Grace is a young woman who ventures back to her childhood hometown after her father has died and her brother has gone missing. And of course we quickly find out that there’s a reason she left the place, because her late father was an abusive asshole. Good riddance. Grace has been estranged from her family for a very long time, living her life and pursuing her career in a completely different place, but now she returns mainly because of her brother, who was the only person who stood up for her when they were kids.
Once arriving in her old hometown, where everything kind of has the look of decay and rot, she notices missing people posters everywhere. She finds out that one of her old teachers are driving some people up to the wilderness, and after asking around she discovers that her brother apparently went there too to get away from the city life (and their father who was then still alive). There’s supposed to be some kind of hidden commune up there somewhere, but it’s not going to be easy finding it on your own. With the help of her former teacher she ventures deep into the wilderness to find her lost brother, and lo and behold – ends up getting lost herself. Now she must struggle to stay alive, and of course there’s something dangerous and dark hidden between all that beautiful nature.
The Banished is an Australian folk-horror movie from 2024, written and directed by Joseph Sims-Dennett. And yes, it’s another trauma-fueled story which has been all the rage for the last decade or so. Rarely do we get horror movies these days where trauma isn’t a major factor in the storytelling. Here we get the trauma bits interwoven with a missing people mystery, some possible dark secrets of a secluded community, and hints of something supernatural. Mostly, though, it’s about being lost in the woods. While it comes off as a bit slow, I enjoyed the creepiness of the wilderness and the mystery behind the hidden commune and the people venturing there. There’s a constant eerie atmosphere, and the isolation feels real and claustrophobic. Nothing bad to say about the actors, either, where Meg Eloise-Clarke delivers a strong lead performance.
What I appreciated the most in this movie, though, was the actual feeling of true isolation in the wilderness, and the slight psychedelic vibe throughout a large part of it. Perhaps being less ambiguous and dropping the non-linear storytelling format would have served the narrative better, but overall I think The Banished is a pretty nice watch if you’re in for something slow and eerie with an isolated forest setting.
If you’re in for more lost-in-the-woods horror of the slower kind, maybe also give Lovely, Dark and Deep from 2023 a watch.
Writer and director: Joseph Sims-Dennett Country & year: Australia, 2024 Actors: Meg Eloise-Clarke, Gautier de Fontaine, David Beelen, Steve Brekalow, Hayley Buckley, Taylor Buoro, Leighton Cardno, David Charlie, Adrian D’Arcy IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33050521/
―There have been films about earthquakes, airplane disasters and blazing infernos… but there has never been anything like THE DEVIL’S RAIN! … or nothing like this fluffy, silly Satanic horror movie that only could have come out from the mid ’70s. Horns up!
Just to make no mistake what subject matter we’re getting ourselves into, the film opens with tasty hell paintings by Bosch over the intro credits. We then get thrown right into, yes you guessed it, a rainstorm where Mark Preston (William Shatner) is looking for his father. After he gets home to his mother Emma and some other old guy named John, his father, Steve, suddenly shows up outside the house, looking like a melted hobo freak from Tromaville. Steve has escaped from the Satanic cult leader Jonathan Corbis to warn the Preston family about a mysterious book, which Corbis expect to be delivered to him at a place called Redstone. Steve mumbles “In nomine Satanas“ before he melts away to a small puddle in front of Mark and his wife.
We learn that the Prestons have hidden a Satanic Bible for generations, and now they order Mark to just give it to Corbis. Nah! Instead, he loads his gun and gets ready to hunt down this Corbis guy to blow his brains out, because who wouldn’t. If it was that simple. A voodoo doll is nailed to the steering wheel on his truck. Uh-oh. Mark then hears screaming from the house where he finds John hanging upside-down with a bloody face. The house has also been completely trashed, as if a tornado of poltergeists had swarmed by. Emma is gone and seems to have been kidnapped by Corbis’s cult. All this happens in just a seconds. Talk about some vulgar display of power. Eleven minutes in and the film is already all over the place. Mark finally takes the roadtrip to Redstone which looks like an abandoned old ghost town and maybe an old set for a western movie. After Mark eventually gets captured by the Satanic cult, we then switches over to Mark’s brother Tom (Tom Skerritt) and his wife Julie who’s a psychic of some sort. She can see into the past, or something like that. Tom get the news that his brother is missing and the search begins in the Mexican desert. Good luck and remember to drink a plenty of water.
According to the original poster for The Devil’s Rain, it can promise us “Absolutely the most incredible ending of any motion picture ever!” Yes, with an exclamation point. No clickbait bullshit, because hear this: the last five minutes or so has more gooey and grotesque melting body horror than The Incredible Melting Man (1977) and Body Melt (1993) combined. Not too shabby for a half-obscure ’70s low-budget horror. And look out for John Travolta’s very first screen presence, which he’s not much proud of as he only remembers it as a terrible movie. Travolta has been in way, way, waaay worse movies than this, and that’s a fact. Then we have the actual Mister Satanist himself, Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan who worked as technical advisor on the film and had a small cameo as the The High Priest. The chanting we hear from the Corbis cult are words from The Satanic Bible, yes the one and only that LaVey wrote and published in 1967. And with that being said, Ernest Borgnine, who plays the cult leader, would never be in a film that deals with devils and satanism again after the film was plagued with “eerie incidents and accidents“. That’s a shame, since he seemed to be having a ball playing the over-the-top demonic cartoonish villain with the most evil psychotic grin that only Kenneth Copeland could match. His presence in full demonic form is nothing but mesmerizing where he looks like a mix of Ron Perlman from Hellboy and the Beast from Beauty and the Beast. Delightful stuff!
But the one that didn’t smile in the slightest, was director Robert Fuest, who was on the brink of a nervous breakdown while filming somewhere in bumfuck nowhere in a dusty hellhole in Mexico with very limited resources. Rumors say that the film was financed with mafia money and several actors didn’t get paid, including Ernest Borgnine. A chaotic shitshow, in other words. After a disastrous theatrical release which garnered mostly negative reviews and earned a spot on Roger Ebert’s “Most Hated“ movies list, Fuest was reduced to spending the rest of his film career on obscure TV shows and even more obscure TV movies. It wasn’t until 1982 that he got his final theatrical release, which was the Greek soft porn Aphrodite. Showbiz…what can you say. Leaving on that note, The Devil’s Rain may sound like one of the worst movies ever made. I wouldn’t say it’s even close. It’s a flawed incoherent mess for sure, but an entertaining incoherent mess with some solid production values, vibrant look, a nice n’ eerie vibe, a cool-looking villain and, a glimpse of the origin of the iconic Michael Myer’s mask… and, of course, lots of melting satanists. The only thing missing is a nude woman ready to be sacrificed on an altar, but oh well, not everyone can be Nude for Satan, I guess.
Director: Robert Fuest Writers: Gabe Essoe, James Ashton, Gerald Hopman Country & year: Mexico/USA, 1975 Actors: Ernest Borgnine, Eddie Albert, Ida Lupino, William Shatner, Keenan Wynn, Tom Skerritt, Joan Prather, Woodrow Chambliss, John Travolta, Claudio Brook, Lisa Todd, Anton LaVey IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072869/
Rose is a young and very talented violinist, but she’s also a bit of a loner. Charles, her agent and manager, has been taking care of her and functioned more or less as a parental figure ever since Rose’s mother died when Rose was only sixteen. When it comes to her father, who is none other than world famous composer Richard Marlowe, she has never personally known him as he abandoned his family and became a recluse shortly after Rose was born. And now the guy is dead, which to the news Rose at first gives a “whatever, I’m busy“ attitude. Who can really blame her, though, the man was basically nothing but a stranger she never met. Rose has still inherited his mansion which is located in France, and she decides to go there in the small hopes of maybe finding out something about why he decided to leave his own family all those years ago.
Once there, in the gloomy and desolate mansion, she finds some sheet music for the sonata her father had been working on for the last twenty-or-so years. She sends a sample of it to Charles, who is immediately intrigued and sees potential for wealth and fortune. The final piece of a famous composer! Once he starts digging, he finds that Richard had been a member of some satanic cult who believed that music could be used for summoning the Antichrist himself. And Rose starts experiencing strange things around the mansion…
The Sonata is a supernatural horror thriller from 2018, directed by Andrew Desmond from a screenplay by Desmond and Arthur Morin. It also stars Rutger Hauer in a smaller role, and this was his final film before his death the following year. The film was shot almost entirely in Latvia, in the 19th century Cesvaine Palace.
This is one of those supernatural movies where you get a good amount of that misty, gothic atmosphere. It’s never really venturing into any real scares, but it’s always giving off that certain spooky vibe. The movie starts off from Richard Marlowe’s perspective (played by the late Rutger Hauer), filmed in a pretty interesting POV style where we witness an act of self-immolation. So, we already know that some weird, spooky shit is going on here. And yes, it does play out the rest of the film as a straight-forward supernatural mystery thriller, with a satanic cult, mysterious disappearances, and of course several paranormal incidents. Just like in The Ninth Gate, the mystery unfolds through cryptic esoteric symbols, hidden messages in artwork and the solving of puzzles in order to unlock some dark, demonic forces.
The music, of course, also plays a significant role here. The ficitional Op. 54 “Rose Sonata“ was composed, orchestrated and conducted by Alexis Maingaud, and performed by solo violinist Olivier Leclerc with the Orchestre National d’Île-de-France. With much of the movie’s concept relying on some unfinished evil sonata, it would be expected that the music here would add to the overall feeling of the film. And it certainly helps with providing the perfect setting for the story.
While never bringing much new do the table, The Sonata is a pretty fine gothic supernatural mystery thriller which delivers mostly on a spooky atmosphere, a nice location, and of course a lot of violin playing.
Director: Andrew Desmond Writers: Andrew Desmond, Arthur Morin Country & year: France/UK/Latvia, 2018 Actors: Freya Tingley, Simon Abkarian, James Faulkner, Rutger Hauer, Catherine Schaub-Abkarian, Matt Barber, Christopher Brand IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7149066/
A group of Soviet and British plunderers visit an old, abandoned 13th-century abbey located somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains. The abbey is filled with what can be best described as Lovecraftian carvings, which was probably supposed to be some kind of warning. These guys don’t give a shit, though, and blasts the place with dynamite which makes the floor collapse and throws them into some underground cave system. This all happened sometime during the Cold War, and what happened to these guys? We don’t get to know that, at least not yet.
Fast forward to the present, and Dr. Nicolai and his associate Dr. Kathryn Jennings is leading a team to excavate the former abbey which is now just a bunch of ruins. Once inside they discover mysterious mosaics, and find that the cave system could contain an entirely undiscovered ecosystem. Inside the cave, a guy named Briggs is chosen to scout ahead and he ends up being attacked by something. The others believe it’s just an equipment malfunction, but the huge problem remains the same: the water scooter Briggs used sped off and crashed into the wall, causing rocks to fall down and blocking the way they came in. The only way they can get out now, is by following the river and hoping they find another way out…all the while something else inside the cave seems to be stalking them.
The Cave is a creature feature film from 2005, directed by Bruce Hunt and written by Michael Steinberg and Tegan West. It grossed $33.3 million against a $25 million budget, and the reception wasn’t that great. And I guess it didn’t help that there was another cave-horror movie that came the same year, The Descent, which became a huge hit and is conceivably a better film. That being said, The Cave is not really a bad movie!
One of the highlights, at least for me, were the set design, props and effects. The movie was filmed in Romania (which is known for having over 12,000 registered caves) and some scenes featuring underwater caves where shot in Mexico. Aside from real-life locations there were some really good artificial cave sets built near Bucharest, and a 750,000 gallon tank was created for some of the underwater photography. Yeah, I do have a soft spot which seems to grow softer for each year when it comes to actual real-life locations and handmade props. It just makes a movie look so much more real, which makes it easier for me to actually feel whatever the characters are going through during the film. The actors also had to sometimes spend up to 12 hours a day in a wetsuit, going in and out of the water all the time, and I can easily see how this must have been exhausting as hell.
The Cave plays out more as an action horror and there aren’t really any scares, but it’s pretty solid as far as creature feature films go. Much thanks to the set designs and locations you easily buy that they are truly trapped in those caves. It also takes a little inspiration from real-life incidents of discoveries of micro-ecologies that have been found in deep caves, and especially in Romania. In 1986 Cristian Lascu discovered Movile Cave, where 35 new species were found and this included a 10 cm venomous centipede. Nothing of any gigantic measures, for sure, but there’s always that little thought of “who knows what else could be down there“. At the start of the movie you also get a little bit of a Lovecraftian vibe, but the movie doesn’t really venture there so don’t start expecting some cosmic horror of any kind. This is purely a monster flick, and for this purpose it does its job well. The CGI monsters leaves something to be desired, not gonna lie about that. I’ve seen a lot worse, though, and there are some scenes where they used animatronics and real models which of course looks great.
The Cave is a fun little popcorn creature feature flick, with some good suspense and a claustrophobic cave setting.
Director: Bruce Hunt Writers: Michael Steinberg, Tegan West Country & year: USA/Romania, 2005 Actors: Cole Hauser, Eddie Cibrian, Morris Chestnut, Lena Headey, Piper Perabo, Rick Ravanello, Daniel Dae Kim, Kieran Darcy-Smith, Marcel Iures, Vlad Radescu IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0402901/
It’s been some years since the great white sharks terrorized Amity Island, and the son of police chief Brody (Mike) has now grown up and works as a chief engineer at SeaWorld Orlando together with his girlfriend Kathryn, who is a biologist. The park’s main attractions are the new underwater tunnels, which allows people a great view of the undersea life. Sounds fun, right? Well, not so much when a great white shark manages to enter while the park’s lagoon gates are stuck open. No one knows yet, of course, but the park’s dolphins shows signs of distress and are afraid of going out into the lagoon. The first victim is the mechanic who dives into the water to repair the gates, and while the shark has started its feasting, Mike and his girlfriend are not aware of any dangers.
When it becomes clear the mechanic has gone missing, they use a submarine to look for his body, and encounters a great white instead…but it’s not a big one, and they find it’s just a juvenile. In order to get more publicity for the park, it’s decided that this shark should be captured, which of course goes to hell pretty quickly and the shark dies. There’s a reason great whites can’t survive in captivity, and that’s due to their need for continuous movement in order to breathe and stay alive, plus they are known for being under extreme stress in captivity and also refuse to eat. Those creatures are born to be free, period. Then when the corpse of the missing guy is discovered, they realize that he was attacked by a much larger shark than the one they captured (and caused the death of). Out there somewhere is Mommy shark, and we are of course in for more body counts.
Jaws 3-D from 1983, also known as Jaws 3, is the third film in the Jaws franchise. It was directed by Joe Alves. And yeah…this is arguably not really a good movie, but as far as shark movies overall go it’s fairly decent to give a watch, and maybe have some laughs at the same time due to the silly and extremely outdated 3D effects. Yes, it’s one of those 3D-glasses movies where several scenes are designed for these effects, and like most movies utilizing this it looks more laughable than fascinating. Getting some of the actors from the previous movie was also a no-go, as Roy Scheider (who played Police Chief Martin Brody) just laughed at the concept of Jaws 3-D and made it apparent he couldn’t have been talked into doing it. Dennis Quaid, who plays Mike Brody in this film, admitted that he was aggressively using cocaine during the filming and was high “in every frame“. That being said, I think the actors overall did well enough with what they had to play along with.
In many ways it was a good decision to move away from yet another story centered around Amity Island, but while the second installment of the film series kind of tried to keep some of the ominous vibes from the first, we here go into pure B-schlock territory. And I guess you can say that a setting of a marine park works pretty well for something like this, with the goofy vibe and all. Just like in the previous movies, we must not forget to also add in some corporate greed that puts everyone in danger, of course!
Some of the highlights are of course the clunky effects which are made even more laughable in the 3D setting, with the glass-breaking scene being the most hilarious one. How could we go from the outright scary and sinister vibe from the first movie, to this ludicrous schlock..? Well, that’s the power of sequels made from popular movies. In one attempt after the other to recreate some of the magic from the first, we end up getting something that strays further and further from the original’s qualities. Kind of makes me wonder what a Jaws movie would look like if it was re-created inside the Backrooms.
Overall, though, Jaws 3-D is a fun watch when seeing it with the right expectations. Despite getting mostly negative reception and even multiple Golden Raspberry Awards, Worst Picture, Worst Director and Worst Supporting Actor awards, it still managed to become a commercial success. Later on came Jaws: The Revenge in 1987, which kind of pretends that this movie never happened and gives the shark a pure “revenge“ motive. I think it’s fair to say that the Jaws franchise ended with this third installment.
Director: Joe Alves Writers: Richard Matheson, Carl Gottlieb, Guerdon Trueblood Country & year: USA, 1983 Actors: Dennis Quaid, Bess Armstrong, Simon MacCorkindale, Louis Gossett Jr., John Putch, Lea Thompson, P.H. Moriarty, Dan Blasko, Liz Morris, Lisa Maurer, Harry Grant, Andy Hansen IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085750/
It is now four years since a great white shark terrorized the villagers and tourists on Amity Island. After Chief Martin Brody and his companions finally managed to kill it and give the seagulls a nice sushi-buffet in the same go, everything has been fine. Of course something must happen to disturb the peace. Two scuba divers are photographing the wreckage of the Orca, and another great white shark appears and kills them both. Uh-oh, here we go again! Already the next day the shark is out for more blood, and kills a water skier who manages to burn the shark’s face by using a flare gun in self defense. It all ends with both skier and the boat pilot getting killed, and we now have four victims in just two days.
Just like last time, no real evidence of anything being caused by a shark is clear from the start, but when Brody finds an orca carcass in the beach with some severe bite marks on it, nothing is going to convince him we’re not in for yet another round of shark terror. As bodies start piling up, the Mayor is once again more worried about the island’s tourism. Money comes before everything when it comes to these guys. Brody, suspected of being “mentally unstable“ after the incident four years ago is not taken seriously, and he grows more and more concerned for the safety of his family. He forbids his 17-year old son, Mike, from going out in the water. We all know how that goes…tell a teenager what they aren’t allowed to do, and you can bet that this will be on their to-do list pretty soon. And sure enough, Mike goes sailing with his friends and even brings his younger brother Sean with them, mostly because the little bugger saw him sneaking out and threatened to tattle on his big bro. Ah, younger siblings…such fun. And we all know that this sailing trip will be just another setup for additional meals to the big fish.
Jaws 2 is the 1978 sequel to the success of Jaws from 1975, a success which was of course bound to spew out a few sequels afterwards. And just like the first film, the production was troubled. The first director, John D. Hancock, proved to not be the right guy for directing this one, and was replaced with the French director Jeannot Szwarc. Steven Spielberg was of course not interested as he thought “making a sequel to anything is just a cheap carny trick“ and apparently didn’t even bother to respond when the producers asked him. He also admitted later on that the production hell of the first film scared him from trying to reprise the ordeal…
Once again, mechanical sharks were constructed for the film, where special mechanical effects supervisor Robert Mattey and Roy Arbogast used the same body mold from the first film. Why they didn’t use the originals, you may ask? Well, they had started to rust and rot away after being stored behind sheds in the lower lot of Universal Studios. So that’s where the creation of “Bruce 2“ came into place. Martha’s Vineyard once again became the filming location for the town scenes, and many of the locals were cast as extras. The beach scenes were shot at Navarre Beach in Florida. John Williams, who won an Academy Award for Best Original Score for the first film, also returned to score. Jaws 2 also became considerably more expensive, and cost $30 million to produce, more than three times the first movie…but hey, they knew this would be an immediate success anyway since loads of people would watch it purely because of the first film, and they were right as the box office was $208.9 million. Not as much as the first movie, but still a success.
Now, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this movie is nowhere near as good as the first one, but to be honest that’s mostly the deal with sequels (with some very few exceptions). That being said, it’s still entertaining and it’s fun to see a movie playing a little around with the so-called aftermath and of course focusing on some of the same characters. The pacing is not quite as tight compared to the first, and with the same town and setting you can’t help but feeling that it’s a little repetitive.
The shark itself is still an obvious threat, but there isn’t that feeling of a constantly threatening atmosphere as in the first. It ventures more into pure creature-feature territory where the shark is more monstrous and often a bit over-the-top. I mean, there’s a scene where it’s attacking a helicopter…something that’s right out of a monster movie. But Bruce 2 is pretty alright (whom fans have nicknamed Brucette since the shark is a female in this movie). Definitely some fun to be had here, just don’t expect a movie on the same level as the first. So, while Jaws 2 doesn’t have nearly enough bite as the first one, it’s still a decent sequel worth watching.
Director: Jeannot Szwarc Writers: Carl Gottlieb, Howard Sackler Country & year: USA, 1978 Actors: Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Joseph Mascolo, Jeffrey Kramer, Collin Wilcox Paxton, Ann Dusenberry, Mark Gruner, Barry Coe, Susan French, Gary Springer, Donna Wilkes IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077766/
For this year’s shark week special, we’ll start off with the biggest fish of them all, the ultimate shark horror movie. The one and only movie that scared people away from the beaches and even lakes and swimming pools (!). It scared the bejeezus out of a lot of people, and some even carries that galeophobia to this day. Yes, we’re of course talking about Jaws from 1975, an instant classic when it came and still remains one, directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. While Psycho made people afraid of showers, Jaws made people afraid of the ocean.
The story starts off in the New England beach town of Amity Island, and we are presented with the first kill almost immediately. A group of young people are partying at the beach, and one of the girls decide to go for a late night swim, while her too intoxicated boyfriend drunkenly collapses and passes out in the sand before being able to join her. Lucky for him, as we soon see her pulled underwater and dragged around like a ragdoll. By what, we don’t see, but of course we have a hunch. Next morning, her partial remains are found washed up on the beach, and when the coroner concludes that this is caused by a shark attack, police chief Martin Brody wants to close the beaches for people’s safety. But, oh no…that won’t do, since the town’s summer economy would suffer! Mayor Larry Vaughn won’t have any of such nonsense, of course. So what happens next is that everything is swept under the rug, no shark here, false alarm, fake news, probably a boating accident. Then the young boy Alex Kintner is killed at a crowded beach, where everyone gets the pleasure or watching nature’s brutality at its finest. And now, of course, it’s time to take it seriously enough to put a bounty on the shark, causing a full-frenzied amateur shark hunting by the local fishermen. Soon afterwards, some of them catches a tiger shark, and the Mayor once again declares the beaches safe. Ding-Dong, the shark is dead! Or maybe not. Slicing it open, there are no human remains inside its stomach. It’s also not as big as the presumed culprit should be, which is more likely to be a great white shark of the much larger kind.
And yes, much of the plot’s key points have been copied, referenced, and parodized numerous times over the years: a giant killer shark (or other creature) plus a town not wanting to take it seriously because of tourist money and local traditions, or something similar. It’s a no-brainer that a movie’s huge success will always make people try to copy it, and there’s no doubt that Jaws has inspired numerous shark and creature feature movies, and continues to do so, because there’s just so much it got right. One of those things include Spielberg’s decision to use lesser known actors. He said that actors who were more anonymous would help the audience find it more believable, as “stars bring a lot of memories along with them, and those memories can sometimes … corrupt the story“. True words. Besides, we all know that the real star here is the shark anyway, so…
Originally, this was actually not meant to be a Steven Spielberg film at all. John Sturges was first considered as director, then it went to Dick Richards instead, but he was dropped from the project. One of the reasons was apparently that he had a habit of describing the shark as a whale…I guess he mistook it for a Moby Dick story. Steven Spielberg became aware of the position and really, really wanted the job, and it all ended with the producers signing him to direct. The producers actually also wanted to train a great white shark for the movie. Uh…yeah, nope. Of course that was not possible, so that’s where “Bruce“ came into the works, which were three full-size pneumantically powered prop sharks. And the film crew nicknamed the shark props after Spielberg’s lawyer Bruce Ramer. Fun spin on the old phrase “all lawyers are sharks”.
The movie was shot mostly on location at Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. It was also the first major motion picture to be shot on the ocean, and yeah…the production was troubled where both the budget and schedules went to shit. To top it all, the main star of the movie, Bruce himself (the mechanical shark) malfunctioned all the time, causing Spielberg to focus more on the shark’s ominous presence than showing it very often. Which may very well have been art by accident, as this movie is definitely an excellent example of how less is more when it comes to showing off the “monster“. Add to it the excellent theme by John Williams, which has become so iconic you’ve probably heard it even if you haven’t seen the movie, and you’ve got the shark’s threatening presence in just a minimalist theme song. That’s no small feat. And despite being a movie that doesn’t show the “monster“ all too often, it doesn’t drown in loads of unnecessary subplots or character interaction that doesn’t drive the story further (which can be an issue in some creature features). The pacing is really good, there’s a constant sinister vibe overlaying the movie due to the shark’s elusive presence. And of course, we have some kill scenes which are really well done.
I’ll admit, Jaws holds a special place in my heart as one of the very first movies to actually scare me. Like, literally. I saw it at a very young age, and as someone growing up in a coastal town where boat life and spending time nearby the ocean and fishing during the summer was a way of my normal everyday life, the idea of a giant shark prowling underneath the waves literally scared the piss out of me. Most of the other horror movies I’d seen was too fantastical and removed from reality to really give me any “but what if“ impact. And while there aren’t even any great whites here in Norway, and the only shark species that roam the Norwegian waters are no threat to humans, it still instilled a deep-rooted fear in me which persisted. At the same time I also got fascinated by sharks, and I already had a love and fascination for ideas of sea monsters and the like, so overall I guess you can say that the movie kind of got me hooked.
If there is one downside with this movie, it’s how the public perception of sharks turned very negative, causing wide-spread trophy fishing and “revenge hunts“. I’d say that this is a people problem, not a movie problem though…both Peter Benchley and Steven Spielberg expressed regret over how the movie caused such an impact on the real-world shark population. That being said, shark populations have also suffered from industrial overfishing and the shark fin trade. Humans will always remain the most dangerous creature, no matter what.
Jaws was the highest grossing film in history until the release of Star Wars two years later, and in 2001 the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the US National Film Registry. While there’s a huge ocean of shark movies out there, Jaws still takes the biggest and sharpest bite compared to all of them.
Director: Steven Spielberg Writers: Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb Country & year: USA, 1975 Actors: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Carl Gottlieb, Jeffrey Kramer, Susan Backlinie, Jonathan Filley, Ted Grossman, Chris Rebello IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/
Enter production hell that is The Primevals, fifty years in the making that even outlived its creator. Yes, this dream passion project about evil lizard people already started way back in the late 1960s by stop-motion animators David Allen, Jim Danforth and visual artist Dennis Muren. The project went through several pre-productions throughout the 70s and 80s with several scripts and titles, such as The Glacial Empire and Primordium: The Arctic World. The British horror studio Hammer Films was interested in the project at one time in the 1970s, but it fell through due to creative differences. In 1978, David Allen met film producer Charles Band where he pitched the concept with the new title The Primevals, but again, it fizzled out because of reasons.
In the meantime, David Allen started to work with Charles Band with stop-motion effects in films such as Laserblast, The Dungeonmaster, Dolls, Puppet Master, Subspecies and Bride of The Re-Animator. He also worked in bigger productions like The Howling, Willow and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. So even though the name David Allen doesn’t ring any bells, and you’re a kid of the ’80s and ’90s, you’ve surely seen some of his standout work. Then the 1990s came and David Allen still refused to give up The Primevals, because the ’90s was after all the decade of optimism. And after Charles Band had some great success with his new-established company Full Moon, much thanks to a distribution deal with Paramount Home Video, he finally decided to produce the film. This would also be the most expensive and ambitious Full Moon film to date. The principal photography for The Primevals was completed in Romania in 1994 with some scenes shot in the Dolomites mountains in Italy, and the project finally seemed to reach the light outside the tunnel.
Then came post-production hell, a lot due to Full Moon ending their collab with Paramount Home Video and the money dried out. Allen did what he could to finish the project in his sparetime for the next five years until the pull got plugged when Allen died of cancer in 1999, age 54. RIP. Fast-forward to 2018 when Charles Band launched an Indiego campaign to collect over $40,000 to get the film finished once and for all. The post-production was then handed over to stop-motion animator Kent Burton and a small team of visual effects artists. The film was finally released in 2023 at the Fantasia Film Festival. The Primevals is now available on DVD/Blu-ray and Full Moon Streaming. Also check out the making-of documentary Lost To Time: Unearthing The Primevals.
So… the plot goes like this: We start off somewhere in a snowy mountains in Tibet where some locals fight against a big yeti, in pure Ray Harryhausen-style. After they defeat the yeti it gets taxidermied and brought to a University, and a small team of scientists go on an expedition to Nepal to search for its origin. The team is led by Matt Connor and the anthropologist Dr. Claire Collier, and they’re not the most interesting people to follow. But the plot thickens when they arrive in Tibet and discovers a mysterious futuristic-looking tower in the mountain. And then they suddenly fall through the ground after a quick avalanche and find themselves in a grotto. Luckily for them the entrance is not far away which leads them to a another pre-historic dimension, not so unlike what we saw in Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012). But instead of nazis we have stop-motion lizards, aliens and other weird stuff. Good luck, have fun and don’t die.
I have to admit that I didn’t know about this project until recently, which to my understanding have been closely followed by more die hard Full Moon fans throughout the years. As going in more blind minus the hype and the anticipation, other than it looked interesting enough judging by the trailer, I’d say: It’s fine. It’s more impressive on the technical aspect than scriptwise. Some of the set-designs, matte paintings and use of miniatures look pretty remarkable, and you can also tell that every single penny was put on screen in terms of production value. The use of CGI, which there is very little of are added when necessary, just as it should. The element, besides the stop-motion, that gave me some extra tickle on the nostalgia bones, were the underground castles, that took me back to films like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). This is more or less a throwback film to a bygone era, as much as it is a passion project to showcase Allen’s love for stop-motion on the most epic scale he was able to reach. The sad thing is that he never got the chance to see the final product of his own magnum opus. What can you say… life’s not fair.
Then you have the human characters which are nothing much to speak about. It’s wooden and by default at its best, like most of Full Moon films where the stop-motion creatures have way more emotions than the actors. There’s some dead meat here and a lot of talking and exposition since the budget never reached the lengths to fully flesh out the pretty over-ambitious story on a visual standpoint. A very common issue when we have a concept that would need a bigger boat to reach the full potential. That said, the third act really pays it off with some fun stop-motion action, actors in ape/monkey costumes and more, and has overall enough of the retro charm to spark some classic sense of wonder that will make you feel like a kid again.
Director: David Allen Writers: David Allen, Randall William Cook Country & year: USA/Romania, 1994-2023 Actors: Juliet Mills, Richard Joseph Paul, Leon Russom, Walker Brandt, Tai Thai, Eric Steinberg, Robert Cornthwaite, Dolph Scott, Kevin Mangold, Jeffrey S. Farley, Billy Scudder IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9352178/
We’re in the year 1968, and we see a teenage girl who has gotten herself a baby alligator. Sounds like the perfect pet, right? At least the girl loves the little thing. Her parents, though, are not quite as thrilled. After finding alligator-poo on his clothes, the father flushes the poor baby alligator down the toilet, in agreement with the mother while they plot finding some excuse when their daughter gets back home. A-holes. Well, that’s not the end of baby gator, of course.
Fast forward 12 years later to 1980, body parts are exiting the sewers and getting police detective David Madison involved, a slightly world-weary “tired of all this bullshit“ guy who is still struggling with the the loss of his partner in a botched case in St. Louis, which has given him a reputation of being extremely unlucky for whoever should be assigned as his new partner. And David once again proves to be a “partner-killer“ when the rookie cop Kelly willingly goes with him to check out the sewers, and becomes a gator snack. Oops. David’s still got a long way to go if he wants to beat Chuck Steel out of that department, though.
David, with two recently lost partners, missing locals, and also mysterious dog carcasses appearing in the sewers, finds himself in search of more than just a giant alligator. He teams up with herpetologist Marisa Kendall, who (surprise, surprise!) actually happens to be the baby alligator girl from the opening scene, and they develop some kind of (rather uninteresting) romance. To top it all David’s also got the problem of a receding hairline, which seems to be a big issue for both him a lots of other people for some reason. Apparently is was the actor himself, Robert Forster, who insisted on adding these jokes on behalf of his real-life thinning hair.
So, here we have the creature feature film Alligator from 1980, directed by Lewis Teague (who also made Cat’s Eye) from a screenplay by John Sayles. It was produced independently and released by Group 1 Films, and became somewhat of a box office flop in North America, but became more successful in other territories, and of course, have garnered a cult following since. Now, you might have heard about the “alligators in sewers“ urban legend, based on how people allegedly flushed alligators down the toilets. Yes, they sold these as pets back in the day, with people buying them and probably thinking they looked so cute as babies, and freaking out once they realized that they actually grow…you know, like babies usually do. In 1967 alligators were listed as an endangered species which stopped the sales, but the myths and legends about giant gators surviving in the sewers lived on, and inspired this movie.
And yes, this is a B-horror movie through and through, but as far as creature feature flicks go this one does at least give us a good amount of actual creature scenes. And it really tries to go all the way, and you don’t have to wait ages before something starts happening. Sewer workers are chomped up, a kid gets eaten after falling into a swimming pool, a wedding reception is totally wrecked (don’t worry, those people were just a bunch of rich, arrogant and not-quite-innocent douchebags anyway) with the latter being the most fun scene of them all. The effects are pretty solid, mixing many good old-school practical effects with an actual real-life alligator. The name of the real-life alligator was Morris, and he starred in several other films aside from this one. Last year he passed away from old age at his longtime home, the Colorado Gator Farm. R.I.P. big guy.
Overall, Alligator is one of those creature features that delivers the goods without too much dilly-dallying or uninteresting subplots. There’s a lot of fun to be had here with a campy and solid charm, combining the creature horror with some humor and action.
A direct-to-video sequel called Alligator II: The Mutation was released in 1991, but that one’s got jack shit to do with the original.
Director: Lewis Teague Writers: John Sayles, Frank Ray Perilli Country & year: USA, 1980 Actors: Robert Forster, Robin Riker, Michael V. Gazzo, Dean Jagger, Sydney Lassick, Jack Carter, Perry Lang, Henry Silva, Bart Braverman, Morris IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080354/
The young French bird Alice (Souheila Yacoub) has sought the good life in ‘Merica, but has already realized that the grass isn’t much greener on the other side. Because we soon learn that her husband, William, is an abusive piece of poo. The scars she’s wearing around the waist can tell. After he dies horribly in a car accident and burns alive as if it was pure karma, Alice should take that as a blessing, get the fuck away and never look back. But then the movie would pretty much be over and not much to talk about. So thanks for staying to the cost of our morbid entertainment, I guess. She doesn’t shed a tear during the funeral, because who would, and doesn’t hesitate to take off the wedding ring. The rest of the family only give her the stinkeye, and things only get worse when they have a gathering by the dinner table in her in-law’s old moldy house in the countryside. Soon, the gathering quickly escalates to hell on Earth, just like one would imagine every Thanksgiving crashout since 2016.
Now, if the circumstances didn’t look bad enough on the surface, we learn that the house was owned by none other than the mystery man who we have heard on the old tapes during the franchise for over forty years. So don’t worry, this is an Evil Dead movie, through and through. He’s the grandfather of Alice’s in-laws where William’s younger brother has gathered all his notes and, of course, the Necronomicon to hopefully write a book about it. Grampa also made a mythical dagger hidden somewhere in the attic, the only weapon that can kill the deadites. And the deadites want that dagger before it gets in the hands of Sam and Dean, or maybe Ash, if he’s still out there. So yes, the deadites actually have an important mission here other than to reek hell and mayhem. That leaves us back to the car crash where the lakeside deadite (the one we saw in the beginning of Evil Dead Rise) possesses William’s dead body which eventually reaches the meatsuit of his dad, where it all explodes by the dinner table when he suddenly stabs their dog to death with a fork.
So, the third installment of the “gritty/serious/trauma“ phase of the Evil Dead franchise, as I like to call it, is directed by the Frenchman Sébastien Vanicek and co-written with Florent Bernard. The original plan was to have Lee Cronin return as director after the success of Evil Dead Rise, but he chose to make Evil Dead Mummy instead. Producer Sam Raimi then handpicked Vanicek after watching his directorial debut Vermines (2023). And what a great pick to spice up the franchise with some spicy French Extremity. Yes, this entry is maybe the most brutal and mean-spirited of them all as Vanicek approaches the material with much of the same raging energy which Alexandre Aja did back in 2006 with The Hills Have Eyes. The Frenchmen just know how to cook when they’re at the their hungriest, or just to quote Orson Welles: Aaaaaah the French…
And yes, the film is heavy on metaphors, because we’re after all in the 2020s. The word Burn in the title is as much the metaphor of burning the bridges of toxic relationships as burning in hell, and let’s be honest with ourselves: many of us can relate either we want to acknowledge it or not, and I’m always in for it to gleefully witness a rotten family tree getting destroyed from the inside in the most brutal ways by the demons they’ve created themselves. You get what you fucking deserve, like Joker once said. And with that said, while this family is as much the villains as the deadites, this is an Evil Dead movie in the purest form that builds up to a a fierce non-stop demonic haunted house ride that rages as fast as a song by Cannibal Corpse. And while the franchise has never been rich on plot, this one also dig more into the lore. The deadites have also developed some new skills, if I’m not mistaken.
The gory highlights are rolling like rotting pearls on strings here with some creative and flawless practical effects. My favorite is the one in the beginning at the lake where someone’s face gets torn apart by fishing lines. Demon dad shoots himself several times in the skull as he smiles in front of the family to show that nothing can kill a deadite. You have brutal car fights where fingers get chopped off by the car door, and the one that should be the most painful, where Alice gets a pen shoved straight into her eardrums. And she reacts as if she just got a small splinter on her thumb. We all know that the French have a strong threshold for pain, but still. Just barely touching the eardrums with Q-tips is torture. Souheila Yacoub gets a lot of beating, if she hasn’t gone through hell already, and is a very likable final girl to root for. The only redeeming character who isn’t a malignant narcissist like the rest of the family is their youngest son Joseph (Wednesday actor Hunter Doohan) as he’s trapped in the hellish crossfire.
There’s also a particular slimy gross-out moment here to mention that includes dentals, and if you thought that the similar scene from Evil Dead Mummy was yucki, this one takes it almost one meter further. Fans of Jackass or Lucifer Valentine will probably slurp this like liquid candy though.
The humor is very subtle and almost absent as it follows the same serious tone as the previous two, but there are some freudian laughs to be had here. The demented crazylady in the wheelchair cracked me up when she got dragged down the stairs and have no clue what’s going on. And I’m not the only one who saw the clear parallels to the Baker family from Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. The only thing missing was a thick southern accent. Welcome to the family, hon. I find it funny how we have gotten more Resident Evil in other films in later years, unintentionally or not, than in the actual Resident Evil films. The only thing that drags the film down a bit is the CGI at the climax, which unfortunately looks pretty shoddy in contrast of all things considered. But all in all, Evil Dead Burn is another strong entry in a franchise that has survived for over 40 years. Six films in and not one single dud and still manage to feel fresh and new for the classic audiences (wink wink). That must be a record for a horror franchise. So let’s have a toast with a shot of fresh candle wax. Yum.
The next installment, Evil Dead Wrath, was wrapped already in May, but don’t hold your breath — for whatever reason we have to wait until 2028 for that one.
Director: Sébastien Vanicek Writers: Florent Bernard, Sébastien Vanicek Country & year: New Zealand/USA/Canada, 2026 Actors: Souheila Yacoub, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Erroll Shand, Greta van den Brink, Tandi Wright, Alain Chabat, Maude Davey, George Pullar, Keanu Karim, Victory Ndukwe, Tapiwa Soropa IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31170389/
Grace is a young woman who ventures back to her childhood hometown after her father has died and her brother has gone missing. And of course we quickly find out that there’s a reason she left the place, because her late father was an abusive asshole. Good riddance. Grace has been estranged from her family for a very long time, living her life and pursuing her career in a completely different place, but now she returns mainly because of her brother, who was the only person who stood up for her when they were kids.
