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Then check out www.UHMN.com. This site is fantastic.



From
Melissa Bacelar: "If you make independent horror on any level (writer,
actor, makeup artist, special FX) or if you watch it..The Underground
Horror Movie Network is for you. It's a combination of MySpace and a
Video Store. Seriously, you create a free profile and you can talk to
other fans, review films, meet the filmmakers!!! It's a great way to
Network and to find movies that you can't find anywhere else. There are
100's of films in the libraries and you can download one for free
today. Alice Sweet Alice!! It's a classic. The best part is you can
download and watch it on your I Pod..But the quality is so good you can
also watch it crystal clear on a big screen TV!!! This site ROCKS!!"



I've joined up and it's exactly what Melissa says it is!!! It makes my
little site look a bit crappy now unfortunately... oh well...

Ho ho ho! Ha ha haaaa-aaargh!
Well, it's that time again everyone! 'Tis the season to be bankrupt and to deck the halls with drunken relatives.
But, if the thought of your in-laws and your relatives' children isn't quite enough to fill your soul with horror, perhaps these four gifts from Satan's Grotto may be just the thing...

Black Christmas
Argued by some to be the first slasher film, certainly it was the model for many which followed.
Margot Kidder stars as a foul mouthed sorority girl in this festive killing spree.

Gremlins
Little furry creatures can be so much fun to give as pets for Christmas, but not when you feed them after midnight...

The Legend of Hell House
In the week before Christmas, a group of psychic researchers investigate the most haunted house in the world.

The Toymaker
A little mute boy is terrorized by his Christmas presents in the best of the ''Silent Night, Deadly Night'' series.

When "Russian mafia" try to steal what they believe to be uranium from a research lab, they accidentally release an army of giant indestructable scorpions with titanium bodies and human DNA!

"Can Major Nick Reynolds (Jeff Fahey) and his Delta Force team rid the earth of this menace before evolution takes a nasty turn for the worse?" Yes, probably, but who cares? It's a load of old CGI nonsense with poor acting and dialogue anyway.

This was only released earlier this year but the idea is so dated that it even stole the main elements of the plot from "Carnosaur 3"!!! Actually it did more than steal the main elements. Most of the scenes and dialogue are identical!!! And when I say "most" I mean 99.9 percent is identical! Just replace the dinosaurs in "Carnosaur 3" with scorpions and you have this! I now have a bad feeling that there may even be a sequel to this one day too.

I don't particularly like Jeff Fahey as an actor (apart from when he was in "The Lawnmower Man") and I found him to be suitably unimpressive in this movie. In fact, everyone was just going through the motions. Even Jo Bourne-Taylor (from Sky One's "Dream Team") couldn't save it by being a pretty but cold scientist (oh no, what a cliché!)! I was hoping it was going to turn into a comedy at some point but it wasn't even bad enough to be funny.

I really can't find anything good to say about this apart from it had giant CGI scorpions in... and you don't see those every day! You don't see a lot of them here either as most of the action takes place in dark and gloomy warehouses to presumably save on the budget. There are a couple of gory death scenes, one soldier gets sliced in half and another sexy Czech girl soldier gets her head pulled off, but you have to wait until almost the end for those.

Oh well, at least it had Russians in it... briefly You could tell they were Russians by the way they all wore black leather jackets and sunglasses... yup, that's how bad this film is!

I don't often do book reviews as it reminds me too much of the torture I had to endure at school but here goes.

"The Secret of Crickley Hall" by James Herbert, my favourite horror author, quite frankly isn't all that good.

I bought it after reading various online bookstore reviews and can only surmise that the writers of those critiques work for the publisher or haven't read many books. I also had to have it since I have all the other books by James Herbert as first editions and have been waiting six months to read it as the release date kept getting delayed. Now I know why! Plus I got it for half price and I think I now know the reason for that too!!!

The story is just like a typical episode of "Afterlife" (ITV's inferior rival to BBC's "Sea of Souls"). That in itself doesn't make it wholly bad as there are some good bits but they are few and far between.

The characterisation is nowhere as good as in something like "The Magic Cottage" or any of Herbie's early books like "The Rats" but various attempts are made with background stories and none really work. I just didn't care about any of the characters at all and the lack of scary vignettes (so apparent in things like "The Fog") really didn't help the tale from lagging. I have to compare this to the author's other works as the jacket says that this is "James Herbert's finest novel to date". I disagree!

Two teenage characters are right out of "Little Britain" and, although typical of today's English yobs, are nothing out of the ordinary. I think more could have been made of them and some kind of more severe punishment for their actions should have occurred.

The main villain is just a nutter, which is usually scary but here it is quite ludicrious. I saw echoes of the teacher in "The Fog" in his character but this one is supposed to be nastier. I really don't think enough was made of him, though I did sympathise with his obvious atypical head pain.

As I said, the story plods. This is a 600 page novel and took me nearly a week to read compared to something like "The Rats" which you can finish in one evening. There are flashbacks to fill out the story which is quite a weak one and the outcome can be guessed from the first chapter so there isn't much to hold your interest either apart from finding out if you were right in a "Davinci Code" kind of way.

I have a feeling the book was delayed because all the rewrites and edits weren't done. The result is that there are few loose ends which should have been tied up.

*** Spoiler *** (like I care if I spoil it or not!)

It would have been better if the psycho who torments them at the end had previously visited Lili the medium. He visited four mediums, we are told, but it would have a nice neat twist if the last one had been Lili.

Also it would have been clever if he had also murdered the couple's missing son. It would have served a sense of justice to tie this up. I like things neat in books and this was a wasted opportunity.

Lili had the potential to be a great character but she didn't really do anything except provide a parallel retelling of the original murders. She was a superfluous character and although we are told how pretty she was, nothing was made of it. It would have been nice to see her possessed and getting sexy or something. But it never happened. I can see the potential of doing that in a movie though!

The mother, Eve, was just a complete waste of space. She didn't do anything of any importance and her husband Gabe wasn't much better. Gabe had a "bad boy" background which wasn't used for anything either except to provide a background for his career choice. There was no reason for him to be American either as it didn't provide him with anything out of the ordinary. Usually if you get a couple from different countries in a novel you can develop their differences and similarities but not much was made of Gabe except a few language corrections. If this was a film then it would be "Spectre" all over again. Do I hear the word "ripoff"?

In fact, the only characters that stood out were Percy and Loren... but I think Chester the dog wins the best character in the book award.

The story, simply, is that a group of evacuees in World War II are sent to Crickley Hall where they are mistreated and killed by the evil governers during a Devon flood. In the present day, a family who have lost their son a year ago move into Crickley Hall and the ghosts of the children and their evil murderer manifest themselves just before another storm and flood.

I think you can probably work out the rest without reading it. It's all cliches. The husband is a sceptic, the wife is on medication, they are grieving, a medium is consulted, the dog runs away, the kindly gardener tells them stories, the daughter is bullied at school, the bullies get scared by the ghosties, not all the murderers are dead, and one of them comes to pay a visit.

*** end of spoilers *** (and the book!)

I read it but was glad when it was over. It wasn't scary, wasn't overly gory, annoyed me enormously and had no sexy bits. The descriptions of the ghosts were quite weak as were the ghosts themselves.

One of the stories involving the daughter getting her duvet pulled off her was just like something I read in Misty comic (yes I know it was meant for girls!) when I was nine years old and it wasn't scary then either... well it was a bit... but then I wasn't the hardened horror dude that I am now when I first read it.

Haunted house novels rarely work anyway unless they are dealing with true stories or are called "The Amityville Horror". I still think "The Magic Cottage" is James Herbert's best work with "Fluke" a close second. This book was just too derivative of other known stories and really didn't work for me at all.



Note:
If you are thinking of reading this, please watch "Spectre", "Escape to Nowhere" or "House of the Damned" (whatever it is called in the country you are in - as it has about 6 different titles!) starring Greg Evigan (yes, he was BJ and one of "My Two Dads") first. It is everything this book tried to be even though it too is a pointless and unoriginal horror flick.

When you realise that this is just Friday the 13th but with teens trapped on an island instead of being in a summer camp (and being menaced by a demon hidden inside a clay pinata instead of Jason) it isn't quite such a preposterous idea for a movie as it first appears. Having said that, I wasn't overly impressed by it at all.

A long spoken exposition of the origin of the pinata demon wastes a good ten minutes at the start and gets a bit boring. It could have been over in a third of the time but obviously someone liked the visuals. Anyway, we find that all the suffering of a red indian (or whatever they are called nowadays) village was magically encased in a clay pinata... hmmm... obviously it is going to escape one day or there will be no more story.

The film is, unfortunately, simply a teen slasher. Here a bunch of fraternity and sorority house members go to an island for a competition where they are handcuffed together as couples and have to search the island for pieces of underwear! Who makes this stuff up? Well, I suppose they had to think of some plot device to get them to split up and wander the island.

Two of them find the big clay pinata, hit it with a stick... lol... and, then, of course, it comes to life and starts killing them in various gruesome ways. One of the best scenes involves emasculation... yeah, the guy loses his nuts! Unfortunately, the CGI animation of the pinata demon is so poorly done that there's nothing scary in this film at all.

It's nice to see Nicholas Brendon getting some work again after Buffy but he's too old to play a teenager now and he's just no longer Xander. I also noticed that he is trying to look "badass" by having a crap shoulder tattoo and one under his armpit (why?). Oh dear, he's yet another idiotic LA fashion victim!

Jaime Pressly, who plays Earl's ex-wife, is also in it as the main eye candy and it is interesting to see her in a completely different role... but it isn't that interesting.

The other characters are also so stereotypical and two-dimensional that they are all instantly forgettable.

I have to mention the CGI again. Just think of the monsters in Doom the computer game (but not the movie) - and by Doom I mean the original blocky version not with the glossy graphics available on the latest consoles - and that's what the pinata demon in this thing looks like. It's worse than a jerky animated gif! It hasn't even got the quality of a Hercules or Xena monster!

So there you have it, there is very little suspense, nothing to make you jump, no realistic gore and one of the stupidest looking animated monsters ever created.

I really don't think you should watch this unless you fancy Nicholas Brandon or Jaime Pressly... and even then it will still disappoint you.

I just knew this was going to be bad. Everything about it was a portent to disaster... well it is called "The Omen" after all.

Some films just should not be remade. The original was an absolute classic and to remake it starring Liev "I-have-no-chin" Schreiber in the Gregory Peck role was an absolute blasphemy!

Julie Stiles is similarly so unattractive that the only bit of credibility in the whole film is that they are well matched as a couple. And even though Damien isn't actually their kid, he's an ugly little tyke too!

Anyway, the "Uglies" as I will now refer to the Thorne family go through all the same stuff as in the original. Daddy Ugly gets his ambassador's job in an England which looks nothing like the real place following the death of his superior in another scene which is so obviously not filmed on location in Rome. The simple giveaway of one scooter rider not wearing a helmet, when the law requires one in Rome, prove that it was all filmed on some backlot.

Following the Alsation inspired suicide of their nanny, Mommy Ugly gets the worst end of the deal as she has to look after Baby Ugly until Mia Farrow turns up pretending to be another nanny. Hmm, they are in England right? So why has an American nanny turned up? And why did the black Alsation turn into a Rottweiler?

After scratching his mother's forehead when freaking out on the way to a church, Baby Ugly then annoys some monkeys at a zoo. Was it Monkey World? Obviously it couldn't be Windsor Safari Park again as that has closed and is now Legoland. Scary lego monkeys would have been even more ludicrous but I feel they might have given this film more interest.

Then the priest gets killed in quite a good CGI enhanced impaling scene. Poor old Pete Postlethwaite. He's quite ugly too isn't he? All we need now is his partner in acting crime, David Thewliss...

Oh God (sorry for the blasphemy!), Thewliss is in it too! How ugly is this film going to get?

Well Mommy Ugly gets knocked off her stool and falls a couple of hundred feet after Baby Ugly knocks her over with his scooter. Obviously, in this case it isn't a real scooter but one of those push along ones as to see him knock her over with a Lambretta would be a bit preposterous. He can't even manage to ride the tricycle that the original Damien managed so well.

At this point I think I'll give up writing this review. Yes, the scene where David Thewliss loses his head is lush in a "Final Destination" kind of way but that is the only good moment worthy of mention.

I also wonder how exactly Daddy Ugly was supposed to have got the knives from Megiddo back through customs following the heightened security since 9/11. Since the Twin Towers were blatantly shown at the beginning of the movie as part of the signs which portended the coming of the beast, it's not as if we are supposed to be unaware of it. Even if it was a private jet, the rubber-gloved airport security would have had a great time with Daddy Ugly once he landed!

This film is slow, boring and insipid. The acting is worse than something you'd see in a school play and, although the script is exactly the same as the original movie, it is delivered in a much lacklustre way.

"The Omen" is absolutely the most pointless remake ever. It's not scary! Even the scary "drink the blood" music is absent.

In many ways this is just like "The Davinci Code". It promised so much, was hyped beyond belief, and then turned out to be far below average.

Just watch the original instead. This remake is just hellishly awful!

At last, a not so crappy low budget thriller! The plot is not all that original but it's been very well done.

Monica Keena plays a character named Nicole Freeman who is menaced by a serial killer on the phone whom she called by accident while trying to phone her mother at the beginning of the film. He proceeds to call her from the home of each of his victims just before kiiling them, causing her all sorts of distress, while the police, who have tapped her phone, try to get him. Seen it before? Well, duh, "When A Stranger Calls" (which has just been remade again, yawn!), "Black Christmas" and "Scream" all spring to mind.

But Monica Keena does it really well. She's very easy on the eye and has some lovable expressions. She has a very distracting mouth though, her top lip looks like she's had some enhancement on the right hand side (the left as you watch) in close up. Maybe she's just not completely flawless after all. Certainly at one point her shirt rises up at the back to reveal that she has fallen prey to the celebrity tattooing fad... yuk. Her character also wears an annoying piece of red string on her wrist as a bracelet which I couldn't work out a reason for. She could do with longer nails though but maybe that's part of the character too. It also looks like she likes to dye her blonde roots black... how do they do that? As an actress she's pretty good though so I can't really slate her for her work. But it's not Monica Keena's performance alone that makes the film good.

In spite of some sometimes annoying background music (I wouldn't have used any background sounds myself if I'd made it!), there is enough suspense and story to hold your attention almost until the end. When the serial killer turned up at her apartment, I lost interest temporarily as I was more into the developing relationship between her and the cop sent to look after her.

There's a twist at the end, again not overly original for anyone who has seen "Identity" or "Dead End", but it's very nicely done.

So, I have no choice, I have to recommend it to you. Not a classic by any means but certainly way above average. You will like it.

I'd give it 8 out of 10, and I don't often say that!

The blurb: "Set in 1960 in France, House of Voices explores the twists and turns of what happens when a woman is sent on a mission to find out what spirits are occupying a thought-to-be empty home for children."

Ooh, a ghostie one!!!

This tried so hard to be a French version of The Others that I almost expected Eric Sykes to join the Hattie Jacques-lookalike Russian school matron. It's beautiful shot but it should have been dubbed or subtitled. Allowing the original actors to use their own 'Allo, 'Allo style accents made the dialogue incomprehensible at times, and at those times when it was the most important.

Aside from the laconic dialogue, there are also very few bits of plot development that make any sense. The lead character is at first terrified of the "Scary Children" and then seems hell bent on summoning them for no reason at all. Similarly to Creep, there are lots of clues to explain why things are as they are but nothing is fully explained. The conclusion just leaves the audience wondering what the hell they just watched. What was the point? Were any moral purposes served? Did any characters get what they deserved? What the hell was it about? I'm sure the director could put all those answers on the back of a postage stamp.

This really didn't stand a ghost of a chance!

Ok, this is an oldie but a goodie. It was years ahead of its time. Most kids are evil nowadays and people turn a blind eye to it, but, back in 1956, it was a whole other story. You just would not expect anything like this back then!

It's 129 minutes long and, in truth, has some drawn out scenes of embarrassingly dated dialogue now, but at the time Nancy Kelly was awarded an Oscar nomination for her performance. At over two hours long, you get plenty of time to see characters develop though it could have been done much quicker.

For those who don't know, it is based on Maxwell Anderson's play and was the inspiration for 1994's The Good Son, as well as the 1985 TV movie of the same name.

Nancy Kelly and Patty McCormack were the stars of the original stage production which is why it all feels like a stage play with stage conventions throughout. A peculiar thing to this style of movie is the classical method of having any "nasty" scenes occur out of sight so that you only hear the sounds of them happening. This goes right back to ancient Greek practices and is none the worse for that.

In fact there are a lot of ancient Greek practices, ideas and myths tied up in this film. The idea of your offspring being a "seed", and all the Oedipal Freudian analysis going on with the housekeeper, point to a big classical influence. There's even divine intervention at the end; the Deus Ex Machina lives!

Anyway, enough of the geeky stuff. Precocious Patty McCormack plays the most horrid and creepy little girl you could imagine and the retarded handyman character, Leroy, is almost as menacing as Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear... almost but not quite. 6 years later, Cape Fear was able to get away with a lot more!

You'll enjoy this film on lots of levels, believe me. If you've never seen it, you really should. It may even make you look at your "little angel" differently.

Psychologists (and parents) know that all kids want everything right now. When that psychotic behaviour goes untempered by liberal attitudes we get the situation we have today with evil kids treating adults the way they do and running amok. This film as a social commentary really nails that message... and does not shirk away from the "spare the rod and spoil the child" truism.

And keep watching right up to the end to see Patty McCormack get the just deserts which she should have got a lot earlier on in the film!

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