Is it "Curtains" for Crimson Screens???

Hey! I'm back with another update. Watching "Going To Pieces" really got me exctied about horror again, so that will translate to a lot of reviews, I am sure. I will throw in some reviews of older movies, but lesser known ones, so if you have not seen them, you need to. One to the review...
"Curtains" is a slasher movie from 1983. It is about a group of aspiring actresses who go to a remote mansion to audition for a coveted spot in a famous directors new movie. All of the actresses want this role real bad. Who will get it? Well a lot of them die trying. Ha!
First, I would like to say that the atmosphere in this movie is really creepy. Especially the secluded mansion they go to. Very cool. Also, the one scene that anyone who has seen this will talk about, is an expertly staged death scene while a character is ice skating.
Second, I wish the acting here was better. There are some decent actors in this but the acting never really is anything but average. And it is especially noticable in the "dramatic" scenes. Some of those just sound silly.
The movie moves a long at a decent pace, but runs out of steam near the end. A lot of the kills are bloodless, which is a pretty stupid decision for a slasher movie. One of the deaths, where someone falls out of a window, is confusing at fuck. I don't know if it was edited shittily or something, but it looks like the person falls out of a second story window and on the way to the ground, manages to fall into the first story window. What the fuck??? I watched that scene mutiple times and I still coudn't figure out what happened.
Ok, while this movie is nothing special compared to a lot of the same genre films that came out around the same time, it is a semi interesting movie with a few good scenes. Rent, dont buy!

Ok, that's all for now. More tomorrow...

Crimson Screens goes for a "Dark Ride" and checks out "Going To Pieces: The Rise And Fall Of The Slasher Movie"...

Crimson Screens goes for a "Dark Ride" and checks out "Going To Pieces: The Rise And Fall Of The Slasher Movie"...

Hey! Again, sorry for the delay. I have been concentrating hard on getting my life in order and when I get caught up in life, I tend to neglect this site. I have a lot of content saved up, so expect frequent updates. I know I have said that in the last 3 or 4 entries, but I mean it this time!
Ok, "Dark Ride" is a part of the After Dark Horrorfest thing from last fall. Eight movies were released in theatres and shown in groups over 3 days. Well, most of them would have went straight to video had it not been for this fest. And for good reason. The majority of them were crap. I will go into detail about more of them at a later date, but for now I will talk about "Dark Ride" which is a slasher movie.
I love slasher movies. So I knew I had to see this when I saw the "slasher movie" description.
"Dark Ride" is about a group of kids who are on their way to spring break but they decide to stop on the way and spend the night in a dark ride. A dark ride is a haunted house where you ride through in a cart and crash through doors when you go into each room. I remember those from when I was a little kid. They had one at a mini amusement park that I used to go to.
Well it seems, years ago, two girls were killed in this dark ride. A giant serial killer lived in the dark ride but was caught and put in jail after the murders. In a silly scene, he rips out of a straight jacket and escapes, to return to the dark ride to kill more people.
The cast gets to the dark ride, explores for a while, plays jokes on each other, do drugs and have sex. Fun times, huh? Well, soon enough the killer shows up and things turn bad.
This has a great set up, with a plot real similar to The Funhouse. But this movie just can't recapture the magic that made all those 80's slasher movies so great.
The movie quickly becomes boring and the bad acting does not help at all. People who do/did great work on the X-Files and the Sopranos are here but they aren't too good. The guy from the X-Files wasn't horrible, just not good. But the girl from the Sopranos, oh man, she was bad. She is a cute one when she is hanging out, but she is gross and silly when she is playing the scared heroine. The rest of the cast is notably bad.
The gore is graphic, but a lot of it is in the dark or in weird lighting, so it is hard to see it sometimes. Gore is the reason a lot of people watch slasher movies and if you are going to fuck with that, then the movie is going to be missing something that made the classic ones so great. There is a head split in half, which was good, but besides that, it is mostly crap. A man has a hole punched through him, one is ripped in half, another has her head saw off while blowing some guy. For a good laugh, watch what comes out of her mouth when they show her servered head. Someone else is impaled on spikes. There is nothing too original here, but what gore there is, is R rated gore, so I guess that is a plus.
Overall, this movie struggles to even be average. A couple good gore scenes can't save this mess. And while the killers design is pretty cool, the rest of the movie is not.

"Going To Pieces: The Rise And Fall Of The Slasher Movie" is a documentary about the history of the slasher movie. I loved it! They start with the origins of the slasher movie, Peeping Tom and Psycho, and move to Halloween and Friday the 13th and then go into the slasher movie explosion of the early to mid 80's. So many great and entertaining movies came out of that time period and it is nice to seem them documented here.
I was afraid that this movie would focus only on the big names and series, Halloween and Friday the 13th, and they do talk about them, but they also discuss many of the lesser known ones, like the Burning, Silent Night, Deadly Night, Maniac, the Prowler and Pieces! Holy shit! Pieces! Now that is a lost classic! In addition to talking with people involved with these movies, they also show clips, mostly the gore scenes. Time is even spent on obscure stuff, like Graduation Day. They cover everything here!
I am so excited about this movie. To the people that like them, the early/mid 80's slasher movies, are gold and this documents that piece of time in a fantastic manner. I like the stupid old ladies talking about Silent Night, Deadly Night. They even counterpoint the stupid ideas of those two oldies with an interview with the lady who played Mother Superior in Silent Night, Deadly Night!!! Her opinion is very different, but dead on. That is where this amazing movie gets an A+. They interview all the "famous" names, John Carpenter, Sean Cunningham, etc, but they also give some light to lesser known directors.
I cannot say enough good things about this. This is a must see, wether you are a slasher movie fan, a horror fan or just a random person looking for an interesting and entertaining documentary. This film gets an outstanding golden A+.

That is all for today. I will be back soon with more reviews!!!

Crimson Screens sees "Feed" and might never eat again...

Crimson Screens sees "Feed" and might never eat again...

Hi! This time I review Feed. It is a fantastic movie. Here is what I have to say about it...
Feed opens in Australia, where an internet crimes detective is about to catch someone he has been tracking for a long time. When he finds the guy, he is force feeding another guy to himself, his penis actually. This sends the detective right over the edge and he is forced to take some time off. During his time off he wabders around alot and has some bizarre sex with his girlfriend. Soon enough, he is lured back into his work when he and his partner find a site that details a "feeder" and a "gainer". Unfortunately, this part is not made up and sites like this actually exist. Where a person, the feeder, gives someone nonstop food and anything else to gain all the weight they can. The person who eats it all is the gainer. The people who watch online places bets on how much the gainer will weigh on certain days and unltimately, when the gainer will die. Again, this is not being made up. Anyway, the detective becomes obsessed with this and he finds out this particular feeder/gainer live in the US, in Ohio, so off he goes to find them.
And he does find them. And what he finds is 100000 times worse than you imagine.
Ok, this is a sick little movie right here. The feeder/gainer concept is pretty demented as it is, but we get all sorts of sordid details about it, like the sexual aspects of it. Yuck.
Ok, the acting here is superb, the detective and the feeder are all very good actors. But the best work here is the gainer, some lady in a disgusting fat suit. Remember the fay guy at the beginning of Seven? Well, it's like that, but worse, and alive. She spends the entire movie on a bed but she is fanstastic at getting emotions out and showing how her character feels. All the acting here is great and the movie benefits from this.
There is not a whole lot of traditional gore here, very little actually, but there is a lot of sickening feeder/gainer action, with eat mixed with masterbation, the forced feeding of gallons of lard and later on the detective has lard injected into his skin and he ends up cutting it out with a knife. It's all very graphic and unsettling.
This movie is great. Yes, it deals with all sorts of topics that most people want to know nothing about. But, it shows the topics and doesn't flinch from showeing them and all of that conbined with the great acting and the superb direction, you get a top notch winner. This movie is such a relief from the never ending straight to video slasher and monster suck a thons that I have seen lately. A+++ and I give it the highest rcommend possible.

That's all for now. We got two more people who will be contributing reviews soon and soon after that, this page will also gon inot a quarterly print form. I hope you like it. Take care.

Crimson Screens is sad after "The Pumpkin Carver" ruins Halloween and reviews in a minute...

Crimson Screens is sad after "The Pumpkin Carver" ruins Halloween and reviews in a minute...

Ok, back again. I have seen a ton of movies in the last month or so. Some were way better than most, but either way, they will all end up here. Someone emailed me and asked why I post mostly negative reviews. Well, I review what I rent. I don't really care about reviewing movies that have been out for twenty years, or the classics, because those have been reviewed a thousand times over in a million other books, magazines and webpages. So, I review what I rent. Yes, the majority of releases today are real bad. I wish that wasn't the case, but it is. I will still watch as much as I can though. Because for every ten crappy movies I see, there is usually one that makes it worth sitting through all the bad ones.
"The Pumpkin Carver" was graced with a cool cover, which drew my interest to the video. Also, it is set on Halloween, which is my favorite holiday of the year, so I was pretty excited.
The movie opens with a boy carving a pumpkin. His sister has her boyfriend sneak over, but sends him away saying that they can't "hangout" until her brother goes to bed. Soon after, a man in a pumpkin mask shows up and tries to kill the sister, but the boy intervenes, killing the intruder. But ooooppps! The intruder was just the girls boyfriend playing a joke.
Skip ahead a few years and the sister and brother duo have relocated to a small town. There is a Halloween party and someone shows up in a pumpkin mask and starts to kill off all the party goers.
Ok, the opening scenes with the practical joke are pretty well done, with a little suspense, but mostly it is just well put together. The movie quickly devolves into crap, as the two leads have moved into a new town. They are getting ready for the big annual Halloween party. There is a lot of crap about what it takes to me a "Carver". Oh please. That's some stupid shit right there.
In addition to the completely generic plot, the acting is bad, the pace is slow and the explanations given are laaaaaame.
There is a lot of gore, which is pretty graphic, but it is all unconvincing and very shittily done.
This is a completely run of the mill modern slasher movie. Nothing special and nothing new.

Ok, here are some "reviews in a minute", done by friend of Crimson Screens, Melissa. I know they are mostly mainstream movies, or at least movies that played in theatres, but I figured this would be better than whole sections wasted on them.
The Departed- fantastic, interesting and excited. it's two and a half hours long but seemed like ninety minutes. A+ plus on all levels.
The Hitcher- take a good movie, reverse the gender roles and take out all the excitement of the orignal and you get this throw away piece of junk.
Stay Alive- life mimics a video game and people die. a semi cool concept that is very poorly conceived. even the unrated version lacks anything special.
Black Christmas- a total waste of time and a disgrace to the original.
Primevel- had one of the most misleading add campaigns ever, but it didn't matter because either way, the movie was not too good.
Hannibal Rising- well, i wish he would sink back to wherever he rose from. average and dull.
Flags Of Our Fathers- very well done and acted but ultimately boring when there wasn't a battle scene on the screen.
Flyboys- some exciting air battle sequences coupled with a love story and not enough character development. those were some crazy guys running around on top of that Zepplin, but overall, not too good.
Crank- awesome and excting action movie, felt like it was made in the 80's. anything Jason Statham touches is good. Highly recommended!

Ok, that's all. More to follow this week!

Crimson Screens returns from the dead, with "The Cavern" and "Darkroom"...

Crimson Screens returns from the dead with "The Cavern" and "Darkroom"...

Hello all! This is the first new post in nearly three months. I had a lot of stuff going on in life around Halloween time and I had to get all of that taken care of. Unfortunately I pushed this site to the side for a while. Laziness had a lot to do with it too. Things are back on track here, so I will update a few times a week, just like before. I have seen a few good movies since the last post and a lot of horrible ones, so look forward to reading about them on here soon. Thanks for reading!

With the popularity and success of "The Descent", it was inevitable that more cave horror movies would surface. Well, there was "The Cave", which came before "The Descent" but hey, that movie sucked so enough about that.
"The Cavern" is about a group of people who find a new and unexplored cave and they are all eager to be the first ones to see new things and be somewhere no one has been before. There is some background to one of the cahracters about him being involved in a cave accident a couple years back and that is mentioned a few times and plays into what eventually happens.
Ok, there is this scene, the night before they actually go into the cave, where two people are having sex inside the cave and the girl thinks she hears something and the camera peers up over them and looks into the darkness of the cave and its such an effective shot. I was just waiting for something to jump out. Great tension there! The tension continues once they get in the cave. There is a lot of hand held camera work, like point of view shots, and the cave is already dark, so whenever something scary happens, you totally do not see it coming. Eventually the cast gets lost because something is fucking with their safety line. Well the semething seems to be a monster of some sort who picks through the cast in a few pretty damn scary attacks. The monster moves so fast and the lack of light all go into making the attack scenes effective. There is one in total darkness that you only hear what is going on and it is done very well. Up until this point, the movie is pretty damn good. Once most of the cast is gone, the pace slows a bit because its just them running away from the monster and getting even more lost. Toward the end, the movie takes a giant turn and goes off in a direction that I totally did not expect. But then they go and ruin it with one of the dumbest and sudden ending ever. Nothing is explained and I wanted to throw my remote at the TV. The movie is so effective for almost the entire running them and it is ruined by the end. Grr!
I would like to say that there are a few what the fuck moments, where something happens and we dont know why it happens and here, it is never even explained why it happens. Like when they are in the cave and they see the bright red light. What the hell was that? It is never explained.
Oh well, this is a pretty damn cool movie with a crappy end. I still say check it out, since almost all of the running time is tense and scary. There is some cool gore too.

"The Darkroom" was a recommend from someone else. The movie stars Reed Diamond, who I was a big fan of when he was on Homicide: Life On The Street. Here he plays a man who was found walking down the road, covered in blood fifteen years ago. No one knows why. Well, a doctor has this medicine that is supposed to help him remember what happened. It doesn't work, but he does start seeing a giant monster killing people. Then he escapes from the mental home he is in. He meets a boy who is having a hard life, being pushed around by bullies, not a lot of friends and a crappy home life. The two set out to find out what happened to the man and also solve little mysteries, like what the boy stepdad is keeping in his darkroom.
This is the best straight to video movie I have seen in a long time. The cast is very good. The plot movies along without any dumb or slow spots. There are some cool effects. And most importantly, it is interesting.
Towards the end, it is pretty obvious where they are going with the plot, but it is so well done, that I didn't care. The monster is explained, a mysterioius scar is explained and the exceptional cast carries out the cool story in a very good manner. Once the plot reveals what is going on, the way the truth is intertwined with what the characters think is going on, is so amazingly well done. I love the weird twitch thing Reed Diamond does at the end showdown.
I give 'Darkroom" the highest A+ everyone must see. Horro fans and thriller fans will like this movie. It is scary and well done.

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!