Reviews by shawn tomorrow

its a classic. if you watch horror you'll eventually see it as i did.

its everything it needed to be back then and today is nostalgic but never scary and a bit more silly than i imagine it was back then. still there is a lot to enjoy.

the story is about a family of archeologist that uncover the tomb of the princess ananka. the father, in the tomb immediately after its opened, is visited by the "living mummy" of kharis who was punished to forever guard her. he has a heart attack (or something of that nature) and is interned in a hospital. the son and uncle finish the job of taking the items from the tomb. just before they had broke into it, an egyptian man shows up and warns them not to do it. he suddenly shows up again back in the archeologist home town with "relics". and sets kharis, who's mummy went missing, out to kill the 3 family members. and he succeeds twice but on attempting the 3rd kill, the son, he see the son's wife who is a dead wringer for ananka.

sure its cheesy and wrought with stereotypes. its not scary but the mummy is pretty nicely done. theres nothing bad about the story, the acting, the scenes, nor the filming. its all decent.

i can't say i was blown away by the movie but it has its place in history and is definitely a must see.

these two films have no business being on one disk. they are exactly nothing alike other than being made generally around the same time. one is horror, the other sci-fi. one is italian the other australian. one has known actors, the other no one at all. and one is pretty good and the other rather silly.

cut and run is by the same team as "cannibal holocaust" and is more or less cannibal holocaust II (or not if you believe the director). its in the jungle again. reporters again seeking a story. and from the very first minutes of the film blood guts murder and boobs! if thats you cup of tea, jump right in. a group of cannibals led by a suspiciously white cannibal is going about savagely killing people for cocaine. and this is being led by 2 (other) white guys. the reporters are trying to interview the main white guy who is supposedly dead and he just may have captive the son of their boss. blood, guts, etc....oh yeah boobs. its typical itailian stuff. but it isn't half bad either. its fairly entertaining throughout. a few things hurt this movie: the son is a horrible actor (and he doesn't die), rape is treated as fairly normal and women as sex objects mostly, and the cannibal savages are flat stereotypes down to calling them idians and hearing the yell-scream like wild beasts. i can over look it but its a scar.
all in all i'd give it a good 7

dead in drive-in: well this is a pisser ain't it? very silly australian sci-fi. it'd be a stretch to call it horror. its set in a post apocalyptic future of sorts but nothing much is built of this before you get to the main story. a boy (who's far to damn old to be a boy) takes his girlfriend to a drive-in in his brothers 57 chevy. while their having sex (of course) two wheels are stolen off the car and the boy figures out its the cops who have stolen them. they try to report it but are told to wait. and then it becomes clear to them that they are stuck in the drive-in with a bunch of other people who came to be stuck under the same sort've circumstances. except everyone else seems to be ok with this because they are given food stamps, drugs, and an enemy...foreigners. yes, for some reason this weird little sci-fi romp tries to become social political. but before it gets to heavy into that theres a car chase as the boy tries to escape and eventually does....end. wtf? i can't say its bad really but it woefully underdeveloped. like a sketch of an idea taken a bit further but not finalized. oh well. theres worse out there just don't expect to be blown away. 5

really impressive!

this movie is not easy to watch. it waivers in and out of dialog, repeats it, flashes it at you in almost nonsensical ways, batters you with a harshness of young and urban, makes you endure chaos, and yet it nearly perfectly represents a reality that is keenly rendered and ultimately engaging.
this isn't hollywood fluff. its not easy to swallow. it won't give you a nice warm feeling. it won't try to pander to you at all. i'd suppose most people will dislike this movie because they want something easy. i loved it. i'll say a good part of the beginning confounded me. its a strange amalgam of filming unlike anything i can recall. nothing spectacular just a strange combination of techniques. which could fall on its face (watch the deleted scenes...some are a mess) but these weird moments add to the feeling of the film.

its a beautiful hell they show us.

young ny kids caught up in their own realities. going about their life confused, afraid, and sexual. its a mess...life...and living in a hyper reality like ny it can only be more difficult to traverse.

this is a story of a writer who comes back to ny after 20 years for his father who is sick. the story follows his book, a biography of his youth and the destructive tales of his relationships with family and friends. great characters, well acted. nicely filmed.

its easily one of the best films i've seen in a long while.

really i just kept hoping there was something deeper and more profound about this movie. in the end its too much waiting for not enough making sense.

the dialog here is occasionally believable but mostly over the top theater script. the acting weird at best. the characters cartoonish.

the black and white is beautiful as is the few points of color. easily the best thing about this movie.

the music is interesting if unsuited in some scenes..it'll at least keep you interested. actually the music carries some of the weirder moments of this movie where otherwise it would all fall apart. it also truly made me think the movie was going to turn into a musical. that and partly because these guys as "gang" members is downright goofy. matt dillon is not tough, and mickey rourke's almost effeminate performance is just odd.

the plot: young kid misses the days when he was younger and hung out with his older brother and his gang. his brother left and now he assumes his role but is too dumb. his brother returns all philosophical and distant to basically tell him to run away from it all at the end of the movie. this could actually be a good plot and it could have been a good movie but its just way to stylized for its own good. that stylization doesn't fit the story. its too bad, there is a lot of good stuff about the movie. it just doesn't fit all together.

its not the godfather. and thats too bad.
untouchables, which is an odd title considering half of them get killed in the film, is about the police/treasury/prohibition enforcers that took on al capone and his bootlegging.
no surprises if you know the story other than this is a small part of the story and somewhat understated.
lots of shootouts and fights, and posturing. all in all its effective without being overdone which is actually very nice.
although, and probably the biggest drawback of this film, is the music score. its way over the top and a definitely cheesy in the first half. it didn't hold up well over time. if they had stuck to something more classical, as godfather did, it would be a better film today. i'd actually like to see this re-scored and i know that is horrible to say. but its a flaw in an otherwise great film.

this is clearly not hollywood quality. its barely b-movie quality.

the story is about a government experiment that went wrong but was locked away never to be seen again. except..of course..it is because people find it. actually the irony of this in the movie is that it was going to be sealed away for near forever in concrete but the son of the scientist that created the organizm (sp) is following his mother's orders not to let anyone disturb it. but by doing so he allows them to find it and while attempting to check what it is they unleash it. its a biological thing that expands from any source of energy (sort've) and it does so rapidly killing all in its path. but they find the son is also the key to destroying it. and so they set out to do so.
theres nothing really surprising about any of this, but thats not a bad thing..its all believable.
where the movie really goes wrong is weak actors, some bad scripting, generally and mediocre filming. but honestly you could probably overlook most of this (albeit there are scenes with such bad acting that you can't possibly ignore it) except the special effects are so appallingly bad and the CG looks like it was created on an atari. mind numbingly bad bad bad bad. i've never seen bullet shots so laughable and an absolute failure to understand gravity. who ever was responsible for these things should not work again. really i'm sure most highschool students could pull this off better.
it wouldn't have been that bad of a movie truthfully if those things would've been done better, but as is it makes the film difficult to get into.

better luck next time guys.
watch only if you're a true sci-fi horror fan and have time to kill.

admittedly the basic premise of battle royale doesn't make sense but it doesn't interfere with the chaos that comes from it.
for reasons that don't really make sense a single class from a japanese school is chosen to take part in a "game". they are taken to an island given necklaces that'll explode if they tamper with them, try to leave, or there is more than one of them alive by the third day. they are given random weapons, some powerful, some useful, and some kind've crappy. they are also given a map and a compass and told that portions of the island will become off-limits, effectively forcing them to have run ins with each other.
right off, several are killed pretty much as they leave the building (actually 2 are killed before that). then several choose suicide rather than deal with having to kill. from there some are trying to survive and some are trying to kill. and at least one is there "just for fun" of it.
its a test of people and who they truly are or will become. down to the last person.
there is nothing really shocking about the film, nor is this really horror. but it is a interesting and compelling film that holds up after several watches. the acting is mostly good, the filming mostly good (though i hate the fake filtered night-"look" scenes), and the script is believable as far as most of the dialog (this copy has some poor subtitles here and there but its nothing awful)
a solid movie.
(did not watch the extra disk yet.)

carriers is a decent movie. it follows the newer zombie revival of movies and doesn't add much of anything to it but that doesn't make it any less.
the one thing that probably makes this film different than say "28 days..." or "28 weeks..." to which this film is often compared, is that there are no real zombies in it.
there is a virus that is high contagious and is killing everyone. through the whole movie you'll only see one person who is possibly dead but than is alive and attacks. you could just as easily take it as a person that was mistaken for dead and just wasn't quite dead yet. there is some talk in the movie about not being able to tell if they were dead or not. also much talk about the fact that anyone who gets infected eventually dies. in fact we start the story clearly after much time has passed and already most people are dead. there are not that many living people in the movie. in fact much of what the movie is about is the dwindling of survivors despite their military regimented rules and systems. simple mistakes undo them.
most of the movie is 4 people, two brothers a wife and a "stranger" sort've friend woman. they are trying to get to a beach hotel the brothers knew as kids to "wait out" the disease. they quickly run into a older man trying to save his infected daughter and have to deal with him to get his vehicle after theirs breaks down. the father is trying to get to a school were there was a "serum". you know whats going to happen probably. they also end up in a run in with another group of survivors with more overthetop military style...and of course that ends badly.
the one thing that may keep people from really liking this movie is the utter lack of hope and an ending that doesn't really bring it home.

overall its solid material. i realize now i didn't have any issues with how it was filmed, written, acted, or anything else for that matter. its pretty damn solid for a film that didn't do very well. it comes on the coat heels of the films mentioned above and doesn't outdo them...so i guess it just got lost. worth watching for more in the same vein.

the after dark horrorfest movies are hit and miss. mostly decent though.
this one isn't too bad but its marred by too much.
the first thing that's glaringly poor is the after effects production. the camera work is so so but then someone who is clearly color deficient threw every filter effect at it and just made it horrible. i'd rather see the raw shots than this. seriously someone just mangled the color in this film its off the wall bad. and then several scenes that they threw a "night" filter on to are so obviously filmed during the day its stupid.
i could overlook that as bad taste. i could even overlook the bland acting.
the plot is silly. 3 friends attend a 4th's funeral and end up in the graveyard at night and decide to read a letter left on his tomb. the letter suggests dancing so they do...and apparently each chose a different tomb to dance on albeit they don't specifically decide to dance on a tombs but just to dance. its an error you'll notice.
the letter turns out to be a curse and now each person (and a wife) is haunted by the person's grave they decided to dance on. oh yeah and we find out they just happened to be in the derelict and unwanted side full of murderers etc.
they find a group of paranormal investigators to help them out.
so lots of ghostlies and good scares...blood etc. all pretty well done and then......the finale. the big lead up to the final moments when the ghosts are supposed to be at their strongest....and what we get is lame blue CG drawings that are more scifi than scary and very unfortunately far less scary than the ghosts have been leading up to these moments. its a major and unforgivable let down. it will ruin the movie for you as it did me. most likely anyways.

somehow it feels like they hired a few amateurs on this film and made some bad decisions to cut corners. too bad, there was a decent amount of good things going for it. i mean how often have you seen horror movies that fail to scare you when they try. this one succeeds a couple times. kudos to that! this movie could be reedited to work. add some better CG to the end. fix the awful color and it would be a damn fine film despite less than grand acting.

if you're expecting big sick blood guts and gore or you're expecting shock and surprise, you'll be bewildered by this movie. there is some blood, but nothing worse than a medical drama, nothing jumping out of dark corners, and no scary beasts.

a man builds a device that gives eternal life, except... 1)you need to continually give it fresh human blood and 2)don't get stabbed in the heart or you'll die anyways. oh and you'll rot partially but the skin will peel away to show new skin underneath.
so the man who built it is in an accident and does get stabbed in the heart and dies. his belongings are sold off except the device which seems to have disappeared.
in modern day a dying man is searching for archangel sculptures which he believes holds the device and a antiques dealer acquires the one that in fact does. the antiques dealer finds the device inside and the dying man buys the now empty sculpture from him.
you can figure out more or less what will happen in this story but that doesn't take away from it. its a unique little story told in a slow but capable way. its strong albeit not a 'hollywood overthetop special effects shock bonanza' its much more distinct than that. in some ways it reminds me of "city of lost children" but much more reality based.
very well done, beautiful, great story telling, and a surprise delight. this is more classy than flashy but well worth delving into.