Attack of the Moon Zombies (2011)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Saint Euphoria Pictures

Runtime: 100 mins

Format: DVD

Plot: A mysterious plant found on the surface of the moon wreaks havoc on the Jackson Lunar Base when its spores change the base's crew into leafy, undead creatures!

Review: Attack of the Moon Zombies was the Christopher R. Mihm movie that initially grabbed my interest and, by doing some light research into it, alerted me to the entire Mihmiverse Collection. I stumbled upon a thumbnail picture from this movie while looking through Google Pictures for some other B-Movie to use in my review of that one, and as soon as I saw the weirdly cheesy-looking plant-headed Moon Zombie picture I knew I had to find out what movie that was from and thus started my adventure into the Mihmiverse realm. However, once I ordered all the movies, even though this is the one that I was most interested in checking out, I decided to watch them all in release order so that's why it's taken me so long to get to my most anticipated one, first sitting through, and enjoying on various levels, The Monster of Phantom Lake, It Came From Another World!, Cave Women on Mars, Terror From Beneath The Earth, and Destination: Outer Space.

And I'm glad I did, because while (for the most part) the movies are stand-alone and you can watch them in any order that you choose, you get so much more out of them by watching them in release order. I say release order because in terms of chronology they jump around back and forth quite a bit, such as the case with this one, taking place in the future (as it may have been envisioned back in the 1950s – the gimmick of all these movies is that, while made now-ish, they're made with the intent of having them act as if they were made in the black and white 1950s era of B-Movie filmmaking), this one taking place roughly around the timeframe of Cave Women on Mars and Destination: Outer Space, give or take a couple years.

This one is the longest Mihmiverse movie yet, clocking in at an hour and 40 minutes. Now as you may guess from some of my previous reviews, I kind of feel that almost-two hours is way too long for something like this, especially when it takes 40 minutes before we even begin the actual plot of the movie of people getting infected and the Moon Zombies start going around. A bit tighter of a pace in that first half and this movie would be 100% perfect. As it stands it's only 'Just About 100% perfect', which is still really damn good!

For the most part, Attack of the Moon Zombies deals with almost all-new characters. A lot of familiar faces for fans of these movies, but they're playing brand new characters from what they played before. Playing the lead female character is Shannon McDonough, who fellow Mihmivites will recognize as the fiance-and-then-wife of Doctor Jackson from It Came From Another World! and a cameo appearance in Terror From Beneath The Earth. I was a bit harsh on her role in those movies, as I found the character she played a bit drab and boring, but after seeing her here I now know that was solely the way the character was written and it was not indicative of Ms. McDonough's acting abilities because she owns this movie in every scene that she's in. Within five minutes of being introduced to her new scientist character here, I was totally in love with her. Returning alongside her is also Daniel Sjerven from Cave Women on Mars and Terror From Beneath the Earth, this time playing a rude, childish, alcoholic pilot that still manages to retain a certain level of humor and charm about him, despite being the kind of character you probably wouldn't like spending a whole lot of time around in real life. Also with them is Michael Kaiser who has been in all of these movies in small bit parts as well as the man behind the costume of I think almost every monster, creature, and humanoid alien to date, and Sid Korpi who played a minor role in Destination: Outer Space but here plays the person-in-charge on this Moon Base, Administrator Ripley. And yes, that is a very clear (and loved!) nod to the Alien franchise. The one person who does return and actually plays a previous character is Mike Cook reprising his role as Dr. Vincent Edwards from Terror From Beneath the Earth, a role I also previously found a bit dull and uninspired but actually really enjoyed this go-around. Also, he hasn't visually aged a day in the 20+ years between that movie's timeline and this one! Oh, the wonders of Movie Magic, I tells ya!

Actually, old character and new ones, old actors and new ones, out of all the Mihmiverse movies this one I think is the one that had me loving all the characters in record time and it wasn't long into the movie before I started genuinely caring about what might happen to them. Sure, the movie has an overly-long 40 minute lead-up to the actual horrific events that make up the plot of the movie, but it uses that time really well to give us some good characterization on everyone and some nice story beats that pay off later in the movie. For instance, lead character Dr. Hacket (as played by Shannon McDonough) is in a relationship with another of the scientists on board and he keeps trying to propose to her but each and every time he does they keep getting interrupted at the last second before she can give her answer, a continuous and hilariously repetitive story beat that keeps playing out even well into the Moon Zombie infestation. Add to that the continuous complaints by some of the staff that there isn't enough women on-board, Ripley missing the birth of her grandchild due to being on that base, and the sub-plot of Dr. Vincent Edwards' looming retirement and they really give you enough meat to sink your teeth into for each and every one of these characters, no matter how large or small their role is.

The only issue I have in the character department, and it's only a minor nitpick and in no way goes against my final score of the movie, but Daniel Sjerven's perfectly sleazy pilot character drops out of the movie pretty early on to return to Earth, and during the thick of the infestation events of the movie the main cast are trying to survive long enough for him to return so they can leave the base and get the heck outta dodge, so having them constantly make reference to waiting on him, in addition to knowing what a familiar face Daniel Sjerven is to this series, I was fully expecting him to show up at the last minute and save the day, Han Solo style, but sadly we never do see him again, which was slightly disappointing especially since he never got that character redemption moment I was really hoping for. Even though this is a minor nitpick, it also works as a compliment as well because if these characters weren’t so likable and well-written, I wouldn't have cared about wanting him to return at the end for a redemption moment to begin with.

Making us care for these characters this much actually ends up being a bit heartbreaking, seeing as how once the Moon Plant shoots its spoors out and finally turns the first person into a plant-headed Moon Zombie (which then in turn begins turning everyone else), it's only a matter of time before most of the characters you've come to love bite it, and as much as I enjoyed spending time with everyone leading up to this portion of the movie, it's really here till the end that it truly shines. Seeing as how the terror begins during the middle of the night when most of the crew is sleeping, there are some authentically creepy moments that play out here, such as a scene where one guy wakes up in his darkened room with no knowledge of what has started, and begins hearing some unknown thing banging savagely on his door, trying to get in to him. The claustrophobic feel of the base as the characters run around the maze-like hallways and run into various random Moon Zombies, either stand alone or in large groups, only adds to the creepy factor. Of course none of that would have been successful had it not been for the best creature designs we've seen yet in the Mihmiverse series, nor for the best set designs we've seen yet; Never once did I question that this was actually a real Lunar Base and these plant-headed Moon Zombies were a real threat – Within a few minutes of pressing Play I was sucked right in and I was right there alongside all these characters. Micro-Budget as this may be, it did just as good a job loosing me in its imagination as any bigger budget Hollywood movie could, and its this movie that best shows just how far Christopher R. Mihm has come, in addition to everyone who works with him, since the days of The Monster of Phantom Lake, and it shows best just how they've all evolved as filmmakers.

As with all the other movies in the Mihmiverse, this self-produced DVD is stacked right up with tons of excellent bonus content. There's only one Blooper Reel instead of the usual two (but it has a really good length to it and is, just like all the others, simply laugh-out-loud hilarious), a trailer for the movie, a Photo Gallery of tons of Behind-the-Scenes photos, an introduction to the film by Horror Host Dr. Ivan Cryptosis, a half hour long featurette on the whole Mihmiverse itself, and the usual informative full length Audio Commentaries, one by just Christopher R. Mihm and a second more Technical Commentary by many of the Behind the Scenes folks.

Attack of the Moon Zombies is easily my favorite film by Christopher R. Mihm to date. Sure, it's a bit longer then I'd like and takes it's sweet time getting anywhere, but it also uses that time to perfectly make us get to know and care about our cast of characters, which is actually a really smart move here since it made it all the more heartbreaking when many of them get ripped away from us during the events of the second half of the movie when the infection has broken out and the Lunar Base is overran with 30+ deadly Moon Zombies shuffling around the dark, empty maze-like corridors. The movie can also double as a fun 'Find The References' game, as it's chock full of references to classic sci-fi/horror flicks like Alien, The Thing From Another World, It! The Terror From Beyond Space, and any number of zombie movies to just point out a few. Plus there's also tons of inside jokes and references to previous Mihmiverse movies (Such as Doctor Jackson-then-Director Jackson is now the President – Nice!), so be sure to keep your eyes and ears open to catch them all.

Seeing as how most of the advertising for these movies come from simple word of mouth from the fans, then if you do check his stuff out and enjoy it please help get the word out there on these movies and hopefully we can snag in a few other fans that may not even realize these exist. You can order these on DVD (and even BluRay for the latest couple!) over at his official site which is filled with all sorts of other goodies as well (including a monthly newsletter in addition to a very laid back, yet fun and informative, podcast). Hell, there's even an excellent deal on right now – Buy Three Movies, Get One Free, which seeing as how there's currently eight of these titles, if you do that twice then that is the perfect way to catch up with all of them and in the end save some dough – that's how I did it!

10/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Rise of the Zombies (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: The Asylum

Runtime: 90 mins

Format: BluRay

Plot: A group of survivors hide on Alcatraz Island to escape from the rising zombie hordes. When their refuge is overrun, and upon hearing that a scientist hiding in the middle of the city may have discovered a cure, they leave the island to seek him out.

Review: A couple years ago the SyFy Channel and Asylum got together for a co-produced project for Halloween called 2012: Zombie Apocalypse. I ended up enjoying that one quite a bit, even though I felt it got really repetitive, had no plot to speak of, and the zombie actors were pretty terrible. Well it seems Syfy and Asylum joining together for a zombie flick is becoming an annual Halloween tradition as they did it again last year with the just-as-bland titled Rise of the Zombies.

Luckily, the saying 'Practice Makes Perfect' rings true here. While the movie itself may not be perfect, it's certainly a nice improvement over an already decently-entertaining previous movie. For starters, the zombie actors were a lot better this time, never once taking me out of the movie and making me go 'Wow, that person is trying way too hard to act like a zombie' like what happened multiple times during 2012: Zombie Apocalypse. It also helped quite a bit that the make-up and prosthetics looks much better this time around; A lot more realistic and less like, well, make-up – plus they also threw in some really unique and chilling zombie designs for the occasional one, to keep things fresh. Actually, there is one scene with a zombie that has a very contorted body that was just genuinly creepy to look at. I don't think there's a single zombie movie that has had even one scene that creeped me out in the last decade (with the exception of the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake), but the scene in this movie with that contorted zombie managed to do just that.

Actually the effects all around were heavily improved this time, and not just the make-up effects. CGI zombie head shots as well as an awesome car crash near the beginning were both improved over the CGI from the previous year's flick, and this one even had some pretty entertaining, albeit gruesome, practical zombie kills. Hell, within the first two minutes of the movie you see a zombie get its head smashed right in with a giant wrench and beat to a pulpy mess, and all throughout the movie you get super gory shots of zombie hordes ripping people apart and feasting on their intestines and other inside organs – and all of this in a made-for-TV movie! In all honesty, in terms of violence and gore, this movie is right up there with AMC's The Walking Dead, including an extremely disturbing and uncomfortable hard-to-sit through baby delivery and what follows directly after. This is weird to say about a TV movie, but there were points in the movie where it almost felt like they were taking things a bit too far in order to make things as disturbing and depressing as possible, and I actually could have done with a tad less of some of that. The baby scene I just mentioned is actually a prime example of that, as I felt it was done in a bit of bad taste and seemed to only be included purely for shock value and to see how far they can go with some things.

In terms of plot, parts of this movie isn't far off from The Walking Dead either. Much like with the current season of that show that was airing during the time of this movie's release, Rise of the Zombies has our main band of survivors holed up in an abandoned prison for a portion of the movie, though they do end up having to leave and head out into the nearby city in order to locate a specific scientist’s lab where they know he had been working on a vaccine, so they can get his notes and research from before he had died. It certainly doesn't have any great in-depth thinking man's kind of plot or subtext to it like what you would get in an early Romero zombie movie, but if you're just looking for a nice SyFy Channel B-Movie to watch some weekend night with a couple beer, and you're in the mood for some gory zombie mayhem, this one comes highly recommended by me. Plus this kind of plot paved the way for a variety of fun settings for some of the zombie action to take place in, settings like both inside and outside of the prison, through abandoned city streets and small neighborhoods, inside rather large and luxurious-looking homes, a secret underground government facility, and (just like the previous movie) a shipyard and dock. Actually, if I had any major complaints with the plot it would be that it kind of devolves into just following the steps of the previous movie a bit too much during the ending, with the survivors having to reach the docks of the city in order to wait for a boat that will arrive to bring them to a zombie-free paradise, and of course the docks are not as 'clear of zombies' as they are supposed to be. Sadly this movie didn't have anything as interesting or unique as zombie tigers for their version of that scene, so not only was it just a repeat scene with different actors, but it also (for the first time this movie) wasn't done as well either.

Something else that, while better then the previous movie, also wasn't very good, was the acting - but that usually comes part and parcel with these kinds of movies, so that should always be expected here anyway. I was actually surprised however by how many recognizable faces were actually in this. Going in, I already knew about long-time actress Mariel Hemingway, Levar Burton from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Danny Trejo in his second SyFy Channel movie of 2012 (the first being Haunted High, aka Ghostquake, back in August 2012), but I had no idea beforehand that Ethan Suplee (My Name is Earl, countless Kevin Smith movies), French Stewart (Stargate, 3rd Rock From The Sun), and Chad Lindberg (The Fast and the Furious, Ash from Supernatural) were all in this as well, in addition to some regular Asylum faces like Heather Hemmens (3 Musketeers, Hellcats) Madonna Magee (11/11/11), and Andy Clemence (3 Musketeers, 11/11/11, Air Collision). With so many great names, it's actually a pretty big disappointment that the acting on display wasn't better then it was, but I suppose everyone is allowed an off day every now and then.

All in all though, this was a highly enjoyable low budget zombie flick from the folks at SyFy and the folks at Asylum. Not perfect, because the acting was below what you would expect from this roster of actors, plus I probably could have done without quite so much of the totally unforgiving disturbing stuff that seemed only added in so they could see how far they could push the envelope and get away with it, but at the end of the day this turned out to be one of Asylum's better efforts and I was impressed more often then I was let down.

While I haven't done so yet, I imagine that Rise of the Zombies would make a great double-feature some rainy weekend night with 2012: Zombie Apocalypse, although watching both  back-to-back may give you the feeling of deju vu in some parts toward the end. Still, I think it'd be a fun experiment to see how well they mesh together, although you would almost have to put this one second just because it's the far superior film and I always like to end things off on a high note.

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

 

 

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Attack of the Herbals (2011)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  Clear Focus

 
Runtime: 81 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: After years in exile, Jackson McGregor has returned to his grandparent's home in Lobster Cove, a small Scottish village where the daily routine consists of eating, sleeping, fishing... and drinking tea. After discovering a mysterious crate of herbal tea washed up on shore, Jackson, along with his friend Russell hatch a plan to sell the tea and save the village from a rich businessman. Unfortunately the tea given to the townspeople soon turns into a nightmare, and Jackson finds himself in a village of flesh-eating zombies.

Review: MTI Home Video recently got in touch with me and offered to send some screeners my way for some of their films, and since I'm always on the lookout for more screener opportunities of course I accepted. The first one that came my way for review is for a movie I've actually heard a bit about in the past, but isn't one I really followed progress on or knew a whole lot about. Attack of the Herbals is a horror/comedy in the vein of movies like Shaun of the Dead, Dead and Breakfast, Black Sheep, The Doghouse, and movies of that ilk, and it's about an old Nazi experiment during WWII that involved herbal tea that could turn whoever drank it into zombie-like creatures, and some remains of that experiment end up in present day in some small coastal Scottish town, and it's not long until it starts causing zombie havoc. That was pretty much all I knew about it going into it. This one I believe has already been released in the U.K. and some other European countries a couple years back, but just recently hit DVD over here in Canada and the U.S. thanks to MTI Home Video.

Unfortunately, the end result wasn't quite as much fun as I was hoping/expecting, given the very unique plot of herbal tea-created zombies. To start, the main lead is incredibly unlikable, which right off the bat makes it hard to really get into the movie. He's rude to pretty much everyone around him – his so-called friends, co-workers, grandparents, old bosses - but then expects those same people to bend over backwards for him over just about everything, and blames everything that goes wrong (even if its his fault) on everyone else...and yet all these people love him? Huh? The fact that this is a character we're supposed to connect with and sympathize with makes no sense to me because he's just so unlikable. There are antagonists in other movies that aren’t as much of a whiny asshole as this guy is. And if that's meant to be part of the joke of the movie, it totally went over my head because it did not seem that way at all.

Adding to that, the movie overstays its welcome quite a bit. It's only an hour and 21 minutes, but feels so much longer. I think the main reason for that is because many scenes, especially in the first half of the movie, were only there for awkwardly-delivered exposition and most of that exposition was for things that don't even really matter in the greater scheme of the movie, so it all came across as needless padding. All of those scenes could have been cut and the movie could have been tightened up a bit. It also takes way too long for anything to happen; Other then the opening scene, and one very quick 20-second scene of a dog being eaten (off-screen, at that), it's well over halfway through the movie before anything even relating to zombies or horror-esque stuff even happens. For about 85% of the movie, it's a total ABC Channel family-drama movie through and through. I keep saying that the worst offense a B-Movie can make is to be boring, and this one came very dangerously close to that, especially since the main lead is someone I couldn't get into at all, it made that first chunk of the movie very hard to sit through. Attack of the Herbals probably could have benefited from taking the Full Moon approach and have it only be just barely an hour, but a very tight and well-executed hour.

Luckily most of the supporting cast were much more likable and fun to watch, and I wish one or more of these characters could have been the 'central hero' instead of the guy we got. His best friend is clearly the real highlight of the movie and the kind of fun-loving but down-to-earth best friend that everyone kind of wants to have. In addition to him, the main character's grandparents play off each other quite humorously, as any couple who have been married for 40-odd years probably would, and I was genuinely sad when their fates came later in the movie, and all the random miscellaneous town residents are pretty quirky and have at least one or two good moments each. Hell, even the main antagonist (a rich guy trying to buy out the main guy's family's post office land so that he can make a golf course) was a blast to watch anytime he was on-screen as he was just such a hilarious kind of asshole, especially to his servants – you could always count on his scenes for a good laugh. It also helps that the acting is pretty decent from everyone involved. Sure, it does tend to go up and down depending on the scene, but it was mostly pretty good more often then it wasn't.

As for the reason anyone would even give this movie a second glance on the shelf, the zombies themselves, wellll...as I said above, it's well over halfway through the movie before any show up. As in like, an hour into this hour and 21 minutes movie. So we don't even get to the zombie action until the last quarter of the movie, which was a huge and major bummer for me as I was expecting something along the lines of the movies I mentioned above, where they kind of just get to the point pretty quickly. However when we do finally get them, the movie is a total blast for that last half an hour. These aren’t zombies in the traditional sense – here the tea just gets them addicted and wanting more and more of this tea, until whatever the Nazis put into it has worked its way into the people's systems and turns everyone into a wacky/looney boiling rage and makes them feel like they have to kill everyone else...and they only get worse from there, having their eyes go all creepy glow in the dark Underworld-style, and they get Evil Dead-esque demon multiple voice syndrome. This twist on the traditional zombie lore may turn some away, but I personally really enjoyed it. This day in age, zombie movies have been done to death, so I always appreciate it whenever one throws in some kind of curveball to make it at least a little fresh. And as to be expected in a movie such as this, there are a ton of really fun (and hilarious) zombie attack/fight scenes filled with lots of gooey gore once this portion of the movie hits, with a couple of really unique moments that I won't spoil here but I will say that one of them involves a drunk wheelchair guy that essentially becomes a hilarious Bruce Campbell wannabe, and that both of these scenes alone almost make the entire movie worth it.

Unfortunately all that excellent zombie stuff was just too late to really save the movie. While the first hour does have some quirky characters, funny moments, and decent acting to get you through it, it's still a very long and tedious hour, following around a very unlikable lead, before the movie finally gets to the goods. Props have to be given for attempting something new in a tired and overdone genre (awesome vicious demon-like zombies created by Nazi-experimented tea sure is a First in my books), but the outcome turned out to be a bit of a fumble that could have been salvaged had it been for better editing and some tightening up of the movie. As it is, I would recommend watching the first 15 minutes or so to get a feel for the characters, and then just skip to a few minutes before the hour-mark and watch the rest from there. Trust me, you really won't be missing much in between, and the movie will feel much stronger to you because of it.

4/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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V/H/S/2 (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  The Collective

Runtime: 93 mins

Format: Itunes

Plot: Searching for a missing student, two private investigators break into a house and find a large collection of VHS tapes. Viewing the horrific contents of each cassette, they realize there may be dark motives behind the student's disappearance.

Review: V/H/S/2 (formally titled the much better S-V/H/S) dropped last night at midnight on the Video on Demand channels and Itunes. I was hoping to stay up and watch it then, but due to time differences, 'dropped at midnight' actually meant about 4:30 am for me, soo... yeah, it kinda had to wait for the following day, plus I then wanted to wait for it to be dark out before I watched it, otherwise what would even be the point, am I right?

Anyway, V/H/S/2 starts on a similar wrap-around story as the first movie. This time around, a private Investigator and his girlfriend are hired to track down and find a missing delinquent teen and their investigation leads them to an old abandoned creepy house, which has contained within it a very large collection of old VHS tapes, of which (like the first movie) the following anthology stories are contained on. Overall this wrap-around segment was actually quite a bit better then the one in the first movie and had some nice genuinely creepy moments within it, as well as acts like an actual proper wrap-around story and doesn't just randomly end midway through the movie like the one in the first movie did. However one aspect of it really grinds my gears and annoyed me quite a bit – The teen they're looking for? Not one of the teens from the first movie's wrap-around segment like I was thinking it would be. The old creepy house he finds? Not the same one as the one in the first movie's wrap-around segment either. Despite being very similar to the first movie's, this movie's wrap-around portion is not related to the first movie's in any shape, way or form, making this movie 100% completely stand-alone and unconnected to the first movie. While I didn't like that portion of the first movie, it still would have been nice (and expected) for this movie to tie into that one in some way, preferably via the wrap-around stories, especially since this one's seems like it was initially written to do just that. Just seems like a pretty big missed opportunity to create a bit of background mythology, especially with a third movie having already been announced.

With that slight disappointment out of the way though, the first of the actual short stories deals with a man that gets a cybernetic eye to replace his lost eye, and the camera for this story comes from inside that eye. For reasons he doesn't understand, that new eye allows him to see ghosts, and he meets up with a girl who underwent the same experimental surgery to get her hearing back and likewise, it's allowed her to hear ghosts. Teamed up and trying to figure out what's going on, the two start getting assaulted by some very nasty ghosts. This story had a pretty great premise, with a few fun scenes and plenty of scares to go around. While it wasn't quite on the same level of unease as the first movie's opening segment, this one had quite a bit of jump scares to keep you on-edge. There are two aspects though that stop it from being great; The acting was distractingly bad, like SyFy Channel Original Movie of the Week level of bad, and was constantly taking me out of the moment and ruining some of the scenes that should have been way scarier then they were due to the acting. In addition, a lack of answers to pretty much anything that's going on also hurt it a bit. With some better actors and more time to fully flesh this segment out, this could have been one of the stronger stories here. As it is, it's still decent thanks to some great jump scares and creepy moments, and I was never bored or wishing it would just end already, but at the same time it's could really have benefited from some tune-ups.

Moving onto the second story, this one has a man with some kind of cam attached to his helmet as he goes for a bike ride in the woods, during which he gets bitten by a zombie and we follow around with him as he becomes a zombie himself and shambles around, attacking other people in the woods. I feel this segment thinksits being revolutionary and doing something new and unique that's never been done before (that's the vibe I get from watching it), however, this exact thing has been done countless times in dozens of homemade youtube videos and student projects that are online. And this version of it does nothing at all to set itself out from the pack and doesn't even attempt to bring anything new to the table. Chances are, even just reading this paragraph right now you can probably tell exactly how this segment plays out and can probably guess every single thing that happens in it, because it's just that generic. I find most anthology movies have an entry that you can just skip and the movie will be better off for you because of it. With the first V/H/S it was the invisible static man killer entry and for V/H/S/2, it's this one.

The middle story of this anthology is probably my top favorite of not only this bunch, but of both movies, and was brought to us by Gareth Evans, the guy who made the excellent The Raid: Redemption. A camera crew shooting a documentary is following a cult leader around on the Eve of the great 'passing over', an event that he and his followers believe will allow them to open the gates to 'Paradise' and cross over into that mythical realm. While this was easily my favorite and I could probably write a full-length review on just this segment alone, it's also the one I feel I should talk about the least just because the less you know about what happens in it, the better. This segment revels in the unexpected, and it should be watched knowing virtually nothing about it in order to get the full effect. All I'll say is that this story goes from 'normal' to 'bat shit WTF insane crazy' in about half of its runtime, and uses the other half to go from 'bat shit WTF insane crazy' to about twenty miles past that, so that by the time this segment is over you almost need to take a break and recuperate your sanity and nerves before moving on to the final story in the movie.

Which while this final story was still pretty good and I enjoyed it, its placement really should have been swapped with the previous one as I feel that would have been a muchstronger and way more impactful way to end the movie off. In this last story of the movie, we get a camera attached to a family dog while the foul-mouthed children of said family (which at times pleasantly reminded me a lot of the kids from movies like E.T., The Goonies, and Super 8, among others) play a prank on their older sister and her asshole boyfriend, which is followed by a counter-prank...at least until some white-skinned, black-eyed aliens show up to abduct everyone. There's really not much more to the plot of this one then that, and it's easily the shortest entry of the movie at only 15 minutes long, but as someone who is pretty obsessed with the whole alien/UFO/abduction phenomenon, I found this one pretty damn creepy in its own ways, and it makes me wish for more creepy horror movies to cover ground like this (such as Dark Skies, which did a decent job with a similar plot when that was released earlier this year). As I said previously though, this entry would have fitted much better if it happened earlier in the movie and the previous entry took place here, because as much as I personally liked this one and was pretty creeped out at moments, it doesn't even begin to come close to touching the previous entry, and thus it seems very confusing to me as to why they would place this one as the final short story of the movie as it's very much a one-note, simple, cookie cutter entry that, honestly, not a whole lot happens in it and it kind of just peeters out instead of ending on a bang like the last one. Then again, at only 15 minutes long, that doesn't really leave much room for many things to happen.

In my review of the first movie, I stated that one of the biggest faults for some of the individual stories was that there just wasn't enough time for the subject matter and a couple of them could have benefited greatly from a slightly longer runtime. The exact same can be said for some of these entries as well, which is made even more frustrating this time by the fact that it's a much shorter movie to boot. Granted, it has one less short story then the first movie did, but they could have used that as the perfect opportunity to fill in that missing space by extending the length of each of these stories by an extra ten minutes each (except for that stupid zombie one) instead of just shortening the overall movie's runtime. My biggest complaint about most of these stories is just that, much like with the final story of the first movie, there's just not enough time allowed for the subject matter, and just about each one could have benefited from being given slightly more screen time.

Luckily that's the only thing about the first movie that's made worse, however that mixed with the utterly confusing decision to make a very similar-but-not-connected wrap-around story, the placement of some of these stories, and that terrible zombie segment does lower my score of this one a bit. But that's ok, because unlike the first, there's plenty of score to go around here. Most of the short story segments were vastly improved from the ones in the first movie (With the exception of that zombie one, which I could have done without) making this movie an overall improvement over the first, and since it's in no way connected to it other then in name-only, you can even skip that one and just move right on to watching this much-better version of essentially the same movie. Plus, between abducting aliens, zombie viruses, killer ghosts, and Chaos Death Cults (among a few other surprises in there) there's such a wide range of horror movie topics here that pretty much everyone will find something to love.

Now if you could just take the best segments from V/H/S, and the best segments from V/H/S/2, and mix them together into their own anthology movie (and make sure they're put in an order that makes sense), then we'd have a really nice and solid horror anthology film.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Zombies vs Strippers (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long
 

  
COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment

RUNTIME: 75 mins

FORMAT: Screener

PLOT: The Tough Titty is a strip club that's seen better days, but tonight it's gonna see a whole lot worse. Spider has been losing money on his business for years, but now it's finally getting the traffic he's always wanted... unfortunately, most of his patrons are undead. With a sudden outbreak of the zombie virus, strippers Vanilla, Bambi, and Sugar deal with the disaster the way only a stripper can.

REVIEW: You don't wad in the B-Movie pool for any good length of time without coming across Full Moon Entertainment. Even if you don't know their name, chances are you know about at least some of their titles; titles such as Puppet Master, Demonic Toys, Dollman, Dollman vs Demonic Toys, Trancers, Subspecies, Robot Wars, The Evil Bong, The Gingerdead Man, Killer Eye, and even some child-friendly titles like Prehysteria, Pet Shop, and the 6-movie Josh Kirby serial. Granted, classic Full Moon titles from the 80's and 90's are easily their best, with their more recent stuff being of far-lower caliber, however that's not to say there's nothing good to find here. Sure, more often then not their titles disappoint these days (Evil Bong and Evil Bong 2: King Bong were decent, but Evil Bong 3: Wrath of Bong was a let down. And while Gingerdead Man was really good, each of the sequels got significantly worse then the entry that came before. And Killer Eye was really just a porno in disguise so I never even bothered with Killer Eye 2: Halloween Haunt), but when you stumble upon one of their true gems this day in age, all that just makes it all the more sweeter.

When they first announced this movie my gut reaction was another soft-core porno in disguise and I had zero interest in following through with watching this one, but then when the trailer came out, it actually looked pretty entertaining and I decided I'd give it a shot. Shortly after that, Full Moon offered to send me a Screener copy of Zombies vs Strippers for early review and since I've been trying to break into the Screeners Game lately, I pretty much said 'Sure, what the heck'. I figured worse came to worse, and the movie was a total dud, at least Full Moon's recent movies have incredibly short runtimes (an hour and 10 minutes normally, and that's including overly-long opening and ending credits, so really just an hour of actual movie-time), so at most I'd only be wasting an hour of my time on it. Well, when the ending credits rolled on this one, it certainly wasn't of the high fun caliber as The Gingerdead Man or The Evil Bong, but it wasn't quite too terrible either. Nothing I'd probably ever rewatch, but a good enough hour-long time waster that never did reach that softcore porn level that I was initially fearful of (though came close a time or two, but that's for later in the review).

Just like the sun rises every morning and sets every night, the movie opened up on an overly-long opening credits sequence (done in an almost-disturbing Rob Zombie-esque kind of style) that ran for well over 3 minutes, and that any sane person would start to skip past after the first 60 seconds. After that, we get introduced to our main lead, the sketchy strip club owner as he's arriving to work for the night at his seedy club, The Tough Titty. One of the things I loved most about this movie (at least in the first half, where it was applicable), is the entire zombie apocalypse is going on in the background of the movie in subtle little news channel broadcasts and radio reports playing in the background, but this guy is just not paying attention to any of it because he's too wound up and stressed out over his strip club running out of business, and having to deal with incompetent and trouble-making employees. Much like in movies like Shaun of the Dead, he's just so self-absorbed in doing his regular day-after-day bullshit job that he's not paying any bit of attention to the world ending around him just outside of this strip joint. Adding to his problems is the fact that the very few amount of business that they are getting (by way of only two men in the entire place), doesn't seem to be enjoying the girls on-show at all, leading him to blame the strippers for not being good enough. Of course as the viewers of the movie (and as the workers of this club will find out soon enough), we can already tell just by how these 'people' are acting and looking, that they're actually already zombies and they're kind of just...sitting there, groaning and mumbling ('Hmm. Dead crowd tonight' as one of the strippers hilariously worded it).

After just a tad bit too long of establishing these characters, the zombie patrons get kicked out as if they were street bums, and the sketchy manager decides to shut the club down early, since it's their final night before selling the building and he figures he'll let them all celebrate instead. Before they get to do that however, people start coming in to get out of the chaos of the zombie apocalypse outside, thus jump-starting business all over again and giving them their most profitable night all year – that is, until the zombie hordes get attracted by all the noise and music and find their way into the strip club as well, and it soon becomes the job of these tough-as-nails wise-cracking Strippers, and a temporary team-up with a biker gang led by a hilarious poetic 'The End is Nigh' kind of badass, to save everyone and fight off the zombie apocalypse that has spilled into their little slice of real estate.

And fight they do. Granted, the first half did slow to a crawl for a little bit, but just as I started to find myself bored, the second half of the movie kicked it into high gear and never let up until the credits started rolling. There are two things in the title of this movie, and it delivers all the way on both of them: This had all sorts of gory kick ass zombie-killing action, and not just by way of guns – this came complete with awesome make-shift weapons as well, such as one stripper taping her Stiletto shoe to a rod and using it as a hammer, and one really-old man zombie having his head explode because he can't take the death metal music that was playing over the radio system. But don't worry, it's not just the Strippers that get good kills in either, oh no, the zombies get some great stuff to do here as well, such as biting off fingers, ripping into stomachs, ripping someone's face off, and all sorts of various bites, scratches, and gougings. There was tons of blood and gore to be seen here, which surprised me quite a bit with how well done it all was (including the zombie make-up). Full Moon didn't give this movie its usual 25-cent CGI treatment, but instead opted to go with really well-done practical effects, and the movie came through a lot stronger because of that choice, so kudos on whoever came to that decision. There was even this one nightmare-inducing 'Big Boss' kind of zombie they had to go up against, that was some kind of weird pig-faced clown from a children's TV show-turned zombie, and the make-up work on that guy was astounding.  Nightmares for Jeff tonight!

As for the second part of this movie's title...well...It goes without saying that there is quite a lot of good eye candy and tons of toplessness. Most of the girls look smoking hot as it is (especially the main female lead), but I don't think the movie goes more then five minutes at any given time without throwing some nudity out for us. Hell, when one of the strippers gets lunged at by a zombie and she steps back to get away from it, it still manages to grab hold of her bra and rip it off. She then proceeds to spend the next ten minutes topless, until she finds a stripper nun costume...only to later have the front ripped off of that, leaving her breasts exposed for the rest of the movie. And that's just one of many examples I could use, not to mention any of the numerous actual stripping and dancing scenes themselves, with one particular pole dance scene coming towards the end that totally stole the movie.

Now the main problem I had with this movie, is it's clear that it wanted you to root for these characters, however that's pretty hard to do when every single person in the entire movie is assholish, sketchy, grimy, and totally unlikable. Not a single person in this movie is worth rooting for because these are all people that I would want to have die if a situation like this ever happened. Hell, I probably wouldn't even stick around with them long enough to see them die. It's also part of the reason why I'm not such a fan of the first half of the movie, since it was spending all that time building up these characters, when really, I didn't find myself caring about them at all, so it just made me more antsy for the zombie stuff to finally start. My other issue is, while it was nowhere near the soft-core porno that Killer Eye was, there was a tad bit too much sex going on. I mean, don't get me wrong – as a straight male I do love seeing hot girl sex scenes in movies, but like with everything else, it's best in moderation and not with such an over-abundance of it. Now here, thankfully, they were all pretty quick scenes and mostly done with some kind of comedic element at play with them so it wasn't too grating, but they did keep going back to that well just a tad bit much, in my opinion.

While the movie doesn't have much re-watch value behind it, it is a pretty fun way to pass a quick hour some stormy evening with a few beer, for a one-time watch. At the very least, it has some decent actors, excellent practical effects, inventive deaths, lots of blood, tons of toplessness, some hilarious sequences (including a Michael Jackson zombie moment), and an ending that may surprise some people as to who survives and who doesn't.

Not the best movie I've watched this week, but certainly Full Moon's best movie in a long time. It hits DVD in just a few weeks on July 10th, so if you're a Full Moon fan, or just a fan of either zombies or strippers in general, then I say pick this one up and give it a watch.


6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 90 mins

FORMAT: Netflix

PLOT: A group of researchers in Antarctica are abducted by a platoon of masked soldiers and dragged to a hidden continent in the center of the Earth. There, they discover that surviving Nazi soldiers are plotting an invasion of Earth to revive the Third Reich.

REVIEW: I honestly wasn't originally planning on doing a review for Nazis at the Center of the Earth, simply because I can't review every B-Movie I watch, I just watch way too many of them, and where I recently put out two reviews, one for Grimm's Snow White and one for Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver, with another one for Camel Spiders being prepped for the near-future, I was planning on just sitting back and enjoying Nazis at the Center of the Earth without having to worry about taking notes and doing up a review after. But by the time the credits started rolling I knew I just had to do a review of this one to help get the word out to fellow B-Movie lovers about just how good I found Asylum's latest offering to be.

Our main characters are all scientists at a remote facility in Antarctica, where they happen upon an entrance that leads down through the ice to another 'world' at the center of the earth, in which remnants of Nazi Germany are residing, led by the real-life Nazi war criminal made famous by his horrifying human experimentation, Dr. Josef Mengele, as they seek immortality by abducting people and using their flesh and body organs to replace their own when theirs expire.

To start, this movie already had me pretty much won over by mentioning and touching upon some of my more favorite conspiracy theories (yes, admittedly I'm a conspiracy theory nut), such as Nazis having top secret underground bases in Antarctica where they currently may still reside in secret to this day, Nazis working on UFO and futuristic technologies at said secret bases, that Hitler actually survived WWII, and that there was a secret battle between the U.S. Air Force and a UFO in the skies over Antarctica a few years back. Do I honestly believe these conspiracy theories? Well no, of course not (Though I am willing to be open to the idea of Hitler having survived WWII), but they're fun to think about and still among my favorites regardless, and it was great to see them all utilized here in one form or another. It's the attention to these little details that sometimes go a long way with me, and Asylum is normally pretty good at including those little details in their projects.

The acting from most everyone was surprisingly good. Yes, there were a few of the more minor characters who were about as good as to be expected from an Asylum movie (which is to say not very), but all the main cast, especially the lead scientist with questionable methods, as played by Starship Troopers' Jake Busey, were in top form, with their true acting chops coming out when they had to play their characters as being terrified; when these characters were screaming or being horrified, you believe them, and you feel the fear right along with them. Another shout-out has to go to actor Christopher Karl Johnson (Angels & Demons, Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes) who played the evil Dr. Josef Mengel to perfection. Every time he was on-screen, there was great tension as you just knew he was in the scene for a reason, and normally those reasons don't bode well for our captured good guys.

Which brings me to what I believe is the strongest aspects of this movie, and it's kind of a broad topic but it all interconnects. Nazis at the Center of the Earth is nothing if not atmospheric and genuinely creepy. Nazis alone is enough to make the movie a bit creepy, but this movie goes above and beyond what it has to, to paint them as a real genuine threat to the characters. Not once did I think 'well sure, they're the villains because the movie says they are, but they're so cartoony and laughable that I just don't see them as a threat'. Instead, I was on the edge of my seat whenever they were on-screen, knuckles white from clenching them in fear and ready to jump a mile high at the slightest unexpected noise in my darkened apartment. I'm not going to go into the details of individual scenes regarding them and some of the things they do, because to be spoiled on them would remove much of the tension, but what I will say is that this movie is certainly not for the feint of heart. There is plenty of blood, gore, disturbing imagery, and uncomfortable scenes that made me extremely anxious - there are quite a few scenes that even I found difficult to watch that made me squirm in my seat uncomfortably. Of course, it takes more then just horrifying subject matter to accomplish that. Sure, that's a large part of it but it could easily come across as hokey and eye-rollingly lame without excellent make-up and practical effects. From the look of the skinless and zombie-esqe Nazis to the various experimentation and operations done on the captured scientists, it all looked amazing and never once did it seem terribly fake or obvious (A first for Asylum, I believe).

But for those that are squeamish or easily creeped out, you'll be able to relax after a bit as the movie takes a surprising and sudden 180 degree turn midway through from being deadly atmospheric and disturbing to a full-on campy cheesefest filled with hilarious one-liners. How can a movie where zombie Nazis that rip people's skin off and group-rape women in a dimly-lit underground base turn into a hilarious cheesefest, you ask? Two words:

Robo-Hitler.

Yes, if you just saw the words 'Robo-Hitler' then you did indeed just read that correctly. In a sudden twist that I can honestly say I did not see coming, Hitler is revived as a giant CGI cyborg with a wide range of arsenal that includes a long-ass blade, machine gun arms, and green energy blasts that shoot from his chest. I am being 100% serious right now when I tell you that I shit you not on this.

And I loved it.

So so much. Only Asylum can turn such a genuinely disturbing and nightmare-inducing torture-porn movie into a laugh riot camp-ground and actually have it work. Adding to the amazingness that is Robo-Hitler is the fact that he also commands a gigantic Nazi UFO Doomsday Machine that breaks up through the ground of the Earth and rests in the skies above Antarctica, heading out to declare war on the rest of the world by pre-empting a biological attack by way of releasing flesh-eating bacteria above the major cities. This of course leads into the previously-mentioned battle between the U.S. Air Force and a UFO over Antarctica, but as to be expected, the fighter jets are no match for this Doomsday Machine and it's up to our escaped heroes to take it down from the inside. This part of the movie actually felt very similar, visually, to another Asylum movie titled Battle of Los Angeles, and upon doing some research discovered that the director of this, Joseph J. Lawson, had been the visual effects supervisor on that one, which would explain the similar visual style from the reveal of the Nazi UFO onwards.

I know this kind of movie isn't everyone's cup of tea, even among B-Movie fans, but I have to say that I personally really loved Nazis at the Center of the Earth. To me, it's near-perfect. There's really only two very minor stumbling blocks, the first of which is the fact that despite being out in the cold in the middle of Antarctica, there's no visible breath coming from any of the characters, not even crappy fake CGI breath and that kind of takes the viewer out of the movie for those scenes (though there is a scene where two of the characters end up outside in just their regular everyday clothes and they rush to grab warm jackets and gloves to put on, so props to the director for that little bit). The other minor detractor is that, putting Robo-Hitler and his UFO Doomsday Machine aside, most of the twists and character motivations in this movie are very predictable and easy to guess pretty early-on, leaving very little to be surprised by during the movie. But as I said, these are only minor issues that are easy to overlook when up against all the other excellent things in this movie.

Production value-wise, this is probably one of Asylum's best and most professional movies to date. Entertainment wise, while it may not be the best (Seriously, 2-Headed Shark Attack, Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, and Mega Python vs Gatoroid has that market pretty much covered), it's still really, really good and far better then I was expecting.

Also, be sure to stay through the End Credits for a short little stinger scene at the very end.

10/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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