Rating: ** (two out of five)
Year: 2010

Plot: There’s a killer on the loose. He (or she) starts out very small, just killing old beer bottles and hapless rabbits, but then his thirst for mayhem vulcanizes. Spoiler Alert – the killer is a tire. The killings and stalkings are increasingly interrupted by demolition of the 4th wall by the director and the audience. This appears to anger the tire more than being run over or passing by the town’s tire fire. The film climaxes with an the unveiling of THE TRICYCLE OF ABSURDITY.

Review: Why should you watch this movie? No reason. Well, no great ones anyway. In some ways, the movie is incredibly unique, but in most ways, just incredibly awful. You can see the path the director is trying to tread, and he actually gets close to really turning the whole genre on its axel by challenging so many tropes, but the execution leaves the viewer feeling deflated. Exposition scenes can’t get enough traction and drag on far too long, you’re hit too hard over the head with justification for what’s happening, and the script/acting are very flat. The star of the movie is certainly (the tire) as the effects team does a fantastic job of anthropomorphizing the inert hunk of rubber. All this being said, the movie was worth watching simply for the originality of it, and I’d certainly prefer spending a Sunday afternoon watching it than a NASCAR race.

Rating: ** (2 out of five)
Year: 1981

Plot: Campers try to pull a prank on a groundskeeper. Prank goes WHOOSH with flames. Burning and horribly painful permanent disfigurement follows. The dude is understandably pissed, so he returns to the camp a few years later and joyfully slaughters everyone in sight with garden shears. That should even things up.

Review: Get ready for a classic 80’s exploitation film! Yes that’s right kids, that means blood and guts, hammy acting, T & A (& P), and a complete lack of directorial imagination! What the death scenes lack in creativity they make up for with gratuity and often-ness. And then of course there’s all the camp sex – these kids make Alyson Hannigan’s Band Camp seem downright prudish… I’m still trying to figure out if “the burning” refers to the fires that take place at camp, or the sensation during urination that inevitably follows summers like those. When I was growing up, we came back from camp with a couple homemade candles and our throats and hymens in tact… come to think of it, their way might have been better.

Rating: **.5 (2 and a half out of five)
Year: 1967

Plot: A moribund professor takes his bumbling assistant to the frozen reaches of Transylvania in an effort to confirm some of his controversial ideas about humanoid bloodsuckers. Turns out he’s right about all of them! ‘Cept the bat thing. They don’t turn into bats. Anyway, they arrive at a claustrophobic tavern where vampirific stuff happens. They follow one of the rascals to an old gothic castle. There they meet the count, his hunchbacked servant, and his bisexual son. The assistant has the hots for the innkeeper’s daughter, who also turns up at the castle. Professor and assistant attempt a rescue of the cute red-head, and pull it off much like Scooby Doo and the gang woulda.

Review: Rosemary’s Baby is one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen, so I was very excited to see Roman Polanski’s stab at a Dracula movie. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the intent for this flick – it was marketed as a slapstick farce in the U.S.. So, it wasn’t very scary… but it wasn’t really funny either. Perhaps it’s just all the reminders about his pedophilia in the news lately, but I had a chill up my spine throughout most of the film. The sets are completely believable. Among them is one of the most genuine spooky old castles you’ll ever see. Although many elements of the Bram Stoker story show up here, Polanski’s version is different enough to be original, and it’s hard to tell just where the scene is going to take you. Overall, this is just a luke-warm rendition of a vampire movie, but certainly different than the rest, and definitely worth watching.

Rating: ** ( 2 out of 5)
Year: 1979

Plot: A long haired kid who thinks that he’s cooler than he really is needs to convince his near retarded brother that the local mortuary is home to a bad “tall man” who can weave the fabric of reality into a hell dimension of his own making. He succeeds. Their plan? Go in there with shotguns.

Synopsis: There are a few things that make this film watchable. They spent money on the mortuary set, and it shows through in its creepiness. Some of the special effects and sound design show ingenuity. And that’s about it. Since Don Corcarelli wrote, produced, and directed this, he didn’t have a voice of sanity around to scream, “HOW ABOUT A MODICUM OF BELIEVABILITY!?” The script barely qualifies as human speech. The decisions made by the main characters are simply unintelligible. There are no ‘rules’ by which the bad guy operates, and there are plot holes big enough to drive an ice-cream truck through. Having said all that, the movie is worth a watch. The badness of the movie borders on cute, and will certainly evoke an incredulous chuckle or two.