An eight-film horror collection from Sam Raimi's 'Ghost House Underground' label, these new films will also be available on DVD separately.
Hand-picked by the "most trusted names in horror", we get American, Russian, Italian, Danish and Finnish horror efforts and the collection not surprisingly runs the gamut between bloody fun to bloody boring.
To be fair though, I was pleasantly surprised by the overall entertainment to be found in the collection as a whole and they were smartly picked to represent a varying cross-section of horror subgenres.
We get a slasher pic, a ghost story, a exploitation homage, a vampire flick and even a film that's more sci-fi than horror. There's very little subject matter that repeats between films, and I also like that five of the eight films are foreign which spices things up a bit.
Unfortunately, the collection starts off with one of the worst, 'Brotherhood of Blood' that despite some notable names in the cast including Sid Haig and Ken Foree, the whole production has a decidedly student-film feel to it that lessens most if not all of what few good ideas it had.
The film revolves around some vampire hunters and vampires with the most ridiculous-looking vampire teeth I've yet seen. Trying to do something different, the filmmakers give their vampires canines that would be more fitting for chewing cud than sucking blood.
So the story, what I could gather anyway, involves some brothers accidentally unleashing a super vampire named Vlad Kossei. On the loose, Vlad wreaks havoc everywhere for vampire hunters and we apparently arrive at the last group of vampire hunters who discover that the only way to rid the world of this supervamp might be to team up with regular old vampires. I saw this film before, only it was much better and called 'Blade II'.
So we get a cool, if borrowed, premise and some admittedly fun moments with Sid Haig and Ken Foree who laugh the rest of the D-list cast off the screen.
Also, word to the wise...you get Sid Haig and Ken Foree in your movie? You use them as much as possible and give them a scene together. I'm completely befuddled that the filmmakers didn't have the good sense to pair these genre stalwarts together.
When Sid Haig and Ken Foree aren't on screen (which is most of the time), we get a lot of talking in cheap, confined spaces and then we get even more talking.
One of those low-budget time-padding tricks that will put anybody even quasi-drunk fast asleep. If one happens to make it past the fifteen mark, there is some agreeable kills and gore here and there but it's mostly too little, too late. A questionable start for this new label.
Presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. Special Features include a commentary from Directors Michael Roesch and Peter Scheerer and Actor Sid Haig, a behind the scenes featurette, cast interviews, storyboard to film comparisons and a trailer gallery.
Ah, now this is more like it. One of my favorites of the collection, 'Dance of the Dead' is an extremely fun flick combining effective teen comedy with zombie splatter - Romero meets John Hughes if you will. Reminding me of zombie classic 'Return of the Living Dead', the pic also has a distinctly 'Shaun of the Dead' feel for combining slapstick and gore.
The typical teen comedy characters are quickly established at Cosa High School - we got the sci-fi geeks, the jocks, the cheerleaders, the bad-boy bandmates and then there are always our protagonists - the b crowd, neatly eschewing all high school sects.
Everybody is abuzz about the big night, the Prom, but little does everyone know that the local nuclear power plant has caused some extraneous radiation and is bringing to life all the corpses of the local cemetery! And guess where their heading?
Writer Joe Ballarini and Director Gregg Bishop are definitely genre fans to watch as they totally get what makes these films tick. Horror-comedy is hard to do well and while Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson and Edgar Wright have nailed it, there's score of lesser imitations that usually have nothing to add (check out 'Dead & Breakfast' or 'Idle Hands' for more tepid results).
Some great characters are created here including school delinquent Kyle played with some insane charisma by Justin Welborne (also great in another well-made low-budget horror pic 'The Signal').
Crafting characters that you can pay attention to is key to caring whether they get chomped on or not and there's a variety of goofs, punks and nerds to rally behind when the living dead literally jump out their graves and hit the ground running.
Low-budget to be sure but the film is well-cast with actors the appropriate age, a ton of gore with great, gross-out effects and well-written comedy that got consistent chuckles out of me.
The film is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen and special features include a commentary with the writer and director, a making of, a effects and stunts featurette, deleted scenes with optional audio commentary from the director, a 'Voodoo' short film and the trailer gallery.
Next is the fairly dreadful (and not in a good way) 'Dark Floors'. Don't worry, this is really the last clunker of the collection. Apparently the brain-child of Finnish heavy-metal band 'Lordi' who dresses up in ghoulish costumes and thought they could carry over that act into a feature film, the first half-hour or so does a decent job setting up a creepy premise but that goodwill soon gets pounded into the ground as you realize the film makes absolutely no damn sense.
Starting off with a little girl getting a CAT scan and her naturally worried father looking on, the CAT scan machine catches fire and her father loses patience with the hospital and attempts to take her somewhere else.
When stepping onto the elevator with a few other poor souls, however, it becomes clear that they didn't get off on the ground floor but an eerily abandoned floor of the hospital where they have to battle with an assortment of ghouls, monsters and zombies to make it out of the haunted hospital alive.
That all sounds a lot more fun than it actually ended up being as the gore is surprisingly infrequent and light, the monsters mostly fake-looking and the writing and characters so one-dimensional as to provide absolutely no depth or attachment to what was going on. It all looks fairly expensive, with the head-scratching exception of the costumes and ghost f/x, but this whole project just reeks of self-indulgence.
The film is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen. Shot in English for whatever reason, we get an English 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio track, an audio commentary with Director Pete Riski and Mr. Lordi, two music videos by Lordi, behind the scenes, a world premiere w/interviews and live performance from Lordi featurette and a trailer gallery.
Lordi also pops up in an easter egg thanking you for spending your hard-earned money on their rushed ego trip of a film.
The next picture is for all you sickies out there. 'The Last House in the Woods' is a down and dirty homage to all those 'video nasties' of the mid-seventies like 'The Last House on the Left' (going so far as to recall it's name) and 'I Spit on Your Grave' along with more Italian-inspired works from directors like Ruggero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi and there's enough in-your-face cannibalistic viciousness to satisfy even hardened fans of the genre.
We meet two young lovers, Aurora (Daniela Virgilio) and Rino (Daniele Grassetti), who are in the middle of a relationship crisis. She's more in love with him as a friend and he disagrees so he gets her to agree to a little road trip so he can change her mind.
On this road trip, they get harassed by a group of young punks who beat up Rino and start to rape Aurora when a middle-aged couple, Antonio (Gennaro Diana) and Clara (Santa De Santis), pull up and save the day as Antonio just happens to have a pistol handy (note to wife: change vacation plans from Italy to Disneyland).
Taken to the couple's house not too far away to let Aurora and Rino recuperate a bit from such a dramatic incident, little do they know they probably would have been better off with a beating and rape compared to what this couple has in store for them.
Written and Directed by Gabriele Albanesi, he fashions a film that could have easily escaped from the time period he's trying to ape which I suppose makes this film a success.
It feels and sounds like a low-budget nasty from the 70s where one is generally concerned for the mental health of the director. Admittedly, the writing is only so-so and the big explanation at the end will either have you scratching your head in confusion or choking on your beer in laughter but, man, is this flick gory - and not in a fun, zombie way.
Definitely not a film for everybody, but if you're a fan of the films or directors I've mentioned previously or even other Italian pics of the same nature like 'Haute Tension', then you'll probably have a ball here.
The pic is presented 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen and special features include a commentary with director Gabriele Albanesi, a short film from the director, a backstage featurette and a trailer gallery. It's presented with both Italian audio with English subs or an English dub.
A mildly fun entry is next with 'No Man's Land: The Rise of Reeker'. Both a prequel/sequel of sorts to 2005's 'Reeker', a better-than-expected DTV horror hit that starred an angel of death that you could literally smell coming as he comes to retrieve stubborn souls, the big twist of that film of course renders this film slightly less of a novelty as it covers pretty much the same ground but there's enough gruesome fun here to please fans of the original.
Director Dave Payne returns to his 'Reeker' universe and opens his new film with a prologue explaining how these 'Reekers' come to be. A pretty cool opening that doesn't proceed how you would expect - things get bloody right away and transitions nicely to the main narrative which is essentially a refashioning of the events in the first except this time we know what's happening as a trio of casino robbers come blazing into a small desert town and end up at odds with the local law.
Both the law and the robbers as well as some diner collateral damage arrive on the business end of what the tattered, weapon-adorned, stinky 'Reeker' has to offer and it ain't a glass of lemonade! The 'Reeker' is a dang cool creation and one of the better original horror creations in quite a while.
I only wish there was more of him in the film as he's pretty much the sole purpose of showing up. The characters are mostly paper-thin as is the acting and the film takes an odd turn into comedy half-way through but there was enough 'Reeker' goodness to keep me tuned in.
Presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, special features include an audio commentary from cast and crew, a behind the scenes featurette, a production team featurette, a 'What scares the cast and crew? featurette, a storyboard to film comparison and a trailer gallery.
The next pic is the Danish 'Room 205', a well-made ghost pic that provides more than enough jump scares to be worthwhile to fans of that type of stuff.
While the story of a long-haired ghost that haunts a college dormitory through mirrors isn't exactly novel, the Copenhagen-set locations add a foreign, outsider aesthetic to the film that makes it more unsettling than it might be for Danish viewers.
The story follows Katrine (Neel Ronholt), who is a little late to the college scene as she had to take care of her terminally ill mother. With the help of her father, she moves into a dormitory at a University in Copenhagen to study English. It doesn't take long for her to make enemies of Sanne (Julie Olgaard) when she naively gets taken for a ride so to speak from Sanne's ex-boyfriend Lukas (Jon Lange).
Playing a prank on Katrine to try and get her to move out, they set up an elaborate scare surrounding the local myth of a girl that got murdered in room 205 of the dormitory. This prank backfires as Katrine unwittingly releases the real ghost of room 205 when she cracks the mirror in the room, therefore unleashing her spirit.
The spirit travels through the mirrors so Katrine teams up with former Dorm-occupant Rolf (Mikkel Arendt) who got bullied out of the dorm before her to try and solve the mystery before everybody ends up dead.
The writing is so-so and the actually mystery of it is non-existent but it moves quick, has good atmosphere and sports a number of good scares and death sequences so this comes recommended for fans of j-horror thrills.
Presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen. The film features it's original Danish 5.1 track as well as an English dubbed track, a commentary with director Martin Barnewitz and Steve Biodrowski, a behind the scenes featurette and a trailer gallery of other Lion's Gate releases.
My favorite film of the collection, the Danish flick 'The Substitute' is so much fun that I'm surprised I haven't heard more about it. A sort-of pint-sized take on 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers', it all unfolds from the perspective of a sixth-grader with a surprising amount of depth, humor, sci-fi chills and an absolutely fantastic central performance from Paprika Steen as a substitute teacher by way of Nazi prison warden.
Certainly more science-fiction than horror, the flick even sports some great special effects (comparatively of course) that really sells the plight of very unlucky sixth-grade class 6B. The flick starts off with some good ol' fashioned seemingly benign sci-fi narration as we learn that humankind is the only species capable of love and empathy.
An alien race is envious of that rare ability and sends one of their own to check it out. Arriving on a chicken farm, it quickly takes the form of the farmer's wife, a tall commanding blonde with an icy stare.
Meanwhile, we meet sadsack Karl (Jonas Wandschneider) whose mother was killed in an auto-accident that we partake in and has to come to terms with that loss along with his credibly written younger sister and his in-above-his-head now single father.
An extremely well-written and well-acted family dynamic is created here and provides some intriguing subplot melodrama.
Still in therapy at school, Karl's mind is taken off his recent loss with the introduction of his new substitute teacher, Miss. Ulla (Steen), who proceeds to hurl insults and make fun of them with a cruel bully’s abandon. Going so far as to poke fun at Karl's dead mother, the kids definitely know that something is off but can't convince their parents as Miss.
Ulla has the positive recommendation of the minister of education, who she can summon from her handy-dandy silver sphere, and can whip up some tears and a sad story at will.
Under the facade of taking a class trip to Paris for an educational competition, Miss. Ulla seems to want to end up with the class back on the chicken farm where she can safely probe 'em, experiment on 'em and ship them back to her home world for further examination and with the adults being fooled, it's up to Karl and his class to stop her otherworldly plans for them.
Directed by Ole Bornedal, who hit one out of the park in 1994 with arthouse hit 'Nightwatch' (not to be confused with the recent Russian fantasy flick 'Night Watch') and who had bad experiences in Hollywood when directing the subsequent remake, he hasn't done much lately but shows he's still got the chops with this family-friendly amalgam of 'The Goonies' and 'The Faculty' with a great cast of child actors, smart writing, and frequent, genuine laughs.
Despite the 'R' rating which is mostly based on language, if there wasn't a spattering of 'F' words throughout, this would be perfectly acceptable entertainment for the whole family.
As it is with the language, I would still recommend it for 13 and up as it's tense but not gory and a great introduction to these types of flicks. In fact, the goriest thing that happens is a chicken that gets devoured alive and what kid wouldn’t want to see that?
Presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, special features include a director's commentary and a trailer gallery. The original Danish 5.1 track is provided with English subs as well as a dubbed English 5.1 track.
And finally we arrive at possibly the first Russian slasher film, 'Trackman', a perfectly pedestrian example of the genre that has a few interesting traits, the few being it's novel location of being set in the a dingy, abandoned subway under Moscow and the mere novelty of the people speaking Russian. Otherwise, it's a pretty dull affair.
The film starts like a heist film, with a group discussing the robbery of a Moscow bank, where we then plunge into the robbery sequence and all hell breaks loose. Grabbing some hostages, they hightail it into the underground tunnels that used to house a metro system for their escape.
From here, we get a bunch of squabbling between these annoying characters and as soon as one fool shares a tale about a Chernobyl victim said to be disfigured, insane and living in these tunnels...well, we get one such victim.
Sporting some leather & wool outfit and a pair of goggles with his weapon of choice being a pickaxe, the killer looks like some post-apocalyptic mountain-climbing maniac. Using a tool that plucks the eyeballs from his victims, this all looked promising until I realized that I mostly would be watching people walk, talk and stare in the darkness for minutes at a time.
I'm not saying it's 'Before Sunrise' but a little less walking and talking and little more eye-plucking would have been nice.
The atmosphere is decent and there are some purely average for the genre kills but the setup, writing and characters are borderline obnoxious. It helps that I want everyone to die but they unfortunately don't die quick enough. And par for the course, the final scene reveal explaining the whole eyeball collecting will have you throwing cheeseballs at the screen.
Presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, special features include just a trailer gallery. The original Russian 5.1 audio with English subtitles is provided as well as an English 5.1 dub.
Whew! That's a lot of horror! Overall, this is a pretty solid collection of horror films with only two real clunkers in the bunch and even those two have a few things going for them. Compared to the similarly themed 'After Dark Horrorfest' collections, these films definitely offer more quality blood for your buck.
If you're a unabashed horror fan and completist and respond to a wide variety of horror pics, then I can easily recommend the collection as a whole despite some underwhelming entries.
For those wanting to pick the best up separately, I think both 'The Substitute' and 'Dance of the Dead' are the real winners with 'The Last House in the Woods', 'Room 205' and 'No Man's Land: Rise of Reeker' being good for fans of that respective type of horror. I look forward to seeing what the 'Ghost House Underground' label comes up with next.
Ghost House Underground Eight Film Collection is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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