Read + Write + Report
Home | Start a blog | About Orble | FAQ | Blogs | Writers | Paid | My Orble | Login
 
Picking the rare gems out of a sea of crap.... so you don't have to!

Sub-Par Horror - Evil Pleasures

Movie Review: Bram Stoker's Way of the Vampire

July 2nd 2009 03:32


Premise: Van Helsing kills Dracula, but while he is doing so another vampire turns his VH's into the undead. In revenge, VH makes a pact with the church: He shall be immortal, until he has killed all of the vampire princes.

Fast forward to present day: The vamps are running scared, afraid of incurring Van Helsing's wrath. Then the prince vampire guy gets a taste of blood, and decides to start amassing an army to destroy Van Helsing.


Acting: Pretty shocking all round. Not one stand out performer in the lot, and all standing out would require would be a mediocre performance.

Script: Terrible. Let me rattle off a few examples.

The vampires had been living in fear for many years.... but all it took was for one grunt vampire to steal some blood from a hospital to start a vampire hunting revolution.

Van Helsing is the bane of vampires and has killed countless vamps.... even though he has mediocre fighting ability, and vamps are super strong, super fast and can turn into bats or wolves. Believable, right?

This one is my personal favourite:

"It would be different if they were like wasps, one sting and they're dead, but instead they come back again, and again, and again"

Wasps, as we all know, can sting as many times as they like. It's bees that can only sting once. How did that get through editing?

Moving on: effects.
Unrealistic, but probably the highlight of the movie. The camera rarely stays focused on the gore for more than a split second, so we don't have time to fully appreciate the dodgy gore effects. Although the quick flashes of gore get a little annoying, when you stop the movie to see how poor the effects are, you see they really are best served not being scrutinized too closely. That being said, there are a couple of decent gore scenes, and all good vampire movies need a little bit of gore.


Overall: Tries to ride on Bram Stoker's Dracula's coat-tails, but falls far, far short. A pretty abysmal effort, and not worth your time unless you are starved for vampire action and have seen every other vamp movie you can get your hands on. Even then, probably still a waste of time.

On a side note: As a general rule of thumb, Eagle Entertainment should be avoided at all costs. I had never heard of them before, but they market this movie, along with House of the Dead, Dracula 3000 and Alone in the Dark. I rest my case.

Oh I almost forgot. Half the reason I got this movie in the first place was because of the mean looking bat on the front cover, and the other half was the triple-crossbow (which reminded me alot of the triple-barrel shotgun from Undead). Both are on the cover, yet neither appear at all in the movie. Lying b@$&ards.

36
Vote
Add CommentsAdd Comments
[ Link ]
Posted By: Someone - Category: Vampire, Sub-Par Horror
   


Movie Review: Creepshow 3

July 1st 2009 16:21


First of all: an apology. I have been neglecting my duties as your source of crappy B-grade horror, but I have a fresh batch of (terrible) movies, and as a recent university graduate who has yet to find work, I have a feeling that time to watch them shall not be lacking.

Secondly: Hopefully you have noticed my awesome new title banner, courtesy of my lovely girlfriend. She is incredible, and I think her banner is just excellent.

Now, onto the show!

Creepshow 3 is an anthology comprised of 5 short horror flicks. In the past I have reviewed each segment of anthologies separately, but in this case I will just review the movie as a whole. I have not seen the first 2 Creepshow movies, but given that they are anthologies this isn't important.

Now, I'm no filmmaker, but I think anthologies would be a nightmare to create. Having to create a believable and engaging story in such a short amount of time... no easy task. I have read that the first Creepshow was directed by Romero and written by Stephen King, and I imagine that would be a good anthology. Unfortunately, this one is not.

The stories are just... well.... stupid. Something happens, there's a twist that attempts to be exciting and/or amusing, next story. For example: Serial killer hooker tries to kill a guy, who it turns out is some sort of creature and kills her instead.... Except they draw it out to last 15 mins. And that, I'm sorry to say, is about as interesting as this movie gets. The acting is, overall, pretty terrible. In fact, the only character in the whole movie that I liked was the over-the-top asshole doctor from the last segment, which is kind of paradoxical considering they do everything to try and make you hate him... He did a decent job, but it's more the general crappiness that surrounds him that makes him stand out.

Now, I have to get this out before I scream: how hard is it to write a script in which your characters behave realistically!? The unrealistic actions of the characters in this movie drove me f&%king CRAZY! For example: holy sh!t! A mysterious voice is talking to me out of my radio! I will freak out for exactly 10 seconds, and then proceed to obey the radio-person's commands without any explanation of why it is talking or any reason to trust it... hell, i'll have conversations with it and won't even find it weird! Or better yet... oh my god! My life is going crazy and I suddenly have a grossly deformed foot and hand and face and everyone else in the world has disappeared except for this one guy... so I will follow him into his house, not look for him, and sit down and eat his wedding cake and drink a bottle of booze. Realistic, right?

Say Cheese!
Perhaps the only thing (other than doctor asshole) that I liked about this movie were the cheesy (but decent) costume effects. The gore was unrealistic, and the CGI was just woeful... but the costumes looked pretty cool. Especially the oversized-mouth creature from the cover... which I'm sure they only made good (?) looking so they could whack it on the cover.

Maybe 2 out of the 5 segments are worth watching. Maybe. The first one is the 4th segment (The Professor's Wife. It's corny, predictable... but strangely amusing. The other is the last segment, Haunted Dog, just to watch the jackass doctor doing his thing and not for any horror value, as the segment is about as scary as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

Overall, give this steaming crap-pile a miss... the watchable segments aren't that great, and aren't nearly enough to save this terrible movie.
46
Vote
Comments (4)Comments (4) Add CommentsAdd Comments
[ Link ]
Posted By: Someone - Category: Sub-Par Horror
   


Movie Review: Rise: Blood Hunter

June 14th 2009 09:32
Take 2:



Premise: A reporter (Lucy Liu) is converted by some vampires, and then seeks revenge. Nothing new to see here.

Some movies, while belonging to a genre, are simply so different that they stand apart because of their individuality. The uniqueness of it is interesting, and it is this effect that they are going for in Rise. The violent, lifestealing side of the vampires are given a back-seat, with the sensuality and depravity is thrust forward. The vampires don't have fangs: instead, they are portrayed as basically nymphos who like blood orgies.

Unfortunately, Rise completely misses the mark. Sure, trying to put a new spin on a cliched vampire movie might seem like a good idea, but for this to work you really need the camera-work and scripting to back it up. Genre-defying movies have to be good, and this one isn't.

First up: The story isn't shown chronologically. The movie begins somewhere about 3/4 of the way through the actual story, and then alternates between following the story from there and telling the beginning of the story. To be fair, when this technique is used, it can be remarkably effective. Anyone who doesn't agree... go watch Memento and get back to me. However, really this technique is only well implemented when coupled with a clever script, and here it isn't. When done right, it can confuse and disorient the audience. Well, I was confused and disoriented alright, but it wasn't intentional. It was solely due to the clumsy handling of the switch between timeframes. Sure, I caught on after a while, and I don't pick up on these things well, but the way they handled it still sucked.

Moving on: Lucy Liu should not be given leading roles. I don't know what it is about her, but by the end of the movie I wanted her to die. No, scratch that. I needed her to die. She just... I don't know exactly what it is... but she annoys the crap out of me. If anyone else has seen this, please tell me if it's just me.

In fact, most of the acting in this movie is pretty rotten. About the only saving grace is James D'Arcy, who plays a pretty convincing vampire villain. Other than him... no one worth mentioning.

One thing that irked me though was how this movie tried (and failed) so hard to be a hip new vamp movie. Like I mentioned, the vamps don't have fangs. They also seem to have had the vampire-powers things completely toned down, to the point that they are barely vamps. In fact, it's possible that they aren't. They don't actually say the word 'vampire', and they seem to get their kicks out of necrophilia as well as blood-sucking. However, it's pretty obvious that they've vampires, and the goal of being a unique vamp movie falls short as a lame attempt to do something different, and failing.

Oh, and another thing. A movie with 'blood' in the title, you expect a lot of blood, right? Well, there's alot of blood... and that's about it. Basically the highlight for a gorehound will be seeing Lucy Liu with blood all down her front, a blood-smeared car window, or blood spattered walls. No gore, no vampires tearing people apart, no stakes, no vamps dissolving in sunlight, nothing! In fact, the closest we come to a juicy vampire bite is seeing Lucy Liu smother a guy with a pillow and then bit his arm and suck blood out of that... and even that isn't totally convincing.

Mmm... Breasts.
About the best thing this film has going for it is nudity. There are naked breasts all over the place. In fact, it's actually ludicrous as to the amount of boob-watching that goes on, and I got a kick out of seeing how quickly they could introduce girls and get them naked. It never really goes into exploitation territory, as the nudity always has a place, but still... that much breast is no coincidence.


So in short... avoid this one, unless you are looking for an excuse to make your conservative partner watch some softcore porn.
28
Vote
Add CommentsAdd Comments
[ Link ]
Posted By: Someone - Category: Vampire, Sub-Par Horror
   


Room 6

May 26th 2009 14:32

Premise: Following a car accident, a the boyfriend of a school teacher is taken away by an ambulance, but the school-teacher girlfriend cannot find him in any of the surrounding hospitals. She is joined by the other party in the crash, who has lost his sister to the same mysterious ambulances. Meanwhile, the boyfriend awakes from the crash in a strange hospital, St. Rosemary's, at which nothing is what it seems.

[ Click here to read more ]
42
Vote
Read MoreRead More Add CommentsAdd Comments
[ Link ]
Posted By: Someone - Category: Demons, Sub-Par Horror
   


Skinwalkers

April 17th 2009 00:49
Werewolves exist, but they call themselves Skinwalkers. There are two tribes: Those that view their werewolf aspect as a gift, and those that view it as a curse. There is a native American legend that says a special child will be born, and at midnight on his 13th birthday he will somehow stop the Skinwalkers for good. The skinwalkers will know the child is coming because 4 days before his 13th birthday the moon will turn blood red.

That is the premise for this mediocre werewolf movie. The production value is generally fairly slick, and the action scenes are decent. That being said, let me pose a question


[ Click here to read more ]
39
Vote
Read MoreRead More Add CommentsAdd Comments
[ Link ]
Posted By: Someone - Category: Werewolf, Sub-Par Horror
   




[ Evil Pleasures Home ] [ Create A New Post ]
Moderated by Someone
Copyright © 2012 On Topic Media PTY LTD. All Rights Reserved. Design by Vimu.com.
On Topic Media ZPages: Sydney |  Melbourne |  Brisbane |  London |  Birmingham |  Leeds     [ Advertise ] [ Contact Us ] [ Privacy Policy ]