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Post by GL on Nov 4, 2006 11:51:39 GMT -5
Since this started a week ago, I figured one of you guys would do this, but I guess I'll do it.
Episode 1-The Damned Thing by Tobe Hooper
A young man witnesses the death of his parents as a child, and as an adult, the force that killed both of them returns to the small town where he's the sheriff and turns the townsfolk into raving maniacs.
Not all that bad.There was some nice suspense thrown in, the story was original and very rarely was I bored. There was some stretches towards the middle where he and his wife are arguing that was a bore, but overall, it wasn't that bad. He seemed much more in control of the camera this time around and thankfully didn't have that jerky editing that plagued the last one. My biggest, and only, beef, though, is actually with the gore. It looks atrocious!! The blood here is way too light to be realistic, and it looks like a soft red. The openning disemboweling is a perfect example. Guts and intestines are not suspended in mid-air without falling to the ground like they do here. It takes you out of the moment as it's so obviously fake and cheesy that you can't be creeped out by it. It loses a point and a half for that, as the gore looks like crap. So far, 6.5/10.
It's not the disaster I expected, but to kickstart Season 2, there's more than likely worse ones out there. Besides, Season 1 got the best ones at around their third or fourth ones, so maybe the same here.
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Conan
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Post by Conan on Nov 5, 2006 5:58:20 GMT -5
I wish I had Showtime!!! I have only seen 2 esp from the first season, and I loved them both. I would buy them on dvd, but those 1-2 esp on a disk is lame. A full season dvd is what its going to take for me to buy them, but I love the show.
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Canetoad
The Prodigal Toad
HMaM member of the Month, July 2006
Cry Havoc! And let slip the cats of war.
Posts: 2,868
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Post by Canetoad on Nov 5, 2006 6:41:03 GMT -5
Conan there are box sets out now with half seasons available in the one package (not sure about Imprint in the US). I'm considering buying this one in R4. www.ezydvd.com.au/item.zml/789018
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Post by GL on Nov 5, 2006 11:58:42 GMT -5
Episode 2-Family by John Landis
Newlyweds move into a new house next door to a seemingly nice guy and his family, but they gradually uncover a deadly secret about him.
This was only marginally decent. The set-up holds great potential and is pretty clever. The fact that there is some genuine Landis touches in the first half (whenever Wendt hallucinates dialog that the woman is saying, and some of it's rather funny and quite out of the blue) and the opening meltdown is very eye-opening and far more realistic than the gore in the first one. I have to admit to being shocked by the twist at the end, a real change from the one I had predicted.
The thing that really got to me is the same thing that plagues many of the first year's episodes: it doesn't feel like a horror film. There's some brutal meltings spread throughout, but it's just not a horrific enough feel to call it a horror film. There's more of a black comedy feel to it, and while that's perfect for Landis and he does it well, there's just not a horror feel to it. It's devent, but not a horror film.
I liked it better than The Damned Thing, but it's not the uber-impressive way the first one started with Coscarelli and Gordon opening the show.
So far:
1. Landis 2. Hooper
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Conan
DWI/Evil Dead Moderator
Pennywise
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Post by Conan on Nov 5, 2006 15:13:53 GMT -5
Yeah that box I want. Them reviews are just making me want to see the show more. Good job.
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Post by GL on Nov 18, 2006 12:40:18 GMT -5
Episode 4-Sounds Like by Brad Anderson
A man tormented by the ability to hear anything slowly goes crazy.
The only thing positive I can say about this one is that the premise was nice. That's it. This was a heap of crap. The fact is, this shouldn't have been here for two reasons: where's the horror, and who is Brad Anderson and why is he on the show? There's not one scary scene in here, and the premise is played out the wrong way to illicit fear. Ooh, he can hear things no on else can, scare me with it. Have a series of sudden noises spring up out nowhere. Make him paranoid by what he hears, not a loser family man who thinks he's going crazy. Really wrong. And what has Anderson done to deserve this honor? I don't even know if I've seen any of his films, if he even has mnore than one, and it's(they're) certainly not a master work as I would've known about it.
Suffers from several of the problems that arose during the crap from the first season: an unwarranted director coupled with a non-horror film. 1/10
1. Dickerson 2. Landis 3. Hooper 4. Anderson
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Post by Bone Daddy on Nov 18, 2006 13:18:59 GMT -5
Good job on the reviews. I don't have Showtime. I should get it-but its too cost prohibitive. I'll wait for the eps to be released on DVD. Just getting tru season 1 now.
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Canetoad
The Prodigal Toad
HMaM member of the Month, July 2006
Cry Havoc! And let slip the cats of war.
Posts: 2,868
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Post by Canetoad on Nov 19, 2006 9:00:27 GMT -5
Also from Toad - great stuff on the reviews. Thanks GL, and bless.
I do have the Aussie equivalent with pay TV which except for stuff like this and the news channels is a complete waste of money... except for the fact that Mrs T loved season one of MOH and has since been more tolerant of my allegedly unhinged predilections when it coms to film. (She thought Imprint was the best of the bunch from season one)
Looking forward to these.
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Post by GL on Nov 19, 2006 10:52:41 GMT -5
Thanks Toad, and it looks like I forgot Episode 3. I'll go find it real fast and put it up. Episode 3-The V Word by Ernest Dickerson After entering a morgue to say goodbye to their deceased friend, two boys come face to face with a deadly vampire. (What did you think the V stood for? ) This is one of the best ones produced in the series so far, and is surprisingly just a lot like Dickerson's previous Demon Knight. A lot of great blood and gore, including some wonderful gags late in the film. There's bites on the neck, a throat ripped completely out, a gruesome staking, and the centerpiece, trying to vomit up blood only for it to spray out through holes in the neck. You'll know what I mean when you see it. The opening twenty minutes is just about as creepy and suspenseful as anything on-screen and really opens it the perfect way. Rivals Phantasm for making morgues creepy. On the downside, the opening stretches out a little too long. Yes, it's creepy, but then after the fifth time they wander around in the dark only for them to bump into something they couldn't see gets a little tiresome. It borders on the verge of being boring, but then it kicks in and avoids those thoughts. The only other problem is what so many of these do: vampires arent' scary at all. This one is the same. Overall, a suspenseful and gory hour waster that doesn't do much harm at all. Ratings above.
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Post by GL on Nov 27, 2006 11:57:51 GMT -5
Episode 5-Pro-Life by John Carpenter
A woman is taken to an abortion clinic, while her religious zealot father and three brothers try to take over the clinic to prevent her from having it done.
Finally, one that gets the series back on track after the disappointment of a week ago. There's for once a pretty worthy plot here that deserved to be on here, with the tale of a puritanical father wreaking vengeance on an abortion clinic to save his daughter's child. There's tons of potential there and this plays it up to most of the possibilities. The torture scene in the middle is perfectly gruesome, and it wonderfully keeps the gore off-screen which makes it all the more powerful. The ending is a surprisingly fun cheesefest that makes it a nice watch. The entire concept of the devil's child isn't new, but the way it's added to the other elements gives it a new spin. Again, however, there really isn't any horror here. The fact that the Devil appears in here should've made this a supernatural spookfest, but it's appearance is so ho-hum, almost treated like it was a normal everyday thing to have the Prince of Darkness pop up out of the floor of an abortion clinic and take his demonic off-spring away with him. That really should've been played more for scares, but it isn't and it really doesn't seem all that scary at all. The gore in here is also really unbelievable, mostly being relegated to some CGI bullet hits. Really didn't impress me here.
1. Dickerson 2. Landis 3. Carpenter 4. Hooper 5. Anderson
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Post by GL on Dec 5, 2006 16:57:25 GMT -5
Episode 6: Pelts by Dario Argento
A cursed placed on sacred animals causes those who come into contact with them to violently kill themself.
An excellent way to get the series back on track! Man, was this one gory for a TV show, as we get a man cutting his skin off on his chest and peeling it off like a t-shirt, a head caved in with an aluminum baseball bat, an arm ripped off at the wrist, and sticking their face into a bear trap and crushing part of the face off, among more. Not only was it brutal, but it was gory and prolonged as well, which is pretty new. There is also a very, very, very welcome return to nudity, which had been absent so far and which is greatly welcomed. The curse is nicely handled, and how it plays out gives some scenes a little suspense. It's also very upbeat and very watchable, which I felt a lot hadn't been so far. There's only one small downside, which was that the ending was a little too over-the-top compared to the rest of the story. It had been a controlled, tight suspense story with some gore thrown in, yet the ending comes in and is just a little ridiculous to get into. Otherwise, I really have nothing wrong to say about this one. So far, the best one of the season, but not of the two overall. 9/10
1. Argento. 2. Dickerson 3. Landis 4. Carpenter 5. Hooper 6. Anderson
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Post by GL on Dec 9, 2006 12:22:45 GMT -5
Episode 7-The Screwfly Connection by Joe Dante
A group of scientists race to stop a deadly virus that turns men hostile and violent towards women.
One of the better entries, if only for the first half hour. the threat of the virus coming closer and closer and then they mystery of how it's coming along are pretty frightening, and the first discovery of where the virus is traveling is pretty nice. The gore is nice and fun, and is nicely kept to a nice minimum. The strip club sequence is really fun for this reason and not the obvious one. The kills throughout are pretty brutal and quite mysoginic. Once the half-hour mark rolls through, though, it falls apart. Once the sequence where the scientists are testing the effects of the cure is the start. The earlier parts of the film were quite mean-spirited, and then the film starts to get jokey out of nowhere, and it completely drops off and stops being a real horror film. The whole ten minutes is such a pain to sit through that it lowers the film substantially. For only being a half-way good entry, it's fine for what it is, but the last half-hour is quite painful and stupid. 6.5/10
1. Argento. 2. Dickerson 3. Landis 4. Carpenter 5. Dante 6. Hooper 7. Anderson
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Post by GL on Jan 4, 2007 13:16:18 GMT -5
Episode 8-Valerie on the Stairs by Mick Garris
A writer moves into an apartment house and begins to see a strange woman none of the other tenets say exist.
Well, the nudity was nice, the breasts looked good, and that was a really nice ass. The gore was pretty good, especially that heart ripped off. Tons of great blood-letting in that one. The building and the later scenes inside the secret tunnels were pretty creepy and did have some nice suspense built up in them. The story, though, was a complete rip-off of Dreams in the Witch House. Man comes to strange building to work on [insert art project here] finds a strange woman no one says exists and uses the anonymous help from one of the tenets and his intellect to save her from a [insert horrible creature/society/maniac here] before it's too late. There wasn't anything else to differentiate this one from the first season's episode, and many ideas, scenes and themes are repeated. Also, I didn't really find this one all that scary at all, beyond just looking slightly creepy. And once again, where's the pace that forces a viewer to stay alive watching it? There's nothing in here in the first half hour that is really all that interesting, and the lack of being a scary film really hurts it. A nice concept, but nothing to it.
The gore and nudity makes this one a little better than being disposable, but that's still not all that great a compliment. Really could've been better. 4.5/10
1. Argento. 2. Dickerson 3. Landis 4. Carpenter 5. Dante 6. Hooper 7. Garris 8. Anderson
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Post by GL on Jan 9, 2007 13:16:12 GMT -5
Episode 9-Right to Die by Rob Schmidt
After a car accident leaves a man's wife in a coma, her ghost appears to terrify friends and family whenever she's about to die.
Hmm, this wasn't a trainwreck episode, but it never really moved me either. The gore in here is quite nice and very realistic, which most of the other episodes can't claim. Several shots of that facial scarring starring straight at the camera is damn creepy and resonates quite well, and is the best part of the film. The gag with the killer appearing on a camera phone behind an unsuspecting victim is done far better and far more chilling than in Cry_Wolf, and the death in the magnetci room is tense and very chilling. Again, the gore is top-notch and very gruesome, including another skin-shredding after appearing in Argento's Pelts earlier this season. And the hot-tub scene is great for being erotic as well and getting some much needed nudity into it. However, this also falls to the trap of so many of this season's episodes: there's not a foreboding sense of fear in the film whenever the killer isn't being dealt with. It's a badly done drama about the right to die and when to pull the plug on a loved one, and that doesn't really inspire terror. The fact that only a couple of scenes are good (the ones mentioned above) are the only ones worth watching in the entire episode make this a conflicting episdoe. As with so many this season, when it's on, it's great, but the fact that too much of it is off makes for such a conflicting experience. At least they finally got back the nudity, otherwise most of them would be almost unwatchable beyond the gore. 5/10
1. Argento 2. Dickerson 3. Landis 4. Carpenter 5. Dante 6. Hooper 7.Schmidt 8. Garris 9. Anderson
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Conan
DWI/Evil Dead Moderator
Pennywise
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Post by Conan on Jan 9, 2007 15:41:51 GMT -5
I try to stay out of this thread cause it just makes me want to watch the show more, but these reviews are very good.
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