31 horror reviews #12- The Last House On The Left

Vengeance Friends and Neighbors. This movie is a great movie about revenge. Both the original and the remake are excellent examples of the genre. Mari gets in real trouble. When she is raped and kidnapped she has the wherewithal to trick her captors into taking her nearer to her house. She and her friend are left for dead and the captors actually take refuge at Mari's house. Soon her parents discover the truth. Now it is their turn to do a little torture. So awesome.
Watch it soon!
I give it 9/10.
Be excellent to each other.
(-
=)
~BAT

31 horror reviews #11- A Nightmare on Elm Street

One two, Friends and Neighbors. Wes Craven's 1984 masterpiece is indeed a great movie. Certainly there are flaws however the tale of Freddy Kreuger begins strong here. Nancy fights the evil in some of the most surreal terror of the series. This is well before Freddy became a complete joke, but he does play for some laughs. Also the debut of Johnny Depp is notable. He dies inal a most gruesome manner.
I give this one 8/10.
Be excellent to each other.
(-
=)
~BAT

Horror Reviews #10- Night of the Living Dead

They're coming to get you friends and neighbors. Night is the best of the Romero movies. It established a genre and is simply horrifying. Ben faces off against a hysterical Barbara, the tyrannically short sighted Cooper oh and there are zombies too.
I give it 10/10.
Be excellent to each other.
(-
=)
~BAT

31 Horror Reviews #9 Horror Hotel or City of the Dead

Hi Friends and Neighbors.  You a fan of Rob Zombie?  How about White Zombie?  There is a difference isn't there.  Well you have no doubt known that Rob is a fan of the old school horror.  One of these is Horror Hotel or City of the Dead.  That opening dialogue, "Superstition, fear, jealousy" is from this movie.  Spoken by Christopher Lee.  Pretty cool.  So here we have a college girl who goes off to a town where she is not supposed to go.  Lo and behold the people there are strange, puritanical and just a bit off.  Still she stays - until she is stabbed.  Why?  Sacrifice.  This town is old man, like really old.  Over 300 years old.  Blood sacrifice keeps them around.  They worship the devil.  Our hero may change midway, but the story is the strong.  It has been compared to psycho in this way, both coming out at the same time one can see the similarities.  It is like Deep Impact and Armageddon in that way.  Psycho was better, but still this is a good one.  So I suggest you watch it.  It is public domain, so likelyhood holds that you can get it for a buck just about anywhere or even Netflix it. 
I give it 6/10 for being so neat.
Be excellent to each other.
(-
=)
~BAT

31 Horror Reviews #8 Dracula A.D.1972

Groovytimes Friends and Neighbors.  This review is for Dracula A.D. 1972.  A wonderoulsy magnificent film about a bunch of brittish mod-hippie-punk-counter culture types who get involved in the black arts and summon the great Dracula.  Now this is the first of the modern Dracula tales by Hammer.  It stars the greats Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.  A good movie in the making.
So the begining is pretty much the storyline of Hair, well the dinner scene.  Much like any good bunch of teens in the late 60's and early 70's these kids are running around leeching off of the establishment.  What is better than getting free food and trashing some rich guy's house?  Well that gets boring, what with the cops and all coming to bust them, so they head to their club to discuss their next outing.  Why not summon something in a ritual?  So about a third of the way into the movie we discover that these kids are influenced by a creepy dude that apparently serves Dracula.  What is more?  The main girl is Van Helsing's decendant!  Okay now we have something.  Following a series of dull events, soon both Van Helsing and Dracula are back and doing battle.  Dracula's kills are neat but not too over the top.  Hippie kids die.  It is grand.
Watch this one, but only after the rest of the Hammer series, they are not too bad.
I give this one 7/10 since so much of the movie is non-Dracula.
Be excellent to each other,
(-
=)
~BAT

31 Horror Reviews #7 Ghoulies

I'm late Friends and Neighbors!  Okay so I guess I missed the deadlines here on a couple of these... however I will be keeping true to the spirit of this endeavor.  The next few episodes will consist of a catchup of the horror reviews and the total will be 31 - you have my word as a hero.   What's more, I will not skimp on the quality that you have come to expect out of Tales to Astonish, so never fear.  We will be posting multiple issues per day so keep reading. 
As I have told you before, I used to love looking at the covers of horror videos that I was never able to rent and imagine how cool they were by the artwork.  One such film that I had wonderful ideas about was Ghoulies.  Some green monster comes out of the toilet to get you?  Awesome right?  Well, I watched it the other day on Netflix... bad move.  The movie is terrible.
First of all, the movie is all about demonic summoning.  It is more like a D&D movie with a ritual than what it appears to be on the poster.  So yeah, dude inherits a house, has college parties and then raises a dead warlock guy.  Warlock apparently is his father... yeah of course he is his father.  Next thing you know we witness the breakdown of his life and the new warlock father takes over and tries to kill the dude's girl.  The supporting cast does have the 'ghoulies' but they are not nearly as cool as hoped.  There are these two dwarfs that are pretty cool.  Again, this is a D&D movie, not really a horror film, though it is horrible.
I give it a 2/10 for the two dwarfs.  They were neat.
Be excellent to each other,
(-
=)
~BAT

31 Horror Reviews #6 Phantasm

Terrifying times Friends and Neighbors. This review is all about one of the most acclaimed yet relatively lame horror movies ever. Of course I am talking about Phantasm. Yeah, the one with the silver ball. As a youth I used to look at the horror movie covers at the video store and one of the most scary ones was that silver ball. What did it do? Where did it come from?
So I watched this crap. The creepy "tall man" is spooky. However most of the story is terribly full of conjecture. Who knows what is supposed to be going on? Some kid and his older brother or something are messing around with this guy's operation - which appears to be taking bodies under the guise of a mortician. He has no powers, but is maybe invincible. He has minions and this magic flying ball at his disposal. Oh and a mirror that goes to a parallel dimension or something. Blah blah, nothing makes sense.
So the ball scene. All you need to see is this and maybe the tall man walking around. Well the kid is running around the tall man's pad and here comes flying a silver ball to kill the kid. Oh yeah it has blades and drills that come out. Well it misses the kid and gets another guy in the face. This is kinda cool. It hits his face and drills his brain so hard that the man pees his pants.
Otherwise the movie is crap.
I give it 3/10 for the creepy tall man.
Be excellent to each other.
(-
=)
~BAT

31 Horror Reviews #5 - Puppet Master

Pull the strings Friends and Neighbors. Today I will review a more well known classic, the direct to video Puppet Master. This movie introduced the world to the puppet creations of the old Puppet Master Toulon.
Toulon you see was an old man who had some puppets way back in the 30s. Well wouldn't you know the Nazis come along and kill Toulon. His nice puppet friends are sad and locked away in the walls of his hotel room.
Flash forward to the 80s. A group of friends apparently are each some sort of psychic and are all called to the funeral of a former member of their group. This part is like the Big Chill but with murders. The puppets start killing people and damn it looks like things are all messed up.
So you kinda get some backstory now, Toulan apparently knew ancient Egyptian secrets about animating the inanimate. Now their dead friend has used the power on himself and became a living dead puppet. What is worse he has taken control of the puppets of Toulan! Well never fear in the end our heroes, I refer to the puppets here as heroes since they are who you watch this stuff for. The jester is the leader and he sees his master acting all evil and decides to revolt, killing their master with he help of pinhead and blade. The lead character survives by the skin of his hide and lives to escape into insanity. The puppets are left to their own devices.
This film is a good one, worthy of watching a couple times.
I give this movie 8/10 for Harryhausen like effects and a generally cool feeling.
Be excellent to each other,
(-
=)
~BAT

31 Horror Reviews #4 - Zombie Women of Satan

Oi there Friends and Neighbors!  Going from Compton last time to London - well somewhere in the Brittish Isles.  So now I review Zombie Women of Satan.  Oh yes indeed this is one jolly rotten flick.  It features the wonderful world of brittish / irish freak show performers who stumble ass backwards into a zombie-like nightmare.  Our heroes, including the Pervo the Clown and Zeus the midget strongman, go on a television / internet show wherein they are trapped by the oddest family since the Firefly crew.  Unbeknownst to any of them, the family is running some sort of brothel, experimentation freak fest of their own.
Honestly the movie is pretty funny, but it is absolutely nonsensical.  These folks fight with each other more than the zombies.  The zombies are in reality some sort of infected...something... they never seem to say.  But let's get real Friends and Neighbors, the only thing this movie is about is showing half naked girls covered in blood attacking stupid people.  Watch it for laughs.   Spoiler alert- there is no mention of Satan what-so-ever.
I give this flick a 5/10 because it shows plenty of humor and is relatively vaudevillian performance.
As always,
Be excellent to each other.
(-
=)
~BAT

31 Horror Reviews #3 - Mutant Vampire Zombies from the Hood

Check yo self Friends and Neighbors.  Today's movie review is Straight Outta Compton.   Perhaps one of the saddest zombie movies I have ever been subjected to, "Mutant Zombie Vampires from the Hood" stars C. Thomas Howell as a police officer who is out to catch the hoodlums dealing drugs in the inner city.   He and his partner, we will call him Murtaugh, get in a shoot out as the leader of the asian gang (we will call them Dragons) and the leader of the black gang (the bloods) are in a dispute over a hostage / drug deal/  Along comes a solar flare - oh my!  This proceeds to knock everyone unconscious.
They awaken to find that the world has changed.  After some time the bloods leader meets up with his friend who has been killed by zombies.  Luckily he is saved by the old mexican man, Julio.  You can't make this up folks.  So after showing the bloods leader how the zombies are terrible and monsters, in a scene that is absolutely hilarious wherein our heros watch - via binoculars from a nearby building - as zombies rip the arm off of a helpless woman and proceed to eat it.  Oh, but before they eat the arm they also of course rip her clothes off so she goes running topless at the camera and presumed armless safety...  This girl is actually credited as "Gratuitous Nudity Zombie."  At least they don't take themselves seriously.
So the obligatory team up for survival happens, cop and gangster and gangster set out to find safety.  Along the way they encounter a woman and her father who have the answers, maybe.  They find it hard to get to safety when all of the zombies are not only semi-aware but also quite randy.  Yep, apparently the zombies that come from a solar flare become rapists.  Geez.  Still the final solution remains elusive and you can predict the rest.
I give this one 4/10 on because of C. Thomas Howell and the cajones to use rapist zombies.
As always,
Be excellent to each other.
(-
=)
~BAT

31 Horror Reviews #2 - Zombiethon

Blargh Friends and Neighbors!  Today's review is for a simple little flick that came out of the home video boom of the mid 1980s, a feature created directly for home video called "Zombiethon."  This is a real gem of a picture.  It takes several zombie movies and shows all of the best parts in clip format.  These clips are framed loosely with the story of several women running for their lives into an old theater only to find that the zombies are inside watching the shows.  

Part one features "Zombi" - Lucio Fulci's half sequel to "Dawn of the Dead."  Here you can see all the best scenes of zombie killing and even the famous zombie vs. shark scene without having to watch the rest of the movie.  Shown in sequence and in bloody detail, witness the story told in an incoherent way that somehow still makes sense.   

Part two brings us "Zombie Lake" which is probably best viewed here.  From what we at Tales can tell is that some Nazi's were killed and thrown in the lake.  Then some skinny dippers came along years later and the sight of all the naked girls turned the Nazis into zombies and they attacked.   Not a great film at all, but this one is not watched for good, I think this was an attempt at zombie porn.  In that case it is Skinamax worthy.

"Oasis of the Dead", "Fear" and "Virgin among the living dead" come along and bewilder us at this point with the questions of why and the thankfulness that this is only Netflix.  Blargh indeed.  

"The Invisible Dead" provides us with an interesting look at an invisible man who attacks the living... especially naked girls.  However the next thing you know it appears he is not a man but a monkey-thing?  Yeah... that is what I said.

Finally the film features "The Astro-Zombies" which is all about aliens being made into zombies... but there is some evil Chinese woman and some other guys in the mob... oh who knows it is terribad.  

So there you have "Zombiethon"  Check it out if you are looking for some laughs.  

I give it 4/10 on the Bat-scale due to "Zombi" being featured with the eye in wood scene and the shark.  Also Zombie Lake for having an eight girl skinny dipping scene with Nazi zombies attacking them.  Worth watching for that alone.

As always,

Be excellent to each other.

(-

=)

~BAT

31 Horror Reviews #1 - Dracula vs Frankenstein

October is here Friends and Neighbors! To celebrate, we will be reviewing 31 horror movies in a row. Yeah that means one per day. Stay tuned folks!
"Dracula vs Frankenstein"
Okay, wow this is a terrible film. This 1971 flick features some heavily cool folks though. Angelo Rossitto is featured in a perfect role, as a barker at a freak show. Also this movie features the final horror appearance of Lon Chaney Jr. Though he performs amazingly given the material, it is clear how the cancer had ravaged his body.
So these hippies come along and discover a mad doctor who is killing people to perform experiments on them. Multiple killings and events occur and finally the police show up to kill everybody. The heroine is the only one to escape. End.
But wait...that was the original movie. Filmed in 1969 Somebody, apparently in a drunken moment, made the call to add Dracula and the Frankenstein monster. So they film some new scenes in 1971 with a clearly aged cast and mix them in to create an even more incoherent story.
So, Dracula shows up. Apparently Dracula here is David Schwimmer's dad, sporting a Jew-fro and bad pancake makeup in his face. He talks with an echo and blinks as he talks. Dracula wants to use the Frankenstein monster to kill people and make Dracula invincible. However, the monster looks like terrible. He sure is strong- can lift a moose, but he appears to have been hit in the face with about 10 baseballs.
So somehow Dracula gets mad, incinerated things with his ring and tries to sacrifice the girl... For no reason...until the monster of course revolts. They fight in the woods and die. Lame
So on the Bat-scale I give it a 2/10. 2 is only because of the two star cameos.
Come back tomorrow!
Be excellent to each other.
(-
=)
~BAT