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mpstjohn
Edward Lee
Anne Rice
Jack Ketchum
Poppy Z. Brite
H.P. Lovecraft
Victor Hugo
Caleb Carr
Chuck Palahniuk
Henry James
Neil Gaiman
Brett Easton Ellis
Ray Bradbury
James Patterson
Phillip K. Dick
Jeffrey Deaver
Favorite Books:
Goat
The Virgin Suicides
A Scanner Darkly
Invisible Monsters
The Turn of the Screw
Violin
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Favorite Horror Movies:
1. Black Christmas (1974)
2. Audition
3. Alien
4. The Fly (1986)
5. May
6. Stir of Echoes
7. Inside
8. The Devil�s Backbone
9. Saw
10. Frailty
11. Opera
12. Deep Red
13. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
14. Anguish
15. Perfect Blue
16. The Thing
17. My Bloody Valentine
18. Return of the Living Dead
19. Re-Animator
20. Halloween
21. Alice Sweet Alice
22. 28 Weeks Later
23. 28 Days Later
24. Hard Candy
25. Alien3
26. In the Mouth of Madness
27. Creepshow
28. Monster Squad
29. 30 Days of Night
30. The Brood
31. Teeth
32. Cherry Falls
33. Ringu 2
34. The Ruins
35. The Ring
36. Slither
37. Dawn of the Dead (2004)
38. The Descent
39. Event Horizon
40. Kairo
Favorite Movies:
01. The Salton Sea
02. Mosquito Coast
03. Black Christmas (1974)
04. May
05. Hard Candy
06. Hunt for Red October
07. Rear Window
08. The Fly (remake)
09. Man on Fire
10. Perfect Blue (Anime)
11. A Scanner Darkly
12. Battle Royale
13. Audition
14. Kingdom of Heaven
15. I Confess
16. Heavenly Creatures
17. Alien
18. Inside Man
19. Raiders of the Lost Ark
20. Dark City
21. Touch of Evil
22. Session 9
23. Identity
24. Fight Club
25. The Thing (remake)
26. Alien 3
27. The Prestige
28. Witness
29. Donnie Darko
30. Shawshank Redemption
31. Memento
32. The I Inside
33. A Simple Plan
34. Saw
35. Legend
36. Poltergeist
37. Kairo
38. Pan's Labyrinth
39. Zodiac
40. Stand by Me
41. Tombstone
42. The Devil's Backbone
43. Secretary
44. Gattaca
45. Smokin' Aces
46. Saw 3
47. The Rules of Attraction
48. Garden State
49. Red Dragon
50. Batman Begins
51. Minority Report
52. Brick
53. Batman Returns
54. Return to Oz
55. 300
56. V for Vendetta
57. Big Trouble in Little China
58. The Burbs
59. Young Sherlock Holmes
60. The Baxter
61. Grimm Brothers' Snow White
62. Running Scared
63. Memento Mori
64. Stir of Echoes
65. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
66. Manderlay
67. History of Violence
68. The Hole
69. Dogville
70. Mission Impossible 3
71. Evil Dead 2
72. Constantine
73. Following
74. The Big Lebowski
75. Mean Creek
76. The Lookout
77. 28 Days Later
78. Cypher
79. The Hole
80. Unknown
81. Cop Land
82. Casino Royale (2006)
83. Unleashed
84. Se7en
85. Collateral
86. Event Horizon
87. Return of the Living Dead
88. Panic Room
89. The Machinist
90. Escape from New York
91. Dawn of the Dead (remake)
92. Narc
93. The Butterfly Effect
94. American Splendor
95. Derailed
96. The Jacket
97. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (70s remake)
98. Suicide Kings
99. Opera
100. The Ring
Reviews
Of Unknown Origin (1983)
Peter Weller is outsmarted by a rat
You know that one guy who'd do anything to get you fired, destroy your house, alienate you from your friends and family, chew through your surge protector? You know, the usual. Well, imagine if that guy was a poodle-sized sewer rat.
I wondered going into this movie why Peter Weller would agree to star in what is essentially the rat-equivalent of Jaws: The Revenge. I got my answer about twenty seconds into the film, where it opens on a shot of Shannon Tweed, playing Weller's wife here, showering. Umm, okay.
She leaves, along with Weller's extremely dimwitted kid to stay at a hotel (only to pop up later in the movie scantily-clad back in her hotel or in a dream sequence in order to meet some strange 80s boob quota I suppose).
Weller is doing fine by himself, (staying behind to finish some work), until the dishwasher overflows, eventually upsetting a rat who decides to move into his apartment. Its hard to gauge just how big this thing is supposed to be until it decides to crawl up under the covers in Weller's bed later, apparently he's the size of a tomcat.
Weller does his best to get rid of the rat, upgrading from normal rat traps to (what are basically) miniature bear traps. When the medieval rat traps don't work or come back gnawed on he decides to get a cat, which also comes back gnawed on (or replaced with a cheap stuffed animal that resembles his cat). When he decides to ignore the rat he chews on on his surge protector, fuse box, and therein cutting off the power.
Weller runs around the house, bashing holes into walls in search of the rat, is plagued by nightmares of birthday parties where the giant rat jumps out of a sheet cake (?), and where his dimwitted kid ends up mixing in various rat poisons in with his cereal. The finale brought to mind Arachnophobia as it ended in a dank basement; the film ending maybe twelve seconds after the rat's been dispatched as Weller brushes himself off as if the last two hours hadn't just happened just in time to greet his wife and kid at the front door. I'm sure they won't notice the completely demolished apartment.
Freddy's Nightmares (1988)
Wow! Where to begin?
I'm a bit conflicted over this. The show is on one hand awful, the acting is terrible (even when we get actual name actors like Brad Pitt and Bill Moseley in one episode), the dialogue is moronic and the premise/moral of each episode feels like something lifted out of a 50s educational short. There's no way you'll be scared for a moment from any of these episodes, and Robert Englund's cameos are short, pointless and corny in a sort of a Bob Saget on America's Funniest Home Videos kind of way.
On the other hand this is one of the funniest things to ever be on television. The 80s fashions, the soft focus makes the actors look like their on the set of The View at all times, the premises lend the material more to self-parody than scares, so we're left with an episode where a high school kid is afraid if he fails his SAT's his girlfriend will dump him and his parents disown him, another is afraid she'll be locked up in prison because she's a substandard mom (her husband is played by Brad Pit), another is afraid that all the parents in the world are in league against him when he runs away from home, another is afraid she'll be confused with her socially-retarded twin, another is afraid if he doesn't break up his mom and step-dad he'll get killed for having a party at his house. The list goes on and on.
Being that these are dreams I suppose you could look past the ludicrous plot points and devices, but they're so out of left field that there's no opportunities for the writers to actually scare the audience. You have characters dressed like something out of a 80s-themed nightmare wandering around delivering bad dialogue in very hammy fashion and making illogical decisions that serve no other purpose but to move the story to the next weird plot point (typically watching as a peripheral character does something uncharacteristic of a sane person while our main character stares aghast and too shocked to do anything about it).
If you're looking for something that'll scare you stay away. If you're looking, on the other hand, for one of the funniest things to come out of the 80s ever. Watch it.
Its been showing on Chiller TV lately (pretty much every day) and I've been watching, earlier out of morbid curiosity, and now just so I can get a good laugh in each day. With Arrested Development and Extras off the air this is officially the funniest thing on television right now.
Henjel gwa Geuretel (2007)
One of the better Korean horror films (Very Minor Spoilers)
The best Korean horror films seem to work because of the screenwriter and director's ability to blend elements of both horror and drama in such a way that you simply cannot give up on the characters in the story, no matter how much you might dislike them.
This is definitely the case with Hansel & Gretel, a film which if all you know about the film is the title you will find something very much the opposite of your expectations.
No this isn't really a story about two children being taken in by a witch. Quite the opposite in fact and despite being led to believe by the title that you've heard this story before and are now only going to experience a slight variation you're in for something very different from the typical Asian horror horror film. None of that Ringu long-haired ghost nonsense here.
Where the Koreans have recently excelled its in their need to produce something new and not fall back into recent genre trends. This film is no different. You're not entirely certain who to root for until the second major plot point, you're not sure of the victims, nor the victimizers. More so, you're not sure how you might arrive at a happy ending or a simple solution. There is none in sight.
When all is said and done, the story of a man, surviving a car accident and happening upon a house and an eccentric family in the deep woods (don't worry, they're not gonna pull a Sixth Sense on you) you realize you experienced the Korean equivalent of Pan's Labyrinth, a story about children and their strange capacity to realize real evil through the filter of their imaginations (don't worry they're not gonna pull a Bridge to Terabithia on you either).
Stay Alive (2006)
Not bad at all for PG-13. Quite good, actually.
I had no intention of seeing this until I started to hear good things about it. I have become jaded by PG-13 horror films lately. Even some of the better ones (Skeleton Key) end up at the very least being the sorts of films I would never want to see again. Remakes in the genre in particular have left me with the impression that I'll end up laughing more often than actually being intimidated by what I'm watching (Fog remake, When a Stranger Calls remake).
This film, despite the occasional plot hole, the lame dubbed-in screaming, and casting of Frankie Muniz as, well, Malcolm, isn't all that bad. If someone didn't tell me this was a PG-13 I wouldn't think it was anything less than a toned down R-rating. The cutting away from the violence didn't get on my nerves the way I thought it would, the directing isn't all that bad.
The characters, one in particular, kept slinging catch-phrases which got on my nerves but not to the point that I totally disliked them. This film doesn't make the mistake that most PG-13 films do (Pulse-remake) of showing too much. The ending doesn't really have a twist, so much as an open ending, so for that I'm grateful. They didn't try to explain too much, perhaps in this case, too little instead. The movie wasn't necessarily scary, but unlike every other PG-13 film in this genre I can understand why it might scare some people.
All in all it was better than I expected. Not ultra violent, but then I don't see why a supernatural film would need to be. Muniz got on my nerves, but then take his character from Malcolm in the Middle out of the context of that show and into something a little more serious and thats bound to happen. That's what they did here.
Not great, not terrible. But good. I'd say a 8 out of 10.