Halloween 2010: September 30

On the last night of September, my pal JD joined me to finish the Subspecies series as well as a pile of rentals I grabbed from Blockbusters the other night. Thrown onto the pile was some assorted British horror just to sweeten the deal.

Mini-Reviews:

Vampire Journals (1997)
An improvement over “Subspecies IV” if only because it doesn’t try to shoehorn these new characters into a Radu story. David Gunn’s Zachery is a pretty decent hero, even if the performance is campy and the character’s voiceovers overdone. Kirsten Cerre is a much better actress then this material deserves. The plot still spins its wheels in the middle and Ash sure isn’t any Radu. (6/10)

Suck (2009)
You know a movie’s got to have a lot of self-confidence when it saddles itself with a loaded title like that. And, for the most part, “Suck” doesn’t suck. Malcolm McDowell, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, and Alice Cooper are all hilarious. (Also hilarious is casting Moby as a hardcore metal singer.) The non-famous people in the cast are pretty good too. The direction is a little over the top at times, but this movie does manage to have a number of really funny dialogue exchanges in it. (Malcolm McDowell’s conversation with a bouncer about phobias is the highlight.) Considering the vampire obsessed world we live in now, this does provide some much-needed levity. (7/10)

The Reptile (1966)
A fairly minor Hammer horror. The monster is quite silly looking but I ended up still wanting to see more of it. I like the performance over all, especially that of the obsessive father. If nothing else, this one does end up creating a fairly unique new monster. (6/10)

Tony (2009)
I have a lot of patience for low-key, character-oriented horror movies, but this one was a little too slow even for me. While it captures the sense of isolation and social awkwardness a person like Tony would feel, you can’t really escape the fact that not a whole lot happens here and there doesn’t seem to be much of a point. (5/10)