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?
