
if only they were screaming at something frightening (Beneath Still Waters). bottle-blonde will also end up having sex with a zombie-ghost, fyi.
sci-fi weekend horror movie round-up!
MINOTAUR - Set in ancient Greece, chronicling the mythic struggles of fragile little Athenian "virgins" who have been sacrificed to the bull-man (who is really, really, gross, with his rotten flesh and dripping blood and exposed gums and shit... I mean, he makes orcs look well-scrubbed) except Theseus the wonderboy dies in this version. I'm not spoiling anything because no one should ever see this atrocious movie.
Fun Fact: Theseus is here nicknamed Theo!
Grade: F - NOT RECOMMENDED
BEYOND LOCH NESS - Somehow Nessie the tortured sea-serpent has moved to a North American lake and is breeding children that look like velociraptors made out of rubber chickens. That's all I have to say.
Fun Fact: Leo from Charmed plays the scientist/hunter/hat-wearing-hero!
Grade: F - NOT RECOMMENDED
BENEATH STILL WATERS - One of those "evil spirits come out of yonder body of water in droves to terrorize townspeople", and in this one the cliche was the idiot town mayor who, as in Jaws, insists that the "celebration" he's planning for the town must go on, despite people being eaten by the perpetually murky water containing dried-up zombie-ghosts who, despite looking like bags of bones, can drown even the most drunken Spanish groundskeeper.
Fun Fact: This cosmopolitan movie had a British reporter, Spanish policemen (and police tape!), lots of "Spanish"-speaking blondes, and a Danish-looking scuba guy!
Grade: D - NOT RECOMMENDED
UNREST - Set in a morgue and using "real bodies" (a fact this movie is very proud of), this "independent" doozy is about a med student and her boytoy who realize that there's a cursed cadaver in the vaults who brings woe to all who messes with it. Except it's not really the body that's pissed off... it's the Aztec god that the body, in life, pissed off, by uncovering 50,000 skeletons of his human sacrifices. I don't know. Lots of blood and decomposition and gratuitous nudity (of both living, pretty bodies and un-living, un-pretty bodies). Pretty cheapy, although at least it wasn't annoying.
Fun Fact: Has more geographical and historical inaccuracies than any movie I have ever seen (such as, the Aztecs were never in Brazil)!
Grade: C - NOT RECOMMENDED
GHOSTDANCERS - Yeah, um, glad I didn't see this at TriBeCa (although still regretting that I saw Hatchet instead). A group of dumbass yuppies dance on three graves "in the psycho section of the cemetery" because the undertaker leaves a letter on their friend's grave telling them to, and are thus plagued with hauntings. They get help from the worst paranormal investigators ever (and follow the standard cliche of stupid, selfish paranormal investigators who just make things worse blah blah blah). What killed it was the ghosts. They start out ok, especially when they're invisible poltergeists... but once you see them, it turns into, well... live-action Scooby-Doo. By the end there's what my mom called the "super ghost", a gigantic translucent skull head the size of a tank, chasing the survivors. I mean, this didn't scare
me, and before you ask, it was not near funny or campy enough to be a parody.
Fun Fact: The older brother from Prison Break plays the main character!
Grade: F - NOT RECOMMENDED
BENEATH - Hooray for a director who can edit at least as well as most AMV-makers and acting that isn't completely trash. While hardly a
good movie, at least this had a solid plot (that held my mother's attention as well as frightening her). And other sci-fi movies, learn from this one:
do not show your monsters. learn the art of subtlety. Two sisters are in a car wreck. Older sister is terribly burned (yeah, if burning and burn victims scares you, this movie may be difficult) and later dies. Younger sister has lots of nightmares, psychological problems, clairvoyancy, etc. She's been sent to numerous rehab centers but returns to her older sister's home to stay with her brother-in-law's family in a Rockies mining town (this movie gets an A+ in scenery), still convinced as ever that her older sister was buried alive. Was she? Is her vengeful spirit the "dark thing" that her creepy daughter thinks lurks in the red-velvet mansion, killing off the nasty brother-in-law's relations? Or does younger sister just need more counseling? Dun dun dun!
Fun Fact: The main actress is constantly wearing black lacy off-the-shoulder funeral dresses!
Grade: B - RECOMMENDED.