Crimson Screens has his high hopes smashed while watching "Pumpkinhead: Ashes To Ashes"...

Crimson Screens has his high hopes smashes while watching "Pumpkinhead: Ashes To Ashes"...

Happy Halloween!!! Today is my favorite day of the year!!! Halloween has always been my favorite day of the year. And to celebrate that on here, the best I can, I'm putting up this review. What a treat, right? Well maybe not, but still, I hope you enjoy it.
Tomorrow morning I leave for continuation of my medical problems, so wish me luck with that and Melissa will be doing the updates while I am gone.
Ok, the original "Pumpkinhead" was a creepy and entertaining late '80s movie. It starred the always good Lance Henriksen and it was about a man who conjures up an ancient monster to take revenge on the people who took part in the death of his son. While, it was no classic, it was a good watch. There was a sequel, "Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings" and, well, that movie was a piece of shit. It is not a good sign when the best part of your movie is Linnea Quigley, who has hit the wall real hard in recent years, having sex with a fat and hairy Gunnar Hansen. Yuck. It's been over ten years since that mess of a movie and we get this sequel. The fact that it is a Sci-Fi original movie didn't place my hopes too high, but I wanted to see it anyways. Hey, it might be good, right? Yeah right is more like it! I did have high hopes for this, since it has been advertised a lot lately and the preview clips seemed pretty damn cool. High hopes don't mean shit in horror movies though.
Doug Bradley plays a town doctor but his family is a bunch of grave robbers and weirdos who do illegal operations on people, and the towns people don't take to kindly to this, so they resurrect Pumpkinhead to take revenge for them.
While Doug Bradley and Lance Henriksen are really good here, the rest of the cast is bad news. They are bad news of the overacting variety. And the ones who don't overact, underact. And the ones who don't overact or underact, well they don't act at all. You get the point.
I had some other problems too, like some of the editing seemed off, like when a kid is killed in prison, it jumped around too much and since Pumpkinhead is supposed to be this great being, it sure takes him long enough to kill that guy.
There is a lot of gore, which is well done, but when they throw in CGI, it is bad CGI and any seriousness ends because you start laughing. The Pumkinhead design is a little different than before and it is nothing distracting. But what is distracting is the CGI. Completely unneccessary and dumb.
I think they could have done a little work with the pacing too, some scenes drag on and I did start to get bored early on.
This is not as bad as I thought it was going to be, not even close, but if you are going to wait this long to do a sequel and hype it up as much as it has been on TV, then you would think the film makers would have had something special here. But no. I didn't hate this, in fact, it is worth one watch. It just sucks that there is nothing really special here, and what could have been a great movie just ends up being average. I see there is already a sequel planned, "Pumpkinhead: Love Hurts". Hopefully that will be better, but you know how the straight to video game goes. Ha.
Ok, thanks for reading.
You should also go here:
http://uttertrashohio.blogspot.com
He is a friend of mine and does some great writing, far better than my stuff. I wish he would update more often though. :)
Also, check out the following podcasts:
Night Of The Living Podcast- best podcast, funny and informative
Monster Squad Terrorcast- very informative
The Infest Sound- unfortunately there hasn't been a new show in quite some time.
I wanted to say something nice about the Reel Horror Podcast, but I can't. I think those two guys are fucking annoying. Like they have some big pompous attitude about the stuff they watch. Oh well, whatever, Being annoying and a complaining jerk will get you nowhere in life.
That's all. Happy Halloween!!! Stop sitting around online and go do something fun!!!
Edward

Crimson Screens sees "Saw 3" and has a coming of age experience with "Lightning Bug"...

Crimson Screens sees "Saw 3" and has a coming of age experience with "Lightning Bug"...

Hey! Edward here and I have two more reviews for you today. One of the just released "Saw 3" and one of the older straight to DVD "Lightning Bug". But first, I want to say that this Halloween has been lacking so far. There have been a couple good shows but that is it. Hopefully that will change tonight and tomorrow night, but we will see.
On other news, I might be returning to the hospital soon, so if I do, Crimson Screens correspondant Melissa Wolfe will be taking over this page while I am there, or until I can get ym computer in where I will be. Medical problems suck and that's a true story.
Anyway, the Saw series has made a ton of money for somoene because they keep making them and, while the quality was never really high, they are entertaining movies to watch once. The first one had a good story and some decent effects, but some really bad acting took over the movie. The ending too, while neat, was no surprise for even a modest fan of horror movies. But it made a ton of money so sequels had to be made. "Saw 2" continued the story of Jigsaw, upped the gore and expanded the story. It had lots of mean death scenes and lots of twists and turns and semi surprise ending.
"Saw 3" picks up a little while after Saw 2 ends and we are reintroduced to the surviving characters from part 2. All loose ends from part 2 are quickly explained or tied up and we meet all new characters. There is a man who lost his son to a drunk driver, a doctor and some others. The plot follows Jigsaws attempt to stay alive even longer and his final test of a man.
The acting here is not too bad. Tobin Bell is quite good as Jigsaw. In fact, he is creepy in anything he is in. See season 2 of 24 for more proof. Shawnee Smith is good too. The man who lost his son to the drunk driver, he is good too, basically surviving test after test of pain and endurance.
The plot moves along really quick, explaining everything we need to know. Hell, they even explain shit from the first movie. Everything is all tied together real neatly though, not in a crappy Hollywood way either.
There is a lot of gore, that's for sure. I'm not going to ruin it and tell about it all, because the movie is too new and lots of people might not have seen it yet. Some of the scenes are long and drawn out and very painful for the characters involced. Others are quick and nasty. Sometimes the gore is shot too close and it's hard to tell what exactly is going on, but that is kept to a minimum. I will say that anyone who dies here, doesn't die fast and lots of blood and screaming are involved.
Ok, "Saw 3" is no classic. It isn't even great. But it was a fun way to kill 90 minutes. I can't imagine ever owning this, but to see once or twice, I say check it out!
On to "Lightning Bug". This is a small movie about a familiy who moves to a small town in Alabama. The mother is struggling with life, the older son is a make up effects wizard and the younger son is just as lost as the mother. The mother meets a guy, but he turns out to be an alcoholic and a bastard who beats in women and kids. The older son makes a lot of weirdo friends and the young one becomes entranced by the Bible.
First, this was marketed as a horror movie. It is not a horror movie by any means. One could make the argument that it deals with the horrors of life, but it is still not a horror movie. I would put is alongside coming of age dramas like Stand By Mean or even Mean Creek. It's on Anchor Bay too and was advertised in every major horror mag, so it lead me to believe I was getting horror, but I was not. That's fine. It is actually a very well done movie. The older son eventually meets a troubled girl and they hit it off, but hey, her mother won't have it because he is doing the effects for a haunted house and well, that's the devil's work. Yeah, but anyways, the plot follows this kids quest to set up this haunted house and his battles with the bible thumpers in the town around him.
The acting is great. The pace is great. The story is great. I liked this movie a lot. I like how is references a lot of horror movies and how the main character is a big horror fan. My only complaint is that some of the characters, like the police chief, he isn't very funny and I know he was meant to be, but he was more annoying than anything else.
Whatever, this is a good movie, not horror, but still good.
That's all for this update. Wether or not I'm back tomorrow is not up to my at this point, but if I'm not, then another Crimson Screens worker will be and so far we have planned reviews for Monster! and the new Pumpkinhead movie. Happy Halloween!

Crimson Screens thinks that "Scarecrow Slayer" needs to be slayed and "Great White" is a long lost comedy classic...

Crimson Screens thinks that "Scarecrow Slayer" needs to be slayed and that "Great White" is a long lost comedy classic...

Greetings all! Melissa here with you! Here are two reviews Edward sent before he lef to attend to some personal business. Also, before we go on, I just wanted to say that the new Showtime series "Dexter" is damn good and it should appeal a whole bunch to horror fans. Check it out! It is about a serial killer who works for the Miami Police Department and he only kills people who escape the normal means of justice. This show is just fantastic and I love it! The new season of Masters Of Horror starts this Friday and, well, I don't really care. Now, Edward's reviews...

Ok, "Scarecrow Slayer" is a sequel to a movie called "Scarecrow". Do not confuse it with the great late 80's movie titled "Scarecrows". That movie was ruling. These are not. I saw the last twenty minutes or so of "Scarecrow" and, oh boy, was it bad! Shot on video slow motion effects that just look like blurs on the screen are not entertaining to watch. The scarecrow is shot through the head and we can see right through his head, but moments later, the hole is nowhere to be seen. A car races away from the scarecrow and he does gymnastics moves down the street after the car and actually catches up. Ridiculous. Well "Scarecrow Slayer" is the sequel. A farmer, Tony Todd, is the guardian of an anceint evil scarecrow and when some stupid college boys try to steal the scarecrow, the farmer shoots one of them and his soul goes into the scarecrow. The idea is ok, I guess, but the execution is flawed. So the scarecrow is off on a rampage and people try to stop him.
Ok, enough about the plot because it gets increasingly stupid. The acting is horrible but I guess that makes it fit in with the rest of the movie. The action scenes are retarded, poorly shot and hey, we don't care what happens to the characters anyway. There is a kung fu fight between a good scarecrow and a bad scarecrow at the end, which is a novel idea, but it is also poorly shot and edited, so any coolness is quickly replaced with confusion. Ok, this movie sucks, right? Well nothing in it comes close to being as bad as the effects are. They are all mostly crappy CGI effects, but the worst and shittiest CGI you can imagine. A man is chopped in half by the scarecrow, and you know the deal, his upper half slides off his lower half, and well, the blood just appears on the screen in like a shitty sub par animation way. It made me laugh that they kept such nonsense in here. Also, a Marine ROTC guy has rockets in his basement. Right!
This was produced by Tony Todd. Who knows why? One would think that he could have gathered more talent than this. The box art and the pictures on it make this look really cool. It's not.
"Great White" is the Italian version of "Jaws". So little changes were made, that the producers of "Jaws" got lawyers to sure and thus this movie was banned from being released in the US.
If you know the plot of "Jaws" then you know the plot of this. A shark is terrorizing a resort town and a group of people set out to stop it. The Brody and Quint characters from "Jaws" are copied without shame. The plot is copied without shame. Even some dialogue seems strangely familiar. Whatever. Nevermind all the plagerism, this movie somehow manages to be strangely exciting to watch. I have been a fan of sharks ever since I was a little kid, so I'll watch anything with sharks in it, and this one is fun to watch. There is a lot of stock footage and hammy acting, but the part that takes the cake is the actual shark design. The shark here is so silly that you can't help but love it. You see, when he attacks, he pokes his head out of the water and just bobs around until someone swims close enough so he can bite them without even trying. Ridiculous! Anyone wanting to get away would just have to swim away, but oddly enough, a lot of people fail to do that. There is some gore and a man hanging from a helicopter is bitten in half.
Ok, this is a shameless copy of a greater movie, but the way that the film makers rip off everything is funny and they somehow manage to create something, that while very stupid, is a great deal of fun to watch. I love it!

Ok, more reviews to follow I'm sure.

Crimson Screens reaches new levels of disgust while viewing "The Covenant"...

Crimson Screens reaches new levels of disgust while viewing "The Covenant"...

This movie was in theatres for two weeks tops before it was quickly forgotten. In fact, I don't think anyone cared about it to begin with. Most early reviews had it labeled as a gender switched rip off of 'The Craft". Whatever. I wasn't about to waste money on this in the theatre, but when it appreared recently in the dollar theatre, and I had seen everything else I currently wanted to see, I gave in and saw this.
First, and I didn't know this before i went to see this, but this movie is directed by Renny Harlin, director of a lot of bad movies. If his name isn't enough to send you running into the night, then perhaps the rest of the movie will.
The story revolves around some boys at a private school and hey hey, they happen to have supernatural powers. Yes, there are some elements of "The Craft" here, the small amount of cleverness that made that movie at least bearable to watch once, are all absent here. Also, absent would be good acting and oh my, the pace is sooooooooo slow. It took forver for this movie to get anywhere and when it gets to where it is going, it is not very cool or interesting. There is some mildly entertaining CGI and a lot of car nonsense, but not enough to save the rest. Lot of shirtless guys though, if that is your thing, but if you don't frequent sausage parties, then forget it.
This was really boring, now that I think about it some more. The theatre was about half full when I saw it and by the end, I say about seventy five percent of the people had left, never to return, hahahaha, like a shitty slasher movie. Damn, one of those would have been better than this though. The end is a set up, I guess, for a sequel. If that happens, it will go straight to video and you can skip right over it on the shelf at the video store. I hated this movie. It was boring and the very small amount mof good stuff in it was smothered by the crap. Ugh! Next!
Hey, Saw 3 comes out Friday and then on Monday and Tuesday night, they are showing Halloween. I will see it Monday night. I guess it has some cool interviews and stuff added before the movie. We will see. I'm guessing Saw 3 will be alot like Saw 2, nothing amazing, but something fun to watch once. Halloween is required viewing though, and as I have never seen it in a theatre, I will be there. OUT.

Crimson Screens thinks that the straight to video market has a hit with "Boo"...

Crimson Screens thinks that the straight to video market has a hit with "Boo"...

A lot of the people who email me or message me about something I wrote on here ask me why I post a lot of negative reviews. I always have the same answer for this. It is because ever since I have been into horror movies, a big joy for me has been wading through the piles of crap because every once in a while I find a golden gem and that golden gem makes every miserable minute seeing the crap worth it. Since I have taken the time to write for websites, do this blogger thing and in the past, even publish my own 'zine, I figure it that it makes sense to tell people about the bad movies, just as much as it makes sense to tell them about the good ones. I won't ever post reviews of Dawn Of The Dead, Evil Dead or any other movie like that, because honestly, you can find out more than enough about those anywhere else on the internet. But movies like Vice Squad and Strange Behavior, well, not a lot of people know about those, especially newer fans of horror and exploitation. And besides, when I see a movie like Motor Home Massacre, whose trailer and box art make it look really damn good, and then I rent it, and witness what I did, then hey, maybe I was hoodwinked into renting it, but it doesn't mean everyone else should be too. So, yes, there are a lot of bad horror movies, but every now and then, you get a good one...
Which brings me to "Boo". This is a straight to video title that has gotten a lot of time on the Sci-Fi channel lately. It is about a group of college students who go to spend a night in a supposedly haunted, and closed, hospital. Through in some missing persons and a couple cops, and you are set to go. The night starts out cool, with pranks and jokes, but eventually things turn very bad.
Ok, the first ten or so minutes of this movie are so ridiculously dumb that I had started to watch this twice and turned it off before I actually watched it all the way through. The early scenes are very tongue in cheek and spoof a lot of modern horror, but it is very poorly done and all the jokes fall completely flat. But, once the cast gets to the hospital, the movie takes off.
They spend the entire time wandering around and when some of their friends become haunted by ghosts, they try to figure out what is going on and why it is going on. I know this sounds very cliche and dumb, but it is actually pretty well done here. There is quite a bit of tension throughout the movie, as the ghosts have a habit of appearing out of nowhere, when you least expect it. Also, the atmosphere is great. The hospital provides a very creepy setting, much like in Session 9. There are a lot of jump scares and people in peril scares, but for the most part, they work.
Of course, there is some bad stuff. Such as the not always very good acting. The guy who plays the blonde guy who cheats on his girlfriend, he sucks. Really badly. He goes from a suave ladies man to a annoying spazz in the period of about five minutes and he is not very good at conveying either. Some of the other cast members are just as bad, but there are some decent performances, so the acting doesn't ruin this movie. Also, some of the gore is CGI, and you know how much I hate that. It is very easy here to pick out the CGI parts because they aren't very well done. There is some creepy natural effects work and some of the breakdowns of the characters are just plain bizarre.
The pacing is good though. If you make it through the terrible first ten minutes, things pick up and never slow down.
This movie is certainly no classic, but it is ten times better than most straight to video releases I have seen in a long while. If you are down for some creepy scares then this movie is a prime pick for Halloween time viewing. Check it out!

Crimson Screens is pissed! "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning", "The Grudge 2" and "Night Force"... all pieces of shit!!!

Crimson Screens is pissed! "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning", "The Grudge 2" and "Night Force"... All pieces of shit!!!

Recovering from surgery is no fun, I tell you. Going to Cinema Wasteland was a terrible idea, even thought I had fun. That shit wore me down something fierce. Also, starting a new job right after was not such a hot idea either. The job was too good to pass up and sacrifices must be made, right? Well yeah, but I'm exhausted at the end of eeach day. My sides hurt and this shit is taking forever to heal. If I twist my torso too far in either direction, it feels like I am being pulled apart. Not fun. Every morning when I wake up, I kind of stretch my body out, like I have since I was a little kid. Well, that shit hurts like a beast and every morning I forget to not do it and soon enough, I'm writhing in pain. I'm my own little horror movie right now. That's for sure.
So with all of that going on, I figure fuck it, it's October, my favorite month of the year, at least there will be some cool movies on. I can even go to the theatre, since it doesn't take much out of me to sit in a seat for a couple hours. Well, silly me, the Halloween offerings this year are bad news, I tell you. Last weeks horror themed CSI episode was scarier and far better than any of the shit I'm about to review...
First, we had to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. I didn't particularly want to see it, but I did because I always feel like I will end up hating myself if I miss out on the next great classis. Yeah right.
Some teens are on a cross country trip. They have an accident and then they get kidnapped by the creepy family. Simple plot, right? Impossible to screw up, right? Wrong!!!
The movie shows the origins of all the people in the remake of the original. That is a pretty cool idea, hey, we get to see how Leatherface came to be, and so it seemed like it would be some cool shit. But no, everything that is explained and shown is nothing great or amazing.
R. Lee Ermy does a great job here, as Sheriff Hoyt. Good role and great performance.
Besides that, there is a lot of dumb shit too. Assuming anyone who sees this will have seen the previous remake, you know all the people who are in that movie, and so when they are shown here, there is never any conflict of who will live and who will die, because we all know, from seeing the remake, that they all live. That takes a lot away from the movie, since we know the outcome, you would have figured they would have put in cool stuff to make up for that but no. There is a Vietnam vet guy, who should have been a bad ass fighter and they could have had a cool battle or something with him and Leatherface, but no, he ends up being a pussy.
There is some cool gore, I'll admit that. A lot was cut for an R rating, but still, good gore. I imagine the inievitable uncut DVD will be neat to see.
Oh yeah, the ending is so fucking stupid, any fan of horror will be able to see it coming waaaaaay before it happens. So fucking retarded to put that in there like that. And, I won't ruin the end, but I will say that when what happens happens, any simpleton can see that how it happened is so far fetched and impossible that it crossed the line from entertaining into dumb.
If this had come before the remake, then it would have been more effective, but overall, since we already knew the end, it just barely passes as a way to show some nifty death scenes.
Another "big: horror movie of the Halloween season is "The Grudge 2". The original "The Grudge" was a remake of a Japanese film and offers further proof as to how people need to stop remaking every movie from Japan. The remake was a horribly boring piece of trash. And yet it made a lot of money, so obviously a sequel had to be made...
Sarah Michelle Gellar is in this for a short while and after her character is gone, the main focus is taken over by her sister. Form there it is anyones guess as to what the fuck is going on. The plot is all over the place. Multiple story lines just go on and on and dude, this shit was boring after a half an hour. The scares are all seen way before they happen and they aren;t scary or even funny. Just dumb. I kept laughing at the movie and the people in front of me were definately sad about that. Oh well. "The Grudge 2" is a mess of a film, switching from nonsense to complete nonsense.
I would like to add that the "creepy little kid" that is in this and about every other Japanese horror movie has been done to death. I'd like to do to them what Anthony Wong does to the kids in The Untold Story. Fuck, this movie is junk, save your money and go to bed early.
Finally, there was nothing else to see at the theatre, so I started to go through all the stuff we got from the Hollywood video VHS sales. First up was "Night Force". This is an 80's action movie starring Linda Blair. The story is about a girl, she gets taken hostage by some terrorists. She is the daughter of a governor and it seems she was kidnapped to get a ransom. Well unfortunately for her, the governor was the guy who helped create the "US does not negotiate for hostages" rule and so they leave her there. Well, her friends don't like that, so the group, led by her boyfriend, set off to South America to save her.
Well, I had real high hopes for this. Action movies in the 80s were gold and this did have a cast of genre actors. Any high hopes I had were quickly dashed as horrible acting, poorly done action scenes and a slow pace bogged down this Red Dawn rip off. There are a few gun battles and a lot of dialogue and one by one the cast dies, but the surviving few must rescue the girl. Oh, it's all very dumb. The scenes that attempt drama and emotion fall flat. Hey, Linda Blair cannot act either. She is at her worst here, hamming it up in her scenes. There is some nudity, so boob fans will be pleased, but then later on, there are crappy rape scenes, so any sexy factor is quickly canceled out. A lackluster battle ends the film and I sighed in relief as I pressed the eject button on my VCR.
So yeah, three bad movies in about three days. Help me!

Crimson Screens has his own bigfoot sighting with "Abominable". And a Cinema Wasteland wrap up...

Crimson Screens has his own bigfoot sighting with "Abominable". And a Cinema Wasteland wrap up.

Hey! Edward here! I'm back! Let me tell you, surgery is a whole lot of no fun. I know it is to fix things that were wrong, but man, I've been so worn down and tired in the last week. I finally escaped the hospital last Saturday and made it to the Cinema Wasteland convention, if only for a little while. I will talk about that later. I'm going to have some horror movie worthy scars when these wounds heal completely. Word!
First, the other night I saw "Abominable". It is a movie about a sasquatch that is terrorizing the backwoods area of a small town. He messes with a group of hunters, some girls on a retreat and a mad who is recovering from a terrible accident. The set up is pretty cool, as we see some quick glimpses of the sasquatch running through the woods or lurking in the shadows. I am a huge fan of bigfoot based movies and the first few scenes of this movie had my hopes really high, thinking maybe this was going to be a new classic. Lance Henriksen, plays one of the hunters, and he starred in a ton of straight to video bigfoot related movies in the past few years. Well, he is here again. Man, there is a scene where he finds a wounded girl, with her guts spilling out, and he looks at her and says, "I'm sorry, but that's gross!". Hahahaha, oh boy, I was laughing so hard. That way he says it is great. I don't know if it was meant to be funny or not, but it is. Eventually, the sasquatch makes his way through the cast, killing them off one by one, until the two survivors have to escape or die. It is all far from original, that's for sure, but it is fast paced and entertaining. There are even a couple mild scares.
Ok, this was orginally one of those made for tv sci-fi channel original movies, and a lot of those suck big balls, but this one is not bad. A lot of gore and some nudity was added in for the R rated release. In fact, the gore is pretty cool. A man has his throat biten out, another has his face bitten off, a girl is stepped on and smashed by the bigfoot and in the best scene, a completely nude girl is pulled through a real small window. Fantastic!
The creature deisgn is pretty cool, until we see the creatures face. He looks like a retard, for real. In the commentary, I was told, the director said they made him that way to make him somewhat of a sympathetic character, but I don't know. He just looked silly to me.
The cast is filled with genre notables, so the acting isn't too bad. There are a lot of plot holes and silliness. But overall this is a fun ninety minute time waster.
Ok, so I finally escaped the hospital last Saturday evening and I headed down to the Cinema Wasteland convention. To be honest, I didn't care for most of the guests this time around, since I have seen most of them before in one form or another. I did like seeing and talking to the guy from Cannibal Holocaust though. Cool guy. The dealers room was filled with the usualy stuff, epic amounts of horror DVD's and t shirts and anything else you could think of. VHS has been all but eliminated. I remember the days of tables and tables of VHS tapes. Well, those days are gone and they have been replaced by DVD's. I didn't want to spend a small fortune this year, but luckily, I didn't even see anything I really wanted. So I headed to the movie room. Betsy Palmer gave an introduction to Friday the 13th. Cool lady. Skipped out on the movie though, since I have seen it more than enough. Horror Convention Massacre was a movie filmed at last years convention, and it stars lots of people who go to these. It was funny and entertaining, lots of boobs and some shittily done gore. They had some lady with a skimpy outfit and big boobs peddliing copies of this to people, but I can't imagine buying this, as it was fun to watch once, I can't imagine owning it. Anyways, Texas Chainsaw Massacre Two was in another room. Cast introduction or something. Shitty movie. No thanks. Street Trash cast and movie in another room. Great movie. Then I watched something about a professional geek and he was there and he talked about a movie some guy made about him. The guy was actually kind of interesting. Yeah. Later on, Roy Frumkes showed am hour or two of short films, one of which was Swirlee, about a man with an ice cream cone for a head. By far the funniest thing I have seen in a long time. If anyone knows where I can buy this, please email me. Ok, lots more shit played, and then there was some premier of this slasher movie called The Remake. The first fifteen minutes or so of the movie were ok, but it quickly fell apart. Really badly too. But that is when it got fun because everyone watching it starting making fun of it. Some real mean shit too, but I haven't laughed that hard in a long long time. So, I say, watching The Remake was the best part of this years Cinema Wasteland for me. After that I took off because I was tired and sore and I wanted to go to bed and I didn't feel like sitting through four hours of Russ Meyer movies to see some premier of Redsin Tower, which by seeing who made it, I am sure it was full of some scandalous shit.
That is all for this update. Later on this weekend, Crimson Screens staffer Melissa will be doing another Cinema Wasteland update, since she was there all three days, as far as I know. Also, we will have a review of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Out!

Crimson Screens visits Ireland and meets "Rawhead Rex"... Plus, more estrogen!!!

Crimson Screens visits Ireland and meets "Rawhead Rex"... Plus, more estrogen gallore!!!

Hey all! Melissa here again. Mr. Edward is still recovering in the hospital and he says he will be back tomorrow or the next day so I am free to do another update. Until then, send him get well wishes at: crimsonscreens@yahoo.com Today I will review Rawhead Rex, a favorite horror movie of mine. Also, I will havbe some comments after that so read on!

A long time ago, when I was a little girl, I came home from school on day, Halloween actually, and MTV was showing some day long horror movie expose. This was before the days of the Real World and Pimp My Ride and countless other non music tv shows. This horror movie thing covered all year of horror up to the present day. Does anyone remember this? If someone has it on tape, I would love to get a copy of it. Anyways, one of the movies they talked about was Rawhead Rex. It is about this small town in Ireland who meets some hard time when a farmer accidentally releases Rawhead Rex, and ancient evil creature, from his underground grave. Rawhead Rex proceeds to terrorize the town until a man decides that he has to stop it.
The clips they showed froom this movie were great, showing Rawhead Rex terrorizing a motor home community and other carnage. I immediately had to see this movie and so I got it on video and I have been a fan ever since.
I guess when this was released, it was considered to be complete crap. But this is one of those movies that has aged very well and it really good compared to the garbage horror that is released these days. The Rawhead Rex creature design is so cool. He looks like a seven foot tall cross between a hairless bigfoot, a black metal guy and an alien. He fucks up anyone who gets in his way too. There are many bloody deaths and the special effects work is of the pure 80's gorefest style. There isn't a lot of actual killing, but the aftermath stuff is top notch gore. The only bad thing is that Rawhead Rex's eyes are silly, like glowing swirly hypnotist shit that I thought cheapened the effect of his character. There are some decapitated head, ripped off hands and other similar stuff. Even a few breast shots, if that is your thing. Everything that made horror in the 80's so great is all here.
The acting is pretty average and hokey, but it fits in with the movie pretty well. There are no specific standout performances, but what the actors do is fit in well with what they have to work with.
There is an attempt to deepen the plot with a lot of religious content, but it mostly fails. Hell, this movie is here so we can see a a cool monster kill people for an hour and a half and then be killed in a wild ending, which is filled with light show esque effects.
This movie will definately never be considered a classic but it is great fun, so it is a classic to me. Sure, it is hokey and sometimes dumb, but then again, it is ten times better than any of the last fifty straight to video horror movies I have seen in the last few years. This is adapted from a Clive Barker short story, but apparently he disowned it after it was released. Whatever. If you enjoy cool little monster movies from the 80's, then you will love this.

I work in an office. All of the people I work with are mainly older than me, and no one is into the same stuff as me, movie and music wise, at least. I have a tattoo of Vampira on my arm. Company policy is "no visible tattoos", so to comply with that understandable rule, I wear long sleeve shirts all the time. Well, one time we had a company picnic and it was a come as you are type deal, where you can dress down or whatver, so I did not wear a long sleeve shirt. Some guy says, "Hey nice Elvira tattoo!" I said, "It's not Elvira, it's Vampira!" Anytime I have seen this guy since then, he says, "Hey Elvira girl!" No matter how many times I tell him that is Vampira, he still thinks it is Elvira. It was funny at first. He now calls me Elvira. He often asks me out to the bar after work. One time I said, "Joe, you are married, what do you want to go to the bar with me for?" So he says, "Well, we could get drinks and see what happens from there". What?!?!?!?!?! Joe, I think I should tell your wife what you are up to. I know her. We get our hair done at the same place. But I won't tell. It will be our little secret. So yeah, it's Vampira and not Elvira!!! Get it right or pay the price.

Crimson Screens takes it up the ass with "Hellbent", the worlds first gay slasher movie. Plus, Cinema Wasteland and estrogen galore!!!

Crimson Screens takes it up the ass with "Hellbent", the worlds first gay slasher movie. Plus, Cinema Wasteland and estrogen galore!!!

Hello all! My name is Melissa and we've got estrogen up in this bitch tonight!!! I got the password and I'm doing the update today. Seriously though, I write occasional reviews for this site and I used to help Mr. Edward with the Crimson Screens fanzine. He is still recovering after his operation and so he asked me to update this since he still has no internet access where he is at. He is recovering well. I am sure he will post again as soon as they move him somewhere that he can have a computer. He says he will be at Cinema Wasteland this weekend if he is feeling up to it, and if he is, then most likely on Saturday.
Send him get well wishes @ crimsonscreens@yahoo.com

Here is a review he emailed me last week, to post in case he was unable to get to the internet. After the review, I will write some stuff, so please read on...

Hellbent
Ok, so it's the night before Halloween and two gay guys are murdered. The next night there is a big festival and a group of gay guys decides to go and it seems the killer from the night before has set his sights on them. I guess this was a novel idea, making the characters of a random slasher movie gay, but once you look past the fact that they are all gay, there really isn't much left here besides a shitty slasher movie.
The script is average. It is not completely horrible, but its on par with any random piece of shit straight to video slasher movie. The acting pretty much sucks too and the characters are, I guess, eye candy if your thing is shirtless guys. If you are straight, then I guess you are out of luck.
There is a decent amount of blood and gore, but it doesn't help anything. Every now and then, I would just think, "Oh another death", but as soon as the bloodshed stopped, the movie was right back to the way it was before. And I don't mean that the death scenes are anything really noteworthy, in fact, all they do is bring you out of boredom just a bit.
What little momentum the movie had going, completely falls apart at the end. The killer is a total letdown and actually quite dumb. We get no explanation as to why any of this took place. Terrible ending to a terrible movie.
I did read up a little about this on various websites and it seems that gay people label it as some breakout horror movie and straight people think it is a piece of shit. In fact, it seems a lot of gay cinema is instantly labeled breakout or superb, just because it has gay characters or gay themes. To me, that is stupid as fuck. If this movie was with straight characters, it would pass under the radar (gaydar?) and no one would give it a second look. Yet, since it has gay characters, it plays in film festivals and is surrounded by a bunch of hoopla. Well, shit is shit and this film is shit with gay characters. And shit will still be shit whether the characters are gay or not. As I said earlier, terrible movie.

Hey, I'm back! This is Melissa back with you. This weekend is the big Cinema Wasteland fall show. To me, Cinema Wasteland is the best horror convention. They always have a good mixup with guests each time, because it does get old seeing the same fucking people at every show. I think I was sick of seeing Tom Savini about five years ago. Don't get me wrong, great guy, but enough is enough with him for a while. Of course, he is back this year, but for a 25 anniversary reunion for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There will also be a Street Trash reunion. I'm very excited for that. Oh shit, they got a guy from Cannibal Holocaust this year. Hopefully he will have some good stories and not have "forgotten" everything from that period of his life.
Of course, there is some shit I am bored to death with at these shows:
- tables of faux "scream queens" selling piles of shit movies, semi naked pictures and other crap. Hey, I'm all for nudity and hot girls, but I think they should get some more talented ones rather than the nameless, talentless ones who I always see there. And they should also sit there with their tops off, because, as much as they kid themselves that it is not the reason, their big tits are the only reason anyone pays attention to them.
- a table of Living Dead Dolls piled sky high. I hate those things. I can't even say why. One year, the one guy who makes them bought be drinks at the bar, so that was cool, but all the drinks in the world won't make me like those things.
- people who have no personal hygiene- horror conventions seem to be the only place I go to these days that you will walk by someone who smells like they haven't showered in a week. Ugh, it's especially bad when you get trapped behind them while walking through the dealers room.
- they do have a lot of good movies listed on the page of stuff that they will be showing in the screening rooms. i love the in person commentaries and stuff, but i hate the people who ask the same dumb fucking questions every single time. ask tom savini who is the hottest scream queen he has banged, but dont ask him how was it working with george romero?
- the people who put this on should get a temporary liquor liscense and sell their own stuff, because the prices last time at the bar were too high for three nights of hard drinking. i think ill smuggle some goodies in, like i often see a lot of people doing. also, if you are a cute boy and you want to buy me a drink, you can find me at the bar or wandering around. i have long black hair with a blue streak going through it. Just yell, "Hey you bitch!" and I'll gladly talk to you. You had better apoligize for calling me a bitch though.
That is all for this update. I have a review to update with tomorrow and I am sure Mr. Edward will be back before you know it.