The Fog (1980)

The Fog is the 7th John Carpenter film that i've seen and it certainly won't be the last as i've yet to see a bad film from Carpenter and he even made one of my favorite movies (Escape From New York).

The Centenary of the small sea town, Antonio Bay, is approaching. While the townsfolk prepare to celebrate, the victims of the crime that founded the town rise from the sea to claim retribution. Under cover of the fog, they carry out their vicious attacks, searching for what is rightly theirs.

Once again the usual Carpenter features in The Fog. Adrienne Barbeau (Escape From New York), Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween), Tom Atkins (Escape From New York), Charles Cyphers (Halloween), Darwin Joston (Assault on Precinct 13) and I even thought that I saw Donald Pleasence as the ghost-storyteller but it turned out that it wasn't him after all. They all do well (although never great) and the best probably was Adrienne Barbeau. Another notable thing is that Jamie Lee Curtis for once isn't the good virgin but this time is a somewhat wilder hitchhiker. She even fucks the first guy who picks her up although he could have been her dad or even her grandad.

The film's plot actually is a simple ghost story and i'm quite surprised that Disney haven't made some kind of attraction just like they did with for example Pirates of the Caribbean. The fog moving above the water and landscape creates brings some very decent atmosphere (Along with the great soundtrack of Carpenter). And that's not the only thing the fog brings... In the fog there are dozens of zombies/ghosts who bring some really good tension. The ghost are mainly shown only mysteriously and are never shown full-screen and that's part of the power of the movie. They stay mysterious and that way are pretty scary.

The Fog surely isn't Carpenters best but still is a very cool atmospheric movie with some great tension. You gotta love Carpenter!

The Dead Next Door (1989)

I've seen this movie three times by now and it's still as enjoyable as it was the first time.

The government sets up a Zombie squad after an epidemic has made the world run rampant with living corpses. Raimi, Mercer, Kuller, and others head off to Ohio to try and find a cure to the epidemic but soon run into a crazy cult of zombie lovers who are set on preserving the zombies and letting a new world be born because they believe that it's God's will. When Mercer gets infected with the zombie virus, Raimi and the others must work quickly to find a cure and avoid the cult.

The Dead Next Door is made by some students, a group of hard working friends, and it shows. You can basically see on every single detail that this movie was not made by people who had any or much experience in movie making. Though it's mainly the enthusiasm that they put in it, which shows in the movie, that makes The Dead Next Door this much fun.

The acting is hilariously bad and more than once provides a smile on your face. Especially Bogdan Pecic as Doctor Moulsson is embarrassingly bad but at the same time very funny to watch. It's a bit of a bummer that the sound was very bad. This way the dialogs (although they don't mean much in a movie like this) sound kinda dumb and it also make gunshots sound like huge farts.

The Dead Next Door biggest plus is absolutely the gore which never looks realistic but does look pretty cheesy. Think of heads being cut off who continue to bite for flesh and bodies without heads who are still moving and more of those kinda cool things. I didn't like the whole religious cult part though as I felt it didn't fit the movie.

The Dead Next Door is an ambitious little film made by guys who had the best time of their lives making it and that shows in the movie. Don't take the movie serious as it doesn't want to be taken serious. Just enjoy this pure cheesyness.!

Road Train (2010)

The pretty explicit sexscene in the beginning of the movie probably was the best thing of the whole movie as the rest of the movie is just some boring shit.

The teenagers Marcus, Liz, Craig and Nina are camping in the remote outback of Australia. While driving on the road, a road train crashes on their car that leaves the road in a serious accident. The quartet survives and Craig breaks his arm, but their car is totally wrecked. However they see the train truck parked on road and Marcus and Liz walk to the vehicle to ask for help. They do not find the driver and soon Craig and Nina arrive. When they see the driver shooting at them, they decide to carjack the road train. Soon they begin to act strange possessed by some evil force.

Quickly 4 youngsters are bumped of the road by a Road Train (That's wat Australians call a huge truck) and from that moment on the youngsters see this as an opportunity to do some of the dumbest things possible. They decide to take the truck as the driver is nowhere to be found. More and more it seems like they are being possessed by the truck one by one. Though I don't know if that was wat I meant to think as the story is verry confusing and nothing that happens really gets explained. Even when some of the characters start to act like they're some kind of Charles Manson maniac it doesn't really get clear why this is happening leaving you with a ton of questions (although you don't really give a shit about the answer.

The acting isn't all that bad but it's mainly the shitty script and the fact that the personality of characters are stupid that you don't give a rats ass whether they die or live. The movie also takes place on the same spot to much. This way it gets kinda boring (especially because the things that are going on are not interesting at all). 

One of the little good things about Road Train is the cool setting in the beautiful landscape of Australia and visually the film itself looks pretty decent.

Don't get yourself fooled by the cool poster of even by the trailer which might seem like it's a Duel (1971) kinda movie. This is some ''huge truck going supernatural'' bullshit which leaves you with a lot of questions after you're done watching as the film itself makes no sense at all.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Even after watching it for the second time The Hills Have Eyes still is a great watch for you'all horror fans.

A family going to California accidentally goes through an Air Testing range closed to the public. They crash and are stranded in a desert. They are being stalked by a group of people, which have not emerged into modern times.

The base of the story of The Hills Have Eyes has become very standard as the years have flown by. A family drives through some deserted land, the car crashes and the family is stuck in the middle of nowhere and as it turns out some group of primitive cannibal killers had already nested themselves and are not willing to share the spot with some hysterical teenagers which mom and dad can't control. 

The Hills Have Eyes does remind me a lot of Tobe Hoopers classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre but misses certain things that Hoopers brilliant horror classic did have. The typical 70's grainy horror atmosphere is great and fits in great with the bizarre sound effects/music and the sultry/deserted landscape. In the beginning The Hills Have Eyes manages to create some decent tension as scene's where you look though the killer's eyes who's watching the stranded family and is communicating with his fellow cannibals are in pretty tensive and atmospheric. 

Unfortunately these kind of scene's are not so tensive and atmospheric when the cannibals are showed full-screen as they are just some feral dudes who run around in bear skin and act like they have down syndrome (no offence). Though I have to be honest, Michael Berryman (Yeah, the bald weirdo that you probably know from the other gazillion low-budget horror movies he's been in) and Lance Gordon (Yeah, the dude with the huge hairdo and his crooks mug who has never achieved more in his career other than movie like ''Attack of the 5 Ft. 2 Women) do look and act pretty creepy. On other hand though there are members like mother cannibal. A fat chick who also walks around in bear skin and has a headband with teeth (or were shells??) and  kinda looks like Bertha, the laundress of Charlie and Alan in Two and a Half Men.

The kills are never showed full-screen and also don't have the impact that for example the kills in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (also without gore) did have. 

Though what the movie does have is a lovely 70's horror atmosphere, great popcorn cheesyness and a killing Michael Berryman on the loose! Must watch!

Movie Kill of the Week: Episode 4 ''Zombi 2 (1979)''

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I will post the Movie Kill of the Week videos on this site every week as well.

Movie Kill of the Week: Episode 3 ''Dawn of the Dead (1978)''

Check out my youtube channel for more videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/itagorehorror/videos?flow=grid&view=0

I will post the Movie Kill of the Week videos on this site every week as well.

Haute Tension (A.K.A Switchblade Romance) (2003)

Alexandre Aja probably is a familiar name to many of you due to his remake of The Hills Have Eyes his pulp flick Piranha en the more serious Mirrors. Though if you really want to see the best this guy has made so far i'd recommend the French ''Haute Tension''.

Alexia travels with her friend Marie to spend a couple of days with her family in their farm in the country. They arrive late and they are welcomed by Alexia's father. Late in the night, a sadistic and sick killer breaks into the farmhouse, slaughters Alexia's family--including their dog--and kidnaps Alexia. Marie hides from the criminal and tries to help the hysterical and frightened Alexia, chase the maniac, and disclose his identity in the end.

The film had just began as I realised i already had a lot of sympathy for this film. The bright collors during the drive through the countryside of France (although IMDB says it's shot in Romania) look like you're watching something from the seventees which I love in movies.

Haute Tension has a continually tension that gets mostly created by something simple like a ringing doorbell in the middle of the night. The lovely morbid soundeffects thoughout the film work really well aswell. 

The badguy is also woth mentioning. It quickly gets clear that this guy has a pretty sick mind (unless getting your dick sucked by a decapitated head is normal in France). His sick head and eyes lurring under his hat and his imposing posture in his blood smeared work suit make it tough to like this guy (like a killer should be: dirty, gross, creepy and sick). 

The havoc that he leaves behind is even a little bit scarier. There are tons of great kills that are done by special effects artis Giannetto De Rossi who is Italian (which other nationality can make such amazing, bloody and realistic effects...?). Though Alexandre Aja should get a lot of credit to. He often manages to create a great atmosphere that reminds me of the 70's and 80's horror flicks and he even throws some giallo influences in the mix which turn out great aswell. Visually Aja does great to. The camerawork and coloring are often very, very good and create some very nice images. 

The ending is incredibly surprising and while it might take away a little bit of the film the second time you watch it it still is an amazing and clever final to a great movie.

Karl the Butcher vs Axe (2010)

This is only the second film, after Unrated: The Movie, that i've seen from Timo Rose and Andreas Schnaas. And again it's very amateuristic basing on the paper mache mask of Karl the Butcher, the bad visual and audio quality, the poor script and the even poorer acting.

2023 and Karl The Butcher Jr Returns from hell after 25 years, and is on a mission to kill a new butcher, Axe. But the world he returns to is in devastation, civilization is split between gangs, including the Gang loco, The Others, the tyrant Queen Scara, The Black Monks, and of course, the nomads Axe and his sister Vendetta whose family history is unknown. An ultra-violent journey in a wasteland awaits...

In the beginning i thought it was gonna be the same kind of thing as Freddy vs. Jason. Two horror-legends fighting each other. Oh, well.... Horror-legends?... Karl the Butcher only featured in the 3 earlier Violent Shit films and Axe makes his debut in the film. But later it turns out that they're not going to fight each other but the two of them are gonna fight the other scum in the world. Whatever... Both of them don't look very frightning. Karl the Butcher mainly just walks around in the woods like 1 of the 7 dwarfs. For some way he kinda reminded me of the gorilla with the diving helmet from Robot Monster. Axe looks a bit more brutal though.

I know that the Violent Shit movies are made for the gore. That's why I decided to watch this movie. But I have to say that I was a little bit disappointed by the gore. The film focuses to much on the stupid plot about some groups/gangs fighting with each other in a post-apocalyptic world. That leaves us with to much bad actors and script writing and to little of Karl and Axe slicing and dicing. Luckily the gore picks up at the end battle of the film which lasts like 20 minutes or so.

Karl the Butcher vs Axe is everything but a good movie. Still Karl and Axe are entertaining enough to keep me focused throughout the movie.

Movie Kill of the Week: Episode 2 ''Undead (2003)''

Check out my youtube channel for more videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/itagorehorror/videos?flow=grid&view=0

I will post the Movie Kill of the Week videos on this site every week as well.

Movie Kill of the Week: Episode 1 ''Day of the Woman (1978)''

Check out my youtube channel for more videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/itagorehorror/videos?flow=grid&view=0

I will post the Movie Kill of the Week videos on this site every week as well.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

After I saw Dawn of the Dead for the first time I was quite surprised that this film has such a huge status. But after watching it for the second time now I must say that I liked Dawn of the Dead a lot better. I can even say that I thought is was very good.

In this first sequel of "Night of the Living Dead," four people take up residence in a deserted mall while trying to stay alive amid the armies of the dead and a vicious gang of militant bikers.

The setting in the shopping mall is one of the great things about this movie. Which of you hasn't ever dreamed of wandering alone in a huge shopping mall and take al the expensive stuff for free...? It also provides some other good scene's. For example the scene where the zombies walk on the icehockey field or the scene where the troopers race through the mall in a car supported by the music of Goblin.

Unfortunately the zombies aren't very impressing. The green/grey make-up doesn't look good at all and the fact that they are slower than a god damn snale doesn't help neither. (Normally i'm not against slow zombies but this was insane.)

The whole idea of starting a new life in the shopping mall is well conceived and executed but after about an hour and a half it starts to get a bit borring. Luckily the bikers show up who provide more threath, action and humor. It also features a nice part of Tom Savini who does a pretty good job as one of the crazy bikers.

Appart from Savini and Peter, great part from cult-actor Ken Foree, the characters are all pretty annoying. Especially Roger with his continually heeehaahhhh yell. 
As for the gore, Dawn of the Dead has some nice scene's. The blood is a bit to red, hey it's the 70's, but there are enough good parts where the walking dead put their teeth into some flesh and tear a nice chunk out of it. But the gore starts to get really good in especially the last 20 minutes. I guess Tom Savini, who appart from actor also did the make-up effects, found out that there was some budget left as some nice gory scene's pass by. The coolest being probably the scene's where the zombies tear the intestines (which were real cow intestines btw) out of the bodies. 

Dawn of the Dead is a great film with a good atmosphere, cool setting, enough blood and nice music from Goblin. To bad that the zombies weren't very convincing.

The Walking Dead: The Game (Season 1)

The Walking Dead: The Game. I started playing it because of the title (as i also love The Walking Dead tv-show) but kept playing it because it's an amazing, intriguing, emotional and well told game.

The Walking Dead: The Game is a game based on the same titled comic books of Robert Kirkman. Your character is Lee Everett, a convicted killer being transported to a prison in Georgia. Because of a strange zombie apocalypse Lee manages to escape. Soon he finds a little girl called Clementine who lost her parents in the apocalypse. Together they travel through a world invaded by the walking dead.

The Walking Dead truly is one of the best games i have played in years. It's divided in 5 different episode's. Call of Duty number 74, Fifa 2050 and Medal of Honor number 98. I enjoy those games but when you played one of 'em you basically played them all. The Walking Dead is a brilliant new kind of gaming experience. There isn't a lot of game play. You can walk around and click on things and there are a lot of dialogs where you can choose your lines. At first I thought that that was going to be pretty boring after a while but because of the magnificent story telling it never gets borring. In fact, you want more and more and more.

The game focuses on the story. You have to take a lot of emotional choices that wil follow you throughout the game. Are you gonna be the ruthless and hard guy or are you gonna be the forgiving nice guy. It's all up to you. After playing this game for a while you really feel like you are Lee himself. You are not just controlling a character.. You are there, it is you that is making all these hard decisions. They really get to you.

The character development is brilliant. They all feel human and real. You create a bond with them and you'll feel desperate when one of 'em doesn't survive. I can't really pick a favorite episode because they are all incredibly amazing. The story is so great that I even noticed that when I was playing the game people that were in the living room all sat down and watched as I was playing. And when something dramatic was happening they all reacted like they were watching a brilliant movie.

I can literally talk hours about how amazing this game is. The story telling is brilliant, the character development is amazing. To be honest, everything about this game is phenomenal. Just play it, make your decisions and experience your story. This game will go in the books as one of the most original and groundbreaking games in the history. I can't wait 'till Telltale games finishes and releases Season 2!

Undead (2003)

Mainly because of the brute poster I was pretty excited about this film. Though you don't have to watch a long time before you realise that ''Undead'' is a pretty moderate film.

Peaceful, rustic Berkeley is a charming fishing community where life is sweet and the people friendly. All that is about to change. After losing her childhood farm to the bank, local beauty Rene decides to leave town and head for the big city. Suddenly, an avalanche of meteorites races through the sky, bombarding the town and bringing an otherworldly infection. Departing is going to be much more difficult than she had planned. The living dead are awakened and Rene is now caught in a nightmare of zombies hungry for human flesh. She manages to find salvation in a small isolated farm house owned by the town loony, Marion. There she is met with four other desperate survivors. Together they battle their way through a plague of walking dead and discover that there is more transpiring than just an infection.

The poster may look awesome. The film is a ridiculous attempt to comedy and horror. The humor is of an extremely low level and instead of funny characters the film has annoying as hell characters that I just wanted to punch in the face (This mainly goes for the incredibly annoying police officer). 

The usual group of survivors has another remarkable person: The Hero. You know the hero in those post-apocalyptic films. They save you when you're about to die, have a lot of gun experience and don't say much. Though in Undead the hero is a big hillbilly who kinda looks like an Amish version of the terminator.

The zombies are not a threat for a second and don't even provide entertaining scene's. The CGI is terrible and soundtrack sounds like it came out of a slapstick comedy rather than from a zombiefilm.

You have to do a lot of things the wrong way if you, as a horror/comedy, don't even give me a shred of sympathy for your movie but Undead manages to do it. Felicty Mason was one of the few reasons that I didn't turn this film of right away. 

Saw (2004)

Now that I finally have every Saw film (so far) on dvd it was time for me to watch all those 7 films full of gore, puppets and creepyness again. Starting of course with the wideley praised original.

Two men wake up at opposite sides of a dirty, disused bathroom, chained by their ankles to pipes. Between them lies a dead man loosely clutching a hand-held tape player and a handgun. Each finds a tape the perfect fit for the player in their back pocket. They play the tapes. One is threatened, the other isn't. But they have a task: One must kill the other by 6:00, or his wife and daughter will die. They find hacksaws in a toilet, and try to cut the chains, but it doesn't work. They are the two newest victims of the Jigsaw Killer. In a flashback, we learn of Amanda, a girl who falls victim to the Jigsaw Killer. On her head is a mask, which is hooked into her lower jaw. There is a timer on it. Only one key will unlock it, and that key is in the digestive tract of her cell mate who lies paralyzed on the opposite side of the room. If she doesn't unlock the mask in time, her lower jaw will be ripped wide open...

The film starts right away. Two guys wake up in an old bathroom with chains around the ankles tied to an old, rusty, with shit covered pipe. What's going on and Who did this to them are the questions that immediately rise your mind. 

The acting from the two chained guys starts off a bit stiff but while the film moves on and situation gets worse and worse the acting gets better and better. They really manage to take you with them in the madness that they are facing. The cop duo Ken Leung and Danny Glover is a very nice addition to the cast and especially Glover is pretty awesome as detective Taps.

2 Dudes tied up in a bathroom. How long does that stay interesting? The answer is very long. Because although the film does spend a lot of time in the bathroom director James Wan manages to create a perfect combination between drama, terrifying horror and grusome horror. You also keep wondering who's doing this to them and who is in the set-up.

In the mean while there are some other nice things that will definitely keep a horror-fan interested. For example Wan puts some very Giallo like things, like creepy phone calls and some first person shots of a person wearing black leather gloves, like giallo master Dario Argento did in his films.

At the peak of the film you'll be definitely biting your nails. The extreme crazyness that hits doctor Gordon when he hears through the phone that his family is being attacked and the reaction of Adam in the same scene a piece of very, very, very good acting. The twist in the end supported by the amazing soundtrack is also great.

Saw doesn't have the gore that his sequels do but it doens't need it. Without the gore it's still gruesome and horrifying.

Stake Land (2010)

A post-apocalyptic world, a young boy and a guy drive through the deserted landscapes, they pick up a hitchhiker, a somewhat dramatic voice-over by the young boy. That's right, in many perspectives Stake Land kinda looks like Zombieland only with a more serious look on things and with vampires instead of zombies.

Martin was a normal teenage boy before the country collapsed in an empty pit of economic and political disaster. A vampire epidemic has swept across what is left of the nation's abandoned towns and cities, and it's up to Mister, a death dealing, rogue vampire hunter, to get Martin safely north to Canada, the continent's New Eden.

De cast is verry decent. Connor Paolo does a decent job and Nick Damici is pretty cool as bad-ass ''Mister''. Danielle Harris also has a part. This time she isn't a kick-ass horror chick but she has the tame role of a pregnant woman in a world taken over by vampires.

The film takes it easy although you never really get the feeling that there isn't happening enough. Still it feels a bit calm. The reason for that are probably the many shots of deserted houses etc. supported by dramatic music. It does give a nice post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Though i don think the film lacks a bit of tension. The vampires aren't ruthless enough and i don't think they felt like a real threat.

I also didn't like the whole Brotherhood, a cult who protect the vampires, thing. The leader, a bald guy with an ugly tattoo on his head and a huge fur coat flowing in the wind, didn't ad to the tension and to be honest i don't think it settled in the wole film/story.

Though Stake Land isn't a bad horror film. It looks, although it didn't have a huge budget, professional and visually it all looks pretty good. The atmosphere and the great acting keeps you interested but to get a higher score the film had to have more tension.

Day of the Woman (1978)

After i saw the ''decent'' remake it was time for me to go and watch the original Day of the Woman also known as I Spit on Your Grave. I looked up a thing or two about the film before I watched it and noticed it was on the Video Nasties list. So I got more and more excited. 

The film follows Jennifer, a writer who is working on a new novel and needs to get out of the city to finish it. She rents a riverside cabin in upstate New York to work on her novel, attracting the attention of a number of rowdy male locals. They catch Jennifer one day and strip her naked for the village idiot (Matthew) and rape her. Jennifer is later attacked and raped a further two times by the four degenerates, and her novel is also destroyed. But Jennifer recovers, and in her now-twisted, psychotic state, she begins to seek revenge on the men.

The first part of the film is filled with the rape of Jennifer but these rape scene's aren't half as shocking as the ones in the remake. The reason for that is that the group of rapists aren't very convincing to say the least. One of 'em yells like he's some kind of indian, one of 'em is a retard and one of 'em is a lookalike of Landon Donovan. Richard Pace especially does a pretty damn bad job portraying the retard. The only good acting from the group comes from Eron Tabor who does a pretty good job. But overal the hilariously bad acting doesn't do much good to the ''shocking'' rape scene's. As a matter of fact, it only makes it look more amateuristic.

Finally after the raping is over Jennifer starts to get a little bit more lively again. And what do you do when you just got brutally raped?... Thats right!.. You get yourself a warm cup of coffee and finish writing your book. That onlogical part annoyed me a bit but luckily after a while she realises that these punks need to be taught a lesson. And thats when the good stuff starts. The rapists get killed of great although there isn't a lot of gore (except for the gross dick-scene of course)

Day of the Woman probably was a crude shocker in the 70's but i don't think it is anymore. It could have been more shocking but the acting of the rapists had to be better as the rape-scene's are way to amateuristic. Though the revenge part is pretty awesome