My Bloody Valentine (1981)

When you think of horror classics you think of films like Halloween and Friday the 13th. Rarely will you see someone who names My Bloody Valentine. That's not surprising as it came out in 1981 and it had to compete with huge slasher flicks like The Burning, The Evil Dead, Final Exam, Friday the 13th Part 2, Halloween II, The Prowler etc. In fact My Bloody Valentine is a mix between two of those. It has the stalking/hounting scenes of Halloween and a brute, huge killer like Friday the 13th. Is it as good as those movies though?

There's a big valentine-party planned in the little coal mining town of Valentine Bluffs, Nova Scotia. It is the first Valentine's Day party in 20 years, because then there was an accident in the mine, and the accident happened because the men responsible for the security were at the party. The sole surviving miner, named Harry Warden, later killed them, and told the town NEVER to arrange a Valentine's Day party again. The party begins, and so does the killing...

My Blood Valentine is a typical 80's slasher film. Not surprisingly a group of teens decide to party (in this case a valentine's party) and the killer sees it as a huge opportuninty to drop some bodies. The killer, dressed up in the typical mining suit, does look extremely cool and creepy. Unfortunately the teens are less cool. They are seriously the most asshole teens in a slasher film ever, and there are a lot... They are not funny, while they think they are and I just couldn't wait for good ol' Henry Warden to kill 'em all off. 

And that is when the disappointment starts to creep in. The kills are rather boring. While some of the ideas for the kill scenes are very cool the actual kill scene's are rather disappointing. My Bloody Valentine lacks a lot of gore. Films like Halloween got away with it due to the tension of Michael Myers creeping around the house but that ain't the fact here. If there ain't no gore I want to see the killer doing some creepy things. Unfortunately, except for some first-person stalking, this happens rarely. The atmosphere is OK but not great either. 

Fortunately the dumb ass partiers decide to go down the mines to party some more. This setting does create more tension and atmosphere and that's the reason why the last 20 minutes are a bit more entertaining. Still nothing great but watchable at the very least. 

The killer's awesome appearence is one of the better things of this movie. The films has some decent atmosphere and tension but almost no gore. At least my version didn't have any. When I look at google images I see more gory pictures that weren't included in my version. I guess I saw a CUT version then. God damn those assholes. For now it'll be 2,5 stars but I'll give the unrated version a watch sooner or later so that I can compare it and maybe the rate will be higher. 

SO KEEP IN MIND. I APPARENTLY SAW A CUT VERSION.

Fun Facts: (Source: IMDB)

Star Neil Affleck said that the identity of the films killer was kept a secret even from the cast because the filmmakers liked the idea of the mystery being real among the actors. Although Affleck figured out that he was the killer when after being cast, he was sent to the make up effects department to be fitted for a fake arm that would be ripped off of the killer in the film's finale.

Non-Horror Exploitation: RoboCop (1987)

26 Years later RoboCop is an amazing classic that still kicks ass in every possible way. I'm normally not a big fan of films with comic book like characters but this one proves that those kind of films CAN be great. 

Detroit - in the future - is crime-ridden, and run by a massive company. The company have developed a huge crime-fighting robot, which unfortunately develops a rather dangerous glitch. The company sees a way to get back in favour with the public when a cop called Alex Murphy is killed by a street gang. Murphy's body is reconstructed within a steel shell and named Robocop. The Robocop is very successful against criminals, and becomes a target of supervillian Boddicker.

So RoboCop is set in the future although you probably wouldn't know that if it wasn't shown in the synopsis. Just everything is typical 80's about this film but the robots. The music is cheesy, the badguys and scum of the streets look like there heading to a fetish party and the newsreaders have 80's hair and bulky shoulder pads. But there is only ONE dude in Detroit who has even bulkier ones. His name is RoboCop. 

So officer Murphy gets killed off by a gang in what is certainly one of the most grim, nasty and disturbing looking kill scenes I've ever seen in a film (especially in an action film). Some company then turns his corpse into RoboCop, an invincible super cop who lives on babyfood... That's right, babyfood. He quickly takes a car and goes searching for bad dudes doing bad things in the big city of Detroit. 

RoboCop, considering its genre, is a very violent film. Bloody scenes certainly don't get shunned. And although it's all very gory you can't really deny the humoristic tone in it all. All gore gets shown fully on screen but there is always that little piece of dark humor that gets thrown in what makes this movie so fucking great. 

The badguys, lead by Kurtwood Smith, actually do the same thing. The cast precisely finds the right formula between being cold blooded killers and being dorky and funny (but still not in a childish way). Paul McCrane probably is the best example of this all. Eventually RoboCop (who still has some vague memory of when he was Murphy) finds out that he has been killed by a group of guys and hunts them down which results in some amazing shoot outs and scenes. My favorite probably being RoboCop busting in a drugshouse, killing everybody off and then take one of the guys who killed him, throw him face first through glass multiple times while reading his rights to him. 

RoboCop is a 1987 film and in some scenes it really shows. The evil enemy robot and the fatal fall in the last scene for example look pretty dated but at the same time it all adds to the charm of this great film. 
RoboCop is a lovely classic action/sci-fi made by Dutch director Paul Verhoeven that, for many many years, many many genre fans will love. 

 Fun Fact (Source: IMDB)

In Sacramento, California a robbery suspect fled into a darkened movie theatre to escape pursuing police. He became so engrossed in the movie playing on screen, Robocop, that he failed to notice that police had evacuated all other patrons from the theatre. When the lights flipped on, the stunned man was taken into custody.

 

Outpost (2008)

Outpost proves that nazi-zombies don't only show up in 70's weird exploitation films. Another ''recent'' nazi-zombie film is the Norwegian film ''Død Snø'' (A.K.A. Dead Snow). Although they are both nazi-zombie flicks they are barely comparable. Dead Snow was a great combination between horror, gore and humor while Outpost is much more serious and very dark. While Dead Snow might be a bit more sympathetic both are still very good movies. 


In a seedy bar in a town ravaged by war, mysterious businessman Hunt hires ex-marine D.C. to assemble a crack team of ex-soldiers to protect him on a dangerous journey into no-man's land. To this gang of hardened warriors, battle-worn veterans and borderline criminals killing is just a job - and one they enjoy. Their mission - to scope out an old military bunker. It should be easy - 48 hours at the most. Lots of cash for little risk, or so he says. Once at the outpost, the men make a horrific discovery that turns their mission on its head - the scene of a bloody and gruesome series of experiments, carried out by the Nazis on their own soldiers during WWII. Amid the carnage, they find something even more disturbing - someone who's still alive. As war rages above ground, and a mysterious enemy emerges from the darkness below, D.C. and his men find themselves trapped in a claustrophobic and terrifying scenario. Their mission is no longer one of safe-guarding - it's one of survival. ...

Outpost starts with a relatively quiet start. It's set in eastern Europe and director Steve Barker does a great job at making it look as raw and gray as possible. Anyway the build up takes quite a long time. About 30 - 40 minutes pass without pretty much anything happening. And while it certainly the weakest part of the film it really doesn't bore either due to some small things (atmosphere and radio noice for example). Even when the soldiers reach the buker things don't really speed up but the dark halls of the buker do create some great tension. And finally the night is there. This is where things start to get pretty cool. 

From out of nowhere a light and dozens of nazi zombies appear from the woods. The soldiers of course open fire but notice that they can't kill 'em and that the zombies/ghosts can disappear and appear out of no where. That's due to a machine in the bunker that was build by the nazis to create an invisible army. One by one the soldiers get picked off by the zombies. The kills aren't really gory but are in fact very dark and horrific. Outpost also manages to be very dark and tensive and at times even scary.

The acting was pretty decent for horror standards. The English accents did annoy me a bit, but hey, it's an English film. The best performance comes from Richard Brake, who some genre snobs might know from his roles in Doom (2005) and his small part of an ambulance driver in Zombie's Halloween II (2009). He plays the character ''Prior'' who is one of the mercenaries/soldiers. It's the typical redneck bad-ass. Ain't afraid of nothing, a cool appearance, always a one-liner ready for every situation and blasting his shotgun like it is a water gun. 

Outpost turned out to be a very cool, dark little horror film. After the 30 minute mark there's lots of action, gunfights and unbreakable nazi-zombies. A great atmosphere (especially in the night scenes) and some amazing tension make this a very fun film to watch.

Fun Fact (Source: IMDB)

When DC pulls out the pistol from its holder in the generator chamber, its sound is identical to Return to Castle Wolfenstein when the player swaps weapons. Similarly, when the soldiers emerge from the truck, the slamming noise is the same as in RTCW when the player attempts to open a locked wooden door.