Review: Voodoo Academy (2000)

1 out of 5 full moons

I knew this would be bad going in: Dave DeCouteau directing a movie about a boy's school. He failed to disappoint. Voodoo Academy is now the worst Full Moon flick I've ever seen. Bar none.

The plot is thus: hot, rich widower Mrs. Bouvier (the 2000's Full Moon girl, Debra Mayer) runs a college with a crackpot reverend because they want to sucker some young, "pure" guys into a voodoo ritual that puts their heads on a tiny voodoo doll so that they can resurrect a really bad guy.

All fine and dandy, until you begin the meat of the movie, which is guys in their underwear talking about what's going on. The efx is lame. The dialogue isn't even funny in that "so-bad" sort of funny. And, of course, we get a short running time (though it feels like I've aged a year or so), a single set (gotta love a college dorm where all 6 students sleep in the same small room), and did I mention the sitting around talking in their underwear?

Trite. Mindless. Drivel.

Review: The Killer Eye (1999)

1 out of 5 full moons

An unscarier bad guy than Killjoy? A dumber premise than Dr. Bones? A more hackneyed script than Horrorvision? Has Dave DeCouteau directed the worst film of his softcore-horror career? Was Killer Eye really only 80 minutes long instead of the 4 hours of drivel it seemed?

These questions and more on the next episode of Seizures from Boredom!

What could've been a fun, campy and maybe a bit gory premise is emasculated completely by DD's need to show boobs at all expense. Unfortunately, the expense is paid by plot, efx, and characters. In the hands of Henenlotter I'd probably be groveling at the feet of this flick, but as it is, I can't wait for this review to be done, so I can go out back and burn this VHS into friggin' ash.

Basically: a mad scientist makes a gigolo's eye fall out via some dumb experiment with eye drops for seeing the 8th dimension. The eye grows bigger than a human head, gets upright on its optic nerve, stares at some medical posters about genitalia that happen to be posted up on the wall of the lab, and walks away. It diddles the scientist's wife who's been sleeping with two druggies next door, then diddles the scientist's assistant's wife in the shower, then they all chase each other around diddling. There's a few deaths (I guess they died, when they disappeared?) and some boobs and it's all very slow and lame.

Also, we get Full Moon's Jeffrey Combs-wannabe, Blake Bailey playing Creepy Bill, which is really a sad knockoff of Brad Pitt playing Jeffrey Goines in 12 Monkeys.

Finally, there is absolutely nothing worse in a movie than constant fake thunder and lighting. Along with lameness and boobs, this seems to be a DD specialty.

Other Reviews: Video Graveyard, Scheib, They're Coming to Get You, Barbara (hilarious).

Review: The Horrible Doctor Bones (2000)

1 out of 5 full moons

Let's just say that I recognize the sets from Killjoy. That's really all I need say about The Horrible Doctor Bones. It's horrible.

There are no best quotes to share with you. There are no thoughts of giving this a 2-full moon rating simply because "they tried". They didn't. After reviewing these post-90's Full Moon films it's really easy to see why the company was failing. I'll give credit to Band for trying hard to regroup after the Paramount deal fell through. He got some young guns (Draven, Bookwalter, Albright) to get some stuff shot on digital. He also hooked up with Big City Pictures to distribute their low-budget "urban" horror movies. And while it's all commendable that Band didn't fold in the tent and leave town, he really should have. The amount of garbage that Mel Johnson Jr's Big City team and the aforementioned Tempe Video team put out really sullied Band's empire.

While the new Full Moon Features may be working on even leaner budgets than these pre-collapse films, I'll take Gingerdead and Doll Graveyard over this Big City drivel any day.

The plot is a touch convoluted and really dumb: Dr. Bones is a music mogul and a witchdoctor who wants to synchronize his voodoo zombie chants with some fresh hip-hop and send it out to the world and turn us all into live zombies. It's a Pinky and the Brain episode. Bland acting, really cheap sets, five-dollare special effects and really rotten pacing don't help.

At least Pinky and Brain had a catchphrase...

Review: Horrorvision (2001)

1 out of 5 stars

Big budget films that go through several scripts, several script rewrites, several directors, and several casts generally fail at the box office. Small budget films, as a rule, avoid this fate: they are usually directed and acted by the persons that dreamt them up. Horrorvision seems to be the microbudget exception to this rule.

You can find references to the film littered throughout late-90s Videozones from other Full Moon films. Originally titled Fear.Com, the film was to be directed by Charles Band himself. After a year or so, it was rewritten as Horrorvision.Com and handed to J.R. Bookwalter to direct after he finished shooting Witchhouse 2: Blood Coven. Why Band would hand money over to someone who put out that drivel is beyond me.

The story only gets longer: Bookwalter was also supposed to direct the second entry into Band's "classic horror revisited" project, entitled Mummy Resurrection or some nonsense. Bookwalter decided to rewrite Horrorvision.Com, and he and on e of his Tempe Entertainment cronies came up with dreadful script that finally found its way to DVD. No longer wanting to direct the film, Bookwalter turned over the reins to young Tempe post-production prodigy and former Full Moon webmaster, Danny Draven. Really, if you want more info on this story, you can check out the "making of" featurette on the DVD; but, you'll have to sit through both Bookwalter and Draven spouting off about their previous self-financed short films.

So, on with the movie: Horrorvision is a technology-is-bad-and-computers-can-kill-you derivative. After a website eats up his girlfriend and girl friend, our hero, Dez Draven, sets about ruminating and driving around. He encounters the film's Matrix derivative, Bradbury, sitting on his car, and they go on some adventures to find the girls and kill the techno-baddie. They are attacked by two robot-coputer things, and some poorly done gore is attempted by the EFX crew, and the movie then ends, unresolved. It ends abruptly, actually, like they ran out of money.

As for the adventures of Dez and Bradbury, let's just say that 30 of the film's 70 minutes are taken up by driving around in a convertible. Each driving trip consisting of one Trent Reznor ripoff song and some accompanying footage of passing mountains, factories, trash, one horribly inept beating, and finally, the desert.

The drive to the desert is particularly long and we're never told why they've gone out there. The car runs out of gas, so they set off on a tedious hike in which the movie is explained to us through a series of bad Star Wars jokes and fake tech-speak. After a confrontation with a techno-monster who just sort of stands in one place flailing his wire arms around, the movie ends.

Did I mention the goth angle? Ah, thought not. You see, Dez and his girlfriend, Dazzy, are goths! The first third of the film is all about their little goth conversations and their visit to a goth store. If we do some rough calculations, we find that 20 minutes of goth and 30 minutes of driving around is about 75 percent of the movie.

Unfortunately, while Bookwalter has not reared his creative drivel in the new incarnation of Full Moon, Draven has edited all three of the new films, and is responsible for the hatchet jobs on Tomb of Terror and Horrific!.

Other Reviews: Flipside, ColdFusionVideo.

Review: Killjoy (2000)

1 out of 5 stars

Another evil clown movie. Why is Killjoy so special? Ah, here's the catch: we've got ourselves an "urban" evil clown movie. I guess "urban" means everybody's black, and the bad guys are wannabe-rapper, blunt-smokin' gang members. Geez, strike another drum for stereotypes...

I especially enjoyed our high school heroes enjoying cocktails at nightclubs and living with their girlfriends/boyfriends.

Best Quote: Jamal: "If we're gonna stop this clown mf'er, we gotta split up!" D'oh!

To be honest, there is nothing to recommend this movie. About the only positive thing I can figure is Killjoy's gnarled-up yellow teeth.

My main problems with the film is the lack of pace, ho-hum killings, non-existent sets, unfunny clown "mayhem", wooden acting, and Richard Kosinski's wannabe urban score. What irks me most is that producer Carl Washington alludes to the service films like his are performing for the black community, since the director and all of the cast members are black except for the token Latino.

My advice Mr. Washington: "Make a good movie. Or, really, an even 'passable' one...."

Other reviews: HorrorDVD's.

Review: Tomb of Terror (2004)

1 out of 5 stars

Rented out 5 Full Moons last night and this is the first I watched. Tomb of Terror is an anthology of three "short" films which are actually 3 full length Full Moon films re-edited and "re-energized". Although the idea is neat, regular Full Moon viewers will be severely disappointed by the end product: 3 very chopped, almost incoherent shorts.

The transfer to DVD is terrible. It looks as though they used a regular old VHS/DVDr machine and made the transfer from a used rental video. You may get a headache watching all of the frame shakes.

I'll take the 3 stories as they come:

1. "Ascent from Hell", edited from the Full Moon feature, Dark Angel: The Ascent directed by Linda Hassani. Unfortunately, Full Moon Direct doesn't offer the full length movie on DVD yet. It is easily a 5 out of 5 stars and the re-edited and "re-energized" version here doesn't do the original the justice it deserves. (I always thought Dark Angel would be an excellent Full Moon serial.)

Best quote: Veronica's Mom: "You've got to apologize to your father, and promise him you'll give up these crazy ideas of yours. Otherwise, he may feel he has to destroy you." Note: her father is torturer in hell who punches guys in the nuts and cuts off their tongues....

Veronica is a hot hellspawn who decides to pay us mortals a visit. She falls in love with a doctor and begins a crusade against evil in her own ghastly way. What follows is a satanic Bewitched where heaven has decided the mayor of our unknown city must go.

The movie is atmospheric, funny, gory and a great effort from Full Moon. This frigged-up version stinks; but, it's the best of the three by far.

2. "Infinite Evil", edited from the Full Moon feature, Lurking Fear directed by C. Courtney Joyner. Jeffrey Combs fans beware: take the time to find a used version of the original. You'll spend the first 10 minutes of this re-edit just trying to figure out the plot.

Best quote: Dr. Specs (played by the great Vincent Schiavelli): "Wow, Syd, you're worth more dead than you ever were alive."

This will be a short review: A cemetery full of cannibals who come out to feed during thunderstorms is under siege from a kick-ass hottie and her crew, who in turn, are under siege from a group of criminals looking for a corpse stuffed with loot. I've never seen the original movie, so none of this plot made sense until near the end of the short. Basically, you've got a heist movie with too many turns of fate and really, some tame cannibals.

3. "Eternal Damnation", edited from the Full Moon Feature, Talisman directed by David DeCoteau (not Victoria Sloan, as noted on the credits of the feature). Not a good movie. Not a good re-edited movie, either.

Best quote: The Black Angel: "Ah, tears of young men: are they not the most poignant of all?"

The famous Full Moon castle in Romania plays a creepy boy's school in Eastern Europe for rich, troublemakers. Our hero is neither rich, nor troublemaker - he's an orphan! The baddie is a pasty, chrome-domed, red-eyed antichrist who rips flaming hearts from schoolboy chests. Luckily for humanity, our hero is both mischievous and curious enough to figure it out and save the day in a really piss-poor ending.

Horrorvision Review (note: I'd try to find someone with a better opinion of this dreck, but was unable...)