Horror Film Review: Cabin Fever (dir by Eli Roth)

Posted on October 12, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When this Boy Meets World
Boy Meets World
Wandering down this road, that we call life
Is what we’re doin’
It’s good to know I have friends that will always
Stand by me
When this Boy Meets World

I imagine that I should probably apologize to Rider Strong for starting this review by quoting the theme song from the final few seasons of Boy Meets World. I’m sure that when Strong agreed to star in the original Cabin Fever, he was hoping that the playing Paul would take him far away from his best-known role of Shawn Hunter. But I have to admit that whenever I think of Cabin Fever (which, admittedly, is not often) I always think of it as being Boy Meets Flesh Eating Virus.

Cabin Fever tells the story of a group of stupid college students, including Rider Strong, who decide to spend Spring Break at a remote cabin in the woods. They’ve got weed, beer, and plans for a wild, sex-fueled weekend. Unfortunately, the majority of them also end up with a flesh-eating virus. It turns out the virus has been infecting people and animals all around the cabin. People are going crazy as their flesh decays and peels off of their bones. It’s a messy virus. With the police struggling to contain the spread, a group of locals have decided that it’s up to them to kill off anyone who is infected.

One member of the group grabs the beer and runs off so that he can spend the weekend drunk and in isolation, The other members of the group are stranded in the cabin and the surrounding woods. Bodies are falling apart and dogs are eating their owners. It’s Boy Meets Pandemic.

This was Eli Roth’s directorial debut and he didn’t hold back on the gore. While we really don’t know much about the college students in the cabin (beyond the fact that they’re all dumbasses and one of them is played by Rider Strong), we learn everything that you could possibly want to know about what that flesh-eating virus does to its victims. The film might as well be called “Nom nom nom,” because it’s all about eating flesh. Roth is also shameless about paying homage (or ripping off, depending on how much you like Roth) to the horror films that influenced him. Night of the Living Dead comes to mind, especially the ending.

(Personally, I like the fact that, with his first film, Eli Roth declared himself to be a lover of horror. Cabin Fever was released in 2002, long before the current mainstream horror boom. Eli Roth was openly celebrating horror at a time when many critics were still writing it off.)

Cabin Fever is a hit-or-miss affair, with the emphasis on miss. The virus is scary because it’s so nasty but the characters themselves are so boring that most viewers won’t care when they get infected. I did like Giuseppe Andrews’s performance as a weird deputy but otherwise, no one is the cast makes much of an impression until after they’ve lost their skin. They’re walking down this road that we call life …. and now they’re dead.

Viewed today, of course, it’s hard not to compare the flesh-eating virus to COVID or Monkeypox or whatever the latest disease is. If Cabin Fever were made today, the gun-toting locals would have been the heroes and the college students would have been the villains for daring to try to leave the cabin. Yesterday’s villains and today’s heroes and vice versa. For many, walking down this road that we call life has never felt more uncertain, even without a flesh-eating virus to worry about.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Embrace of the Vampire (dir by Anne Goursaud)

Posted on October 1, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this incredibly silly film from 1995, Martin Kemp plays The Vampire. He doesn’t get a name but he does get a backstory. Back when he was mortal, the Vampire pursued a secret and forbidden affair with a princess. One day, after making love, the man who would became the Vampire was laying down next to a stream when he was approached by three naked women who proceeded to bite his neck and vampirize him.

Centuries later, the Vampire is sickly and approaching the end of his existence. He only has three days to convince the reincarnation of his former lover to allow him to drink her blood so that he can continue to exist. And apparently it won’t work unless she’s a virgin and unless she rejects all others and loves only him. That sounds like a lot of rules to me and, to be honest, most of them seem to be kind of arbitrary. Not only does The Vampire have to find the reincarnation of the Princess but he has to find her before she loses her virginity or otherwise, what? She’ll cease to be the reincarnation? Her love will somehow be devalued? Her blood will no longer be worth drinking? If this vampire has had to spend centuries only drinking blood from virgins who were in love with him, no wonder he looks so sickly. I really think that maybe the other vampires were playing a practical joke when they explained the rules to him. Hazing the new guy, it has consequences!

Anyway, the princess has been reincarnated as Charlotte (a young Alyssa Milano). Fortunately, for the Vampire, Charlotte was raised in a convent and, even though she is now a college student, she’s still a virgin who blushes when she even hears the word sex. Unfortunately, Charlotte has a boyfriend named Chris (Harrison Pruett) and she’s thinking about losing her virginity if she can convince herself that she loves Chris more than any other person that she will ever possibly meet. So, the Vampire not only has to convince Charlotte to fall in love with him but he also has to make sure that she doesn’t have sex beforehand. It’s going to be difficult because everyone on campus is determined to get Charlotte laid. This has all the makings of Italian sex comedy but Embrace of the Vampire instead takes its plot very seriously.

The Vampire starts to appear in Charlotte’s dreams. He gives her an ankh to replace the cross that Chris gave her. Because the Ankh is a symbol of desire, just wearing it makes Charlotte more sexually aggressive and soon, she’s wearing short skirts, low-cut tops, and white stockings. She’s also making out with Sarah (Charlotte Lewis), the photographer who lives in the dorm room next to hers. (As played by Charlotte Lewis, Sarah is actually an interesting character and it’s a shame that the film pretty much just uses her for titillation.) But since the Vampire’s whole thing is keeping Charlotte from losing her virginity, why would he give her something that would make her more open to sexual experiences? Again, it’s hard not to think that the Vampire is just the victim of an elaborate practical joke.

As I said at the start of the review, Embrace of the Vampire is incredibly silly. It’s also a film that seems to be a bit popular with viewers of a certain age. I’m assuming that’s because of the frequent Alyssa Milano nudity and that one scene with Charlotte Lewis. For the most part, Alyssa Milano gives a bland performance in Embrace of the Vampire. It’s not so much that she’s bad as everything about her performance is on the surface. One gets the feeling that there’s really not much going on with Charlotte’s inner life, both before and after she starts dreaming about The Vampire. As The Vampire, Martin Kemp appears to be absolutely miserable. He comes across as if he’d rather be anywhere than appearing in this movie.

That said, the film’s director got her start working with Francis Ford Coppola and she has a good eye for gothic scenery and atmosphere. A scene where Charlotte imagines a frat party turning into a Hellish orgy is effectively done. Jennifer Tilly has a small role as a vampire and she has said that Quentin Tarantino approached her at the Oscars to tell her that he enjoyed the movie. It’s a silly movie (yes, third time I’ve used that specific term and that should tell you just how silly it is) but, for better or worse, it epitomizes an era.

Lifetime Christmas Movie Review: The Christmas Contract (dir by Monika Mitchell)

Posted on December 23, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s a very clever scene at the beginning of The Christmas Contract.

Jack Friedman (Robert Buckley) is a writer who can’t get any of the big publishing houses to even take a look at his new book. However, Jack’s agent informs him that they might change his mind if he does some ghostwriting. One can see from Jack’s reaction that this is not the first time that he’s been asked to be a ghostwriter and it’s not something that he particularly enjoys. Still, because one does have to eat, Jack agrees.

His agent tells him that he’ll be ghostwriting the latest installment in a very popular but critically dismissed series of romance novels. He’s told to go read the previous book in the series and then to basically rewrite it, just changing a few details so that it can be advertised as a totally new book. He’s given a list of plot points that the publishers want to be included in the book. Again, it’s not particularly important how the plot points are integrated into the story. Instead, they just have to be there.

Moonlight dance? Yep.

Kisses under the stars? Yep.

Oh, and the book needs to take place in Louisiana.

Now, you don’t have to be a part of the industry to realize that, in this scene, Jack is serving as a stand-in for every writer who has ever been assigned to write a Hallmark (or, let’s just be honest here, Lifetime) Christmas movie. Don’t try to reinvent the season, just make sure that the basics are there. Pick a new location and you’re ready to go!

With that scene, the makers of The Christmas Contract are acknowledging that, “yes, this is another Lifetime holiday movie.” And yes, it’s going to remind you of a lot of other Lifetime holiday movies. But, that still doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy it. After all, the appeal of a movie like this is to be found in its familiarity. In an often chaotic world, there’s something to be said for the comfort of a good, if predictable, romance novel. The same can be said of a Lifetime Christmas movie.

Anyway, it’s a good thing that the publishers want the book to be set in Louisiana because that’s where Jack spends his holiday. He’s actually accompanying a recently single woman named Jodie (Hilarie Burton) back to her home for Christmas. Because Jodie’s ex-boyfriend is going to be visiting with his new girlfriend, Jodie doesn’t want her family to know that she’s single. So, Jack pretends to be her boyfriend. They even sign a contract ahead of time. And, yes, you can guess exactly what ends up happening but, again, that’s kind of the point with a movie like this.

The cast, which includes several veterans of One Tree Hill, does a good job with the material but the true star of this film is the state of Louisiana. This film makes full use of the beautiful Louisiana landscape and the celebratory nature of the state’s culture. It may have been predictable but it was still enjoyable. Spending the holidays with Jodie, Jack, and the family looked like a lot of fun.

Cleaning Out The DVR: Stage Fright (dir by Fred Olen Ray)

Posted on January 2, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Hi there! So, as you may know because I’ve been talking about it on this site all year, I have got way too much stuff on my DVR. Seriously, I currently have 188 things recorded! I’ve decided that, on January 15th, I am going to erase everything on the DVR, regardless of whether I’ve watched it or not. So, that means that I’ve now have only have a month to clean out the DVR! Will I make it? Keep checking this site to find out! I recorded Stage Fright off of the Lifetime Movie Network on January 29th, 2017!)

(aka Stage Fright)

Right above this sentence, you’ll see the original “poster art” for the film that was eventually broadcast on the Lifetime Movie Network as Stage Fright. Even though the title changed (and personally, I think Stage Fright does carry a bit more oomph than Her Final Bow), I love this poster. It’s just so melodramatic and I like how the stalker’s blue eye is staring straight at the viewer. Even though the scene itself never actually occurs in the film, the poster still tells you everything that you need to know about this movie. If I saw a paperback novel with this poster as the cover, I would definitely buy it and probably read it in one sitting.

Stage Fright tells the story of Sarah Conrade (Jordan Ladd). At one time, Sarah was one of the most popular and famous opera singers in the world. But then she was attacked by an obsessed fan. Though he was subsequently gunned down by the police, he left Sarah with scars that are both physical and mental. After she had a nervous breakdown, Sarah retired from performing and devoted her time to raising her daughter, Haley (Savannah Osborn). However, one day, Sarah gets a call from a producer, letting her know that another singer is planning to perform Sarah’s signature songs and claim them as her own. Though Sarah may be frightened of stepping back out on the stage, she’s a performer and she has her pride. Sarah agrees to make a comeback and perform for one night only.

A lot of people are happy to hear this but it’s debatable whether any of them are as happy as Kevin (Peter Stickles). Kevin works in a music store and he is one of Sarah’s biggest fans. When she happens to step into the store, he not only tells her that he listens to her voice regularly but he also contrives to take a quick look in her purse. Of course, Kevin also has a shrine to her in his house. That’s … well, that’s a little bit creepy…

Audiences have waited for years for Sarah to make a comeback and now that she’s making it, the people around her are mysteriously dying. The police even suspect that Sarah might have something to do with it. Of course, we suspect the truth…

State Fright was directed by Fred Olen Ray, who is a veteran of these type of thrillers and who specializes in giving the audience what it wants. In this case, the audience wants melodrama and Stage Fright certainly delivers that. (Ray also delivers some effectively creepy shots of characters running around in the dank, lower levels of the opera house.) Personally, I would have liked it if there had been a little more mystery about the identity of Sarah’s stalker but Jordan Ladd gave a good performance as Sarah and the mother-daughter relationship between Sarah and Haley felt real. This is an entertaining little Lifetime movie that delivers exactly what it promises.

Hallmark Review: The Wishing Well (2009, dir. David Jackson)

Posted on January 23, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

It’s not often that I review two movies from two relatively different sources that are both by the same director, but that’s the case this time. David Jackson is also the director who brought the Halloweentown series to an end with Return To Halloweentown. This time he took on something much easier than ripping off Harry Potter with a miscast lead. It’s about a wishing well! Sort of.

The movie begins before the title card appears, and we meet Abby Jansen played by Jadin Gould. She will be your smiling one-dimensional little girl for the movie. I mean your Hallmark Bailee Madison stand-in for the movie. Then we cut to stock footage of New York City before we meet our leading lady named Cynthia Tamerline played by Jordan Ladd.

She works for Celeb magazine where not only is Charles Shaughnessy her boss, but her secretary is Lurch with a nose ring.

Obviously this movie needs to find an excuse to get Cynthia out with the country folk now. That’s why Shaughnessy calls her in and tells her either publish, perish, or become a nanny for my kids. He suggests that she write a story for one of his other magazines called Great Housekeeping. It’s for people who think Good Housekeeping just isn’t good enough. I thought she chose to write about a woman named Angela and her charity to save the vampire flies, but somehow that will cause her to end up in Slow Creek, Illinois to find a celebrity who may have visited their wishing well. But before that, she looks up Angela’s push to save the vampire fly on CelebrityCauses.us. No affiliation with CelebrityCauses.org. This one has Darcy from A Gift Of Miracles writing for it too.

This time she ripped off numerous encyclopedia entries about flies, but it is a little odd that she copied from the United Church Of God’s magazine Vertical Thought.

Anyways, she’s off to Slow Creek, Illinois, which is the “Home of the Wishing Well.” Not just any wishing well, but the Wishing Well. That is till the 2011 Canadian film Wishing Well came out to give them some stiff competition for that title.

She arrives at the hotel where she is going to stay and finds that Ernest Borgnine runs the place. Cynthia is in town for a story that she can take back to Celeb magazine…I thought. Regardless, this is where I am obligated to say that these townsfolk are probably hiding a terrible secret about a Muslim American solider who died overseas and whose father was murdered in the town. I mean the movie has Borgnine, it’s a small town, and Cynthia’s last name is Tamerline which is close enough to Cass Timberlane played by Spencer Tracy in the movie of the same name. That meant while watching this movie, I immediately thought of the film Bad Day At Black Rock (1955) which had Tracy and Borgnine in it. Great movie by the way that I simply updated to a modern context. Here’s the trailer.

But onward with this movie now.

Annoying little girl tells us that wishes come true if you believe and make the right wish. Then we find out that not only is the hotel run by someone Retired and Extremely Dangerous, but that the diner is run by ‘Hot Lips’ O’Houlihan (Sally Kellerman).

Now Cynthia visits the local paper and finds out that it’s run by the little girl’s dad played by Jason London.

So this is what happened to Eric Camden’s associate pastor’s twin brother.

Cynthia starts to look into this wishing well of theirs. Turns out it was once a hot attraction, but then this happened.

Don’t you just hate it when your ex shows up and your wish doesn’t come true, but your ex’s does. Now writer Enid Jones had it out for the well.

But this isn’t enough for her so she goes to dig in the archives. Long story short, Ronald Reagan once visited their well back in the 1960’s.

That and a UFO was seen on a farm in Slow Creek. Interesting! What else is interesting is that they didn’t pull this Reagan and a wishing well thing completely out of their ass. Reagan actually did visit a wishing well in Dublin, Ireland back in the 1980s. Hmmm…I guess that means I need to listen to some Irish music while I finish writing this review. Well, Dropkick Murphys (Flannigan’s Ball) is Irish enough for someone who is a quarter Irish and from the Bay Area.

Oh, and since Reagan was mentioned. I guess I need to break out Genesis’ Land Of Confusion as well.

More annoying girl, and then Cynthia wakes up the next day to find out that she is now in the Twilight Zone. She is just somebody who has been hired as a local reporter. She calls up people back in New York City, but they don’t know who she is. She doesn’t try to tell them anything personal that only she would know, but just keeps calling.

This is when you can say the film goes on autopilot. Cynthia becomes more of a fixture in the town and discovers just how important this paper is to its residents. The paper is in trouble and might be bought out soon. The little girl is still annoying. A guy dies and she writes his obituary. Another guy sets his house on fire trying to beat his record for how many of his collectible lighters he can have going at once. I’m not making that up. During the scene where he explains his little game and current record I said to my dad that he didn’t mention this is the third house he’s gone through playing this game. Then she is waking up in bed to a phone call telling her his place is burning down. Of course! She writes an article that moves people about the fire. Finally, the townsfolk watch a meteor storm.

Then this big city guy’s mustache shows up to buy the paper. It’s okay though because it turns out the guy who died left a huge amount of money to the paper in his will. I guess that’s better than the huge wad of cash in a can from Christmas Land.

Now just in case you thought you were finally getting this Twilight Zone like story, she wakes up on a plane back to New York City to receive praise for the story she wrote for the magazine. Yep, makes as much sense as you think it does. By that, I mean very little. She leaves her job at Celeb magazine and goes back to Slow Creek where smiley and her dad know who she is. Then it just ends abruptly.

That’s it! It’s quite lousy. Even my Dad said this was a stinker and he’s usually easy to please with these movies. No reason to waste your time with this. Go watch Bad Day At Black Rock instead.

Since I happened to catch her this way. I’m really sorry Jordan.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to throw a coin in a wishing well because I’m shipping up to Boston to find my wooden leg and I can use all the luck I can get.

Back to School #57: Never Been Kissed (dir by Raja Gosnell)

Posted on September 16, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1999 romantic comedy Never Been Kissed is a definite guilty pleasure of mine, and that’s not just because of the fact that James Franco has a small role in it. Never Been Kissed is a genuinely sweet movie that might not be extremely realistic but is still enjoyable.

Never Been Kissed requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, largely because Josie Gellar, the character who has” never been kissed,” is played Drew Barrymore. Oh, it’s not that Josie hasn’t ever been kissed. Instead, it’s that she’s never gotten the type of kiss that every girl dreams of getting. She’s never been kissed by someone who she was truly in love with. She’s never had the type of romance that everyone dreams of having (especially when they’re in high school).

However, Josie is about to get a chance to find that kiss. Josie works for a newspaper and her editor (John C. Reilly) has just assigned her to go undercover at a local high school. Unfortunately, Josie was traumatized by her experiences the first time that she went to high school. (She wrote a poem for a boy, he responded by asking her to prom and then throwing eggs at her.) On her first day as a “student,” Josie finds that she is just as unpopular as the last time but now she’s also absolutely out-of-touch with her classmates. Fortunately, she’s befriended by Aldys (Leelee Sobieski) and, soon, Josie has finally managed to find a place with the Denominators, a group of intelligent students.

Unfortunately, hanging out with the good kids isn’t producing the type of stories that Josie’s editor wants. He orders Josie to reject Aldys and to befriend the school’s mean girls. After her brother, Rob (David Arquette), also enrolls in high school, he helps Josie to become the most popular girl in the school. Soon, Josie is no longer hanging out with Aldys and has been asked to go to the prom by the loathsome Guy Perkins (Jeremy Jordan).

However, Josie has fallen in love with her English teacher, Sam (Michael Vartan). Sam likes Josie too but, of course, he thinks that she’s a student. Will Josie tell the truth and risk losing Sam? Will she be able to maintain her cover even when she discovers that her new friends are planning to humiliate Aldys? Will Josie ever truly be kissed?

Well, you can probably guess all the answers. Nothing really surprising happens in Never Been Kissed but it’s still a likable film. For the most part, the actors all do a good job with their stock roles and David Arquette, especially, is hilarious as a professional slacker who thrives in high school precisely because he’s never bothered to grow up. (Of course, by the end of the film, his new high school girlfriend is wanting to know what he’s planning on doing with his life after he graduates….) At no point is the film in any way realistic but it’s still an enjoyable way to spend 110 minutes of your life.