Director: Robert Young
Year released: 1972
THE CHARGE: Bringing a circus full of vampires to town. But in all fairness, I guess they're not any scarier than clowns.
THE EVIDENCE: Vampire Circus opens with vampire Count Mitterhaus killed by local townsfolk. Not many films have the nerve to kill off their most important character in the first five minutes, but there we are. But before dying, he curses them, swearing that their children’s blood will return him to life. Just like when Dick Cheney was kicked out of the White House.
Director: Robert Scott
Year released: 1987
THE CHARGE: Video killed the living dead star? Meh, I got nothing.
THE EVIDENCE: In this piece of 80’s fromage, Zoe and Jeff are a couple of teenagers moving into a new home their parents just bought, though their folks are out of the country. Because after purchasing a home, it’s perfectly natural to want to be several thousand miles away from it. Yep, thirty seconds into the movie and we already have our first plot hole.
Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Year released: 2007
THE CHARGE: Rolling the clocks back instead of springing forward. I hate daylight savings time.
THE EVIDENCE: I've previously written about director Nacho Vigalondo's film Open Windows and found it to be a major disappointment. So I recently revisited his feature film debut Timecrimes, which really wowed me the first time I saw it years ago, to see if it was as good as I remembered. I'm happy to say that the film not only still holds up, but a second viewing made me appreciate it even more.
Director: John Carpenter
Year released: 2011
THE CHARGE: Being a bit too hard on The Beaver last night
THE EVIDENCE: John Carpenter has directed some iconic horror flicks: Halloween, The Fog, The Thing and the woefully underrated In the Mouth of Madness. So you would think that The Ward, the first feature film he’d directed in nearly ten years, would be a big deal; a project worthy of an auteur returning to his milieu. But then you remember that this is the same John Carpenter who directed Escape from L.A., Ghosts of Mars and the overrated snoozefest Prince of Darkness. And suddenly, the mediocrity of The Ward makes a lot more sense.
Director: Robert Eggers
Year released: 2015
THE CHARGE: Weighing the same as a duck and therefore being made of wood (wink wink, nudge nudge)
THE EVIDENCE: Now here's a polarizing piece of celluloid. Robert Eggers's 17th century period piece has been hotly debated around the interwebs. Some consider it the scariest film ever made while others call it an overhyped snoozefest. Well, your good friend Judge Hammer has finally had a chance to weigh the evidence and I'm here to let you know that the truth falls, as it usually does, somewhere in the middle. The Witch is a legitimately frightening film, but not without its flaws.
Director: Aditya Vishwanath
Year released: 2016
THE CHARGE: If a shadow falls and no one's around to hear it, does it make a good movie?
THE EVIDENCE: Senka and Jonas are a young couple in the early stages of building a life together when Jonas throws a monkey wrench into their plans by getting himself perished. But Senka won't let him get away that easily. Ignoring the "till death do us part" section of their vows, she makes a Faustian deal with a demon named Amis to bring Jonas back to her. Things then take some very bad turns, because Shadows Fall wouldn't be much of a horror film if everything went smoothly.
Director: Pang Ho-cheung
Year released: 2010
THE CHARGE: Taking advantage of a killer real estate market
THE EVIDENCE: Young urban professional Cheng, working multiple jobs, finally scrapes up what she thinks is enough cash for a down payment on a luxury apartment. Sadly, a sudden surge in the housing market jacks up the price and puts it out of her financial reach. But she REALLY wants this apartment. She wants it so badly, she'd be willing to kill or die for it. Well, maybe not die...
Director: Anders Jacobsson
Year released: 1995
THE CHARGE: Practicing evil without licensing or documentation of proper training. Record keeping is important, people!
THE EVIDENCE: Evil Ed opens with a scene of a film editor sitting in front of an editing machine. You see, kids, in years gone by, movies were recorded on something called "film" and this "film" had to be manually cut and sliced together in order to create a movie. Well, the person in front of this particular machine is going completely mental and when the head of the movie studio enters the room to tell him to knock it off, the editor puts a grenade in his own mouth and pulls the pin. After being covered with gore, the studio head promptly fires the deceased editor.
Director: S. Craig Zahler
Year released: 2015
THE CHARGE: Forcing a head-on collision between two distinct film genres and charging admission to view the wreckage.
THE EVIDENCE: A couple of no-good sidewindin' bushwhackin' varmints stumble upon a burial ground and before you know it, one of them ends up deceased. The other takes refuge in a town run by Sheriff Kurt Russell and his majestic sheriff-y beard, but he may have unwittingly led some rather agitated cannibalistic tribesmen to an all-you-can-eat buffet. But the cannibals prefer to get their food to-go, and drag some townsfolk back to their caves. Will Sheriff Kurt and his beard save the day?
Director: Patrick Brice
Year released: 2014
THE CHARGE: He's a creep. He's a weirdo. What the hell is he doing here?
THE EVIDENCE: Josef is dying. He advertises on Craiglist for someone to film his last days, and to impart wisdom to a young son who will grow up without ever getting to know his father. Aaron answers the ad and it doesn't take long before he gets the sense that there's something... off about Josef. But hey, a job's a job, right? Even if it's the last job Aaron might ever take...
Director: Steven Goldmann
Year released: 2008
THE CHARGE: Offering a double-wide dose of delightful dread.
THE EVIDENCE: In case you haven't noticed by now, I watch a lot of horror flicks. My wife is kind enough to sit through most of them with me. And when we popped the tantalizingly titled Trailer Park of Terror into my DVD player, we did so with the lowest of expectations. With a title like that, how could we expect anything but a laughable and ultimately forgettable b-movie? So imagine my surprise when, about a half hour into it, I turned to my wife and asked, “Is it me or does this movie actually NOT suck?” She answered, “It’s not just you. This really is GOOD!”
Director: Richard Hiltzik
Year released: 2008
THE CHARGE: Sleepwalking through the worst case of sequelitis in many moons.
THE EVIDENCE: The original Sleepaway Camp introduced audiences in 1983 to teenage gender-confused serial killer Angela. It's considered a controversial classic for two reasons: 1) many of the campers who swear like sailors on shore leave, including some of the killer's victims, are played by actors actually under the age of 18 and 2) it features the most bizarre final frame of any movie in the history of film-making.
Director: Rick Jacobson
Year released: 2009
THE CHARGE: Not being the biography of WWE's Stephanie McMahon. (That's a pro wrestling joke. You see, she likes to slap people a lot and... oh, never mind.)
THE EVIDENCE: If you ever watched women’s professional wrestling and thought “this would be a lot better with some blood and some lesbian tongue wrasslin’”, then stop whatever you're doing - and if you really think along those lines, I don't think I want to know what you're doing - and watch Bitch Slap immediately!
Directors: Katsuyuki Motohiro & Naoyoshi Shiotani
Year released: 2015
THE CHARGE: Not being bad, just being drawn that way.
THE EVIDENCE: I'm throwing a little bit of a change-up into the blog today, passing judgement on a recently released anime film. Don't worry. There are no Pokemon, Digimon, Dragonballs or Ben-Wa balls to be found here. In fact, today's movie is a poitical thriller with a heavy sci-fi influence, a few horror elements and an occasional burst of splatterific gore for color. So let's dive in and see what Psycho-Pass: The Movie is all about.
Director: Marc Fratto
Year released: 2015
THE CHARGE: Kidnapping. But is it really a crime if the guy you kidnap is the Antichrist?
THE EVIDENCE: Amazon Prime has become a breeding ground for horror. From A-list titles to zero-budget exploitation flicks, it's all there. And with probably ten times the number of titles as Netflix, it's become my go-to for checking out movies that are under the radar. Hell Fire is one of those titles, capturing my attention with its titillating cover shot of a bound man looking between the legs of a scantily-clad gun wielding woman. I went in with high hopes and low expectations... and was completely blown away.
Director: Michael & Peter Spierig
Year released: 2003
THE CHARGE: Bringing Australians back from the dead. ZOMBIE ZOMBIE ZOMBIE, OI OI OI!
THE EVIDENCE: Meteorites carrying an alien virus smash into a Australian village, killing the townsfolk and then turning them into zombies who crave human flesh. (Has there ever been a zombie who didn’t?) A small group of survivors takes refuge in a bomb shelter but, realizing there are almost no supplies to sustain them, try to figure out how to get past the zombie hordes and get out of town. The task proves to be far more difficult than they expected, but it’s not because of the zombies...
Directors: A whole bunch of them
Year released: 2016
THE CHARGE: Encouraging cinematic ADHD by hopping onto the anthology bandwagon.
THE EVIDENCE: Let's get this out of the way: I don't care much for anthology films. Most of them are lazy endeavors held together by the loosest of threads. They're generally the refuge for directors who have ideas but neither the budget nor the expertise to develop them into full length features. But the success of anthologies like the V/H/S and ABCs of Death movies have ensured that we'll be accosted by these short film collections for some time to come. Holidays is one the most recent additions to the genre and, like almost all anthologies, offers stories of varying quality.
Director: Can Evrenol
Year released: 2015
THE CHARGE: Serving up 31 frosty flavors... of TERROR.
THE EVIDENCE: Foreign horror films can make for interesting viewing. Sometimes it reveals universal themes that are frightening regardless of your nationality or background, like the extreme horror of the French films Martyrs and Inside. Sometimes it reveals unique motifs to specific to the culture of the film's origin, like the dark humor of the Israeli film Rabies or the socio-economic motives behind the violence in the Japanese film Dream Home. Baskin, filmed in Turkey, falls between those two ends of the spectrum, giving what seems to be a very local flavor to universally nightmarish concepts.
Director: Michael Steves
Year released: 2015
THE CHARGE: Being the only horror movie I know of that's named after dingleberries.
THE EVIDENCE: Peanut butter and chocolate. Beer and pretzels. Jennifer Lopez and Judge Hammer. They're all examples of things that go great together. Clinger wants to check if the same applies to to teen Disney comedies and graphic horror, and the results are pretty much what you'd expect.
Director: Roger Corman
Year released: 1962
THE CHARGE: You got Edgar Allan Poe, Vincent Price and Roger Corman and can't come up with a better title than that?
THE EVIDENCE: Tales of Terror is one of several collaborations between Vincent Price and director Roger Corman to bring the works of Edgar Allan Poe to the big screen. This one’s a little different from their other films in that it doesn’t focus on one story. Rather, it’s an anthology that presents three Poe tales: Morella, The Black Cat and The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. Price appears in all three and provides a voice-over introduction to each of the stories as well.
Director: Colm McCarthy
Year released: 2010
THE CHARGE: Appropriation of Irish folklore to create a mash-up of Twilight, Beauty and the Beast, and a Lucky Charms advert.
THE EVIDENCE: I know what you're thinking and I'll get this out of the way right off the bat: Outcast does not feature Andre 3000 anywhere in the movie. So those of you hoping for a few rollicking choruses of "Hey Ya" will have to look elsewhere. I know, I was disappointed too.
Director: Chad Ferrin
Year released: 2006
THE CHARGE: Hiding brightly colored painted eggs... of DEATH.
THE EVIDENCE: Today, Film Verdicts continues its recent foray into the world of holiday horror. There have been plenty of horror movies centered around holidays: Halloween, Black Christmas, My Bloody Valentine... heck, there have been no less than two horror films centered around Mother’s Day. But to my knowledge, no one has tackled a fright flick that takes place on Easter (unless you count Mel Gibson’s religious splatter flick The Passion of the Christ). It’s a bit surprising, considering the holiday’s major theme of resurrection of the dead. But Easter hasn’t quite turned the corner from a religious holiday to a secular one and the thought of a gorefest centered around a holy day is still considered taboo to some.
Director: Astron-6
Year released: 2011
THE CHARGE: Being the best movie ever directed by something that sounds like George Jetson's robot dog.
THE EVIDENCE: Is there anything more frightening than the holidays? As if putting on a brave face and dealing with your relatives wasn't troublesome enough, numerous film makers have ensured that we need to spend every Halloween, Christmas, New Year's, birthday, Mother's Day and Earth Day looking over our shoulders to make sure that a masked maniac isn't trying to offer us season's greetings with a butcher knife between the shoulder blades. Canadian film crew "Astron-6" has taken their turn on the holiday exploitation bandwagon with Father's Day and it's safe to say that I'll never view that particular day the same way again.
Director: Rainer Erler
Year released: 1979
THE CHARGE: Having no heart, but trying to make up for it with a liver and a couple of nice kidneys.
THE EVIDENCE: I've watched a lot of movies that the general viewing public would consider "bad". But I'm usually able to sit through even the worst of the worst just from the sheer awe that comes with the realization that this movie exists because numerous people dedicated a fair chunk of their lives, and invested a fair chunk of their money, to make it happen. I respect that kind of dedication, however misguided it may be. That being said, Spare Parts sorely tested the boundaries of both my respect and my patience.
Director: Robert O'Neill
Year released: 1970
THE CHARGE: I can think of at least two things wrong with that title.
THE EVIDENCE: Blood Mania. You might think this would be a slasher film filled with all manner of gratuitous violence and gory special effects. Or maybe you'd think it's a lesser known movie from the collection of a notorious b-movie auteur like Herschell Gordon Lewis or Roger Corman. Or maybe you'd think it sounds like a ditzy Troma horror-comedy chock full of gross-out gags. Whatever you're thinking, you're wrong.
Director: Osvaldo Civirani (as Richard Kean)
Year released: 1971
THE CHARGE: Identity theft, because seven faces is at least a couple too many.
THE EVIDENCE: Ah, the early 70s. A politically incorrect time when men were openly lecherous, secretaries wore miniskirts, and sideburns weren't ironic. A time when every home, office and daycare center had a wet bar. A time when the Surgeon General said "Smoke 'em if you got 'em." A time when a movie as utterly crazy as The Devil with Seven Faces could pass itself off as a serious crime caper.
Director: Giulio de Santi
Year released: 2013
THE CHARGE: Price gouging, eye gouging, brain gouging... pretty much gouging every gougable thing there is to gouge.
THE EVIDENCE: You see that tag line above, just below the web site's banner? "Films on trial for crimes against humanity, decency, and general good taste." I made that up with the intention of being tongue-in-cheek. I love movies and even the low budget affairs I typically review here are rarely ever that bad. But then I witnessed Hotel Inferno, a movie not content to merely wallow in bad taste. It decapitates bad taste, pulls out its innards, vomits on them and gleefully rolls around in the putrid mixture while unleashing a torrent of profanities that would make even the most dedicated vulgarian blush.
Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Year released: 1988
THE CHARGE: Being grody to the max and so not totally tubular, like, gag me with a spoon FER SHERRRR!
THE EVIDENCE: The 80s were... well, they were what they were. Some of us lived through them and have wistful memories every time the muzak version of Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" plays in the supermarket. Some of you were born afterward and your only exposure to that era has been through repeated airings of Back to the Future on TBS. But like a relic in a time capsule filled with Pound Puppies, Alf dolls and Nintendo Power Gloves, Day of the Panther is here to show you exactly what the 80s were about... for better or for worse.
Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Year released: 2014
THE CHARGE: Wasting air conditioning and letting all the stank out.
THE EVIDENCE: Boy, this review was a poser to write. How do I start it off? Do I talk about Elijah Wood's increasing wide-eyed presence in the horror and thriller genres? Do I mention that director Nacho Vigalondo was the man behind Timecrimes, one of the best time travel stories ever put to film? Do I go straight for the reader's prurient interest and discuss the performance of ex-porn star Sasha Grey? Ultimately, I decided to just get right to the point: Open Windows blows.
Director: Peter Carter
Year released: 1977
THE CHARGE: Having a title so vague that I'm forced to watch the movie to figure out what the hell it means.
THE EVIDENCE: We all have rituals that we go through. It could be in the form of a daily routine or activities centered around a particular religion. It could be an OCD-like need to makes sure all the doors are locked whenever you leave the house. The movie reviewed today examines such rituals and... wait! No it doesn't! In fact, after watching this movie, I still don't know what the hell the title has to do with anything I saw.
Director: Joel Bender
Year released: 1990
THE CHARGE: Impersonating Re-Animator with a budget that screams Re-Possessed.
THE EVIDENCE: By 1990, the horror genre was on life support. We had eight Friday the 13th and five Nightmare on Elm Street films to that point, with both series demonstrating serious declines in quality. Sequelitis was in full force, and for every decent one released (like Exorcist III) we were treated to a slew of stinkers (Prom Night III, Psycho IV, Troll 2). And on the rare occasions that original horror films like The Immortalizer were released, they were typically as unoriginal as you could get.
Director: Minoru Kawasaki
Year released: 2005
THE CHARGE: Animal cruelty. Anyone who would doom a cute little koala to a life of living in cubicles is a dirty monster.
THE EVIDENCE: In this Japanese import, a successful executive is accused of murdering his missing girlfriend. He has no alibi and no memory of the night of her disappearance, but the chain of events is eerily similar to what happened when his wife was killed years ago in a crime that was never solved. He also happens to be a koala. An executive koala, in case you wouldn't have guessed that from the title.
As much as I enjoy watching cheesy movies, I can't bring myself to watch or review any films in the Sharknado franchise. That's because they aren't really films. They're just a business strategy, a crass commercialization of the "so bad its good" paradigm. And while many exploitation movies were created for the sole purpose of making a quick buck, the joy in watching those movies comes from discovering the artistry that the film makers managed to sneak in despite having little to no budget to work with. There is no artistry in the Sharknado movies. They are soulless corporate entities.
And that's why I'm happy to report that SyFy's recent airing of Sharknado 4: The Fourth Awakens earned the lowest ratings of any of the Sharknado sequels, showing that audiences might be wising up to the con.
Despite having less than a 30% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Suicide Squad set a record for best August opening by any movie in the history of forever by earning $135.1 million in North America. But ticket sales of less than $40 million on Saturday were a huge drop-off compared to its strong Friday opening, indication that the movie might not have a very long box office life.
Can a movie that sets a box office record ultimately be considered a bomb? Time will tell. One thing we do know for sure is that any movie looks better in comparison when its opening weekend competition stars Kevin Spacey as a cat.
Director: Taylor Sheridan
Year released: 2012
THE CHARGE: I dunno. Is it a crime to be vile? How about icky? Is it a crime to be icky?
THE EVIDENCE: Vile opens with a stark, high-def scene of a man on an operating table, bound and gagged. As the opening credits appear, a great slacker-rock soundtrack in the background provides a nice counterpoint to the visual of this man getting his chest cut open and salt rubbed into the open wound. Meanwhile, liquid drips through tubes in the back of his head, which is collected, centrifuged and infused into pharmaceutical ingredients. Watching this, I sat back with a grin, enjoying the wickedly black comedy that doubled as a scathing indictment of the drug industry.
Directors: Monroe Mann, Ronnie Khalil, Jorge Valdés-Iga
Year released: 2012
THE CHARGE: Cinematic con artistry in an attempt to cash in on the reputation of someone who had NOTHING to do with making the film.
THE EVIDENCE: When you discover a film with an incredibly awesome title like You Can’t Kill Stephen King, one hopes the imagination that led to the creation of that title will be equally displayed throughout the film. One is frequently disappointed. Here, once again, we have a movie that falls short of the hopeful aspirations raised by its title... but somewhat surprisingly, it doesn't fall short by much.
Director: Adam Fields
Year released: 2008
THE CHARGE: Indecent exposure, indecent acting, pretty much indecent everything.
THE EVIDENCE: Since you’re on the internet, you’ve no doubt seen the joke about replacing the word “wand” in the Harry Potter novels with “wang”. One-Eyed Monster is the cinematic equivalent, taking the “killer” in any horror flick and replacing it with... well, “wang”.
Director: Marc B. Ray
Year released: 1973
THE CHARGE: Noise pollution. The bloody murder I can take, but enough with the screaming already!
THE EVIDENCE: The 70s were a classic era of cinema, providing countless gems like Jaws, A Clockwork Orange, Rocky, Star Wars, The Godfather, Chinatown, The Exorcist... the list can go on and on. But it was also the era that gave us films like Night of the Lepus, Satan's Cheerleaders, The Blood Waters of Dr. Z and Exorcist II: The Heretic. I'll bet you can guess which side of the fence Scream Bloody Murder impales itself on.
Director: Charles Band
Year released: 1999
THE CHARGE: This master of puppets is charged with pulling strings, twisting minds and smashing dreams, and probably imbibing too much whiskey in the jar-o.
THE EVIDENCE: Not many people know the name Charles Band, but his name deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as renowned low budget horror veterans like Roger Corman and H.G. Lewis. Since the early 70s, Band has produced almost 250 films and directed over 30. He also has an odd preoccupation with dolls, which appear in many of his films like Puppet Master, Dollman, Demonic Toys and Dangerous Worry Dolls. But Blood Dolls might be the craziest of them all.
Directors: Ray Dennis Steckler, Ted Roter
Year released: 1965
THE CHARGE: Creating short films 50 years ago with humor that went out of style 80 years ago.
THE EVIDENCE: Ray Dennis Steckler is something of an icon in the B-movie business, having directed such notorious films as The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies and Rat Pfink a Boo Boo. The Lemon Grove Kids were a lesser known creation of his, an attempt to emulate the classic humor of the Bowery Boys with a dash of The Little Rascals thrown in for good measure.
Director: Jake West
Year released: 2005
THE CHARGE: They're aliens and they admit they're evil. It's right there in the title.
THE EVIDENCE: It's been said that the really great movies are the ones that teach us something about ourselves. By that definition, Evil Aliens is a really great movie. But I can't say it's a good one.
Directors: Jesse Holland, Andy Mitton
Year released: 2010
THE CHARGE: Being yet another "creepy things in the woods" movie and paying attention to the man behind the curtain.
THE EVIDENCE: Once in a while, a low budget horror flick clearly aspires to be something more. It doesn't intend just to scare you, it wants you to think about why you're scared. When it succeeds, it’s a magical masterpiece of creative film making that not only raises goose bumps, but flexes your mental muscles as well. Yellowbrickroad (yes, one word) wants to be recognized as part of this rare breed, but it never quite gets there.
Directors: Yoshihiro Nishimura, Naoyuki Tomomatsu
Year released: 2009
THE CHARGE: Stealing classic monster mythology and infusing it with an unhealthy dose of Japanese WTF.
THE EVIDENCE: If I could sum up Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl in one word, it would be “ridiculously”. No adjective I could use to describe this film would be complete without it: ridiculously violent, ridiculously campy, ridiculously offensive, ridiculously enjoyable.
Director: Paolo Heusch
Year released: 1961
THE CHARGE: Solicitation of horndogs who demand more negligees in their werewolf movies.
THE EVIDENCE: A werewolf. A girls' dormitory. Two great tastes with the potential to go great together, like a lycanthropic Reese's cup. But the combination turns out to be not as great as one would hope. It's decent enough, but it coughs up a couple of furballs along the way.
Director: Simon Hynd
Year released: 2008
THE CHARGE: Impersonating films like Saw and Hostel and combining it with something even scarier: politics.
THE EVIDENCE: What do you get when you infuse a standard torture porn story with political and socio-economic commentary? Somebody decided to try it out a few years before the 2016 Presidential election made such ideas commonplace, and the result is Senseless.
Director: Steven R. Monroe
Year released: 2005
THE CHARGE: Title ambiguity and unnecessary use of Dennis Hopper.
THE EVIDENCE: Marketers are soulless creatures devoid of conscience. That’s the only conclusion I can come to after comparing the marketing description of House of 9 to the actual movie.
Director: Freddie Francis
Year released: 1970
THE CHARGE: Contributing to the delinquency of a minor by forcing her to interact with manic scenery-chewing thespians.
THE EVIDENCE: Girly lives with Mumsy, Sonny and Nanny in a large estate in the English countryside. Girly and Sonny love to play games and sometimes invite new friends to their home for play dates. These friends become part of the family and if they break any of the family's rules or try to run away, Mumsy gets very cross indeed.
Director: Chad Ferrin
Year released: 2009
THE CHARGE: Disturbing the peace and refusing the use the damn doorbell.
THE EVIDENCE: If you ever watched a horror movie and thought, “this flick could really benefit from a few guy-on-guy rape scenes”, then have I got the movie for you!
In Someone’s Knocking at the Door, a group of medical students fond of sampling various illegal and sometimes experimental narcotics find themselves terrorized by a psychotic couple who were held for observation at their med school three decades ago, but who disappeared after killing their psychoanalyst.
Director: Peter Mervis
Year released: 2006
THE CHARGE: Taking a bad movie and making it even worse by utilizing a budget probably found under the producer’s couch cushions.
THE EVIDENCE: In the realm of b-movies, there are films so bad that they end up being remarkably entertaining. This is not one of those movies.
Then there are films so utterly terrible, that you actually hate yourself for watching them for more than five minutes. This is not one of those movies.
Finally, there are films so stupefyingly awful that they’re not just a train wreck, they’re a train slamming into the hull of the Titanic which has just been set on fire by the Hindenburg... and you become so mesmerized by the sheer atrociousness on display that you just can’t turn away from it. Snakes on a Train not only falls into this category, it may very well define it.
Directors: Pasith Buranajan, Kongkiat Khomsiri, Isara Nadee, Seree Phongnithi, Yosapong Polsap, Putipong Saisikaew, Art Thamthrakul
Year Released: 2005
THE CHARGE: Doing that voodoo that you do so well.
THE EVIDENCE: Art of the Devil II is a vibrant and erudite examination of the mainstay of religious fervor in Thailand and the effects that old ritualistic practices have on modern society, carefully straddling the fine line between condemnation of the stubborn tenaciousness of an aging society and admiration for its ability to remain relevant in an increasingly technological world.
Director: Sofian Khan
Year Released: 2008
THE CHARGE: Pandering to the B-movie crowd by coming up with one of the best titles in recent exploitation cinema.
THE EVIDENCE: I’ll admit it: the title sucked me in. A title as lurid as Destined to Be Ingested had me expecting an exploitation flick along the lines of Cannibal Holocaust or Cannibal Ferox. Hell, I half expected a repackaging of “Ferox” with a few extra minutes of ultra-low budget footage shoehorned in. After all, if you’ve seen one cannibal movie, you’ve pretty much seen them all. Right?
As it turns out, that’s not the case. “Destined” manages to do something different with the genre. But it also proves that different doesn’t necessarily mean better.
