Expelled Grey Matter

While Godzilla vs. Biollante has become a favorite among fans it didn't set the Japanese box office on fire.  That, along with the fact that Toho couldn't get theatrical distribution in many countries including the U.S., frightened them a bit.  Because of this, and with the 50th anniversary of the studio coming up, it was decided to do another rematch with King Kong.  Problem is, unlike in the 1960s, King Kong was now owned by Turner Broadcasting, and they wanted 9 million dollars for the rights.  Being that it would have been two thirds of what was the final budget for this movie Toho did a poll to decide who Godzilla would go up against next.  The result was King Ghidorah. Only thing is returning director Kazuki Ômori didn't want King Ghidorah to be, in his words, was a silly space monster.  Since The Return of Godzilla had wiped the slate clean of every Showa film after the original that meant the origin of King Ghidorah, as well as Godzilla himself, could be altered. 

Wes Craven was one of the more frustrating horror directors.  He churned out a lot of movies, some for television, and kept doing so even when he had big hits.  After A Nightmare on Elm Street   came the TV movie Chiller , followed by the ridiculous Deadly Friend .  The only good movie he did for the rest of the decade was The Serpent and the Rainbow , an atypically strange film involving voodoo, before he brought us Mitch Pileggi as electric Freddy in Shocker . But, true to form, he pulled another strange movie out of his hat to open the 1990s with The People Under the Stairs .  Taking inspiration from a real-life incident in which a burglary call led to police finding a couple's children locked in their rooms, Craven came up with this urban fairytale of two monstrous landlords who get up to all sort of evil, including keeping a number of teenagers prisoner in their home.  Fool (Brandon Quintin Adams) is a young boy whose family is facing eviction from the dilapidated slum in whic

Few movies have any surprises in them these days and those that do are usually not of the good variety.  Housebound , the debut film of Gerard Johnstone of M3GAN fame, is one of the good ones.  Like all the best fright films from New Zealand this was made on a shoestring budget and with help from the New Zealand Film Commission, who has always seemed like a bunch of weird horror fans rather than some stuffy bureaucratic office.   Low budget means, as usual, an economic use of sets and places, and Housebound  is no different.  The title pretty much gives that away, but the special thing about this movie is that it begins as a haunted house film and evolves into something else as it goes along.  Add the usual dry Kiwi sense of humor and it turns into something special. Kylie (Morgana O'Reilly) is a young criminal who, after a failed ATM robbery, is put under house arrest with her mother Miriam (Rima Te Wiata) and stepfather Graeme (Ross Harper).  It's a home that she has always