Expelled Grey Matter

Sometimes it is possible to see the same movie over and over again, especially when it comes to horror or exploitation.  This is not my experience with Beyond the Door III , but I have run into it with others, and I'm sure some viewers first encountered this movie as Amok Train or Death Train , both of which are better titles.  Just to be clear, this movie has nothing to do with Beyond the Door or Beyond the Door II , the latter of which is actually the Mario Bava film Shock retitled for distribution in the U.S. The reason this was given such a strange title when it hit American video stores is because of executive producer Ovidio G. Assonitis was the director on the original 1974 film.  This movie has some similar plot points, mainly Satan trying to have a bride and some offspring, but it ends there.  Rather, this movie was a low-budget splatter film from exploitation director Jeff Kwitny, largely taking advantage of the fact that Yugoslavia was beginning to open u...

The Heisei Godzilla series of the 1990s did something that the preceding Showa series did not.  It created a continuous timeline rather than a tenuous connection of stories.  That doesn't mean that anything was done with the characters.  In fact, one of the few continuing throughout is Miki Saegusa, played by former child star and pop artist Megumi Odaka.  She was introduced in Godzilla vs. Biollante as a psychic who was supposed to have some connection to the various kaiju.  Despite her supposed importance to the study of the monsters and later to G-Force, the UN-sponsored group set up to fight Godzilla in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II , she never really did anything.  She would show up, give some exposition, close her eyes and act like she was doing some sort of mind-meld with Godzilla.  She later becomes a caretaker of LittleGodzilla and has a connection to Mothra's Fairies, but she usually pops up when necessary for the plot.  Godzilla vs. Sp...

The problem with slashers is that there wasn't much to do with them.  The early ones - Halloween , Friday the 13th and The Burning - had differences and followed tried and true horror and exploitation trends.  They in fact followed on the heels of the Italian giallo films and cult British horror movies like The Abominable Dr. Phibes .   By the mid-1980s, however, they had become their own sub-genre, and pretty much every movie followed the same pattern.  Some sort of wrong was done in the past and the person who was dealt dirty came back, in the flesh or in spirit, to take revenge.  That revenge just happened to be on a bunch of rowdy teenagers, all stereotypes that were there to get naked and party.  A final girl would emerge at the end to take on the killer, only for the whole thing to start back over in the sequel if the previous movie turned a profit.  The critics hated them, audiences loved them, but because they were pretty much the same t...

Dark Night of the Scarecrow came out just as slashers were becoming popular.  It was one of those rare television movies that stuck with the generation that saw it.  It remained rather elusive for a long while, living in Generation X's memories, but it got restored and resurfaced a few years ago thanks to popular demand.  It's in no way a perfect horror film but, watching it again, I understand why it stuck in my memory.  It was a bit bloodier than most movies on television at the time (even with the parental advisory at the beginning) and the story was different enough from the average horror fare to make it memorable. With the movie finally able to be rediscovered writer J.D. Feigelson decided that it was time for a sequel.  The problem is he was about the only one.  Most fans were happy to have the original film, with its story and atmosphere, stand on its own.  However, Feigelson was able to crowdsource enough money, allowing him to produce and di...

Nosferatu, a Symphony of Terror had already been remade twice before 2024, and that's not counting Shadow of the Vampire .  There was Nosferatu the Vampyre , from Werner Herzog in 1979 and in 2023 a little-seen crowdfunded version with Doug Jones playing Count Orlok.  I was really not excited over another remake until I saw that the director was Robert Eggers who, like Herzog, has a certain style and vision.  Eggers took inspiration both from Herzog and F. W. Murnau to create his own version of the classic 1922 film, meanwhile further separating it from Bram Stoker's original story. Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) is in line for a promotion at his firm, and in order to seal the deal he accepts a task from his boss Knock (Simon McBurney) to travel to a remote village in Romania to obtain the signature of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) who is purchasing a ruined property in Hutter's town of Wisburg.  Thomas's wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) is not wanting him to go as she ha...

Sylvester Stallone was a rising star in the early 1980s thanks to Rocky and First Blood .  Pretty much he could get any movie he wanted and get everyone on that set to do what he wanted.  So, what ended up happening with Nighthawks , is he got the original director, Gary Nelson, canned and Bruce Malmuth hired.  Stallone himself directed the train sequence and Billy Dee Williams, fresh off of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back , plays his partner.  It was the first time Stallone played a cop and he was hoping this would be his big comeback after a string of box office bombs. What he didn't count on was Rutger Hauer pretty much stealing the entire movie. Deke DaSilva (Stallone) and Matthew Fox (Williams) are a pair of New York police officers on the Decoy Unit, trying to lure muggers and drug dealers out in the open to arrest them.  They enjoy their jobs although the late hours and constant danger destroyed DaSilva's marriage to fashion designer Irene (Lindsay Wag...