. But it's because the US one is more graphic and had nudity (nothing to go in the "think of the children" mode). It doesn't take long to know you will watch a mexican movie as it starts with masked women wrestling (the Mexican sure love masked wrestling...). By the synopsis you now pretty much what this film is about and how it is scientifically exact, it isn't for nothing if no one try to transplant ape organs to men since this films. OK it's a silly movie badly dub and a little bit boring by moment when nothing happen. But the effects aren't too bad (the transplantation being the winning one, but it's hard to not be realist when you use real procedure footages).


 
Rating :

[Jimmy]

MOVIE / DVD INFO:

Title: The Curse of the Doll People (1961)

Genre: Horror
Director: Benito Alazrahi
Rating: NR
Length: 1h10
Video: Full Frame
Audio: Spanish
Subtitles: English

Stars:
Elvira Quintana
Ramón Gay
Roberto G. Rivera
Quintín Bulnes
Nora Veryán

Plot:
A group of archeologists travel to the ancient grounds of Coombas and help themselves to a souvenir, a sacred idol. The keeper of the tomb puts a curse on the men for desecrating their holy ground. Once home, the archeologists consult with an expert on ancient rites to find out about the curse that has been invoked upon them.

My Thoughts:

Don't let the year of production fool you... this one is scary. It's a little bit on the slow moving side but all the ingredients are there : voodoo ritual, zombie and creepy looking dolls. The best asset of this film is the dolls because they have used dwarfs to play them and not fake dolls or special effects with normal people looking smaller. I was unable to find a trailer, but I've found an excerpt of the dolls in action (don't worry it won't spoiled the film).


 
Rating :

[Achim]

Now I worry I remember it wrong

 

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But it's the only thing that makes sense in the bigger picture, no...? We start with Jigsaw being dead, so the only way to show him again is by going back in time... There even is a website for it; it goes over the series, but he does point out that 3 and 4 are parallel.

[Jimmy]

One thing for sure, the Friday the Thirteen is so easier to understand

[Jimmy]

MOVIE / DVD INFO:

Title: Planet Terror (2007)

Genre: Horror
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Rating: NR
Length: 1h45
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 1.78:1
Audio: English / Spanish
Subtitles: English / Spanish

Stars:
Rose McGowan
Freddy Rodríguez
Josh Brolin
Marley Shelton
Jeff Fahey

Plot:
After an experimental bio-weapon is released, turning thousands into zombie-like creatures, it's up to a rag-tag group of survivors to stop the infected and those behind its release.

My Thoughts:

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Best way to start this review is to write that all this fucking stupid retarded grindhouse insult me. I fancy myself as an expert in seventies exploitation and this is not seventies exploitation... Even the term "grindhouse" is an idiotic word that means nothing just like "torture porn" but the hipster crowd eat it because they are usually happy to be tools. OK I grant a correction in my previous sentence, torture porn is a real genre but it isn't really an horror genre. the worst of the worst insult is of course the way the film is shown and those two fucking tools have the nerve to call that shit an homage. Homage my ass... the prints shown in the New York theaters (I guess this is what they mean by grindhouse, I have a news for you... a fricking theater isn't a genre) didn't look like that. The film visual qualities was as good as any films made today (maybe better as 35mm looks better than digital). The lines and damages in many of those films are due to two simple factors, the prints played often and the film cans were stored improperly. I guess it's easier to ridicule something logic and simple because it looks cool (no it doesn't). The print didn't had bad cut edit, missing real, burning reel and others stupidity of the same ilk. The project flop and this isn't for nothing... You don't insult the people you want to please by doing an half-ass homage ... BTW is it funny how they were able to do much entertaining movie without a thousand of millions budget.

 
This show what I looked like when watching this... Just a copy of Warning Sign (if the infected would have leave the research center) and all the Italian's zombie movies ever made. Full of wooden acting and bad one liner... The special effects when they don't go stupidly over the top aren't too bad and Freddy Rodríguez is the only one showing an ounce of talent in this (not that it is that hard when the next best performance is by Stacy Ferguson who is in the movie for a big 2 minutes).

Crap in the worst sense of the word, but to be honest I was not surprise... Thanks to Freddy Rodríguez this film doesn't get a zero.


 
Rating :

[samuelrichardscott]

I loved this and enjoyed Tarantino's even more (although most prefer the other way round).

[Najemikon]

I frickin' love Planet Terror. Absolutely lapped it up! I know where you're coming from, but I got what they were trying to do and thought it was superb.

I know you don't agree and you have good reasons for it, so I leave it at that. However you give audiences too much credit by suggesting they spotted a poorly conceived film and stayed away. Actually the consensus was that Grindhouse was poorly marketed for American audiences who were unlikely to respond well to the project anyway, because mainstream like shiny, glossy films. They don't like films made to look crap on purpose and some of the irony fell flat.

Europe, so often the real champions of Tarantino, was really looking forward to the film, but after the States the distributors panicked and showed them separately, taking the entire point away. And in the end, though I predictably liked it, Death Proof was a very tough sell on it's own.

Why do you feel so insulted by it though, Jimmy? Even if you don't like the film, thought it was an abject failure or would ever attempt to watch it again, surely the spirit of what they were trying to achieve was cause for celebration? Whatever you think of them, the fact is Tarantino and Rodriguez adore the real grindhouse and wanted to capture the mood to give a shock to audiences blinkered to mainstream, something you rail against regularly. And the project has been used as an excuse to dig up and re-release a lot of classic titles from the period.

In the end, this was an optimistic endeavour and should be greeted with some positivity surely?

[Jimmy]

I loved this and enjoyed Tarantino's even more (although most prefer the other way round).

Yeah but you like Children of the Corn IV...  

[Jimmy]

Why do you feel so insulted by it though, Jimmy?

Because it wasn't an homage but an insult. When you respect the materials that "inspired" you you don't go all "hey look at the shitty crap, are those cheap films looked ugly and made by untalented people?". It was much more a cash in ripoff endeavor than anything else...

BTW BCI, VCI, SWV and many others labels released double exploitation features (look like I use the real term here) way before this... So no, this film isn't responsible of the release of any seventies exploitation films.

[Najemikon]

Why do you feel so insulted by it though, Jimmy?

Because it wasn't an homage but an insult. When you respect the materials that "inspired" you don't go all "hey look at the shitty crap, are those cheap films looked ugly and made by untalented people?". It was much more a cash in ripoff endeavor than anything else...

BTW BCI, VCI, SWV and many others labels released double exploitation features (look like I use the real term here) way before this... So no, this film isn't responsible of the release of any seventies exploitation films.

Yeah, but no-one outside of special interest groups considered buying them before... 

[samuelrichardscott]

I loved this and enjoyed Tarantino's even more (although most prefer the other way round).

Yeah but you like Children of the Corn IV...  

True. I'll give you that. I do score differently than most though. I will mark low budget horror sequels in comparison to other low budget horror sequels, so whilst a film could be a 2/5 in general, I may bump it to a 2.5 based on that factor. I am also quite easy to please and can find something to enjoy, even in films I hate. Out of the 2,347 films I have rated on imdb since January 1st 2009 (so I have seen those films since that date) is 6.1 (I use a 5 point system so double my score of an average film from 3/5 to 6/10). I have given out 51 perfect 10/10's, mostly to the obvious candidates like The Godfather, Terminator 2, Alien, On the Waterfront, Rear Window, Jaws, Dawn of the Dead (original) etc etc.. In comparison, I have only scored 3 films with 1/10. They were Vampires Suck, National Lampoon's TV: The Movie and Horror of the Humongous Hungan.

I did remove TV shows from the ratings figures:
http://www.imdb.com/user/ur3142892/ratings

[Jimmy]

Yeah, but no-one outside of special interest groups considered buying them before... 

But it's always like that...
Exploitation is a genre that grew up on you. You like it or don't as any other genre of films. By exemple I love Last House on the Left and we know you hate it, but on the other hand you liked old japanese films and I don't. It's normal that people don't like the same thing if it was the case we would be a group of yes-men...

If he wouldn't have voluntarily ridicule the genre my appreciation and review would have been better. Not that much, probably a two and a half in place of a one, but the movie pissed me of right from the start wich doesn't help the objectivity.

[Jimmy]

I am also quite easy to please and can find something to enjoy, even in films I hate.

Pete is like that too. Me when a film start by making me angry I've an hard time watching it, I also write my review right after watching them and yes it happen sometimes I change my view after a while. Wolf Creek being a good exemple of this, I gave it a really bad review here the first time I watch it, but when I've watch it again later I find it better (not that much better, but better).

[Jimmy]

MOVIE / DVD INFO:

Title: Underworld (2003)

Genre: Horror
Director: Len Wiseman
Rating: R
Length: 2h01
Video: Full Frame
Audio: English / French
Subtitles: English /French / Spanish

Stars:
Kate Beckinsale
Scott Speedman
Michael Sheen
Shane Brolly
Bill Nighy

Plot:
In the Underworld, Vampires are a secret clan of modern aristocratic sophisticates whose mortal enemies are the Lycans (Werewolves), a shrewd gang of street thugs who prowl the city's underbelly. No one knows the origin of their bitter blood feud, but the balance of power between them turns even bloodier when a beautiful young Vampire warrior and a newly-turned Lycan with a mysterious past fall in love. Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman star in the modern-day, action-packed tale of ruthless intrigue and forbidden passion - all set against the dazzling backdrop of a timeless, Gothic metropolis.

My Thoughts:

More an action film than an horror film and to be honest a nice surprise. Nothing really negative to say about this one. This is certainly an exemple of how to use CGI effects correctly. The story isn't develloped enough but I guess it will be later.

Thanks for this one Kathy, since it's not the kind of film I would buy myself.


 
Rating :

[Jimmy]

This last review almost sound as if I was a student at the Eric's School of Review Writing