Often times movies are slow moving engagements. That is true
for modern horror, and a lot of the time I’m flabbergasted by what audiences
will sit through to get a little thrill. When I saw the poster for this film, I
wasn’t expecting a lot. I figured it would be a slasher, and well we all know
that the mother of killer clown movies either comes from outer space or “IT”,
but this was different, it felt different, and it started off innocent enough,
and just derailed fast.
The premise is simple enough, a killer clown is hunting down
individuals, and no matter what they do, he keeps coming back. A slasher of
1980s lore is what you get here, and not much else to really explain. Sure,
there are moments where the story takes you to care about the characters
slightly, as they have some peril outside of the killer clown, but it’s short
lived. This is a straight forward slasher and it is fast moving. There is not a
lot of room for filler in this one, and that’s something that I appreciated
about it. It's a movie that knows what the audience wants, and knocks you in
the teeth within the first act.
The expected horror movie tropes live in with this one,
including the final girl, albeit not without putting up one hell of a fight.
You get the unstoppable villain, and you’re drenched in gore and blood as well.
There’s nothing too complex about the movie, and it really draws you in with a
powerful performance from David Howard Thornton as Art The Clown.
Terrifier isn’t brain candy, but it is a good slasher with
an easy premise, and something that will have you thrilled and shocked at
times. This is horror sliced up the way you expect from the 1980s and 1990s to
boot, not “modern” day slow moving genre art. That’s just my two cents, you
should pick up the blu ray and make upyour mind on it, but I recommend it, so there’s that.
And we're going back in time today. I have been bogged down with a few other projects and decided to do a look back at a post rather than force a new one. Here you go, here's a blast from the past.
Growing up, I enjoyed the Nickelodeon series “Are You Afraid of the Dark” and loved to read the “Goosebumps” series of horror novels, and this short film seems to be in that vein.
The Masters of Horror series is a pretty cool concept, that gets a wide array of directors to shoot one hour horror shorts and produce some really cool stuff. This one is quick and easy to swallow.
There is a killer clown who has come back after a long absence to kill off some kids that were mean to him. By giving kids ice cream, their parents begin to start melting to death.
Meanwhile, one of the parents gets wise to the scheme and tries his best to stop it. This is a rip off if you’re buying it. It’s really cool to rent on netflix, but overall it’s a short winded burst of tension, and release. It’s a good one hour program, but it is rushed and the characters are somewhat disposable, so you don’t really get the full emotional connection as you would if this was a 90 minute project.
We All Scream For Ice Cream is really a good entry in the Masters of Horror series, and it compliments the genre really well, but it’s not the greatest thing to come out of the cable television series.
I fell asleep watching some movie about losing stuff in fires or something, and when I woke up it was too late to review a horror movie. So instead of trying to shoe horn a new review here, I decided to once again rely on my trusty friend, the REWIND post. These posts are just throwbacks with additional comments and the original reviews for films you may have missed.
Drive Thru is one of those films that went straight to dvd, but it has higher production value than most other films in the genre. Morgan Spurlock's cameo was definitely a great addition to the overall film, and that's really all I remember. That and the fact that the gore levels in this film are way better than most horror films.
Drive Thru is a straight to dvd horror comedy, which features more laughs than horror. The overall tone is dark, but the gore is immense, and the comedy is so-so, but it’s worth at least one viewing.
The story surrounds a villain named Archie, who for the rest of this interview is known as Horny the clown. When he was young the local kids would play tricks on him, and one day he invited everyone to his birthday party, but instead of having everything go right, the kids burn the burger joint down and Archie is presumed dead inside.
That’s the spoiler kids…Horny goes from kid to kid killing all the children of the kids that caused the fire.
The movie is straight to dvd, so the quality isn’t exactly very high at all. It’s above television quality, and I presume it was filmed in HD. The main character “Mackenzie” is hot, or at least she was when I saw it, and maybe I’m just fond of “punk/emo” chicks in horror movies, or maybe I’m just weird, but I thought she looked good. Whatever the case is, the movie progresses through lots of slayings fast, and it doesn’t really get going until the third act when everything starts to unravel.
The comedic value and tone to this film is almost immediate. The start of this film has some wannabe gangsters ordering food from Hella Burger only to meet their demise with Horny the clown. This clown isn’t all that scary, he’s a punk rock version of what you would imagine a killer clown would be like. He moves fast and kills with a cleaver, and is often found spewing horrible one liners. I’d give you an example, but I’d rather not.
There is an attempt at a love scene, but I’m assuming the girl involved was either too young or the director couldn’t get her to commit, because the camera pans away, the screen fades out and we never see any of the action. For a rated R film, this makes no sense, especially since they tease that through the whole first and second act of the film.
The killings range from straight up slash and hack deaths to deep fryer kills, and even a few explosions. Overall, the body count is massive for such a corny film. The final turn of events and explanation onto what is going on is stupid. I hated the way the film treated me like a complete idiot, but at the same time tried to act serious. Morgan Spurlock even shows up as the Hella Burger manager at one point! The producers were NOT serious when making this horror comedy, and it’s hard to take it seriously when the makers weren’t serious at all.
Why Drive Thru is Scary: The scary parts of this film have nothing to do with the plot and are directly linked with the harsh themes found in this film. The revenge is over the top, and I’m not sure if revenge killing has ever happened in real life, but it makes you think about the whole notion of “you reap what you sew” and in this case that’s what happened. The mean kids grew up and had children of their own, only to have them snuffed out by someone from their past. Sometimes we move on, and we don’t realize that we hurt someone in our past, and just like those crazy killers out there with “hit lists”, revenge is never a good thing. I guess the scary notion is that anyone would harbor such hate for so long that they would seek out this sort of devastation as a result. Drive Thru is comedy before horror, but to a lot of people the gore levels in this film will be enough to induce vomiting or nightmares, because after all, it’s still a horror film.
Comedy or not, the film must have made some money because a sequel is planned to hit dvd stores and it will most likely follow along the ending of this film, which you can guess at this point. The saving grace of this film relies heavily on the cuteness of the lead actress (Leighton Meester of Gossip Girl Fame), and the Morgan Spurlock cameo. Otherwise, I would only recommend viewing this film if you’re a diehard horror fan like myself, and just must see everything. If you’re more of a discerning movie fan, you’re going to hate the lack of support from the actors, writers, and director on this film. They basically phone it all in. However, if you are a fan of horror and terror in a Fast Food setting, let me recommend an awesome book collection of horror stories all based around Fast Food: Fried! Fast Food, Slow Deaths, which is a great book that I got to read a few months back and recommend it highly today.
I've seen a lot of bad movies in my day, but I didn't expect this one to be another one of the trash pile. Dead Clowns had some great reviews, on the box cover, and the artwork made it seem like it was a legitimately scary film. I'm not sure sure how I missed this one, because it looked promising, until I got it home and actually watched the train wreck unfold.
Dead Clowns has an interesting premise, a storm sets off events that unleash the fury of clowns that passed away during a carnival train crash years ago. Now they are coming out of the waters and they want to eat the flesh of humans. Zombie Clowns? I can dig that.
The gore effects are interesting, although the camera is frantic, blurred, or blacked out. There's a constant crunching sound as the clowns eat through the flesh, and it makes no sense to me as to why.
Like with a majority of zombie movies, these clowns are slow and yet no one can seem to get away from them. The death toll rises, the boredom matches it, and the story just has tons of holes in it.
Oh and if the lackluster, slow moving clown zombies aren't bad enough for you, this film is shot with a handy cam and HD adapter, and is poorly acted, constructed and told. The “real” storm footage spliced into make it seem like the area is in fact getting stormed upon is terrible, and only leads me to hate Lionsgate.
Then I was reminded of a story. I knew a director of horror films and he said that Lionsgate at one point, and most likely still, buys independently produced horror film at around 50K a pop, repackages them and then re-releases them on dvd. That's what happened here, some independent got some cash to get the Liongsate release and BOOOM they are getting gigs....right?
This film isn't worth analyzing further, and really isn't worth much time. Sure, it has some gore, sure it has zombie clowns, but despite the idea being solid, the film is boring, slow paced, and really reaching towards the bottom of the barrel of what can be justified as entertainment. Whoever positively reviewed this film for the quotes on the box, should be shot, because this one is a terrible film.
Drive Thru is a straight to dvd horror comedy, which features more laughs than horror. The overall tone is dark, but the gore is immense, and the comedy is so-so, but it’s worth at least one viewing.
The story surrounds a villain named Archie, who for the rest of this interview is known as Horny the clown. When he was young the local kids would play tricks on him, and one day he invited everyone to his birthday party, but instead of having everything go right, the kids burn the burger joint down and Archie is presumed dead inside.
That’s the spoiler kids…Horny goes from kid to kid killing all the children of the kids that caused the fire.
The movie is straight to dvd, so the quality isn’t exactly very high at all. It’s above television quality, and I presume it was filmed in HD. The main character “Mackenzie” is hot, or at least she was when I saw it, and maybe I’m just fond of “punk/emo” chicks in horror movies, or maybe I’m just weird, but I thought she looked good. Whatever the case is, the movie progresses through lots of slayings fast, and it doesn’t really get going until the third act when everything starts to unravel.
The comedic value and tone to this film is almost immediate. The start of this film has some wannabe gangsters ordering food from Hella Burger only to meet their demise with Horny the clown. This clown isn’t all that scary, he’s a punk rock version of what you would imagine a killer clown would be like. He moves fast and kills with a cleaver, and is often found spewing horrible one liners. I’d give you an example, but I’d rather not.
There is an attempt at a love scene, but I’m assuming the girl involved was either too young or the director couldn’t get her to commit, because the camera pans away, the screen fades out and we never see any of the action. For a rated R film, this makes no sense, especially since they tease that through the whole first and second act of the film.
The killings range from straight up slash and hack deaths to deep fryer kills, and even a few explosions. Overall, the body count is massive for such a corny film. The final turn of events and explanation onto what is going on is stupid. I hated the way the film treated me like a complete idiot, but at the same time tried to act serious. Morgan Spurlock even shows up as the Hella Burger manager at one point! The producers were NOT serious when making this horror comedy, and it’s hard to take it seriously when the makers weren’t serious at all.
Why Drive Thru is Scary: The scary parts of this film have nothing to do with the plot and are directly linked with the harsh themes found in this film. The revenge is over the top, and I’m not sure if revenge killing has ever happened in real life, but it makes you think about the whole notion of “you reap what you sew” and in this case that’s what happened. The mean kids grew up and had children of their own, only to have them snuffed out by someone from their past. Sometimes we move on, and we don’t realize that we hurt someone in our past, and just like those crazy killers out there with “hit lists”, revenge is never a good thing. I guess the scary notion is that anyone would harbor such hate for so long that they would seek out this sort of devastation as a result. Drive Thru is comedy before horror, but to a lot of people the gore levels in this film will be enough to induce vomiting or nightmares, because after all, it’s still a horror film.
Comedy or not, the film must have made some money because a sequel is planned to hit dvd stores and it will most likely follow along the ending of this film, which you can guess at this point. The saving grace of this film relies heavily on the cuteness of the lead actress (Leighton Meester of Gossip Girl Fame), and the Morgan Spurlock cameo. Otherwise, I would only recommend viewing this film if you’re a diehard horror fan like myself, and just must see everything. If you’re more of a discerning movie fan, you’re going to hate the lack of support from the actors, writers, and director on this film. They basically phone it all in. However, if you are a fan of horror and terror in a Fast Food setting, let me recommend an awesome book collection of horror stories all based around Fast Food: Fried! Fast Food, Slow Deaths, which is a great book that I got to read a few months back and recommend it highly today.
Looking for grindhouse, horror, or sci-fi films? Please check out our amazon astore featuring all things horror. Don't trust astore? Check out amazon.com, surprisingly they have more grindhouse,horror,and rare sci-fi than you may not have thought possible.
While House of 1,000 Corpses scared us with insanity, The Devils Rejects shows how far depravity can go, when the firefly family go on the run after the events of the first film. If you’ve seen the original film, then you’ll see all the characters here that you saw from the previous film, and an introduction to a few of Rob Zombies friends, who aren’t half bad at all. This film also includes my favorite wcw superstar, Diamond Dallas Page! But that’s just a sidenote.
First and foremost, the marketing for this film had a lot of great posters. The posters were grotesque to say the least, and they didn’t make it to the dvd box cover art, as shown above. The posters were so harsh, that I was wondering how in the world Rob Zombie got away with showing these in public. The brutality of the film is references with such a subtle positioning of an arm out of a hotel door, and that in itself was enough to get me hooked.
The film surrounds the family as they are being chased by a deranged and rogue Sheriff, who happens to be the brother of the first investigator, creating an intense revenge theme that circles the whole movie; if you recall the death scene from the first film, you’ll remember one of the most artistic pieces of death in a horror movie. (I know, that sounds morbid, but if you saw the film, you know how great that part of the film was) The movie follows a good revenge plot and it once again throws back a lot of scenes and dialogue to the greater horror movies of the past. References to grindhouse classics are felt throughout this film, which in my view, focuses more on the law than the actual family.
The gore has been turned up a notch, and the hostility is at an all time high. We’re not talking about boobs or nudity for the sake of it. We’re talking about complete and utter repulsion. We’re talking about as close as you’re going to get to shocksploitation in the new era as you are going to get. Nudity and near rape scenarios are highlighted in this film without flinching and the cruelty that you see is hard to watch. Even veteran horror movie fans can agree that scenes of harsh cruelty involving women who are “older” age is a horror in itself, and like I said hard to watch. We’re not talking about uncomfortable x-rated stunt double sex, we’re talking about cruel punishment that had to have shaken the actors to go through. The genuine feeling of the situation was definitely a fine touch by Rob Zombie, and is a credit to the horrors of this film. If you miss the emotional tie in that is given to the victims before their death, you are way too jaded to watch any movies and should most likely just give up altogether.
This film is more than just a revenge throwback or a 70’s grindhouse film, it has a lot of layers that involve more than just the rainy night scenarios that were involved with the first film. There are also additional scenes with Captain Spaulding and his banter with his brother, who runs a brothel. The film doesn’t bode well overall and is not going to allow a sequel, nor is it going to spawn a prequel, this film goes out in a hail of furious revenge. I kid you not, this film is a hard luck piece of film making and is a good testament to horror ethos, while not forgetting how to crossover into the mainstream.
Looking for grindhouse, horror, or sci-fi films? Please check out our amazon astore featuring all things horror. Don't trust astore? Check out amazon.com, surprisingly they have more grindhouse,horror,and rare sci-fi than you may not have thought possible.
Rob Zombie’s directorial debut is like a journey into hell on dvd. I recall when this movie made it’s theatrical run, and Sid Haig was outside of my local theater passing out tickets to a horror convention that he was signing autographs at. It was hilarious, and I didn’t know who he was until I sat down and watched the movie.
The movie has a simple premise, a group of young adults are traveling the nation looking for weird and spooky tourist traps. They stumble upon Captain Spaulding’s museum of weird stuff and chicken, alongside The Murder Ride. In this ride they learn about Doctor Satan, and after some questions find out that the Doctor Satan house is just down the road, so of course, they must explore it.
Meanwhile, there are a group of cheerleaders missing, and locked up in a dingy garage somewhere. We don’t hear more about this until later, but it plays as a key turning point later on in the movie. The beginning of the film sets up for what kind of language and violence is to come, when a failed robbery turns into a hilarious introduction to Captain Spaulding. (My Favorite of All Clowns)
The movie starts to feel a little recycled, and then the horror starts. If you’re a fan of Gore, you’re going to be in love with how its presented here. Skin peeling, guts exploding, head shots, ax cuts, surgical procedures, zombies, and even occult rituals pour out of the crevices of this film to make quite a cesspool of interactive fun.
The ending is also a great tribute to the 1980’s scare secenes, but I won’t deliberate more information than that. You’ll love it, that’s all I will tell you about that.
Alright, so you either hate this movie and hate Rob Zombie, or you love this movie and get all the references that long time horror movie fan Rob Zombie threw in there. If you’re a fan of horror you’ll catch all the references to movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3, Friday the 13th, and dare I say…A Nightmare on Elm Street, oh and I’m reaching for this one, but Toxic Avenger is also summoned in spirit, if you really pay attention. The overall tone of this film is dark, and it’s rainy. There are a lot of cut scenes that you don’t really know how to explain, but you don’t have to, you just strap in and get ready for a journey into what the radio spots call “Hell”.
Rob Zombie may have got a lot of heat for Halloween, and when I reviewed the movie Halloween, I didn’t think it was as bad as people said it was. House of 1,000 Corpses is a great entry into the horror genre for both nostalgia’s sake and horror on its own. If you’re a long time horror fan, rejoice that this is not a Japanese remake of some kind, it is definitely NOT pg-13 and is definitely worth its weight. I admit, the first time I saw this movie I didn’t really like it, but it grows on you, like the fungus or disease in Cabin Fever (a favorite of mine). House of 1,000 Corpses is not the greatest, but it is heavy and hardcore enough to win this horror movie buff over, with enough blood, guts, and glory. Try it on for size, and enjoy the ride!
