Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)

After reading this hilarious comment on IMDB about the TRAILER for Hellraiser: Revelations I just had to watch one of the old sequels again and my choice fell on the one I’ve seen the least times, Hellraiser: Hellseeker. Now, I’m one of those that don’t consider any movie holy. They could have remade Hellraiser as a romcom for all I care! The original movies still exist and can be enjoyed whenever I want to. Regarding Revelations it’s probably shitty, it’s just a movie that was produced to keep the rights to the franchise and nothing wrong with that. Art is business, make no mistake. I’ve been defending the Hellraiser-sequels since as long as I can remember, and I still will do that. It’s just something with them that attracts me. Like a twilight zone in the Hellraiser-mythology…

Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) is now a grown woman and has left her terrible history behind her, living a fantastic life together with her husband Trevor (Dean Winters). A terrible accident kills her and leaves her husband alone in the world with a mind more and more confused for each day. He starts seeing visions and his paranoia starts to grow. The police think he killed Kirsty and his memory-loss gives both him and us some clues of what really happen! Soon his closest friends starts showing up dead, brutally molested and isn’t that a certain Cenobite lurking in the dark of his mind…?

Like the excellent Inferno, and the sequels after, Hellseeker is a typical mindfuck movie. What I heard all these sequels were other movies from the beginning, but was rewritten to be Hellraiser-sequels, which makes them have a distance to the Cenobite-mythology, only using it as a background to some very fucked-up characters. What’s good with them, with the possible exception of Hellworld, is that the originals scripts used are quite good. Not especially original for us who have seen a lot of movies, but more ambitious and dark than most other DTV-sequels out on the street.

But I like them, and Hellseeker - while not in the same league as Inferno – is a fun and nasty sequel, dark and downbeat and even of the character of Kirsty is not that well-written, it’s nice to connect the story back to the original movie. I mean, why not? What gives the Hellraiser-sequels more respect than for example the Children of the Corn-franchise, is that they trying to keep the stories true to the downbeat tradition of the original. Sure, Hellworld is a slasher in (a not convincing) disguise, but the rest are actually quite non-commercial for being cheap sequels produced for the home video market.

There’s not need to complain about Hellseeker, everyone else does it so well. If you can ignore the holy Hellraiser-movie by Clive Barker (and maybe part 2) and just watch it like a separate mindfuck-movie with Pinhead and his friends in cameos, I think much more of you would appreciate what they’re doing here.

If you are true Clive Barker fans, I’m sure you would wait a thousand years for a proper new Hellraiser movie, or…?

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)

I've been a lifelong fan of all things Hellraiser - but ironically I never read the story it's based on from the beginning. I think it's too late now anyway, I'm more of a non-fiction reader and most of my time is focused on movies and music. Hellraiser 2 is by far the best in the series, but I've always had a very soft spot for Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. It's the first sign of the franchise going a more goofy and silly route (not as silly as many others, and it always kept some kind of seriousness) and in this movie it means some outrageous technological Cenobites and an unhealthy dose of crappy nineties fashion and music.

The young owner of The Boiler Room, a hip night club for goth kids, needs something new to spend his money on and gets a strange pillar for a couple of bucks. It's of course a cursed pillar, including the Pinhead-demon - who just wants out to raise a little hell again....

Originally it was meant for writer Peter Atkins to direct, but the company thought he had to little experience as a director and asked genre veteran and cult favourite Anthony Hickox to take over the wheel instead. It's impossible to say what could have happen with Atkins doing the directing but I think Hickox, with his usual flair did a pretty good job with a silly script. Maybe he made it more silly with his directing, I have no idea, but the man is a visual genius and always packs his productions with creative camera solutions and colourful characters - so even here. He likes his slow-motion or prankster-style attitude when it comes to on-camera gags and gore (even if it could have been even gorier...).

So even if the style and story is quite far away from what happen in the first and part 2, it still hangs together very good with the mythology - and gives us a clue to what will happen in the very uneven, but also underrated, part 4 (who became an Allan Smithee-movie after the production company took the movie away from its director). I actually like how the story departs from the usual Hellraiser-gloom and dives right into neon-lights and pseudo-goth kids dancing. It's like the filmmakers trying to spoof the fans a little bit, poke fun at the darkness and sadomasochistic themes - just like they did with the fun Hellraiser: Hellworld many years later.

And yes, regarding the CD-cenobite. I need to quote David Zuzelo in his review of Hellraiser: Revelations: "Dear Clive Barker. You signed off on CD FACE, how the hell can you not sign off on this? The checks are probably smaller, but the reputation doesn't shrink any further in my opinion". Yeah, this was regarding Clive Barker's hate of the Revelations-movie, when he's one of the men (aka producers) behind the silliest Cenobite of them all! Money talks. I kinda like the Cenobites in this film It's nice to see some new faces, so to speak, and these aren't bad - even if they seem to make things explode rather than torture people with chains and hooks that much. But they're nasty bitches and that's what we like, I guess.

Hellraiser III isn't exactly a heavy-weight sequel, but it's never boring and delivers some interesting ideas, some gore, some nudity and a nice change of location. Instead of British social realism and ugly mental patients we get young, hot men and women getting torn to pieces. I like that. It feels good. 

Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)

I once read that Lance Henriksen never accept roles as child molesters, rapists and just any kind of acting in slasher movies. Probably a very wise decision for him, because it kept him going for many years now and he’s probably gonna act until he falls down dead (which I forbid, he can never leave us!). That’s why it’s a mystery that he accepted the role of the mystery host in Hellraiser: Hellworld. At a first glance it’s a Hellraiser-movie, but it’s just slasher in disguise. Probably the most hated (until the next one of course, Revelations) sequel in the Hellraiser-series and shot back-to-back with the interesting but very uneven Deader, also from 2005. I can agree it’s a weak movie, but if you forget what it’s meant to be and see it as a silly slasher it works.

Two years ago Adam (Stelian Urian) burned himself to death in the basement after getting to involved in the fictional Hellraiser internet-game (internet was VERY dangerous in the movies once) and now his friends are getting back into their old “drug” with participating in a Hellraiser-themed party, hosted by Lance Henriksen: Hellworld. Yes, this is one of those sequels that look at the franchise from the outside (like Wes Craven’s New Nightmare for example). Soon things are starting to get very strange in the old Leviathan house, and one by one our hero’s is getting killed in violent ways!

OK, look at it from a distance and it kinda works. The story and the twist is absurd and silly and shouldn’t work, and it would have probably worked better as a pure slasher outside the Hellraiser-realm. It also has a twist which I hate and I loath every stupid fuck that uses this idea to seem smart (I’m looking at you… NO, sorry. I won’t name any other similar movie, just so you can be disappointed by yourself). Why it works a little bit better here is because it’s a Hellraiser movie, which make it seem more logic… kinda.

Because like with Deader and Hellseeker, director Rick Bota makes a very fine job spicing up rewritten scripts and adds a lot of atmosphere and some nasty violence to DTV-sequels that never would have gotten the same treatment if they belonged to another franchise. Hellworld is the weakest because the story is the weakest. It’s shallow and belongs entirely to the beautiful location, the excellent effects by Gary J. Tunnicliffe and the presence of Lance Henriksen. As you might now, I LOVE Lance, and I watch everything he’s in. He can have a tendency, especially during later years, to look a bit bored – or maybe just too used to doing lowbudget horror films. In Hellworld he’s better than in other similar projects, and seems to have fun scaring the kids and saying silly lines. Or maybe it was just a nice vacation to Romania that made him in a good movie, I don’t know. His best scene is actually the last one, where he can do a more realistic and – it looks like – do some improvisation on the set.

I know you all hate Hellworld, and I can agree it’s no super-movie. But watch it as a slasher with a little bit of Pinhead tossed in and it’s quite fun. And it looks good at least, which is better than nothing!

Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

Oh, how the fanboys raged - and even Clive Barker - who sold his "art" to many inferior movies - got into the discussion and publically denounced Hellraiser: Revelations on Twitter. What very few of them obviously couldn't grasp with their mini-minds is what we have here is a real, quite ambitious sequel that's not only the first script written specifically for a Hellraiser-film since part 4, it also quite cleverly builds a story much in the vein of the first movie and through this goes back to the roots of what the fans should like. I think the problem is that it looks cheap, and fan boys often confuses cheap with bad. There's a special story behind the making of this part (and it has happen a couple of times before): New Line realized that they had to make a movie within a certain time to be able to keep the rights to the Hellraiser-franchise. So they tossed talented director Victor Garcia and writer/special effects master Gary J. Tunnicliffe maybe 100-200 thousand dollars and a production schedule of three weeks... so this was a rushed production. So that's why it's surprising it turned out SO good.

Steven and Nico is two teenagers going on one last trip to Mexico to have fun and fuck around with cheap whores. Well there it's kinda boring, but a dirty old bum gives them a puzzle box and says it will give them all the pleasure in the world. Steven thinks this is a great idea and tries it... and then both of them disappears. Some time after this, Nico stumbles back into his parents home and slowly the story of what really happened unveils....

This is micro-budget film making how it should be done. The script could probably have one or two rewrites before shooting could being and the directing might not be as thought-through, but what to expect with such a short notice? They had eleven days shooting the film with very little means. What I really like about the script is the claustrophobic, chamber play feeling. This is an interesting deconstruction of the American bourgeois family - always pretending to be perfect, but with the bloody help of the cenobites there's more revealed about themselves than they could imagine. There's some very fine references to the first Hellraiser-film, and they are a lot more fresher than what a lot of the other sequels had. The script also has some twists that feels very interesting and works fine. This is the second time I've seen then movie and I still wasn't prepared for some of them.

If you, like me, have no problem with low budget movies, you wouldn't have any problem accepting the style of this film.  The effects, designed by Tunnicliffe, looks splendid. It's a gory and violent movie but of course, because of the budget and time, some steps of the kills and effects is off screen, but don't worry. It has quite a lot of gory goo anyway. The make-up is fine also, but here we also come to one of the few problems with the film: Stephan Smith Collins. Yeah, he plays Pinhead. And no, there's actually nothing wrong with him and his acting, it's just his look - he's so far from the bleak, almost androgynic look of Doug Bradley (who said no to star in the movie because the pay was to bad and he thought the script needed another rewrite) in make-up, and here he just looks like a slacker, a couch slob, who just happens to have walked by the make-up room and cast as Pinhead because there wasn't any other choices. Nothing personal, Mr Smith Collins.

Hellraiser: Revelations is a nifty and emotional strong sequel that could have needed some more time fixing the slightly corny dialogue and a bit longer shooting schedule to be perfect, now it's just a good little DTV movie with more ambitions than money. Oh, and the Mexico sets looks very bad, they could have used some more work to! ;)  

Give it a try, see it with your own eyes and just don't believe all the negativity around this film. It's worth more than just another generic, unimaginative fanboy-bashing. 

Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)

I'm one of those tasteless people that have no problems at all with all the Hellraiser-sequels. Part 2 is of course in a league of it's own, but even lesser (aka "sillier") sequels like Hell on Earth and Hellworld has something that attracts me. Inferno is the most underrated of the all sequels, and for a while it seemed that everyone hated it. "Not enough Pinhead!" (he's featured more in Inferno than in the first movie by the way) and not enough connection with the Hellraiser-mythos. Sure, it takes some liberties with the legend, but if you are openmined enough and can look beyond those small details, this is one helluva movie. 

Craig Sheffer plays Det. Joseph Thorne, a real bastard-police that fucks whores, don't care about his family, takes drugs, steals and is... yeah, a traditional bad cop. One day he comes to a murder scene where a man has been ripped to pieces with hooks and chains and Thorne finds the Lament-box... and takes it with him, and of course manages to open it. From that moment he's being trapped in a nightmare where more murders is taking place and everything is connected to him. He starts seeing weird Cenobites, and the person/thing behind it all is The Engineer - an almost mythological character in the underground crime-scene...

This movie is so criminally underrated that those who claims it's bad deserves a smack in the face. With an axe. Well, I won't be so hard to you all that dislike it, but it's still underrated. Scott Derrickson (who later directed The Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Day the Earth Stood Still) makes a fantastic job and creates a cool noir-style nightmare with great make up-effects by Gary J. Tunnicliffe (one of the best in the business today I think). It's hard to like a movie with such an unpleasant lead as Thorne, but Craig Sheffer do it well and it's a pity he never had a bigger career than he has now. He gives it all here and do a marvelous job. 

Inferno almost travels into Lynch-territory with some scenes, for example the cowboys playing poker. You can take a slice from the atmosphere and eat it, so think is it. And juicy. But it never becomes pretentious. One of the best scenes is the first trip into Hellraiser-world where Thorne encounters a couple of strange female Cenobites and one of the weirdest ones inte the series, a creture with hardly any torso and that is walking on it's hands. Everytime I watch Inferno it reminds me of the norwegian mindfuck-movie Naboer (made five years later), but the visual style and some of the gimmicks. It's a good movie to, but never come close to the small genius of Inferno.

I'm not saying it will change your world, but I dare to say it's the finest work from Scott Derrickson and a damn fine small masterpiece of direct to video-movies. 

Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (1996)

Disowned by the director because of the production company's decision to re-cut HellraiserIV: Bloodline, this is still a very underrated part of Clive Barker's macabre saga about the Lament Box and the demons called Cenobites. It has very interesting ideas, a bit more violent than part 3 and a bigger scale where they try to explain a bit more about the origin of the box and what it can make to curious people.

It's hard to deny it's a bit of a mess, and I'm pretty sure we can blame this on the production company who effectively destroyed the original vision of director Kevin Yagher and writer Peter Atkins. They actually tried to do something new and fresh, but someone high up wanted Pinhead in earlier in the movie and decided to fuck up the whole movie when Yagher left and refused to participate in the demanded changes. Good for him, maybe not so good for us - even if his workprint is available in terrible quality on bootlegs and downloading it's of course not the way it was meant to be seen.

But in all honest, the result is quite decent anyway. It could have been a lot worse! What doesn't work is the order of the scenes, which no makes the story fractured and confusing and it takes a few times watching it to fully appreciate the storyline and ideas both those written by Atkins and visually told by Yagher. The best part of the film is the origin story, where get to know the toy maker Le Merchant and how he built the box to a rich, decadent occultist who wants it to invoke a demon - and we all know who's that gonna be in the end? Well, not Pinhead at first, but a beautiful female demon who then we follow through the years until modern time. Everything is told from yet another ancestor in the future, sitting on his mysterious space station trying to once again invoke Pinhead.

Everything is very well made, gory and interesting. The middle part - focusing on the time "now" is good and has some interesting ideas, but feels a bit flat compared to the past and future. The actors is very good though, especially Kim Myers as the wife of one of Le Merchant's ancestors, all played by Bruce Ramsay by the way.

So if the script is a mess, Hellraiser Bloodline at least delivers some spectacular gore and splatter and some surprisingly fine visual effects (not all of course, for example the computer animated hands solving a computer animated box during the beginning of the movie). The highlight is a nice decapitation and a fun sequence where two heads is twisted into each other.  It's not a bad movie, but could have been a sensational sequel - maybe the best sequel of the bunch. But no, that didn't happen - but give it a try anyway. It's worth it!

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

The first Hellraiser-movie is one of those movies that grow on you. I wasn't really fond of it the first time, but it's been a movie I've watched over and over again during the years and it get's better. But one movie that is actually better is Hellbound, the first sequel. It might not be more original, but it's a unique horror movie with some amazing visuals and a really cool story. It's set directly after the events in the first movie, and starts without any hesitation. The strongest part of the sequel is that the filmmakers directly expands the mythology of the cenobites and that hell/other dimension that they're coming from.

Pinhead has a bigger part here, of course, and hams it up together with his favorite friends Butterball, Female Cenobite and Shatterer. We're also getting a look at where they came from and some clues to their identities, which is a nice touch. But Pinhead is such a masterful character, a combination between a poet, philosopher and a serial killer. And it never becomes cliché (they saved that for part 3). Doug Bradley is probably the only actor I could see as Pinhead now, but if there's a new one I guess they want to reboot it completely... pity in away, but on the other hand, this is one of those series that needs a good reboot to feel fresh again.

I've never been fond of the small ounces of comedy that's in this movie. For example some of the patients at the hospital are more comic relief than scary och strange. It breaks the dark illusion for a while, but as we all know it's not that much. Because most of the time we're witnessing brutal acts of violence and a stunning vision of hell. Though the budget was much bigger here the effects and sets are very uneven. Some is even very bad. But the good stuff steals everything. Hell is a labyrinth with the god Leviathan in the middle. This is my favorite part of the movie, and I just love the idea of god as a huge diamond-shaped object pouring out black light and making strange deep sounds. It's so fucking mighty. 

The script had to be rewritten quickly, but I think that was only a good thing. Sure, we miss one of the most important characters from the first movie, but on the other hand: it gives more mystery to the story and makes the twist even more nasty and surprising. The biggest shame with this franchise is that they never returned to the new Cenobite again, Doctor Channard. The transformation of him and the creation of the new lead demon is really cool and that character deserved to be resurrected for another sequel. Never happen, so I guess I have to walk through life without him. Shitty life.

Hellbound is a masterpiece. It's one of the coolest, most radical and weirdest horror movies from the eighties and I think it will last forever. One of those movies that never will die.

Hellraiser: Deader (2005)

Here we have part 7 in often hated Hellraiser-saga. The official series did end with part 4, but the franchise wasn't dead until much later. I've always liked the sequels. Many of them are far from perfect, but they still is above average. Well, not for hardcore-fanboys that hasn't moved away from mommie yet of course. They still cry and whine over the sequels. But not me, no way man ;) Sure, it's just a way to squeeze some money out from Clive Barkers original vision, but the movies themselves isn't especially commercial at all - except for Hellworld. But we'll discuss that one another day.

This time Kari Wuhrer plays a journalist, Amy Klein, that dosen't scare easily. She has a new assignment, to go to Romania to find out more about a mysterious sect that seem to raise people from the dead. Their leader is Winter (Paul Rhys), a decendant of the original inventor of the Lament box, and Amy soon finds her deep involved in the sect and the people around it. Soon the reality around her begins to shift and she can never be sure what's happening and if she's even alive...

I really like the idea, and Deader has some parts that works fine. I like the stuff with the bed, which is an interesting nod to the Hellbound. The idea to use the bed, inflict pain on it, and then get powers from Pinheads world is cool. Also to include a relative of LeMerchant is nice, and brings the story to a circle. That's more or less the basic concept with Deader, and it's a pity they couldn't go deeper into those ideas. The location in Romania has a lot of atmosphere and Wuhrer makes a fine intensive performace as Amy, as most of the actors. The budget was obviously restrained and that shows. There never enough time to show really cool stuff. For example, the subway train-scene could have been a lot more decadent and violent. But instead it's feels very rushed.

The gore then? Not that much. Sure, there's some blood and some very fast glimpses of gore (someone getting torn to pieces for example), but not as much and as dirty as I would like. But it also seem to be a case of low budget. This also means that we see way to little of Gary J. Tunnicliffes excellent make-up and not much Cenobites either. Or at least not much close-ups.

Concept and story can't just fill 85 minutes of a nice looking movie, even if Rick Bota do a good job with the directing and a lot of other competent people behind and in front of the camera.

Species: The Awakening (2007)

I'm a big fan of DTV-franchises, the less-loved, the better. Give me yet another Hellraiser-cheapie, or a Children of the Corn! I'm not gonna say no! Species, from 1995 and it's sequel 1998, are both over-the-top, gory and silly sci-fi horrors with a lot of classy actors slumming around in something their agents probably forced them to not say not to because of the paycheck. And there it could have ended, if not some cunning producer realized that this could be a great direct to video franchise for the gore and sex-starved idiots out there - and Species III was made and some years later, the final chapter in the silliest saga on earth (except the bible of course!): Species: The Awakening!

Helena Mattsson (the swedish starlet who's a quite big semi-star nowadays) plays Miranda, who until right now in the storyline thought she was just an ordinary young woman. But when her dear uncle Tom (Ben Cross) reveals that her whole live is just an illusion, she's really a cloned alien/human, the shit hits the fan. After a disastrous hospital visit they both travel to Mexico to find Forbes (Dominic Keating), Tom's former colleague, who might help them to reverse the alien-DNA and save Miranda. But Forbes has been a bit too experimental-happy in his own private lab and there's several alien-hybrids on the loose in the area - and everyone wants to kill, Kill, KILL!!!

Sure, it's not Species or Species II, or even Species III, but Species: The Awakening is still a pretty ambitious and - maybe mostly - a very good-looking cheapie. The Mexico setting is a nice touch to the story and experienced and competent actors like Cross and Keating makes their best from quite shallow characters. Mattsson isn't bad either, even her role mostly is to look sex and having weird make-up on her breasts. I can't proof it of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if the script is a different horror script rewritten to fit the Species franchise (just like Hellraiser part 5-8). It could well have been a story about werewolves or vampires, but the bites replaced by killer-tongues and boob-scenes.

Much of the charm with the Species movies has been the gore and slime, and this one kinda delivers on that. Not as much as the earlier ones and here we mostly have the above mentioned tongues going in and out of heads, but also a very cool transformation scene where a guy in a car squeezes a monster out from his mouth. It's a nice combination between CG and practical effects. But I still miss the spinal-pulling, exploding heads and bellies-ripped-up-from-the-inside-by-tentacles from the earlier movies. But hey, you can't have it all. I can live with that fact. At least they did what they could here with a very small budget.

Species: The Awakening is a still a nice little addition to the DTV collection of every man and woman out there. Hardly original, but a step above some of the other shite movies being produced every hour of the day from the bigwigs in Borywood.

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012)

In 2009 director John Hyams surprised everyone by delivering Universal Soldier: Regeneration, a sequel that actually felt fresh and had non-stop, very violent action - and also marked the return of both Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. Even if both of them mostly have extended cameos, especially Dolph who pops up from a box, kills a bit and then... well, I don't want to spoil anything, but I think you can guess what happens to a bad guy like him in a movie like this. That was the second official sequel to the 1992 hit (fourth if you count the two miserable TV-movies starring Matt Battaglia and Burt Reynolds - Matt actaully plays the same character as JCVD, so they should be considered sequels and not spin-offs, but Van Damme himself seems to disagree) and how the hell could you take this franchise another step and still feel fresh? The answer came in 2012 when Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning was unleashed on the world, with Scott Adkins taking the lead and the two old farts doing the same old extended guest appearances - but still makes it works like never before!

John (Scott Adkins) wakes up after being brutally beaten. He's been in comatose for nine months and he's ready to go out in the world again, but this time without his wife and daughter - who both got executed during the attack. The only face he saw was that of Luc Deveraux, now a rouge Universal Soldier who seem to have gathered an army around him, of other Universal Soldiers longing to find peace and freedom. John sets out to solve the crime and get back his memory, but Deveraux is on his back all the time and John is in constant danger, mostly from a man called The Plumber, a human war machine who is almost impossible to kill! Will he ever reach the heart of darkness or will Deveraux get him before he finds out the truth?

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning is without a doubt the darkest film in the series, and for being - in all honesty - a movie mostly made to be released on DVD and BD it's a stunningly ambitious project. It would have been so easy to do something more easy, something less complex, but instead the filmmakers gives us what could be called a Universal Soldier-take on Apocalypse Now and Rolling Thunder, with a healthy dose of David Lynch and mindfucking stuff like Jacob's Ladder and Hellraiser Inferno. The style is more European than American, with lots of wide shots, characters taking their time to say stuff, people looking at each other - and not just before kicking each other in the head. John Hyams and his teams clearly wants to tell a story here and not just a series of fights. I love Scott Adkins but I never really seen him act that much before - he's an awesome fighter, but can he act? He actually can act - it's a bit uneven at times, but it works and I'm pretty sure this performance will give him a new start in more character-driven movies (and I see now he's also starring in Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty).

Jean-Claude Van Damme is brilliant, as usual, doing a Deveraux how seems high both on himself and on drugs, cold and zombie-like, but with a rage inside that's hard to beat. Dolph has less to do, like in Regeneration he's mostly an excuse to deliver some danger for our hero. But don't worry, his character has some interesting turns and the use of him is original and a little bit radical.

As you all know, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning is also about action and while it doesn't have the absurd amount of action as Regeneration, it also probably the most brutal and graphic fights shot in a long time. We're taking long takes here, wide angles, lots and lots of bloody hits against head and body, often with a bloody and nasty conclusion. The Raid was fun, but there's a different seeing small guys kicking each other and seeing very heavy, tall dudes bashing baseball-bats in each others face in slow-motion. I prefer the later and it's very impressive fighting and stunts with lots of gore and squibs. This is an action movie for adults, not for people who wants to have yet another Jackie Chan-clone. I'm a bit mean to The Raid, it's good, but it's also very repetitive and unimaginative - it lacks that "it" that's so damn important.

And as I wrote here, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning is one of the best genre movies of 2012. Watch out for the US DVD and blu-ray, it's cut - I, myself, got my BD from Australia - so check around first so you'll get the movie in it's original version.

Death Spa (1989)

Death Spa, Death Spa, what have ye done? You was born from the agony of starving screenwriters, just two years after Killer Workout (aka Aerobicide)... why didn't you scream, why didn't anyone stop you from being born in this cruel, non-pink and light-blu, world? I think, somehow, it was a genius who got the idea, carried it to a wealthy producer and said: "Hey man, we're gonna make a horror movie like never before and it's called HAUNTED GYM!". The wealthy producer laughed and slapped himself at the knees, "No boy, we're gonna call it... DEATH SPA!". And classic was born.

Right now I stopped writing this next and posted this on my Facebook:

"Writing a review of Death Spa, and I'm not really here. Gonna be an interesting experience. It will be a classic text about a classic movie."

Gah, I guess I have a lot to live up to now. And what the hell do I mean with "I'm not really here"?

Puh... anyway, here we have a brand new high-technological gym and it's about to be open for the big public very soon, after the opening party of course. But someone, or something, is disturbing the computer controlled gym equipment and people is starting to get really hurt in weird accidents. But that's not all, soon the wife of the owner - she died in a freak accident, or murder, or suicide - and wants to get revenge for somehing. So she flies there and starts killing of the nasty, sinful, shallow visitors and of course hunts down the person responsible for her death!

So what the hell do we have here anyway? Yeah, it's a lot of pink and light-blue colours, sweatbands, aerobics, body socks and lots and lots and lots and lots of bright, eighties neon - and this movie is from 1989, it's basically the nineties! Why? I don't know, but I really like crap like this. It's unpretentious but still serious. It doesn't pretend to be a dark nasty horror movie, it wants to make people happy with its all shining neon and cute faces getting ripped apart.

I always forget how gory this film is. There's lots of bloody deaths, and if they're not graphic they are more odd, like the man getting killed by a dead fish (oh, which ends with a lot of blood!). My favourite must be the girl that gets ripped to shreds when a mirror explodes in front of her. Spectacular, to say the least. The final is my favourite form of final, when a lot of partying people gets locked up in a room and then all hell breaks loose (see also, for example, Hellraiser 3, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 and Wishmaster) and lots of people gets killed in creative ways.

Death Spa - or Witch Bitch as my Dutch DVD says - isn't here to tell us something. It's here to entertain... and maybe educate us in how not to be dressed in spa's, or maybe that we should stay away from spa's and gym's and live happily ever after. It also has the mighty Ken Foree, an actors so legendary people tend to not understand how legendary he is, because if you're one of the leads in George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, then you're more or less immortal. He hasn't much to do in Death Spa actually, which is a pity. He gets a chance to sport some ridiculous gym wear instead, which he always will be remembered for.

Death Spa is here to not make us think so much. It want to make us laugh because of the absurdity and feel down because the movie ended to quickly. I'm not sure I can go so far as "underrated", but it's a good little movie with the heart at the right place, and that's what I expected when want to see some goofy, bloody, eighties horror. 

Banglar King Kong (2010)

Finally on Ninja Dixon, the legendary - the obscure - the awful - the amazing... Banglar King Kong! I'm proud to say that I think I've seen every King Kong movie, every rip-off and every similar movie made (except The Asylum's King of Kong Island, but I need to watch it soon!). The original King Kong was one of the first movies I ever saw and it still haunts me since I was 4-5 years old and it was aired on Swedish television. Because I have a smart and cool mother she let me see it and since then I've been obsessed with monsters, big apes and miniature destruction. Thank you mom.

But back to Banglar King Kong. You all now the story and I have no intention to tell you what everyone already knows: female scream queen, boat, island, big ape, hero (with a nose that literary becomes invisible because of the bad picture quality of the movie), mad director, show in big city, ape climbing up skyscraper and falls down. This version is an interesting combination between the 1933 and 1976 version, the best of both shows so to say. Even if I have nothing against the message-heavy seventies version it's nice to see that they just aimed for simple (and I mean Simple with a capital S) entertainment and lots of silliness instead of going the more serious root.

Actually, if you turn of the colour on your TV - and the sound - this would look like a real silent movie, complete with unsteady and light-sensitive cinematography and actors doing their best to be as far away as possible from acting in a realistic way. Prepare for a lot of scene-chewing and dramatic poses and rolling eyes!

The effects ranges from bad to terrible with a crappy ape-suit (according to the filmmakers purchased from the US, so we can once again blame that country for all the horrible things in the world!) and very, very, very simple blue screen effects and miniatures that's so primitive I'm not sure I would like to call them miniatures - maybe just "cardboard boxes with holes in them"? It's interesting to see that it actually works and the sole reason for that is that the effects are crappy all the way, every single one of them - except those few shots that are actually stolen directly from the 1976 version, and they fit in anyway.

I also need to come out from the closet and say that I prefer bad musical numbers before good ones, and Banglar King Kong has plenty of badly staged, moronic and tacky sing- and dance-numbers for the whole family. Often shot with a handheld camera, very few other dancers, simple choreography and even the most pointless supporting characters gets a chance to rap - or what ever they try to do. And I love it. I love Love LOVE it! I mean, if I can participate in one of these musicals number then they must be good!

Banglar King Kong is one of those movies that can be used to separate real cult movie fans from fake ones. The fake ones are those who only have seen (brilliant) movies like The Evil Dead, Halloween, Re-Animator, Hellraiser, Dawn of the Dead etc and claims to be fans of subversive, original, odd, exploitative cinema. But they can't even get through a movie like an unsubbed monster-mash like Banglar King Kong or a three hour slasher-epic with kung fu fights from India. They're too lazy and therefore they just belong to those mainstream "cult movie fans" who happily share specific scenes on Facebook from Banglar King Kong but never dares to the watch the whole movie.

I might be making fun of some movies here, but remember one thing: if I didn't love them I wouldn't watch them. What's the point of watching (and writing about) movies you dislike or even hate? I love primitive movies because I'm tired if big, smart productions. Along the way a lot of love and passion disappears it seems.

Banglar King Kong IS incompetent and extremely silly but it has a lot of trashy love to share with us all. I wish it was easier to find, but with the stolen footage, music and story I guess it will never get a proper release outside Bangladesh - or even inside the country.

If you want to see a lot of cool screenshots (and read a superior review), head over to Tars Tarkas for an impressive piece of in-depth analysis of Banglar King Kong!

I think I can see a nose. Not sure.

The clothes! The Clothes!!!! Arghhhhh!!!!!

One of the spectacular dance numbers!

The comic - and slightly disturbing - relief!

A sad native.

Miniatures... kinda. Almost? Maybe? No!

Critters 2 (1988)

I love a good sequel, and there's quite a few that even is better than the original: Maniac Cop 2, Hellraiser 2, Children of the Corn 2, Warlock 2, Halloween 2 (yes, and I'm not gonna join a debate about it), Psycho 2 (a film on the same level of quality as the first one) etc. Yesterday I watched Critters and kinda liked it, but today I sat down and watched the sequel, Critters 2: The Main Course, and found out that it's actually a damn fine and fun sequel and superior compared to the original. What makes a good sequel? When it comes to this form of genre cinema I think the budget plays a big part of the creativity. Sometimes the sequels gets less money, but here it feels like New Line Cinema believed in the projected and gave the Opper's and director Mick Garris both a lot of love and freedom to create something out of the ordinary.

Charlie (Don Keith Opper), the village idiot from the first movie is now an intergalactic bounty hunter together with Ug (Terrence Mann). They thought the Critters was dead and extinct, but some eggs has survived and now they're ready to hatch! At the same time Brad travels back to his old home town to visit his grandma, but soon he realizes that something is wrong and the space monsters he's been trying to forget is back and they're even more hungry! Lucky for him he gets some help from Charlie and Ug... and the whole town is now ready to kick some Critters-butt! If they survive...

In cinemas Critters 2 seemed to be a flop, but it must have made a big buck on home video - remember it spawned two more sequels, direct to video. It's a pity, because Critters 2 is a lot better than the first one. It also feels more adult, which I like: more blood, some nudity and a fun orgy of monsters and special effects. It has a more epic feel to it, more characters involved and a whole town under siege at the end. Mick Garris knew how to boost the production values without forgetting interesting characters we cares about. Scott Grimes is back as Brad, and here he's two years older and with more character. He's not just the annoying boy, he's more a of a hero and a proper sidekick to Charlie and Ug (and Zanti, the third bounty hunter who transforms into a naked woman in a memorable sequence). The only thing I feel is odd - and somehow fresh - is the little, almost non-existent, love story between Brad and Megan, it's very visible that she's like 6-7 years older than him...

The comedy is also darker and the script is filled with fun and somewhat macabre ideas. The easter bunny sequence, from when they places the "eggs" outside the church to when the poor bunny comes crashing through the church window is brilliant, cheesy and loving filmmaking. It's the suburbia of John Waters mixed with the dark, family-friendly splatter of Gremlins. Yeah, Gremlins. Critters 2 is a lot closer to that movie than the first movie, which is good. It was during that time in the US when movies for young adults could be a bit bloodier, a bit more extreme. Not so damn wimpy and correct. We've seen some similar quality productions recently, J.J. Abrams Super 8 and Joe Dante's underrated The Hole for example, but except those it's hardly anything worth mentioning.

Like every good monster movie it ends spectacular. Critters 2 brings all the artillery with an awesome sequence starring one big mother of a Critters, put together by every other Critter around. I didn't remember it to be so effective, but it looks cool and the creative special effects helps a lot. If I was allowed to make a sequel  would want to see even more big Critter-piles eating humans while rolling over them!

Even if I wish I could, I can't complain about this movie. It's made with a lot of love and creativity and with a fine cast of actors who seems to care about what they're doing and not just cashing in the paycheck. Can't say that about every movie I've seen. Recommended and if you haven't seen this one since it came it, give it a new try! I'm sure you won't regret it. 

Knife Edge (2010)

Anthony Hickox, the genius behind Wax Work 1 and 2, Hellraiser 3 (yes, I like that one a lot), Warlock: The Armageddon and the cool werewolf-movie Full Eclipse, is back in the saddle after teaching Dolph Lundgren and Steven Seagal some manners during the last seventeen years! Knife Edge is not the most unique movie in history, but it’s still far above average and is a stylish and fun thriller with a shitload of atmosphere.

Natalie Press plays Emma, a famous and very successful stockbroker that decides to quit her career and live a quite life together with her husband Henri (Matthieu Boujenah) and son from a former marriage, Thomas (Miles Ronayne), on the English countryside. It was Henri who bought house, but something is fucked up with the house… Emma has psychic abilities and starts having visions of murders that happen once in the house. At the same time Henri is loosing all his jobs and bringing his company closer to bankruptcy. He don’t want to ask his wife about money, and gets in deeper shit… Emmas visions is getting stronger, and she realizes that there’s more too what the old newspapers is telling her. More secrets are buried…

Actually, Knife Edge reminds me a lot about Lucio Fulci’s The Psychic, and it even has a scene where Emma finds something hidden behind a wall – but Hickox movie has other twists, which fooled me. I’ve seen it before, but this is such a well made movie, filled wonderful acting and stunning visuals. Natalie Press has the perfect haunted look and the rest of the movie is filled with both veterans like the great Hugh Bonneville and Joan Plowright and Jamie Harris and Lorcan O’Toole.

Knife Edge is very old-fashioned, from the location – a big British mansion with antiques to the direction of Anthony Hickox. You can see that he’s from a different school of scares. There’s a lot of moody shots, really good jump-scares and never to fast or to slow. This is perfection. He also gives us a couple of cool hallucinogenic visions, creepy dolls, some not so graphic bloodshed and fantastic cinematography by Daniel Bronks.

With a feeling of watching a combination between a good old British or Canadian thriller from the seventies and a supernatural Italian Giallo, I can say that this is the most welcome production in a long time, not that it’s original, but the return of Anthony Hickox in the thriller/horror-genre.

Welcome back Tony, give us more please!

The Saw Saga (2004-2010)

I've spent the last couple of days watching every Saw-movie again. Why? Just because I could and I kinda liked them. So here's my comments after each one, written directly after I saw each one of them.

Saw, now a classic in the horror genre, and also a thriller that holds up very well. It feels fresh and unique, even after six sequels and countless rip-off's. Leigh Whannell's script (after a story by him and James Wan) plays a perfect game of thriller ping-pong, keeping the mystery intact to the very end. I remember how the twist made me jump, and I still think it's a good one - even if it feels less logical the more I analyze it. Interesting is also how cheap it looks. It's first now I can see clearly how everything is shot in one house, inside, with quick production design and not always thought-through direction. But still damn good.

I find SawII quite intriguing. Maybe it was just luck that this sequel wasn't based on an original Saw-script? There's something that differs the one from the first, something more than just a bigger cast. Can't put my finger on it. Anyway, that's what makes it a good sequel, more unexpected. It's a bit more tricky to keep every character alive and interesting, but it's not badly written here. The twist is actually a damn fine twist, one of the best ones in the series. Still not as magical and unique than the first.

Saw III was the first one I saw in the theatre and boy, this is a lot nastier than the first two - they're both quite lame regarding the graphic violence. But here! I turned away my head a couple of times, including a lot of the skull-surgery scene. The first time I saw it felt like the best sequel, but that feeling has diminished a little bit. It's still a very exciting thriller, with a neat twist and a couple of fun surprises. I also thing the acting in this one is the best so far. This is also the sequel when things start to get confusing, and I still have four movies left! Sigh...

When you see every part of this series at least one year apart it's easy to mix them with each other. I always thought that Saw IV was the weakest one, the big letdown, but I must have confused it with the next one - maybe. This is actually not a bad film. It has better pacing - and is shorter - than the Saw III and kinda hangs together better. It still leaves one big question hanging at the end and I'm not even sure they will bother to answer it. It's also nice how it hangs together with the last part very carefully, and it wouldn't surprise me if they where shot back-to-back. The twist is fine, but not the best. Alright. Let see what the next one has to offer!

But what the... I've always lived in that illusion was the worst one! But nooo, it's actually a nice companion piece to the part before, both more or less a deconstruction of the male ego. Part V have now - I need to say - the best cast of them all. The ensemble victims are all excellent, which is needed to keep the interest up. The weakest spot is, as usual, Costas Mandylor, who seem quite detached to his character. He's okay, but not fantastic. And yeah, this part has the simplest - but worst - final trap! Nasty as hell!

I totally forgot, but Saw VI is the absolute weakest. Mostly because it's more visible that the writers have run out of ideas and the flashbacks and earlier unknown links between characters and scenes just doesn't work to the same degree as earlier. I like most of the acting and there's some fine ideas, but it doesn't hold together. The best thing with it is that it's very anti-capitalistic, and keeps that message all through. Alright one left...

Saw 3D is different in several way. First of all it's a lot more polished and brighter in style than the rest, the blood and often the gore effects is red (almost pink sometimes, which makes me think of almost every movie made in the seventies) and cartoonish. It also, like Hellraiser: Hellworld, Jason Goes To Hell and New Nightmare, acknowledges the crime as something commerical, something that can be made money from. It takes one step out from the traditional storyline and shows a little bit more around everything. I personally think Saw 3D is a fun movie, one of the better ones and a lot better than the first. And it's also very nice to see THAT character back in the... game.

That's all, ffffolks.