Director: Billy Senese Starring: Shane Carruth, Poorna Jagannathan, Jeremy Childs, Bill Feehely, J Thomas Bailey. USA. 1h 33m
For the most part Dead Center seems to be built on the idea of keeping its audience in a perpetual state of WTF tinged with the feeling that something is creepily wrong. Shane Carruth, stars as Dr Forrester, the eggfree shrink who genuinely cares for people and is often pulled up by his superiors for trying to help everyone, his concerns are not budget related but actually trying to make people better. The really interesting aspect of the films that slowly creeps out from between the slowly driven office politics.
Director: Thomas Grieser
Starring: Thomas Grieser, Ursula Grieser, Wolfgang Grieser, Timo Homburg Germany. 1h 09m
There’s something about Griesers career as a movie director that has hints of Don Dohler, not necessarily, subject and quality but determination and drive, it’s a similar energy. For those who aren’t aware, Dohler had a run of trashy sci fi movies in early 80’s including Fiend, Galaxy Invader, The Alien Factor and Nightbeast which have recently started gaining a small cult following.
Director: Dale Fabrigar Starring:Lance Henriksen, Dwyane Standridge, Frank Lammers, Giovannie Espiritu, Catherine Healy. USA. 1h 20m
What starts out as a lavish murder mystery on a train, soon turns into a bizarre nonsensical run through the forest from a devious gruesome monster, or something like that.
Director: Juan Piquer Simón Starring: Jack Scalia, R. Lee Ermey, Ray Wise, Ely Pouget, Deborah Adair,John Toles-Bey. Spain/USA. 1h 19m
If you’re a fan of underwater horrors such as The Abyss, Leviathan, DeepStar Six etc, then this film will feel really familiar to you. Often seen as a BMovie version of the movies mentioned above due to its lack of originality in the plot, the film is often praised for providing a decent entertaining sucker punch for it’s limitations. Considering that 1989 was the sterling breakthrough for deep sea thrillers involving a host of alien and mutant creatures, it’s a strange step backwards to watch Endless Descent ride on their back 2 years later, but for all its flaws it’s incredibly watchable.
Director: Hank Braxtan Starring: James Remar, Sherilyn Fenn, Ron Carlson, Graham Greene, Gregory Crux .USA. 1h 29m
A year after his gross toxic adventure featuring a group of strong femme friends in Chemical Peel (2014), Hank Braxtan is back with a similar environmental disaster movie, but this time a similar uncaring tech company aren’t illegally transporting chemicals but instead they have something dangerous brewing in their icy labs.
There seems to be a drive within Braxtan to warn us of the dangers of covert labs and the dark secret organizations who are totally ruthless with their chemical waste and with arcane unrelenting needs to control nature. In the opening scene we have a gleaming smile from the cult actor Ray Wise who is the spokesman for Clobirch claiming to be an environmentally conscious company they have everyone’s interests at heart.. But no one is fooled.
Set in Humboldt County, California, and filmed over 5 days, a film now commonly known as the Blairquatch Project emerges from the forest to (not) wow it’s audience with the adventures of a Bigfoot enthusiast who drags his girlfriend into the wild to hunt bigfoot for his birthday treat. Continue reading Willow Creek (2013)→
Director: Max Perrier Starring: Jared Cohn, Ardis Barrow, Victoria Curtain .USA. 1h 35m
A romp through the woods in search of secret fields of dope, turns into a hellish nightmare, filled with native tribal monsters and strange dangerous entities in Max Perrier’s tepid horror.
The typical loser, while down on his luck, calls in a debt from a friend which involves trading all outstanding money for whatever homegrown he has been busy growing out in the wilderness. Eager to get his hands on the green gold he heads out speedily with his girlfriend but finds his sister stowed away in the back of the pick up before finding the sweet spot. She’s a pain in the ass but another pair of hands and they’ve gone too far to turn back. Continue reading Feed the Devil (2015)→
Director: Leigh Whannell Starring: Elisabeth Moss, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid, Harriet Dyer, Michael Dorman, Oliver Jackson-Cohen . Australia/USA. 2h 04m
So many years after the temptatious story of the Invisible Man by the legendary H G Wells, later made into a Black and White Classic by Universal Studios. The implausible idea of a chemical formula to make humans invisible has now been cleverly updated to an optical genius and a camera suit but why would we need such an application in this day and age? Infiltrating rival governments? To make an invisible army to take over the world or just a tool to torment an ex girlfriend who dared to leave a toxic relationship?
Director: Don Leifert. Starring. Don Leifert, Richard Nelson, Elaine White, George Stover, Greg Dohler, USA. 1h 30m.
A gothic styled ghoul horror with a touch of mom and pa sleuths is the strange workable combination that Don Leifert had forged together for his follow up to the B Movie cult classic The Alien Factor (1978). Starring in his second feature but taking on an entirely different role is adaptability is certainly one of his strong points and I have to say despite all the limitations with budget, he seems constantly determined to develop wonderful psychotropic movies and I think I’m a bit of a fan already and I’m only 2 films in. Continue reading Fiend (1980)→
Since my uncle gave me my first secondhand copy of Fortean Times back in about 1986 I’ve been hooked on the paranormal and the earth’s mysteries, everything from spontaneous human combustion, ghosts and possession, to UFO’s, rolling rocks and Bigfoot. I’m not saying I believe everything I read about these subjects but I enjoy a great skeptical tour of those unusual things which are often talked about around the campfire.
It seems that some monsters and paranormal entities are easily adapted to the big screen, I couldn’t fathom how many ghost or vampire movies have been created to date but the number of Bigfoot movies are probably outnumbered by the sightings.