|
|
By  Will, on March 27, 2012, 5:20 am  Starring Madison Charap, Troy Taylor, Ryan Larson, P.J. Palmer, Tim Baldini
Directed by Ted Nicolaou
Expectations: I hate Blair Witch, so a rip-off probably isn’t much better.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
“I love all the ghosts.”
That is one character’s protective mantra throughout the film and it became mine as I tried valiantly to remain conscious through the film’s running time. The funny thing though is that I actually enjoyed watching The St. Francisville Experiment for the most part, it’s just that so little happens and the characters far too uninteresting to make for an overall pleasing film. So why would I enjoy watching something like this? Well, because I’m a cinematic masochist of course, but besides that if you buy into it just enough it’s pretty easy to have fun with it. I can imagine a group of thirteen-year-old girls renting this for a slumber party and having an absolute ball.
The premise here is simple: there’s a haunted mansion and a film producer has rounded up four college students to go in with cameras and try to document some ghost activity. Everything is presented as if it were a real documentary; there are no opening credits and the film is all shot on handheld video cameras. Anyone that actually watches the movie shouldn’t be fooled past ten or fifteen minutes in, but at least initially it does a good job of selling the documentary “found footage” idea of the picture. Not that that’s original or anything. This film exists purely to shamelessly rip off the success of The Blair Witch Project. That film dropped the year before and Full Moon and company were quick to spring on its success. From my limited research into the found footage genre, this seems to be the first rip-off released after Blair Witch too, so if that truly is the case, you have to give Full Moon credit for moving faster than anyone else.
Continue reading The St. Francisville Experiment (2000) →
By  Stephen, on March 21, 2012, 5:20 am  Starring Youki Kudoh, Saemi Nakamura, Joe Romersa
Directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo
There isn’t much in the way of rules for what movies we review here at Silver Emulsion. Nevertheless, there are certain genres that get more attention than others. Anyone familiar with this site will be aware of the plethora of horror and martial arts films, and I would feel remiss if I didn’t add anything to these categories.
Quite some time ago I saw Blood: The Last Vampire. Back then, I felt it was average at best and wholly forgettable, at which point I promptly forgot everything about it. Years later, I watched Blood+, the TV series based upon the movie, and I thought about going back and watching the original again to see if it filled in any blanks or added anything new to the story. I never got around to doing it until I started talking to Will about this site, and that led to the aforementioned desire to give it a horror anime review. Suddenly, I had another reason to get off my duff and re-watch Blood. And now that I have, I’m not quite sure why I was so dismissive of it.
Continue reading Stephen reviews: Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) →
By Will, on March 20, 2012, 5:20 am  Starring Michael Bendetti, Denise Gentile, Anjanette Comer, Holly Floria, Robert Sampson, Holly Butler, Alex Datcher, Robert Burr, George Kelly, Mark Kemble
Directed by David Schmoeller
Expectations: Fairly high. Schmoeller has a good enough track record with Tourist Trap and Puppet Master.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
Sometimes when a film is able to capture the vibe of a place it creates a film worth talking about. Other times this backfires and we’re left with a film like Netherworld. Shot on location in New Orleans, Louisiana, the film definitely takes on the slow-paced New Orleans vibe, but in a film about a cult turning people into manbirds, a degree of urgency should inform the film. OK, OK, it’s not exactly about manbirds, but Full Moon and director David Schmoeller do try to make you think it is within the first few minutes, when a stone hand adorned with Egyptian runes flies out of a crypt and onto the face of a violent rapist of a man and quickly transforms him into a crude man-sized bird (Think dude with giant cardinal head).
Now, I’d love to tell you that the rest of the film is about the stone hand rampaging around, turning men into hybrid manbirds; the flock eventually rising up against their evil creators. Or maybe an elder manbird taking a newly hatched manbird under his wing and showing him the ropes, training him for his ultimate finale against the evil creator. Nope, sorry. Instead, right after the massive manbird bomb (or egg, if you prefer) is dropped, the film completely, and I mean completely, drops that line of the plot and starts up a brand new one involving a son inheriting his father’s incredible New Orleans mansion.
Continue reading Netherworld (1992) →
By Will, on March 6, 2012, 5:20 am  Mansion of the Doomed (1976)
AKA Massacre Mansion, Eyes of Dr. Chaney, Eyes of the Living Dead, House of Blood, The Terror of Dr. Chaney
Starring Richard Basehart, Gloria Grahame, Trish Stewart, Lance Henriksen, Al Ferrara, JoJo D’Amore, Donna Andresen, Marilyn Joi, Katherine Fitzpatrick, Katherine Stewart, Vic Tayback
Directed by Michael Pataki
Expectations: Pretty high for some reason. This one looks fun.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
Here’s a movie that just gets more and more fucked up as it goes on, which could go either way, but I found Mansion of the Doomed to only get better as it moved along its tortured path of eye trauma. It’s not going to win any awards (even the genre ones), but it definitely packs in a lot of twisted, fucked-up thrills for those in the audience that can find entertainment in such things.
Richard Basehart plays Dr. Chaney, an eye surgeon who one day accidentally blinds his own daughter in a car crash. Being an idealistic doctor with a God complex, he takes it upon himself to correct her eye sight at all costs and researches different methods and techniques until he stumbles upon a doctor who has successfully transplanted entire eyeballs from one animal to another of the same species. Chaney knows that animal eyes won’t work in a human, but if only he could get some live, human specimens, it could work! The horror movie literally writes itself from this point on.
Continue reading Mansion of the Doomed (1976) →
By Will, on February 28, 2012, 5:20 am  Starring Chuck Connors, Jocelyn Jones, Jon Van Ness, Robin Sherwood, Tanya Roberts, Dawn Jeffory, Keith McDermott, Shailar Coby
Directed by David Schmoeller
Expectations: Pretty high, actually. This poster is pretty damn good.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
Tourist Trap is an interesting movie in that it’s both boring and oddly enchanting, daring you to close your eyes and not be haunted by the creepy mannequins with the mouths that open too wide which populate the more tense moments of the film. It’s a hard film to rate because I genuinely enjoyed and got a lot of entertainment out of it, but it’s almost completely devoid of plot and what is there is pretty obvious right from the get go to anyone even remotely familiar with horror films.
The film opens with a guy rolling a tire down a dirt road. He’s hot, tired and obviously a long way from home. He finds a gas station/restaurant and goes inside seeking some help with his tire. No one is around, but he hears something that makes him check out the backroom. He approaches the figure laying in the bed and it quickly springs up to surprise him. It’s just a mannequin, but when the guy turns to leave the room, the door slams shut and everything starts to go completely apeshit. Windows shut without anyone near them, chairs rattle, mannequins burst forth from closet doors. He’s eventually killed by a hurtling lead pipe that pins him to the door he’s been desperately trying to claw his way out of the entire scene. And this is only the beginning of the nightmare for this guy and his friends…
Continue reading Tourist Trap (1979) →
|
Follow Me on Other Platforms!
|
Recent Comments