Expelled Grey Matter

Honestly, the only reason most people are probably familiar with this low-budget '80s horror film is because Tawny Kitaen is in it.  The movie benefited from that bit of serendipity, as it came out the same time she was rolling around on a car in the video for Whitesnake's "Is This Love?"  She was already getting a bit of fame as a model and an actress, but the video became her claim to fame and it undoubtedly helped give a boost to this movie. It kind of needed it as this was well into that first bunch of slasher films that rode the coattails on Friday the 13th .  It is also getting into the point of the 1980s where horror films started moving beyond masked killers and got a bit stranger, thanks to A Nightmare on Elm Street  and The Evil Dead .  Witchboard has a bit of that later influence, but writer/director Kevin S. Tenney didn't have the same budget of Wes Craven had or the ingenuity of Sam Raimi  With his brother Dennis doing an electronic score and the paci

If there was one thing Jigsaw did it was bring the Saw series to a satisfying end.  At the same time it showed that it didn't have to keep following the same pattern movie after movie.  Honestly, I don't think there was ever any intention on carrying on further with the story, as we learn about John Kramer's first test run and yet another unknown assistant, Logan Nelson, who is originally one of his intended players until Kramer has second thoughts and decides what he is doing to Nelson is too much like vengeance.  The story is basically about Nelson bringing down a Detective Halloran, who had let the murderer of Nelson's wife go free, and framing him as a Jigsaw copycat.  The film works as Nelson has just one goal.  He achieves it and, as far as is known, continues his work in the city's coroner office with no one the wiser.  Neither he, nor any of the other participants except Kramer are mentioned in Spiral as a new Jigsaw copycat emerges, this time targeting the

The Saw series by this time should be played out.  Honestly, the first three were good, the fourth merely okay, and after that there was a brief return in the sixth to what made the series good before it gave us an underwhelming finale.  Instead of the two-parter that was promised it was basically a repeat of the mistakes of the fifth movie with unexplained time jumps and what should have been shocking revelations devolving into pointless cameos.  Yes, Dr. Lawrence Gordon was back, was revealed as being one of Jigsaw's accomplices, but beyond that it looked as if Cary Elwes had popped in between engagements to earn a little side money.  So, by the time the events in  Jigsaw happen, John Kramer as been dead for 11 years, no one knows what happened to (or even mentions) Mark Hoffmann and, because the killings stopped, Dr. Gordon is not even known to have had a role in the Jigsaw murders. The question then begins how to restart a series where it had fallen into a rut and killed off al

I think it may be safe to say that Dario Argento is the Queensrÿche of horror directors.  There are many famous directors that, at some point, the quality just vanished.  John Carpenter comes to mind, but there was a glaring reason why his movies after In the Mouth of Madness were not as good: he got tired and wanted to quit, only he seems to have needed the paycheck that stuff like Vampires and Ghosts of Mars promised so he could go off and spend the latter part of his life enjoying making music.  Dario Argento, on the other hand, just seems to suddenly hit a wall, much like Queensrÿche, who were one of the biggest metal bands in the 1990s and almost managed to survive where grunge had killed the others off.   With Argento, ignoring his segment for Two Evil Eyes , he had released one of his best movies, Opera, in 1987.  He followed that up with Trauma in 1993 which, though not as good, still had all the elements that made him popular.  The Stendhal Syndrome is different but still resp

Musicals.  Having to watch one typically causes a chill in my spine unlike any horror film.  With a horror film I typically know that even if it is boring or just plain bad that it will be over, in most cases, in about 90 minutes, even if that 90 minutes feels like three hours.  Musicals, though, take that 90 minutes of plot and stretch it out for unfathomable amounts of time with major production pieces, overdramatic songs and what typically amounts to a fair amount of empty bombast. Empty bombast is probably the best way to describe Andrew Lloyd Webber.  I know it may be strange for me, as a person who loves music so much, to have such a revulsion to musical theater.  While I do occasionally like a few classic musicals they tend to be ones where the plot would work with or without the music, and vice versa.  Some of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stuff does - parts of Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita , for instance, although I cannot stand to sit through an entire production of either.  F

It always disappoints me when a studio gets cold feet.  Menahem Golan, parting ways from his partners at Cannon, formed 21st Century Film Productions.  Instead of going for something cheap he decided to get one of the biggest contemporary horror stars - Robert Englund - to play one of the most popular horror roles of the past.  Instead of going the cheap Full Moon route he hired Dwight H. Little, who had directed the surprisingly well-done  Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Meyers , and filmed on a set of 19th century London that Hammer would have been proud of.  Despite the fact that most of us who remember when this film came out probably think it was a direct-to-video release, quite a bit of money was invested to make this a stylish crossover of old-time horror films and late '80s slashers. Unfortunately they just couldn't resist trying to connect this new version of The Phantom of the Opera with A Nightmare on Elm Street, right down to using what looks like Freddy makeup o