Recently Lisa reviewed Jaws. You know what she did probably without knowing it? She reviewed Blades. Seriously, it’s the same movie. Watch this. I’m going to take the second paragraph of her review and make it about Blades.
I mean, seriously, what’s there to say about this film? Blades is one of those movies that no one has seen and everyone has seen. And, even if everyone hasn’t seen the film, chances are they can still tell you about it. They know it’s a movie about a giant lawnmower that attacks Tall Grass Country Club, just as a big golfing tournament is starting. They know the club owner refuses to close the course, because he doesn’t want to lose the television exposure. They know that the final half of the film is two guys and a girl (Robert North, Victoria Scott, and Jeremy Whelan) driving around a golf course in a van, searching for a lawnmower. And they certainly know that, whenever you hear the rumble of an engine, it means that someone is about to get attacked.
See, it’s the same damn movie! And it’s damn entertaining! The reason it works so well is that they play it straight. The scene where Jeremy Whelan, who plays the Robert Shaw character named Deke Slade, tells the story about his father dying at the hands of a lawnmower, it’s done with all the seriousness that Shaw told his shark story.
Also, Robert North, who plays the Roy Scheider character named Roy Kent, always appears genuinely concerned for the lives of the people on the golf course.
It’s been awhile since I watched Jaws, but I swear I remember a scene on par with the most ridiculous scene in this movie. That’s where they deputize a bunch of people who go out on a big hunt for the killer lawnmower and catch one. Then our heroes go and cut it open to find that it doesn’t have inside of it any body parts to indicate that it’s the right mower.
So you want to see the killer mower? Here it is near the end of the film.
How does it end? The same way of course. Explosives get placed on the lawnmower and Roy hits a golf ball onto it that triggers them. Boom!
I could have explained in more detail, but seriously it’s the same movie as Jaws. All you need to know is that yes, it does a good job and I think it’s worth watching. I honestly look at it less as a parody or a spoof of Jaws than an homage to it that shows how well that formula works.
One of my favorite things is in the credits. The very first credit you see is a solo card crediting the gaffer Scott Buckler. Before anyone else on the movie, the gaffer gets top billing.
At the end of the credits they hint at a sequel called Hedges about a killer chainsaw. After a guy leaves his chainsaw outside we see it appear to come alive. Then we get this.
The best part of this is you can easily watch it online. I’ve embedded it below. Enjoy!
That’s our girl Jennifer Stone (Jessy Schram) doing Alicia Silverstone from Clueless (1995). In short order she gets a call from daddy who has the sad news that the family is basically bankrupt. Her father is played by Willie Aames who most people will probably remember as Bibleman or one of those short lived sitcoms he was on. I said basically because Hallmark does like to recycle things from earlier movies so…
she inherits a pumpkin farm like in Growing The Big One. Let’s introduce the boy since you know it’s a given that she falls in mud wearing expensive clothes.
That’s Brett Jarrett (Jesse Hutch). The pumpkin farm has been in his family for a long time. I honestly don’t remember how they own the farm, but don’t. Doesn’t matter anyways. The film is about her adapting to living in the country while finding a way to make it a successful business.
There are some side characters, and those actors do a decent job. The problem is that this film would have been fine if it had just been about her turning this otherwise unknown pumpkin farm into a profit center for her and his family. But of course it also has to be about them falling in love. That part never really comes together. I think the one user review on IMDb is reading too much into it seeing it as greed conquers all. It’s more like yet another Hallmark movie where the love story part is unnecessary and forced. It just doesn’t need to be there. I was fine watching her discover the old Jarrett family recipe and turn it into a big success. That part was fine. They just wasted their time with the romance part. And it can even send what I believe is an unintended message that the IMDb user picked up on.
This is one that isn’t terrible, but subpar enough that I really wouldn’t waste your time watching it. Watch Clueless, Funny Farm (1988), and Baby Boom (1987) instead. They do the rich girl comes down to earth, adjusting to quirky country life, and making the most of a sudden shift from city life to country life much better.
At least the computer screen was done well in this.
And some nice shots of the Harvest Moon. Even if it does look close enough to kill everyone with the tides.
One of the most often repeated stories about the tribes that live along the Amazon River is that, when they first met “civilized” explorers, they refused to have their pictures taken because they feared that that the camera would steal their souls.
Now, I’m not sure if I believe that story. It sounds like one of those stories that’s just a little bit too perfect and metaphorical. But, it’s still a neat idea because, when you think about, cameras really are fascinating devices. They literally freeze time and they produce images that are full of details that you might have originally missed.
To me, a camera with supernatural powers seems like the natural subject for a horror movie. Obviously, Italian director Francesco Gasperoni agreed with me because he directed Smile, a 2009 film about a camera with supernatural powers.
Smile deals with a group of European college students who are taking a road trip through Morocco. Our eight friends are all equally attractive, equally shallow, and equally destined for a bad end. Seriously, as soon as they first appear, driving through the desert in a jeep and doing bong hits, you know that they’re all doomed.
Clarissa (Harriet McMasters-Green) is determined to photograph the entire trip but, when her camera is stolen, she’s forced to search for a replacement. Luckily, she comes across a mysterious man (played by veteran actor Armand Assante) who is willing to give her an old camera. Of course, Clarissa accepts his offer and, needless to say, the camera is like totally cursed. It turns out that Assante is a former crime scene photographer and anyone who has his or her picture taken with the camera will subsequently die…
Smile is hardly a perfect film but I enjoyed it for what it was. The characters are just shallow enough that it’s not upsetting when they all start getting killed and Gasperoni makes good use of the desolate Moroccan setting. The idea of the haunted camera is a clever one and Assante is properly menacing. While the film might occasionally be somewhat predictable and the film’s plot is pretty much dependent upon every character doing the stupidest thing possible, the film does feature an effectively mean-spirited ending.
(Again, it helps that none of the characters in the film are all that likable.)
As much as I was hoping that it would be a throw back to the classic Italian horror films of Bava, Argento, and Fulci, Smile really can’t begin to compare. That said, Smile is entertaining for what it is. At the very least, it won’t steal your soul.
I should start things off with a confession. This is actually not the first time that I’ve shared Manos: The Hands of Fate here on the Shattered Lens. I previously shared it on October 8th of 2013 and I even used the exact same picture of Torgo.
However, Manos proved to be such a popular choice that I simply had to post it again. As I pointed out two years ago, Manos has a reputation for being one of the worst films ever made. And, honestly, who am I to disagree? However, it’s also a film that is so bad that it simply has to be seen.
By the way, everyone who watches Manos ends up making fun of Torgo, who was played by John Reynolds. What they may not know is that Reynolds committed suicide shortly after filming on Manos wrapped. So, as tempting at it may be to ridicule poor Mr. Reynolds’s performance, save your barbs for Torgo and leave John Reynolds alone.
— Alex Travis (Emily Hughes) in The Dead Live (2006)
So, this is what it comes down to. There’s a lot of very critical things that you can say about the 2006 zombie film, The Dead Live. You can complain about the wooden acting. You can talk about the terrible special effects. You can talk about the numerous continuity errors and you can also point out that this film drags on for 120 minutes. Myself, I would complain about the repetitive heavy metal soundtrack. (What is the deal with amateur zombie filmmakers and heavy mental?) Judging from the comments over at the imdb, the number one complaint about this film is with the sound. To put it simply, it’s often time impossible to hear what anyone’s saying in The Dead Live.
But, with all that in mind, The Dead Live does feature brave journalist, Alex Travis (played by Emily Hughes), shouting, “It’s madness! Madness, I tell you!” And any movie that features “Madness, I tell you!” in the dialogue cannot be considered all bad.
Add to that, this film features a scene where an unfortunate guy gets shot in the head. However, before the trigger is pulled, the guy shouts, “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” and the action suddenly starts moving in slow motion. Even the “NOOOOOOOOOO!” is heard in slow motion. And, as I’ve said in the past, I love the slow mo of doom.
Oh! And I did I mention that, towards the end of the film, someone shouts, “STOP OR I’LL SHOOT! ARE YOU DEAD OR ALIVE!?”
And then there’s the visit to the Savini County Morgue in Romero, Ohio (that’s right — Savini County and Romero, Ohio), which turns out to be located in an office. The director plays the coroner. He also plays the sheriff, a member of a SWAT Team, and a zombie.
Before we get too snarky, I’ve read a FAQ at the imdb, one which I have a reason to suspect was written by the director himself. This was Darrin Patterson’s first movie and, assuming that he is the author of the surprisingly detailed FAQ, he admits that this film was largely a learning experience.
And, as easy as it is to criticize The Dead Live, there’s an odd sort of charm to just how thoroughly and totally inept this movie really is. I think it’s because we all secretly know that, if we ever got a chance to make a movie for only $10,000 and with no professional help whatsoever, we’d probably end up making something just as bad.
The phrase is overused but The Dead Live is literally “so bad that it’s good.” It’s a shame that the film doesn’t have a cult following. If you can appreciate Birdemic or April Rain, you can probably appreciate The Dead Live.
Jeez! That title card is even more generic looking than the one for Erotic Ink.
This movie picks up where The Confession left off. Katie is now rich, but remembers to remind us she’s Amish in case we’ve forgotten.
Is it in bad taste to use that particular screenshot after referencing the movie Erotic Ink? Nah, that movie was all one on one so it’s okay.
At least this time she doesn’t just flat out tell us she’s Amish. Actress Katie Leclerc can also do her fake Pennsylvania Dutch accent throughout the whole movie. Thank god! It doesn’t make it any less fake, but at least she doesn’t magically drop it like she did in The Confession. And neither is there a lady in the movie playing an actress playing an Amish girl doing a fake accent that we are supposed to recognize as fake. Since this movie is just a retread of a typical Hallmark romance with a bonnet thrown on it, here’s the wrong guy.
Oh, remember Daniel Fisher played by Cameron Deane Stewart in The Confession with wonder and a blind love for Katie? Yeah, he had to go because it’s imperative we replace him with the Jesus archetype family man guy played by Jacob Blair.
He even works as a carpenter in this movie. Speaking of characters who aren’t played by the same actor again.
Remember Katie’s biological mother played by Sherry Stringfield? Well, that picture is all you’ll see of her character in this movie. By that, I mean you won’t see her again, but you will hear a voiceover from her done by a different actress later in the movie.
So let’s lay out the plot. Katie decides to invest in a place Oak Vale: Home For Boys. A guy who worked as a janitor and grew up in homes like Oak Vale shows up and is hired as a counselor. Fisher shows up to tell Katie he’s not dead.
As you can see she takes it quite well. Of course Fisher starts working on the boys home. Gotta have someway for him to spend time around Katie!
Oh, there’s also a little subplot involving Katie’s adopted parents, but really it’s just there to tie up that loose end so that they can show up at the end of the movie.
The movie is about a girl moving forward with a marriage to the wrong guy while hanging around the right guy and helping this boys home out. Also, in reminding us she’s Amish.
I must say that as much as having the kids raise this barn to get them doing something positive together is a good idea, the size of it does make me chuckle.
Everything else is exactly what you expect from a Hallmark romance movie. If you think about it for a bit you can even figure out who the janitor turned counselor is. Some of the shots are quite nice. Oddly, once again, this Hallmark movie reminded me of another late night cable movie called Passionate Intentions which also had similarly nice cinematography.
All in all, it works well enough. Just know that the Amish bit really has nothing to do with anything and that this movie really exists just to give closure to this series of movies. Now I just need to watch The Shunning so that I will have reviewed all the movies in the series. Unfortunately, I can’t con my Dad into watching that one with me after watching this one. That means I’ll get to it eventually after the many more I have sitting on my DVR and the even more to be recorded in the coming months.
I finally saw The Lazarus Effect and … bleh, who cares? You may remember that the Lazarus Effect came out earlier this year and it got some attention because it was one of the first horror films to be theatrically released in 2015. But then the reviews came in and they were all awful. And then the movie opened in theaters and audiences saw it and soon, social media was full of tweets and updates about how disappointing the film was. I meant to see it but the movie just kind of came and went. Looking at my records, I can see that — when the Lazarus Effect was still in theaters — I instead chose to see Kingsman, Cinderella, and Maps to the Stars.
But, last night, I finally found the time to watch The Lazarus Effect and … well, I think I made the right decision skipping it. The Lazarus Effect is about a bunch of scientists who discover a serum that can be used to raise the dead. For instance, they use it to bring back to life a dog but guess what? The dog isn’t very happy to be back and he spends most of the movie glaring at every human that he sees. One of the scientists (played by Olivia Wilde) worries that the dog may have happily been in “doggie heaven” and now resents being brought back to life. Mark Duplass, playing her boyfriend and fellow scientists, laughs at her but it turns out that Wilde had a point.
The other scientists are played by Donald Glover and Evan Peters. There’s also a videographer, played by Sarah Bloger, who is there to record all of the experiments. You may notice that I’m not using any character names and that’s because the characters themselves are not that memorable. You remember them because of who played them and not because of anything that the character may have said or done. It’s true that The Lazarus Effect has a pretty good cast but it doesn’t matter because none of them are really given anything worthwhile to do. It’s not so much that anyone gives a bad performance — though the usually very effective Mark Duplass certainly does come close — as much as it’s just a case that the characters just aren’t that interesting. They’re all recognizable stereotypes and, if you can’t exactly predict the order in which they all die from the minute they show up on screen, you obviously haven’t seen enough horror movies.
Anyway, after they bring the dog back to life, Olivia Wilde ends up getting electrocuted so, of course, Mark Duplass decides to use the serum to bring her back to life. Needless, that was a big mistake. Not only does she return with a lot of super powers but it appears that Wilde left her soul in whatever afterlife she was inhabiting.
So, now, you’ve got an angry Olivia Wilde wandering around and killing people…
And it should be interesting but it’s not. The idea has promise but the movie does nothing new or unusual with it and the talented cast mostly just goes through the motions. The Lazarus Effect ends with the promise of a possible sequel. Let’s hope it’s a promise unfulfilled.
Well, it’s the 14th of October. Halloween is just two weeks away! Have you bought your costume yet? Have you tracked down a big bag of candy for all the trick or treaters? Do you have the Silver Shamrock jingle stuck in your head? Are you ready for Halloween?
If you’re not, why not watch today’s blast from the past because I guarantee that it will help to improve your Halloween spirit! First released in 1929, The Skeleton Dance was the first entry in Walt Disney’s iconic Silly Symphonies series. As you can guess from the title, it features dancing skeletons and it’s simply adorable. (It also features some black cats hissing at each other and you know I loved that!)
This was directed and produced by Walt Disney and animated by Ub Iwerks.
Remember Glenn Manning, the unfortunate “hero” of The Amazing Colossal Man?
The previous film may have ended with Glenn plunging to his apparent death from the Hoover Dam but, believe it or not, he survived! Unfortunately, he didn’t survive well. Now, he’s even bigger and he’s even angrier. Plus, he’s massively disfigured. The once articulate, if cranky, Amazing Colossal Man is gone. Now, he’s a Colossal Beast!
That’s the story behind the 1958 film, War of the Colossal Beast! In this sequel, Glenn is back and the army once again has to find a way to control him. Needless to say, it all leads to a final confrontation near Los Angeles’s Griffin Observatory, which means that War of the Colossal Beast is not only a sequel to Amazing Colossal Man but it’s also a bit of companion piece to Rebel Without A Cause!
(Speaking of companion pieces, am I the only one who associated the end of Colossal Man with those commercials that MSNBC used to show of Rachel Maddow going on and on about how only a nation could build the Hoover Dam? Never say “Lean forward” while you’re standing on top of a dam.)
Anyway, War of the Colossal Beast has a totally different cast from Colossal Man and a somewhat different feel. That said, the Colossal Beast makeup — that eye socket freaks me out! — is memorable and, like the previous film, it’s fun in a 1950s B-movie sort of way.
The movie begins and we see a girl walking down the street on Halloween. She smashes a pumpkin and Billy Corgan takes revenge on her because her eyes turn creepy. She runs into the forest and becomes a monster. Then the movie reminds me that if I don’t like it, it’s not director Peter DeLuise’s fault cause it’s called R.L. Stine’s Monsterville: Cabinet Of Souls. The missing “the” had to be donated to the band The The who lost one of their the’s in a tragic accident.
Now it’s one year later and the kids are putting on a high school production of Something Wicked This Way Comes. We are introduced to two guys and two girls. Seeing as I got over my Disney Channel addiction a few years ago, I only recognize Dove Cameron seen here in Liv makeup…unfortunately.
This is a horror movie that wastes no time in killing off people.
He is never heard from again after being killed by that candy apple. Just kidding.
Anyways, we now cut to Nora’s Dance & Ballet Academy Halloween Spooky Dance Contest. Cue the Suspiria (1977) footage!
It’s bad enough the High School Musical movies made Disney think we want dancing and singing kids again, but then Nora says this.
No! Don’t do it kids! That’s how we ended up with the movie Nudist Colony Of The Dead (1991)!
Then these two show up. That’s Dr. Hysteria (Andrew Kavadas) and Lilith (Katherine McNamara). Dr. Hysteria then invites the children to visit his Hall of Horrors which is a journey “into the wretched black heart of pure evil itself.” He’s exaggerating though since it’s just a haunted house. He’s not holding screenings of God’s Not Dead (2014), Let’s Be Cops (2014), and Frenemies (2012).
All jokes aside, both of those actors do good jobs in this movie. They manage to actually be creepy and evil right up till the end. He even kills a kid. No joke.
Because the local news station actually had a story with enough information for the first time in days, they air that the girl from the beginning of the movie is still missing. Now we meet a guy who is probably interchangeable with an actor from Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (1990). I’ll find out when I get to it.
He goes on to brag that he once surfed in a monsoon and outran an avalanche with a broken snowboard so he doesn’t scare easily. I sat through the god awful Extreme Ops (2002) knowing that a guy actually died scouting locations for that studio cash-grab on the extreme sports craze, so this guy didn’t scare me.
Oh, and this movie has kids rapping, so if you are a child, you might not want to show this to your parents because they will probably want you dead. But let’s get to the haunted house.
And I put this screenshot here just so everyone knows that it’s okay to start submitting to IMDb that an alternate title of this movie is Troll 4.
There are scary things in this haunted house such as what Calculus II would have looked like in the sequel to Freshman Father called Sophomore Father: Revenge of the Derivative! There is also a guy making inappropriate references to penises by pretending to sell “brains on a stick”. But nothing is as scary as that ginormous pink scarf they have Cameron wear in these scenes. Seriously, why? She looks like someone is going to throw a saddle on her and start riding her. Also, I played The Walking Dead and know that you don’t want something a zombie can easily grab on to. Of course she stumbles into a backroom during this sequence to to find that maybe some of these monsters are real.
After Cameron figures out that the missing girl has something to do with the Hall of Horrors from a site with a malformed URL that it shows a close up of for no good reason. We see Lilith insist on having this guy wrap his arms around her as they ride her bike before she whispers in his ear that her favorite movie is Joe D’Amato’s Porno Holocaust (1981). The kid is naturally scared by this seeing as his favorite movie with Mark Shannon is Italian Batman (1982).
Now the really creepy stuff starts happening. Dr. Hysteria takes kids in to the backroom and shows them their dreams through a portal he opens up in front of them. Their eyes flash and the kids are now his. We don’t know what that means exactly at this point, but we soon find out.
Inside The Cabinet Of Souls are kids standing around while a fog machine fills the room. It’s a little unclear, but I believe these are the kids souls while their bodies exist in the real world as monsters. It’s all a little unclear. We see some of the monsters walk into the kids bodies. And we see Dr. Hysteria feed off their souls. He does this to one kid who apparently only had one more shot to give cause she dies. I like children’s movies that don’t soft pedal the danger. Harry Potter may have been a bit much, but you get my point. Oh, and before I jump to the end. Just in case the kids aren’t already afraid of clowns.
I love the way this kid acts too. It’s like they gave him a copy of Beetlejuice, told him to watch it, and just do that. Oh, and here’s the kid dying.
He says she’s almost empty, then sucks that last bit of lifeforce from her body. She dissolves to the ground and he says “you were a good worker.” Again, kudos to the actors and the people involved with this production for making this movie genuinely creepy even while making it geared toward a younger audience.
The creepy stuff keeps getting more and more frequent until it finally comes down to whether Cameron is going to join the family or not. Notice two members of the family are rocking the Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, Part 2 look. Of course Cameron fights back and saves the kids, leaving Lilith, extreme sports guy, and Dr. Hysteria to go into a red oblivion.
I enjoyed this movie. Yeah, I’m sucker for kids movies cause I basically missed out on my childhood by being sick and at home through middle school and high school, but this was well made. I recommend it. Serious points to Andrew Kavadas for the character of Dr. Hysteria.
