The Gingerdead Man (2005)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment

RUNTIME: 70 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: An evil gingerbread man comes to life with the soul of a convicted killer, and this real-ife cookie monster wreaks havoc on the girl who originally sent him to the electric chair.

REVIEW: Full Moon is one of the more well-known low-budget production companies by horror movie fans, if for nothing more then their sheer lasting-power. They've been around since the 80's, and they're still around now. Granted, what they put out now doesn't even come close to the amazing stuff they put out back in the 80's and 90's (Puppet Master, Trancers, Subspecies, Prehysteria, Robot Wars to name just a small portion), but there's still a few gems that pop up from time to time, and it's because of the thrill of potentially coming across one of those occasional gems that I find myself checking out their titles as soon as a new one comes out, even if I'm left disappointed more often then not these days (Stay away from The Killer Eye and Killjoy - seriously).

One of those recent titles of theirs was 2005's The Gingerdead Man, a movie very much like a classic Chucky movie, but instead of a wise-cracking killer doll it's a wise-cracking killer cookie. Yes, you read that right: A wise-cracking killer cookie. And to top it off, this deadly pastry is voiced by none other then genuine crazy-man himself Gary Busey! Talk about perfect casting! I mean, just those two bits of information right there is enough to grab my interest and shoot the cheese-scale so high it breaks the meter! The sweet cherry on top of this sure-to-be cheese-fest is the main actress, Robin Sydney. Pretty much a no-name to most people, but B-Movie fans should recognize her as the hot-but-crazy girlfriend of one of the main characters from the Evil Bong trilogy (which is also from Full Moon). Luckily she has a much bigger role in this movie then she did throughout that entire series. And what a role-reversal as well: In the Evil Bong trilogy, she plays a self-centered slutty crazy chick, where-as here she plays the sweet and innocent, down-to-earth shy girl. She plays both parts so well, that when you watch one and then go watch the other it's hard to believe it's even the same actress. It's amazing that with her range, she's not in much else other then Full Moon flicks.

Also in a similar vein to the first Child's Play movie, The Gingerdead Man starts off with Gary Busey's psychotic character, Millard Findlemeyer, on the run from the cops (in this case after robbing a restaurant and murdering some people in there), which ultimately results in his capture and eventual execution. After the overly-long opening credits that Full Moon is known for at this point, we cut ahead some undisclosed amount of time and our sweet and lovable main female lead Sarah, as played by Robin Sydney, is the girl we saw briefly in the intro who had her brother and father murdered right in front of her by Millard Findlemeyer, and she is the one that testified against him in court, leading to his electric chair execution (in which his dying words were 'I'll get you for this'). She's now working as the Manager, Co-Owner, and Head Baker in a little independent family-operated bakery that was previously owned by her father before he was murdered, and she's still quite haunted by the death of her father and brother, and by the killer's final threatening words.

Working alongside her is a wrestling-loving dorky guy that's a fellow baker and seems to have feelings for her, a hot girl who works at the counter and likes to wear low-cut tank top shirts, and her barely-there alcoholic mother. The rest of this small cast consists of an asshole business tycoon that is moving a large bakery chain in across the street and wants her small family-owned independent bakery gone and will go to any lengths to get it gone (which mostly means dirty sleazy underhanded tricks). With him, is his spoiled brat of a daughter and her bad-boy-but-good-hearted boyfriend, who is overall kind of a nice guy and starts to fall for Sarah throughout the movie, drifting away from the spoiled brat of a bitch he currently has as a girlfriend and widening the rift between those two girls. That's pretty much it - not a large cast at all, and apart from Busey and Sydney none of these other actors are really worth talking about as they're pretty much nobodies and like most nobodies in these kinds of movies, their acting leaves a bit to be desired most of the time (but also leaves a nice thick trail of cheese in their wake!).

Shortly after the opening credits finish and we get introduced to our main cast, a mysterious tub of gingerbread seasoning shows up on the back steps of the little bakery, dropped off by a mysterious old lady that is never explained but we can only assume it's the mother of Gary Busey's Millard Findlemeyer. Since Sarah was actually in desperate need of some gingerbread seasoning, and assuming that it was her daily order that had just arrived, she brings it in to start making gingerbread cookies with. While mixing it all together, one of the other characters ends up cutting himself, and while Sarah looks the cut over, blood is dripping down into the cookie mixture. Now, instead of throwing out that batch like a normal and sanitary person would, she continues mixing it. And she's supposed to know better, being the Head Baker and all! Even if that wasn't some voodoo-tampered cursed seasoning, that would still not even be close to right or sanitary. But of course this isn't the Cooking Channel and that's not what people are watching for, so thanks to some voodoo by crazy mysterious old lady, the fact that she put the ashes of her son in with the mixture, plus the added bonus of some spilled blood, when the main big cookie gets baked, it comes to life, occupied by the soul of Millard Findlemeyer!

From there, the rest of the movie deals with all the above-mentioned people being stuck inside this little small bakery, with a one-liner-spewing wise-ass killer cookie offing them one by one until they inevitably find a way to defeat him once and for all (though not really, since there's two more of these movies). Although oddly enough, they're not really 'stuck' per sey as they just choose not to leave. There's even a scene where one of the characters goes out to his car to get his cell phone and brings it back inside so they can call for help. Um...what? Why not just all of them leave with him, and then drive off in the car? Even when the power goes out and they are literally a foot away from the door, and they know that there's a killer gingerbread man after them, instead of leaving through that door they turn and head deeper into the building in order to try to turn the power back on...WTF? There's quite a few glaring and laughable plot holes like that scattered throughout the movie.

Unfortunately, that's not the only problem with this movie. Due to the small cast, and the fact that more people survived then I expected, there's not really a large body count in this one. Even the few that do get killed are very generic un-inventive deaths that consist of mostly just regular stabbings, so to be honest there's not a whole lot to look forward to in the kills department.

The characters are decently-written though, with some pretty funny dialog between all of them, and you genuinely start to care for them so you enjoy spending time with them as the movie goes through its motions. Plus there are tons of cheesy lines that spew forth in Gary Busey's voice from the killer cookie, so despite the movie kind of dropping the ball with the death scenes, there's still plenty of other good stuff to keep you paying attention. And if it helps at all, when you remove the ending credits the movie is only 58 minutes long (even shorter then that when you remove the overly-long opening credits as well), so it's extremely short and it just zooms by thanks to the aforementioned cheesy dialog, plus the added bonus of quite a few humorous visual treats such as seeing a group of fully-grown humans running away from a tiny cookie instead of just turning around and stepping on it, an awesome cat-fight that leads into a hilarious food fight in the back of the bakery (think of a similar scene from Mega Python vs Gatoroid), a scene that includes a perfect laugh-out-loud delivery of 'Got Milk?', and the Gingerdead Man doing up a body to look like a giant cake, just to list a few gem scenes that this movie holds within.

Speaking of the tiny potty-mouthed killer cookie, I must say that I was quite impressed with the puppetry used to bring the Gingerdead Man to life. Sure, there were occasional shots where it looked like nothing more then decked-out hand puppet, but more often then not it actually looked pretty impressive, especially with the close-ups of it's face when it talked. Granted, it's not like it was jumping around and doing acrobatics, so it couldn't have been hard to make it look good, but I still appreciate it all the same. Even more-so when take into consideration other recent Full Moon movies have opted to take the lazy way out quite often, and be much less-impressive with their effects (I must direct you to the Evil Bong trilogy, where while they are fun cheesy movies that I enjoy, the mouth on the Evil Bongs in each movie don't even move when they talk).

I tend to see quite a lot of people complain online that the entire plan concocted by the mysterious old lady, of bringing her psycho son back to life as a killer cookie, was hinged on the fact that somehow the old lady knew that someone would cut themselves, bleed all over the gingerbread seasoning mix (which already had the ashes of Millard Findlemeyer mixed in), and then continue to use that batch to make cookies. However, the way I like to look at it is this – later on in the movie, one of the characters eats the Gingerdead Man in order to (hopefully) defeat him. However, when the little guy was eaten, the evil soul of Gary Busey's character transferred into the person's body and he possessed him. Much like with Charles Lee Ray in Child's Play, this guy just wants a normal human body again, and so the way I look at it is that the old lady planned on someone eating the cursed cookie (probably Sarah herself was the intended target) and so Gary Busey's character would be able to possess the person and return to life that way. But when someone bled on the cookie mix, it brought him back in that form instead, and thus he was never supposed to be a homicidal baked good. It's not so much an example of an outrageous plan going perfectly, like haters online like to point out, but rather of the plan totally failing miserably. Though as hinted at in the final scene, this may actually have worked out better for Millard Findlemeyer then returning to a human form could ever have been for him. But for more on that, you must seek out Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust and Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver!

When all is said and done with this first movie in the series, was this a perfect B-movie? Definitely not, seeing as how some things were never fully-explained, some other things leave gaping plot holes, and there's an annoyingly-noticeable lack of kills and an even bigger lack of inventive kills. But whatever shortcomings this movie has, it more then makes up for in pure unforgiving cheese, a quickly-paced immensely-short runtime, and the very unique idea of having a killer cookie.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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The Eden Formula (2006)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Fantastical Cinema

RUNTIME: 92 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: Terrorists infiltrate a research facility with the intent of stealing the top-secret Eden Formula, only to accidentally let loose a fully-grown cloned Tyrannosaurus Rex.

REVIEW: Anyone who knows me, or have been following my reviews here on this blog, should already understand that my all-time favorite low budget movie series is the Carnosaur trilogy. In 2001 there was a new movie made titled Raptor, which starred Eric Roberts and was almost entirely made up of stock footage from the three Carnosaur flicks (and badly, I might add), and thus it's often regarded as an unofficial Carnosaur 4 (there are actually some European countries that have it officially, although mistakenly, titled as Carnosaur 4). But for the longest time, I always thought that was it for the world of Carnosaur, and I've constantly been lobbying for a new Carnosaur flick, even if it's done for the SyFy Channel or some other such company.

So you can imagine my amazement when it was brought to my attention that there actually was another Carnosaur movie made in 2006 that completely escaped me! Well to be honest, it's not a real Carnosaur sequel, but much like 2001's Raptor, it was made up of mostly stock footage from the Carnosaur flicks and thus should be regarded as an unofficial sequel as much as Raptor is. So of course I wasted no time at all in tracking down a copy of The Eden Formula to munch down on and review. If Raptor is an unofficial Carnosaur 4, then in my eyes The Eden Formula should be considered an unofficial Carnosaur 5.

Since these kinds of movies are pretty much just made up of footage from other movies, they need to have some selling point to attract interested parties, and that's where the stunt casting comes in; Where Raptor had Eric Roberts, this one improves on that by including Tony Todd (Candyman, Final Destination), Dee Wallace (The Howling, E.T.), and Jeff Fahey (Manticore, Lost), and oddly enough the only one out of that trio who really came across as really all that bad, was Dee Wallace. Jeff Fahey didn't really have to show much emotion to show so that was fine, and Tony Todd just had fun with it all and hammed up his role like crazy (which isn't a bad thing since this is a B-Movie after all, so that just makes it more cheesy and thus more entertaining). He totally stole the show as the too-cool-for-school terrorist leader, while Jeff Fahey and Dee Wallace play the two people in charge of the research facility that's created this Eden formula. The rest of the supporting characters though are pretty brutal in the acting department, which consist mostly of a female cop, an overweight security guard, and then the other members of Tony Todd's terrorist group, whom launches an attack on that research facility with the intent of stealing the scientific breakthrough formula and, of course, inadvertently cause a fully-grown cloned Tyrannosaurus Rex to escape and start causing havoc around Los Angeles, in the gory buckets-of-blood way that only a Carnosaur T. Rex can.

What this movie also improved on from Raptor, other then the stunt casting, are the special effects – sure, it used almost as much stock footage from the Carnosaur trilogy as Raptor did, but it integrated that footage a bit more smoothly, and also managed to create new effects shots as well! Granted, the new practical Rex model doesn't really look like the Carnosaur Rex stock footage much (same basic design, but more thin and seems to be far more cheaply-made, and some shots make it look more like a 2-legged crocodile then it does the Carnosaur T. Rex), and the new CGI version that they use a few times does somewhat resemble the original design as well, but ultimately the body comes across as very disproportionate; the head is fine, but the rest is far too small for that head. In addition, some of the things they do with the CGI model isn't realistic and its just not faithful to the physics of what has been portrayed with the physical models previously (seriously, there is one scene where the CGI Rex is jumping and hoping around like a basketball-playing bunny rabbit), and the worst part about it all is that these new models aren’t even the same color as one another! The Rex footage from the Carnosaur movies have it as a dark brown color while the new, cheaper-looking, Rex model changes from all-green to green with some white, and the CGI model is all-white! It's like the dinosaur version of those old gimmicky Micro Machine car toys where they completely changed colors when you held them up in sunlight or submerged them in water. They do get props from me though for at least putting in the effort to have something more then just stock footage like Raptor did, even if the execution didn't turn out all that great. The thought and effort was clearly there, and that counts for something in my books.

The final aspect that I felt The Eden Formula did better then Raptor is the story. Raptor was pretty much just a re-telling of the first Carnosaur movie, where-as this one actually had a unique plot not yet done previously in the series, with some genuinely surprising twists thrown in here and there. In-part, it's the plot I mentioned in my Carnosaur 3 review as having thought and hoped that Carnosaur 3 was going to do (and it ended up not). Granted, it didn't do it to the degree I would have liked, but at least it's a really nice step in that direction. If you remember from that review, I initially expected Carnosaur 3 to have the dinosaurs rampaging through the city but instead we just got them stalking a warehouse and then trapped on a transport boat out in the ocean. Well this movie does indeed have a dinosaur rampaging through a city for a large portion of the movie, though it only has the one dinosaur instead of a group of dinosaurs like Carnosaur 3 had.

And that brings me to the main thing this movie lacks IMO - the dinosaurs. Sure, we get lots of really good stuff with the Rex, but with this being the first Carnosaur-esque movie to have only the one dinosaur, you kind of feel a void left behind by not including a pack of vicious intelligent Raptors alongside the Rex. Especially with the 'Loose in the city' plot, it would have been awesome to see a pack of Raptors darting about the streets with one or two scenes of them possibly getting into a house or apartment complex or something. Just seemed like a bit of a missed opportunity, especially considering that half of the movie takes place inside of the research facility as Dee Wallace and Jeff Fahey try to escape from Tony Todd and his terrorists. That could have been the perfect opportunity to use some stock footage from Carnosaur 2 and 3 of the Raptors, having those things chase both groups of people through the facility. It at least would have made the scenes taking place in that facility more interesting while the Rex is away munching on people throughout the city.

Another aspect that bugged me a bit, which is something I also had a problem with in the similar-themed movie 100 Million B.C., and that is that despite a fully-grown giant Tyrannosaurus Rex rampaging through the middle of Los freakin' Angeles, nobody at all seems to even notice except the occasional random person that gets eaten; these streets in this movie are more lonely and deserted then those of Silent Hill. So much for Los Angeles having a bustling night life. Hell, not even the main characters themselves seem to be too concerned about the escaped Rex for the majority of the movie.

To top it all off, for the first time in the Carnosaur series (both official and unofficial entries included), the dinosaur does not make the same kinds of noises that it did in every previous movie. One of the things I loved about Carnosaur 1-3 and even Raptor, is that the dinosaurs had some really awesome-sounding vocal noises, but for this one they go with an entirely new soundboard, which isn't nearly as effective or memorable as the dinosaur sounds they used for all the other movies.

The movie on a whole really is not very good, and I probably would never recommend it to anyone. However, for someone who was starving for a new Carnosaur outing, this wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been (i.e. It isn't Raptor). Sure, the final 'polished' product is a pretty uneven mess that can get a bit boring when the dinosaur isn't on-screen, but there was at least some genuine effort attempted with it (even if it did fall a bit short), and there's always Tony Todd's cheesefest performance and some great gooey gore at the hands...err, jaws...of the escaped Rex to keep you riveted to the screen, plus there are some laugh-out loud lines of dialog to entertain you along the way (“I think we're gonna need a bigger bucket.”, “Ok, so in hindsight maybe creating a giant T. Rex wasn't the best of ideas.”).

If it was just Carnosaur 1-3 and then this, I probably wouldn't be nearly so kind to it. However, since its following on the heels of Raptor while trying to accomplish the same thing, I'm just happy that it's at least much more enjoyable then that one was. Until the next movie comes along that decides to use stock footage from the Carnosaur movies, this one will tide me over quite well for now.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Airline Disaster (2010)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long
 

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 100 mins

FORMAT: BluRay

PLOT: Terrorists hijack a new state-of-the-art passenger airliner and hold the pilot's family hostage in order to make him cooperate and go along with their plans, while the U.S. Government works on bringing the terrorists to justice.

REVIEW: Despite owning Airline Disaster for about a year now, it's taken me forever to get around to watching it because, quite frankly, I just prefer my B-Movies to come in either the Monster/Creature or the Global Disaster variety and just regular action or suspense ones don't normally capture my interest as much. However, once the credits for this surprisingly fun little flick started rolling, I began giving serious thought to changing my tune.

This is one of Asylum's longer movies (1 hour and 40 minutes), but despite that it never feels long. Right from the opening minutes straight to the end, there's quite a lot that's going on as it's primarily made up of two separate, but related, main plots that themselves are split up into several smaller sub-plots, which means no time at all to waste on slow or boring stretches. The first of the two main plots reminded me quite a lot of the first season of Fox's hit TV series 24, in that it dealt with a mother and her daughter (and in the case of this movie, also her son) being kidnapped in order to make the husband/father of their family cooperate with the terrorists. They even get held at this house out in the middle of nowhere to be used as hostages and bargaining chips, with their kidnappers driving a white van. Their half of the story involves them trying to escape several times but always getting caught, and the mother trying to come up with ways to convince their captors not to kill them and to leave her kids alone. There were even a couple scenes in this part of the story that felt to me almost directly lifted from 24 (which for the record I'm perfectly fine with, since that's what this company is known for). One of the subplots for this part of the story even involves a government agent that's working on trying to rescue them, which involves some twists of it's own but still results in him leading an assault on the house to rescue the family, followed by a car chase with the white van (which if I remember correctly, is how the similar plot in Season 1 of 24 ended as well).

The other main story that shares the screen time is the part of the story that the title of the movie references. Just like how the previous plot reminded me of 24, this one reminded me just as much about Con Air. The husband/father of the kidnapped family (played by Scott Valentine who has taken on quite a few more pounds since his days filming Carnosaur 3) is the pilot of this new state-of-the-art passenger airline that gets hijacked by a group of people that are in charge of the temperamental hillbillies that kidnapped the family (who by the way are a gang of modern-day Nazis – cause, you know, everything that they're doing isn't bad enough as it is, so let's also make them Nazis for the hell of it since everyone hates Nazis). It's pretty clear that these people are the more calm, collective, thinkers of this gang of Nazis and the kidnappers are kind of the lower-class members. This part of the plot had many scenes that seemed lifted right out of Con Air other then just having the plane hijacked by hardened criminals – there was a scene where fighter jets were sent to shoot the plane down but our hero (in this case, the pilot) has to pull some daring tricks to get them to back off in order save the hostages on-board, but thus also the villains. There were even a couple of scenes that involved the plane crash landing into the middle of a city (or coming really close to it in one instance) but they go even a step further in this then Con Air did, and in true B-Movie fashion they added in the thrill of having parts of the plane breaking off as it plummeted through the sky, raining destructive debris down upon the city below and the people in the streets.

Con Air wasn't the only movie that led to inspiration for this part of the movie though. Fans of Die Hard will find a few little nuggets borrowed from their movie as well. There's also an off-duty Secret Service agent on the plane (Played by the very beautiful Asylum-regular Lindsey McKeon who should also be known to fans of Supernatural as Tessa the Reaper) and she plays a very Die Hard-esque role of sneaking around the tight spaces of the giant, multi-floored plane in the hopes of screwing up the terrorists' plan in any way she can while relaying information back to the authorities on the ground whenever she finds something out. She even has the whole “Right person in the wrong place at the wrong time” attitude about her. The only thing missing that was stopping her from being a true John McClane protégée was that she never got into the habit of mumbling to herself under her breath or of mocking the terrorists. And speaking of those terrorists, they also seemed to take a page out of Die Hard in that their demands that they gave to the authorities (and also to the viewers) turned out to just be a distraction from their real plan, which of course involved money. Lots of money.

There is a third, albeit very minor, plot that kind of bridges the two main plots (you know, apart from the fact that the family kidnapped is that of the plane's pilot), and that is the White House part of the story. The female President is played by Family Ties star Meredith Baxter as she spends the entire movie in her War Room with her military advisers. Their job in the movie is to dabble in all the various plots and sub-plots. They communicate with the terrorists in control of the plane while also secretly trying to figure out a way to put a stop to their plans, they're the ones that the Secret Service Agent hiding on board the plane relays information to, and their also the ones that the Government Agent communicates with as he tries to track down and rescue the kidnapped family. Oh, and in an extremely pointless and has-nothing-to-do-with-anything sub-plot of this part of the story, it's revealed that this President is also the sister of the pilot and thus the aunt of the kidnapped kids (cause you know, she really needed yet another completely random connection to everything going on in the movie). I don't really understand why they felt the need to make her related to the other main characters since it was quite out of the blue and random and they really did nothing at all with it in the movie anyway, but oh well. Despite this minor connecting plot and the fact that other then adding more screen time the whole President part of the story could have easily been removed, I found in a movie of pretty decent actors that Meredith Baxter completely stole the show. May have been a useless part of the movie, but she was always entertaining to watch – especially when her character was frantic and shouting at everyone.

 

Alongside the better-then-average acting for this sort of flick, are the better-then-average special effects as well. Granted, there wasn't much in the ways of special effects needed for this one, other then a plane flying in the air, but the shots of it almost crashing (and then later actually crashing) were pretty good. And you wouldn't think a plane flying over a city could be so deadly, but they found some pretty inventive ways to have the plane reign destruction down upon the cities it passes over, giving the plane almost a life of it's own and pretty much making it just as much an actual character in the movie as any of the humans.

In the end this one pretty much had it all. A really good story with mostly-all-good interconnecting plots filled with non-stop action, which came to life thanks to some great acting and decent special effects. As far as entertainment value goes, this is pretty close to as good as they can get in the B-Movie realm, without including a monster or creature in there.

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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The 10 Best B-Movies of 2011

 

Now that we're at the end of the year, every Site seems to be doing a 'Top 10 Movies of 2011' list and it made me want to do my own - but not some generic list that you can find on any site, that would include mostly all the same films as each other - no, I wanted to do one such list that fits my personal tastes - a list of the 10 Best B-Movies of 2011! Now to be honest, this entire list is pretty much being done on the spot, with no research behind it other then my own memory of what I've seen so far this year and which ones still stick out as having been really good in my memory after all this time, so forgive me if I ended up forgetting some by accident. Also, there is still plenty of movies from this year that I haven't yet seen, so it's possible I've potentially skipped over a few diamonds in the rough due to that as well, since this list is based off what I've actually watched myself.

The following list won't be in any specific order, as I clearly love all of them for them to even be on the list, so putting them in any kind of ranking order is a bit moot.


- Asylum puts out one or two movies about every single month, at least. Some are honestly not that good, at all, but most are a blast of low budget cheesy fun, and out of those ones this mockbuster of the more well-known Battle: Los Angeles has got to be one of my all-time favorites. You can read my full, previously-released, review of Battle of Los Angeles here.






- With the amount of movies Asylum releases, it's no surprise that more then one would make their way onto this list. This is the movie that Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus promised to be, but stumbled to deliver. Mega Python vs Gatoroid is filled with non-stop cheese and laughs from beginning to end, with 80's pop sensations Tiffany and Debbie Gibson stealing the show from the title creatures on more then one occasion. This is how you make a fun low budget monster movie.




- This one originally aired on TV in 2010, but was released on DVD and BluRay this year, so I'm counting it as a 2011 movie. Roger Corman is famous for a ton of well-known B movies from the 60's onwards and he returns this decade with Sharktopus - a movie that you can pretty much accurately guess what you'll be in store for based off just the title and cover art. Pure cheesy goodness all the way through with never a dull moment. This is one that one day I hope to see a sequel to.




- Hostel: Part III may not be as good as the first, but way better then the horrid second movie, and quite faithful to the tone of the series despite that it's not made by Eli Roth. Some really nice kills and unexpected twists throughout. Should have ended 5 minutes earlier then it did though, as the actual ending wasn't nearly as good or leave as much of an impact as the 'first ending'.






- Honestly, there's not really any plot to speak of with this movie, just seemingly random scene after random scene. But it's entertaining random scene after entertaining random scene, filled with really inventive and gory zombie kills by way of a whole slew of unique weapons, within some great post-apocalyptic set pieces, making it really feel like a fast-paced FPS video game adaptation. Plus it has Zombie Tigers.




- I'm never one to turn down a made-for-TV creature feature, but it's always an added bonus when it actually turns out good. Swamp Shark stars the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer as she battles a really old, really vicious shark that has made it's way into the swamp lands of her small town. Both the CGI shots, and the quick practical shots of the shark were surprisingly detailed and well-done, and the movie itself had a better-then-average plot, filled with better-then-average actors for this kind of flick. This one was a blast and a half.




- I love the Spanish horror flick [Rec]. I'm also one of the few that love the American remake of it, Quarantine. And as much as I enjoyed [Rec] 2, I'm glad this direct-to-video sequel decided to go its own path, because to my surprise, I ended up liking Quarantine 2: Terminal even more then I did the first Quarantine. Well-worth checking out for fans of the first, because this one is not only better, but also builds upon it in ways I never expected. It's more then one of my favorite B-Movies of the year - it's also one of my favorite horror movies of the year.




- While this is a sequel-in-name-only, when it comes to going direct-to-video that's almost a better route to take sometimes. This however felt like it could have easily gone to theaters. It was highly entertaining with a competently-written script, filled with very well-acted characters, excellent use of genuine tension, some really fun and explosive action scenes, and a creepy villain that you just love to hate. What more can you ask for in an Action B-Movie?




- Asylum's modern-day mockbuster of this classic story is pure adrenaline-fueled entertainment from beginning to end, with fun quirky characters that I never got tired of following, and well choreographed action scenes. Even has a couple of sword fights thrown in for good measure, which is quickly becoming a staple of Asylum action flicks. I wouldn't mind at all seeing further adventures of this group of Mission: Impossible wannabes.




- Sure, the actors may not be the greatest, the dialog is atrocious, and parts of the script are incredibly messy - but it's still the best of the Howling sequels, and overall a pretty damn fun little popcorn werewolf movie, with a gothic castle-like school as it's main setting. They also stick to mostly old-school practical man-in-suit effects for the werewolves which I can very much appreciate, keeping the design pretty close to the design of the werewolves from the original movie (which is something none of the other sequels ever bothered to do). As a werewolf fan, despite it's shortcomings, I can't help but see the genuine effort that went into this one and enjoy it based on that alone. The gory kills and fun werewolf-on-werewolf fights help as well though.

Honorable Mention

- I have a few too many issues with this one to count it as among 'The Best' of the year, but despite those issues it's still a really entertaining movie if you're a fan of the series thus far, and it's extremely short runtime (about an hour if you don't count the opening and closing credits) helps you to overlook a lot of it's problems because the movie moves at such a fast pace that it's over before you have much time to think. If you're not a fan of the previous two movies though, then there's no need for you to attempt this one because nothing in this will make you like it above the others.

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