Burke and Hare (2010)

No Job Too Small. No Body Too Big. No Questions Asked.

William Burke and William Hare were two Irish immigrants in Edinburgh, Scotland, during the early 1800's. Down on their luck and in need of income quick, the two men accidentally fall into the strange but lucrative business of providing corpses for medical dissection. A leading surgeon in the area, Dr. Knox, is willing to pay a pretty penny for a fresh specimen and isn't particularly concerned where they come from. There's just one problem... a lack of legally obtainable corpses to sell.

Hare and his wife see the good life within their grasp, while Burke falls in love with a beautiful actress who needs a backer to finance her efforts to produce the first ever all-female production of MacBeth. Unable to turn their backs on such a profitable new industry, they make the leap from grave robbery to serial murder. But the towns small and inept militia is hot on their heels and incompetence aside, is sure to catch up with Burke and Hare in due time.

Burke and Hare is for the most part a dark comedy, with touches of thriller. This reviewer has yet to view a film containing Simon Pegg that was not worth every minute. But it's not just him, the whole cast is great. The film is funny but also educational when it comes right down to it, since this is based on a true story. A very good movie which showcases a lot of British comedic talent while not straying too far from reality.

4 daguerreotype's out of 5
Unrated: contains violence, sexual content, language.

Red Scream Nosferatu (2010)

Jonathan Harker is sent to Transylvania by his employer with the goal of selling the wealthy Count Orlok a piece of property. But when Jonathan arrives at his far off destination he finds the Count and his home very peculiar indeed. Sure enough the Count is a vampire, and soon Jonathan becomes his prisoner.

Captivated by a photo of Jonathan's beautiful wife, the Count departs to make her his new bride. Meanwhile, the Count's existing three wives seek to make Jonathan their new master which is actually much less pleasant than one might think.

Red Scream Nosferatu melds elements of Nosferatu with elements of Dracula, and then modernize it with a steam-punk aesthetic.

The film attempts the difficult task of convincingly creating a setting which is seemingly based both in the past and the present or near future. Unfortunately this fails and just ends up seeming ridiculous. Each line sounds out of place and forced. That might also just have been the awful acting. The film does contain a few scenes that are kind of cool and artsy when taken on their own. But the story line is goofy and unnecessarily altered. Is Nosferatu some kind of Mormon all of the sudden? What's with all the wives? Red Scream is boring at best, irritating at worst. Instead, stick to Nosferatu (1922), Nosferatu (1979), or Dracula (1931) if you want the real vampire movie goods.

0.5 baby snacks out of 5
Unrated: contains violence, language, sexuality. 

Zombie (1979)

The dead are among us. 


A seemingly deserted sail boat floats into harbour where it turns out to contain the a hungry reanimated corpse. The boat belongs to the father of Anne Bowles, but her father is nowhere to be found. She teams up with a newspaper reporter seeking a hot story and they travel to the remote island where her father was last known to have been.

They find a young couple who happen to be about to set sail in that direction, and hitch a ride. Once there they meet the slightly racist and seemingly unsuccessful scientist Dr. Menard who is, when not bemoaning "the natives", seeking a cure for a strange virus that is bringing the dead back to life. Soon the lot of them are beset by hordes of the undead.

Zombie (aka Zombie 2, Zombie Flesh Eaters) is a solid zombie flick which delivers in every way that one would hope a zombie film would. It's got plenty of gore, particularly the eyeball scene and some of the zombie killings. The zombies themselves look great. The special effects and make up are very good for a zombie film produced in 1979. The acting, while originally performed in Italian, doesn't seem too bad. The real shocker about that one is that the dubbing is actually very good, which is a true rarity. There's the predictable occasional goof up, like when they are chucking Molotov cocktails and every time one lands, there is no pre-existing fire from the previous one's. And how are 400 year old conquistadores still in such (relatively) good condition? But this sort of slip adds charm when part of a good movie.

That Zombie is an excellent horror film should come as no surprise since it was brought to us by Italian horror master Lucio Fulci who also produced such films as City of the Living Dead and The Beyond. Great zombies, reasonable plot, decent acting, and did I mentioned an underwater battle between a shark and a zombie? Check it out.

4 zombie/shark battles out of 5
Rated R for horror violence/gore and nudity

Outpost (2008)

You can't kill what's already dead.

A businessman hires D.C., an ex-marine, to gather team of mercenary ex-soldiers for a mysterious mission to an abandoned bunker. The bunker is hidden deep within a forest in war torn eastern European country, somewhere in no-man's-land. But with the expectation that the mission should take no more than 48 hours and that encounters with hostile forces are unlikely, the mission seems like easy money.

But what the businessman, Hunt, isn't telling them is that the bunker is really a World War Two nazi outpost where the SS carried out horrific experiments on its own men in search of a scientifically modified super-soldier. Now D.C. and his men are trapped underground, hunted by some unknown, unseen assailant.

Outpost is far from the first or last zombie-nazi movie. After all, what is more evil than flesh eating zombies? Nazi's pretty much take the cake in terms of vile, bloodthirsty beings so it's hardly surprising that they have shown up in a number of horror films. Amongst those films, Outpost is perhaps one of the darker, less comical, and less cheesy films.

The zombies are something different as well. They don't seem to eat people, nor do they lumber around or moan about wanting brains. Instead they act like they would have as humans cruel, brutal, and murderous. Plus they are almost ghostlike in their movements and ability to appear and disappear seemingly without a trace.

In many ways, Outpost is an action film. Plenty of running around and firing off hundreds of rounds of ammunition. These particularly zombie-nazis even fire back sometimes even though their preferred means of killing are much more grisly.

There are some unexplainable happenings, however. After all, if the nazis are immortal then why don't they just wipe out D.C.'s turn in one fell swoop? Why doesn't their leader reveal himself sooner? Regardless, in the final analysis, Outpost is an entertaining action-horror which isn't afraid to give a slightly different twist to the zombie-nazi sub-sub-genre. Worth a look.

3.5 punctured eyeballs out of 5
Rated R for strong violence and language

Dog Soldiers (2002)

Six soldiers. Full moon. No chance.

A British military squad is sent on what should be a routine training exercise against a special ops squad in the highlands of Scotland. The area is notorious for its legends about disappearing campers and strange creatures, but the soldiers ignore these stories as childishness.

Unfortunately, the stories become more real and more horrifying than they ever would have imagined when they find the special ops squad annihilated by a pack of hungry werewolves. They retreat to a nearby cabin where they meet a zoologist who claims to have been sent to study the creatures. Barricaded in the remote home, they are left no option but to fight for their lives against seemingly unstoppable foes.

It's hard not to go in to this movie with some serious scepticism based on the title and premise. Plus, let's face it, there hasn't been an overwhelming number of fantastic werewolf movies. To be sure, Dog Soldiers is indeed a campy B flick and is more action than horror.

I have a few questions for the writers as well. For one thing, the entire plot twist with the zoologist simply makes no sense to me. Neither does the fact that a bunch of special ops who were dropped in to try to capture werewolves were sent in without any silver or other items known to cause vulnerability in werewolves. Why do the werewolves have a pet dog? Seems a little weird. But I digress.

To be fair, however, for its low budget it had respectable special effects and pretty good werewolves. I didn't find the film particularly compelling over-all, but if you just have a hankering for some action packed battles with cool looking monsters, you will find some value in Dog Soldiers.

2 hairy back-seat drivers out of 5
Rated R for strong violence/gore and language.

Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000)

 Legends never die. 

Film students at Alpine University begin to turn up dead as the victims of murders styled after urban legends as Amy Mayfield struggles to complete her thesis project. Soon Amy begins to suspect that the deaths, all of which are of students who are  somehow related to her thesis, are neither accidents nor coincidental. In fact, a serial killer is on the loose and only she has realized it. Now it will be up to her to stop the killer before she too becomes an urban legend.

Final Cut is not so much a sequel to the 1998 film Urban Legend as it is the second of a three part series of movies all based on a similar theme. In fact, the only remaining character from the first movie is the likeable security guard, Reece, played by Loretta Devine. Jennifer Morrison, meanwhile, takes on the lead role; a pleasant surprise since she is a good actor, and I have not seen her in anything that sucked too badly so far. As for the villian, well... as with the first film, you will be left to guess until near the end.

What Final Cut lacks is anything particularly scary. We have a somewhat sluggish plot, some generally mild gore, and some elements of mystery. Over all, the film fails to keep the viewer particularly engaged and the movie can be considered among the many sanitized Hollywood slasher flicks of the day. The kidney thief scene remains perhaps the one exception because although it feels slightly discorporated from the rest of the plot, it would be difficult not to squirm a little bit while watching it. The worst element of all might the absolutely absurd explanation for the killers rampage which is of course explained in detail. After all, what killer wouldn't take the time to explain it all before finishing their last victim off? Neither bad in the strongest sense of the word, nor particularly good, Final Cut falls somewhere in the no man's land of mediocrity.

1.5 torn stitches out of 5
Rated R for violence/gore, language and some sexuality.

Zombieland (2009)

Nut Up or Shut Up.


A mutation of mad cow disease has spread to humans, turning almost everyone into a flesh hungry, violence prone zombie. One of the survivors is Columbus, a shy student who has developed a lengthy programme of rules for surviving the zombie apocalypse and is now attempting to reach his family, which he hopes is still alive in Ohio. He meets a trigger happy tough guy with a grudge who happens to also be heading east bound; to Tallahassee.

Their unlikely team works out well enough until they meet up with a pair of sisters, Wichita, and Little Rock, who are on their way to an amusement park where they have heard there are no zombies. After various shenanigans, all four will learn some important lessons not only in zombie slaying, but also in teamwork and family.

Zombieland is one of the newest, and also one of the best known, of the many zombie comedies on the market today. If one is to be honest, one has to admit that the majority of light hearted zombie tales too often end up being the shits. This, along with others like Shaun of the Dead and Fido, prove to be exceptions.

The film serves up its fair share of gore, action, and maybe even the occasional cheap jump. But its also very funny. Furthermore, it features and fantastic cast. Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin are all perfect for their respective roles. Meanwhile we get a guest appearance from Bill Murray with hilariously ironic consequences as well. Zombieland is well worth a watch from its educational, yet Metallica-riff laden beginning to its blood stained yet touching conclusion. Don't forget to double tap.

30 survival rules out of 30
Rated R for horror violence/gore and language

Hardware (1990)

It activates it exhilarates... it exterminates.


A nomadic scavenger finds the remains of a robot in the deserts of a post-apocalyptic dystopia. He takes the robot for sale as scrap metal, but ends up selling it to a wandering soldier, Moses, instead. Moses gives the disassembled robot parts to his artist girlfriend, Jill, for use in one of her sculptures.

What neither of them realize is that robot is actual a prototype of an extermination droid being developed by the government for the purposes of "population control". Soon this mechanical killing machine, the MARK 13, has reconstructed itself and is on a violent rampage.

Hardware is a dark and gritty sci-fi flick taking place is a dismal, radioactive future. After a slow, grinding build up the movie explodes into fast paced and chaotic action, which feels even more so given its claustrophobic setting. The robot is pretty cool, even if you can see a human leg sticking out from under it once or twice. The acting is good as is the casting. There's even appearances from Lemmy of Motorhead as a taxi driver, and Iggy Pop as an edgy radio announcer. A very worthwhile film.

3.5 killer robots out of 5
Rated R for strong violence, sexuality and language