Sad news for the world of movies tonight the legendary director/producer of countless classic exploitation and B-movies, Roger Corman has passed away at the age of 98! RIP ROGER CORMAN!
Marvel comic-based flick is another attempt by Sony to make a Spider-Man movie without Spider-Man. This flick is sort of a prequel as it takes place in 2003 and focuses on EMT Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) whose mother died giving birth to her after being fatally wounded hunting a rare spider in the Peruvian jungle. Cassie has a near death experience herself and suddenly finds she now has clairvoyant abilities. She keeps having visions of three young woman (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O’Connor) who are being stalked by a masked man with spider-like powers and strength. Soon she discovers that the mysterious figure is Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), the man responsible for her mother’s death, and vows to stop him and save his three intended targets.
Cassie Webb lives up to her name as she finds herself and three girls in a web of intrigue and danger!
Comic book film is directed by S. J. Clarkson from her script along with Matt Sazama, Claire Parker and Burk Sharpless with Kerem Sanga also assisting with their story. As one can guess from all the names attached the flick is a bit of a mess. There are some solid action scenes and Johnson makes for a very likable lead as Cassie, as does Sweeney, Merced and O’Connor make for endearing future super heroines. It’s just the script and story are all over the place and Tahar Rahim makes for an extremely dull and uninspired villain as Sims. The attempts at connecting this with Spider-Man, by including future Uncle Ben (Adam Scott) as Cassie’s EMT partner and introducing Peter Parker’s future mother Mary (Emma Roberts) fall flat and feel forced. It certainly doesn’t help either that the Groundhog Day-like elements employed here to illustrate Cassie’s abilities grow tiresome quick as they are overused. It’s not as bad as its reputation suggests but a convoluted script and story, plus a director who can’t really bring it all together, makes a tangled web out of what might have been a good movie. Worth a look when it hits Netflix on 5/14/24 but keep expectations low.
Pretty, down on her luck Gwen (Phoebe Tonkin) has taken a job as night shift manager at the All-Tucked Inn, a seedy remote motel. Dirty rooms, rats and odd and unsettling guests aside, Gwen also gets the feeling someone is watching her. She even finds out that the rundown motel is haunted and starts to see apparitions. Can the young woman last the night or is there a far worse fate than a lousy job in store for her?
Is Gwen (Phoebe Tonkin) being stalked or haunted or both?
Spooky horror is written and directed by Benjamin and Paul China and provides some fun scares. The film also has atmosphere as our heroine finds her place of work is quite a sleaze pit, and the directors quickly give us reasons to be wary of the motel right from the start. Gwen then begins to get the feeling she is being watched and that’s before the ghosts arrive. It’s no secret she slowly finds out the place is haunted which is one of the reasons a guest she befriends, the awkward Alice (Madison Hu), is staying there. It’s entertaining and both Tonkin and Hu put in good work to get us involved in their characters. The writing and directing duo aren’t done with us yet, though, as a third act twist takes the film in yet another direction, one that is surprisingly violent and bloody. The details of that will be withheld as it’s best kept for the viewer to discover on their own, but it does become a different movie from that point on. Sure, it’s not perfect as it does bounce from one type of flick to another more than once, but it is well done, atmospheric and when the blood does start to flow it has impact, as up till now the film has been more a tale of paranoia and the supernatural. Definitely worth a look as are the China Brothers filmmakers to keep an eye on. Also stars Lamorne Morris as motel owner Teddy and is available on digital streaming networks.
Pretty teen Kennedy (Francesca Capaldi) is about to have a very bad night! She’s reluctantly going with her friend Tess (Mia Rae Roberts) to Terrace Lanes, a bowling alley on its last night of operation before being torn down. Making matters worse, her estranged father Bruce (Ken Arnold) works there. But all of this is the least of her problems as a murderous cult invades the establishment, seals everyone inside and begins to slaughter them. Now Kennedy must team up with her dad if she and Tess are to try and get out alive.
Pretty teen Kennedy is in for a bad Last Night at Terrace Lanes!
Flick with an 80s vibe is directed by Jamie Nash from a script by Jenna St. John and Adam Cesare and is basically a gory Die Hard in a bowling alley. It’s an amusing horror that does have some impressive bloodshed to go along with its cute and spunky heroine forced to fight for her life alongside her goofball, slacker dad. The gore and kills are well done though it’s not very scary and the action does stop cold from time to time for dialogue sequences, especially with the reconnecting Kennedy and dad Bruce. The cast are fine with Francesca Capaldi making a decent heroine and the masked cultists are adequate if not unremarkable villains. It’s done tongue in cheek and while no classic there are far worse ways to spend 75 minutes. Worth a look but nothing that is going to stick with you. Now available on streaming networks such as Amazon Prime.
This spooky fun Roger Corman release has recently had an anniversary and it has brought back memories of my first time seeing this 70s haunted house flick! It’s not my usual Movie Memories tale as I did not go to see this flick in a theater but saw it on cable tv, Home Box Office to be exact. The flick is especially nostalgic to me because of the circumstances of my first watching it. At the time, my family lived in a two-family house and upstairs lived a husband and wife along with their hot twenty-seven-year-old daughter who had a ten-year-old son of her own. As a boy coming of age, I was quite taken by this single mom who noticed my interest and actually seem to like that she caught my eye and used to flirt with me. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time with her son, despite him being a bit younger than me, just so I could hang with his mom. We actually did all go to the movies a few times, and when she mentioned wanting to watch a scary movie on cable one afternoon, I asked if I could watch with her because we didn’t have HBO. She said yes!
Someone is having a devilishly good time tormenting the occupants of this house!
Despite being in such fetching company, wearing a pair of Daisy Dukes and a tight t-shirt might I add, I actually paid enough attention to the movie to like it very much. She liked it too and we had a fun discussion about the movie afterwards. Over the years the film has stuck with me, and it has become a personal favorite from this era. I really enjoy this haunted house flick with a devilish twist very much on its own despite the nostalgic memories attached. Sure, I will always remember it for being one of the movies I saw with my older woman first crush, but The Evil is a solid 70s horror with some good scares, some gruesome deaths and a really good cast who took the material just serious enough to make it work!
In honor of the film’s anniversary, I am reposting my original review which echoes some of the sentiments I conveyed above…
THE EVIL (1978)
This 1978 haunted house flick, released by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, spooked me quite a bit as a kid. And upon a recent revisit, I still found it to be a fun, nostalgic good time, but obviously for different reasons. It may be tame and kind of silly by today’s standards, but as 70s B-movie horror entertainment, it’s delightfully effective. The film opens with drunk caretaker Sam (Ed Bakey) grumbling about having to clean up the large old house he now enters. He hears children laughing once inside and follows the sounds into the basement to the cold, dead furnace…which promptly blazes to life and sets him on fire. Creepy old house now has our attention! We soon find the large old house is being renovated by psychologist, C.J. Arnold (Richard Crenna) as a clinic, along with his doctor wife Caroline (Joanna Pettet). They are getting help from volunteers and friends who are going to work and live there over the summer till it is ready to open. Despite some spooky occurrences during the walk-through and local tales that the house and grounds are haunted, they move in anyway and begin work. And as soon as they do, the weirdness begins such as apparitions, strange noises, moving objects and a seemingly friendly pet dog who turns vicious. As a man of science, C.J. refuses to believe there is anything supernatural going on, even when his wife finds a diary that warns of an ancient doorway to evil within the house, that has been sealed and must never be opened. So, of course, when C.J. finds a stone door in the cellar floor sealed by a cross…he removes the cross and opens it. To say all hell breaks loose is far more appropriate than you think, as now the house is sealed by some horrible force and the trapped guests are being tormented and murdered one by one in gruesome ways. Will they find a way to escape with their lives…and their souls?
Written and directed by Gus Trikonis (Moonshine County Express), The Evil has everything you could want from a 70s B-Movie haunted house flick. There are cheesy apparitions with dire warnings, levitations, diabolical echoing laughter, an endless thunderstorm, possessions, horrible deaths and even a showdown with Old Scratch (Victor Buono) himself. What more could you want to go along with a six pack of your favorite poison on a Saturday night? Trikonis’ style is pretty straightforward, and he takes his material seriously, but he is definitely having fun with his supernatural story, as its elements are presented with just the right touch of theatricality and flair. The cheesy dialog and simple FX work all the better because, it is presented sincerely and not made a joke of. It’s not the intense, visceral horror of today’s standards…though there are some violent moments that are still effective…but the film has its devious heart in the right place, and I appreciate the daring of having our atheist hero actually come face to face with the Prince of Darkness himself for a James Bond-ish hero vs. villain Tête-à-Tête at the film’s climax. It works better than you think, especially due to some witty dialog and Buono’s malice drenched performance that goes just over-the-top enough without becoming camp.
The rest of the cast take their parts seriously, too, with Crenna giving us a man of science who is resisting the notion that the supernatural things he’s disbelieved all his life may be far too real. And to survive, he may have to turn to the God, whose existence he has always denied. Pettet gives us a solid heroine in his wife and as she’s a doctor, too, she is strong-willed and a fighter, though far more receptive to what she is experiencing than her husband. The supporting cast, including 70s mainstays Andrew Prine and Cassie Yates, all do well in creating likable people out of characters who all face possible doom in the grasp of an ancient evil right out of a bedtime story. It’s treating the material with respect and playing it straight by cast and crew that makes this film so much fun. If it were played for laughs, then we as the audience would appreciate it much less. Our entertainment comes from the fact that it’s all being presented to us in a serious manner, whether it be the house’s former tenant possessing Caroline right before C.J.’s eyes, or his arguing there must be a scientific explanation for a house filled with diabolical laughter locking you and your friends inside. Sure doc… it’s the humidity!
It all comes down to a really entertaining 70s B-Movie horror that, while it may not be perfect and may not scare like it did back in its day, still thoroughly entertains for much different reasons and that, is still entertainment after all. A flick made unintentionally campy by the passage of time, but still not without some very effective moments. A prime example of fun, nostalgic 70s B-Movie horror!
This latest installment of Halloween Hotties features an actress who is relatively new on the scene but has made an impact as the final girl in Eli Roth’s fun holiday horror Thanksgiving! Nell plays Jessica Wright, the daughter of Plymouth Maine RightMart owner Thomas Wright. When Jessica and her friends sneak into the store moments before it opens early for Black Friday sales, it causes an outright riot and there is carnage and some unfortunate deaths. One year later a still grieving Jessica and her friends are targeted by a masked killer who blames them for what happened. As Jessica soon finds herself in final girl mode, Nell Verlaque impressed with her performance in portraying Jessica’s fight and resilience! With a sequel announced for 2025, one hopes Nell and her feisty Jessica will be back along with killer John Carver!
As Jessica whose Thanksgiving shopping trip with friends ends in a nightmare!
A year later bodies start to fall, and Jessica and friends might be targets.
Targeted by a killer?
Not the quiet Thanksgiving Jessica had in mind!
Jessica making sure this turkey is cooked!
Only time will tell if Nell Verlaque will officially return in the sequel, but as she impressed us in this fun old school slasher, we hope to be seeing this beautiful and talented actress again and soon!
-MonsterZero NJ
And don’t forget to check out our previous HalloweenHotties profiles…just click on the following link to head over to the HalloweenHottieslistings!)
Tubi streaming horror from Terror Films opens in 2018 with a police officer (Victor Mele) responding to a 911 call of screams coming from a house. He arrives on the scene to find three residents dead and the fourth, a little girl named Belle (Syrenne Robinson), missing. Now in 2024 authorities release not only the house security footage but footage filmed by Belle with a camera she received on her birthday. The hope being that the footage will produce leads as to where little Belle has disappeared to.
What happened in this house? Where is Belle?
Found footage flick is written and directed by Shawn Robinson and while it has severe Paranormal Activity envy, it is actually effective on its own. The footage begins with Belle getting her camera, as we meet her, brother Link (Zachary Robinson), her mom (Sarah Mae Robinson) and dad (Matthew Robinson). We immediately see something is not right in this home with a scream from mom in the night and the father trying to get a reassurance from his wife that she is taking her meds. Soon the father leaves for a business trip, and mom is left alone with Belle and Link. The film then follows along with mom’s increasingly emotional unraveling after she throws out her medication, leading up to that fateful night. It is disturbing and a bit heartbreaking to watch these cute kids dealing with an increasingly unhinged mother, someone they should always feel safe and protected by who is becoming increasingly frightening and unpredictable. The last night is difficult to watch and while not totally effective, writer/director Robinson leaves us with some final images that may give a disturbing clue as to mom’s suddenly shift in behavior and what might have befallen Belle. It’s something subtly hinted at if you’re paying attention. The cast are good, especially little Syrenne Robinson as internet star wannabe Belle and Sarah Mae Robinson as her downward spiraling mother. Not perfect and a little too reminiscent of the Paranormal Activity films but worth a look, especially if you like found footage. Now streaming free on Tubi.
We are officially halfway to Halloween! As you may know by now it’s my favorite time of year! So, to herald the halfway point, I think a film festival is in order! Which flicks will you watch!?
MonsterZero NJ's Movie Madhouse 