End of the Line

Director - Maurice Devereaux (Slashers)
Starring - Ilona Elkin (Big Wolf on Campus), Nicolas Wright (Swamp Devil), and Neil Napier (300)
Release Date - 2007
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "God loves you" and "The end is coming"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection)

Rating (out of 5):

     A few years ago, when I was in college, a local Movie Gallery was going out of business.  They had their DVDs on sale dirt cheap and I made multiple trips in to grab as many of the horror films that my wallet would allow.  In fact, I went there so many times that the manager gave me a few DVDs free of charge.  This movie just happened to be one of them.  This was the first time I had heard about this film and just threw it on my shelf to gather dust.  Recently this film has been getting a little attention of a horror forum I am a member of and needing a break from this month's theme of Christmas, I decided to throw this one in and see if it is worth a damn.

     The film follows a young nurse, Karen (Elkin), as she boards the subway late at night.  After a run in with a sex craving man, Karen boards the train in hopes of leaving a stressful day behind her.  This wouldn't be a horror movie if it ended there.  The train comes to a stop and the lights turn off.  Karen is unaware that a group of christian radicals are killing all the passengers in an effort to "save their souls."  When Karen and another passenger have a run in with Granny wielding a crucifix knife, they flee the subway car.  The two are able to find a group of survivors and attempt to hold out in a one of the maintenance rooms in the tunnels with two of the maintenance workers.  The group then decides that this plan would not work because the church may have access to the keys to the room they are locked in and decide to leave.  The group head down the subway fending off the religious fanatics.  After a few run-ins with the fanatics another member of the group is mortally wounded and lock themselves in another room where they find the sex-crazed man.  They tie him up and leave the hurt man and his girlfriend behind while they head for help.  However, his girlfriend was a member of the church and unties the man and the two kill the boy.  The remaining members of the group are forced to split up and they all die except for Karen.  She comes face to face with the horny man.  He is actually a member of the church and wants to get laid before he kills himself.  She refuses to give it up and fights him off.  Thinking she is in the clear, demons begin crawling from the dead bodies and surround her...

     This movie surprised me.  The cover art makes the movie look like it will be a shitty CGI riddled shitfest.  The demons on the cover look like some sort of CGI creature you would find in a Sy-Fy channel original film.  The cover also makes the film look like the main storyline is about the demons themselves, which is not the case.  The acting is decent by most of the cast, however, there is some actors and actresses that make the film painful to watch.  I also can't stand when an actress screams a lot and this film had a lot of that.  In some scenes, because an actress would not stop screaming, I had to turn the television down or put it on mute because it became annoying.  I really liked the special effects and, from what I could tell, there was no CGI in this film at all.  The demons looked really good and there was a few great kills in the film.  I also liked the story.  The radical religious group killing people to save their souls is a little more terrifying than any creature you can think of because this is something that could happen.  Movies like this and Red State really make you think about today's society and radical christian groups like Westoboro and the damage they could do.  I did not like the pacing of the film.  The movie starts out strong and ends strong, but the middle of the film is slow with boring dialogue.  If they could have just added a little more action to the middle portion of the film this movie could be a lot better.  Overall, this is a great film that is slow in parts.  It is definitely worth a watch.         

Teddy

Director - Steve Goltz (Blood Brothers)
Starring - Keegan Bergen, Kirk Gilbert, and Mike Goltz (Blood Brothers)
Release Date - 2011
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "He's beary scary"
Format - Streaming (Youtube)

Rating (out of 5):

     After watching Popularity Killer and discovering it was a typical slasher, I had no doubt in my mind that Teddy would be similar.  Teddy was Slasher Studios first horror outing and due to the companies name being Slasher Studios I knew this one would be a fun little slasher.  I was hoping this film would be better than the previous film I watched and I could only guess it was.  This movie had made its rounds through the film festival circuit and received a lot of positive feedback.  So immediately following my last post, I headed over to Youtube and decided to give this little 10 minute film a go.

     The film opens with an elderly man having car trouble on the side of the road.  His son, Teddy, is a bit odd and may possible be mentally ill.  He tells Teddy to go sit under a tree while he tries to get the car going.  As a car approaches, the old man steps out onto the road to flag them down.  He has no idea that the driver has been drinking and is hit by the oncoming car.  The group in the car are going camping for a few days and have been drinking heavily.  The driver is a douche and forces the others to keep their mouths shut and they push his corpse in the ditch.  They are unaware that Teddy is in the bushes watching.  That night they are sitting around the campfire when the douche and his lady head back to the tent for some purple headed yogurt slinger time.  The boy and girl left by the campfire are siblings and the sister heads back to the car to gather more blankets.  While she is gone, Teddy arrives and stabs her brother in the mouth with a metal rod used for roasting marshmallows and then rams a tiki torch up his ass.  When the couple finish screwing they leave the tent so they can piss and get more beet.  The douche wonders off to piss, and while he is gone, Teddy kills the girl and cuts her head off with a shovel.  When he comes back, Teddy throws a hatchet and hits him in the head with it.  The young girl finally arrives carrying blankets and witnesses this.  She runs off and finds a nearby house.  When she runs inside she finds her brother's body with the tiki torch in his ass. While standing there trying to wrap her mind around the events that has recently unfolded, Teddy wonders in behind her...

     This is how slasher movies should be done nowadays.  I honestly wish this movie was an actual full length film instead of the short.  The acting in this one is actually decent and so is the special effects.  Most of the kills are done off camera due to their budget but the hatchet to the face and decapitated head look amazing.  I also really enjoyed the story.  Good, ol fashioned "camping in the woods" slasher like I used to rent on VHS growing up.  This movie deserves every bit of the hype it has received, and in time, I hope they remake it into a feature film.  This short is only 10 minutes long and not a minute of it is wasted.  Check it out.

 

Popularity Killer

Director - Steve Goltz (Teddy)
Starring - Courtney Ellen Bay, Matty Dorschner (Blood Brothers), and Jennifer Frey (The Spade County Massacre)
Release Date - 2011
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "Every school has an "it" list...pray you're not on this one!"
Format - Streaming (Youtube)

Rating (out of 5):

     After watching Blood Brothers and discovering it was not what I thought I would be, my mind started wondering as I tried to think of all the possibilities of what Popularity Killer was could be about.  Could it be a straight forward slasher like I thought the last film was or could it be something completely different?  However, with a name like Popularity Killer I could only think of the slasher story lines, so after I wrote Blood Brothers I pulled up Youtube and gave it a go.

     The film opens as a couple make out in a car on the side of the road.  The boy is a little too touchy feely and the girl stops him.  The two argue for a few moments and when the guy discovers she will not give it up to him he leaves her on the side of the road.  As she is walking home a figure appears behind her wearing a mask and wielding a knife.  As you can imagine, the figure kills her in good ol fashioned slasher style.  The following day at school everyone is talking about it and most suspect it was her boyfriend.  School is released early because of the murder and two girls decide to watch movies that night and spend time together.  However, one of the girls has made different plans and invited a few more people over to watch Night of the Living Dead and drink.  The murdered girl's boyfriend shows up hammered with another girl from a rival school and the rest of the group feel uncomfortable having him there and leave.  Two girls leave the little get to together and one of them is murdered by the mask wearing figure.  After a few more minutes the drunk and his date leave and meet their demise.  Now left is one of the girls and a guy friend.  When the girl leaves the room the guy is stabbed by the figure and when the girl enters the room, the figure removes the mask and reveals their true identity.

     This movie was exactly what I thought it was, a true genuine slasher.  It is nice to see a modern slasher follow the same plot formula as the classics which is something the new slashers have steered away from.  The acting in this one is kinda bad with the exception of a few characters.  The special effects are on par with the slasher films I grew up with and the opening kill was great.  Unfortunately, they were unable to follow that up and gave us stock slasher kills.  Opening the movie with such a great kill and then have the killer just stab the rest of the victims is a bit of a let down.  The viewer expects the ending to be bigger than the opening and that is not what we got.  The story is stock slasher story and that is fine with me as long as the movie is pulled right. However, the killer is predictable and I called it as soon as the character was introduced.  A little more thought could have been applied when writing the story.  This movie is entertaining but does not have replay value at all.  If you can, watch it on Youtube instead of buying this one, because you will never watch it again.

   

  

Blood Brothers

Director - Steve Goltz (Popularity Killer)
Starring - Matty Dorschner (Popularity Killer), Mike Goltz (Teddy), and Hannah Herdt (Popularity Killer)
Release Date - 2012
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "Terror runs in the family"
Format - Streaming (Youtube)

Rating (out of 5):

     A few months ago I was browsing my newsfeed on Facebook and saw a link someone had posted for a page called Slasher Studios.  I assumed this was a fan appreciation page for slasher films.  I "liked" the page and found out that it was actually a production company that had released a few horror shorts.  I debated for a few months on if I wanted to fork out the cash to buy their films or not.  The DVD's are rather cheap but I am cheaper and would rather spend my money on movies I have actually heard about.  As I was debating this,  they posted a link to their Youtube account where they were showing their films for a short period of time.  I was able to give this a watch and save some money.

     Michael and Lindsey are living the American Dream.  However, Michael's brother Chris is not.  Chris is a junkie and will do whatever it takes to get his next fix.  Chris and his girlfriend kidnap Michael and Lindsey in order to get some quick cash.  Their plan does not work out that well because Chris is an idiot and accidentally shoots Lindsey in the neck while Michael is tied to a chair.  After seeing his wife die, Michael breaks the rope and attacks Chris.  Michael is able to get the upper hand and take the gun away from him.  Because he lost Lindsey, he shoots Chris' girlfriend before turning the gun on his brother.  Unfortunate for him, the gun jams and Chris grabs a knife and stabs him in the chest.  Before collapsing, Michael shoots Chris in the head and they both fall to the floor.

     This movie was not what I was expecting at all.  From a studio called Slasher Studios and the film being titled Blood Brothers, I assumed it was a flick about siblings stabbing people.  I was way off.  This short runs around 8 minutes and the first 5 drag on forever.  The film does make up for the slow 5 minutes by piling all the action in the ending.  The acting is actually pretty decent and so is the special effects.  The headshots are some of the best I've seen, even when compared to a Hollywood blockbuster.  The dialogue was not the best I had heard and for the most part it was very cliched.  The company behind this film did a great job by making the film a short, otherwise it would have been an extremely boring movie if it was any longer.  Overall, this is a short film that does not fail to deliver.  Slasher Studios is making a name for themselves and if their other films are on the same level as this one then soon they will be a staple of the horror movie community.         

 

Office Killer

Director - Cindy Sherman (Doll Clothes)
Starring - Carol Kane (Scrooged), Molly Ringwald (The Breakfast Club), and Jeanne Tripplehorn (Waterworld)
Release Date -1997
Genre - Horror/Comedy
Tagline - "Working here can be murder"
Favorite Quote - "You may think that once dead people are dead, that is the end of them. Not so. They leave memories, which are very much like dead people living inside of you"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection) (Midnight Horror 8 Film Collection)

Rating (Out of 5):

     When I was in middle school I stayed home from school because I was sick as shit.  I was shuffling through the channels and came across this little film on Cinemax or HBO.  I absolutely loved it.  This movie was unlike anything I had seen before.  This was not your typical horror movie made for the horror hounds, instead this is one of those horror movies made for movie lovers in general.  Not to be confused for theatrical shit released to the masses.  As I got older I looked for this movie on VHS and DVD and could not find it.  One day I was randomly looking through the $5 dollar bin at Wal-Mart and spotted another Midnight Horror Collection.  Always looking to add another one of these collections to my actual collection, I grabbed it.  When I grabbed it I was surprised to see that Office Killer was one of the films on this collection, so I bought it.

     The film follows Dorine Douglas (Kane), a magazine editor, who is rather odd and anti-social.  Most of her coworkers find her strange due to her lack of communication with them.  She also lives at home with her handicapped mother who was crippled in a car crash she caused resulting in her father dying.  One night, while working late, her computer crashes and she asks a fellow coworker to help her out.  While he is trying to fix the computer he is electrocuted.  Dorine flips shit and calls 911, however, when the operator comes on the line she hangs up and decides to take his body back to her pad.  Once inside her home, Dorine imagines that he is still alive and decides to add more people to her basement fan club.  She starts picking other coworkers and girls scouts and killing them before placing them in her basement.  At work Dorine is also starting to get noticed for her writing and computer skills.  Kim, one of Dorine's coworkers, despises Dorine and is constantly telling her superiors that something is not right with her.  Eventually they fire Kim for her negativity towards Dorine.  Dorine attacks her but she is able to get away.  Later, Dorine discovers that her mother had passed away while she was at work and because of her current fascination with death she is unaffected by this.  Kim's best friend, Norah (Tripplehorn), is missing after a lunch date with Dorine and her boyfriend goes to Dorine's to see if she knew where she was at.  Dorine had knocked her unconscious and placed her in the basement with the others, however, she wakes up while her boyfriend is there and he hears her.  Dorine then kills them both and calls Kim.  After the phone call, Kim calls the police.  Before the police arrives, Dorine douses the place with gas and burns it to the ground before heading off on her own now that her mother has passed on.

     I really enjoyed this movie after watching it for a second time.  It had been so many years since I last watch it and was still pleasantly surprised by it.  This movie catches a lot of shit, but for what it is, its very enjoyable.  I have seen people review this film and reference The Exorcist and Poltergeist.  Neither of these movies have anything in common with this film.  This movie is not story or budget rich.  This is just a straight forward movie made to entertain and NOT be a award winning film.  The acting is actually very good and so is the special effects.  Carol Kane is very good at portraying creepy characters.  She did a great job on her portrayal of Granny in the 90's Addams Family films and the ghost in Scrooged.  Her being cast as Dorine was brilliant.   The movie has some nice blood and gore with no CGI as well.  This is something of a rarity for this time.  During this time CGI was starting to take over regardless of the film's budget.  Also, the story is very original but nothing like the classics that it is often compared to.  The story reminds me of the Lucky McKee film May to an extent.  That is one film I am not really a fan of but would like to give it another chance.  My biggest complaint about this movie is the characters.  Aside from Kim and Dorine, the characters are a bit of a nuisance.  The acting is good but their development just seems halfassed and was just added to the film to pick up the running time.  I also did not like the ending.  I was just expecting something more from the film to close it out.  The ending we got just does not provide closure for the viewer and for a film where the killer lives and the film just ending is a big let down.  I want to know what became of her.  Other than those two complaints I liked this film a lot.  If you ever have the chance to watch this, then do it.  Just remember this not a horror classic, instead just a cheap, quick film made strictly for entertainment and not to be groundbreaking.