To The Devil A Daughter: Nightmare Orgasms

Christopher Lee leads a satanic cult, intent on bringing a demon into the world.

At this stage I am cleaning up, these next few days will be the last of my Halloween watches before we get back into more regularly scheduled programming. As you know I am a big Lee fan, as such I couldn’t let Halloween pass without watching a Lee film. Here we are on that front.

I have to say this is not one of the strongest Hammer entries, I feel that The Devil Rides Out is much stronger, and gives Lee more to do. He is the antagonist here, and other than a few mind powers scenes that mimic his Rasputin film, he is not given much of substance to do, other than look evil.

The plot around this young lady from Germany and her parents involvement in a satanic cult, is not so much a head scratcher, as a film that leaves you entirely baffled it is so convoluted that you don’t know which way is up by the end of it, and have no idea what has remotely happened.

There is one scene that I would be remiss not to mention which is Hammer in all of their late seventies weirdness, and in this scene the central young lady is supposed to be having a bad dream yet is moaning like she is in the throws of sex, this scene lasts a long time. Take that as you will.

Overall, a good idea ruined by trying to do too much.

2/5

Pros.

There is some great unintentional comedy

Lee is a good villain even if he is given nothing to do

Cons.

It is convoluted

It has needless nudity and sexual elements that do seem to serve a purpose

The characters are not well developed

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Shelby Oaks: Chris Struckman Doesn’t Like Women It Appears

Summary

Youtube film critic Chris Struckman decides to become the filmmaker.

I have to report straight up that this film is problematic, the whole plot revolves around a woman’s quest to find her missing sister. When she does find said sister she finds out that she has been raped and has a demon baby now. Yet when our lead finds this out she immediately falls in love with the baby and wants to take her home, as I guess Chris thinks all women are just baby crazy. At the end of the film the captured sister tries to kill her baby as she knows it is demonic and evil, yet the lead stops her to the point of pushing her sister who she had been looking for all film out the window to protect the demon rape baby. As women aren’t lifting up other women they are just breeders and mothers who will do anything for their/or in this case their sister’s baby. The one thing I will say for this film positively is that it revealed to us all what a hypocrite Struckman is. He has attacked the right wing labelling them as bigots and evil for a long, long time, and now it appears it was all an effort in projection.

Outside of the deeply sexist undertone, the film is basically The Blair Witch, Hell House LLC and Paranormal Activity stitched together. It is clear that rather than being a creative project Struckman and co simply stitched together a lot of scenes they like from horror and called it a film. This is not a creative film this is plagiarism, this is not from the mind of someone who has an idea they want to make into a film, it is from the mind of someone who has seen a lot of films and wants to rip them off. The worst thing of all is that it doesn’t even manage to get right the things those films mentioned above do, it is the knock off version of a better project.

As other reviewers have said the film really falls apart when you get to the third act, as the writing, plot direction, integrity, all of it just seems to collapse in on itself.

Overall, a youtuber thinking they are a creative gets brought back down to Earth.

0.5/5

Pros.

It is unintentionally funny

Cons.

It is sexist

It is a rip off

You have seen it all before

The third act is a mess

The characters are one dimensional

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Star Wars A New Hope: A Slow Start

Summary

The Saga begins.

For me this is easily the worst of the Original Trilogy, and that is mainly due to the pacing of the film. It takes a long time to get going, when it does it picks up, but there is a lot of time before Luke, Mark Hamill, meets the Rebellion.

It is well done at setting up things to come and makes the universe feel really and lived in, you can see why it became so popular as the universe is crying out with stories to tell. However, it would and does later, benefit from being a bit more in depth, the characters we are meeting here are interesting but paper thin, if you think about any of the central trio, simply as this film presents them you will see they are not well rounded characters.

You do get some cool set pieces such as whenever Darth Vader is on screen but these are few and far between.

Overall, slow yet with promise.

2/5

Pros.

Some cool set pieces

It sets up an interesting world

Cons.

It is slow

The acting isn’t great

The characters are paper thin

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The Black Phone Two: Possibly Too Far

Summary

As some of you may know I recently move to Belgium for a work opportunity, and during my first few weeks here other than attending a film festival for smaller profile releases, I’ve not had a huge amount of time to check out new releases. This the first film I’ve watched since the move, and I must say maybe it was a bad choice.

Edit for further reference I am seeing this first but my review of Strangers Chapter Two which I will be seeing in a few days, my second film here, will be released earlier this is just down to my release order and wanting to tie up that loose end which came out for a lot of people much earlier than it did here.

This film is dark, the grainy sort of film quality they project onto some scenes makes them feel like snuff films, the fact that you are seeing little kids getting hacked into pieces only adds to this. It really doesn’t shy away from showing horrific child abuse and slaughter.

I liked that the film developed a lot of the ideas from the first film and really pushed into more of a supernatural direction. There was of course supernatural elements to the first film, but they were mostly in the background, this went full on Nightmare On Elm Street. Therein lies the problem, part of this film wants to be incredibly serious, Ethan Hawke’s character goes on long monologues about what hell is like, but then comes out ice skating and twirling, clearly going for the comedy. This film really needed to decide on one tone before filming began.

Overall, I enjoyed that this film built out elements from the first, but I think that the tone is distracting and that child mutilation may be a bit much for some.

2.5/5

Pros.

It expands the supernatural storyline

The acting is okay

The location is interesting

Cons.

It is depressing

The tone is all over the place

The acting is just okay

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Final Destination 5: Death VS Corporate America

Summary

Death decides to attack corporate America.

I enjoyed that this film tried to tie itself into the previous films, even if the idea it is a prequel makes little to no sense. I also thought it was sweet to see some of the highlights from across the franchise in the films end credits.

I would say that the plot was a little thin on the ground here, much like with the fourth film, however, at least they brought back Tony Todd as William Bloodsworth for a meaty role.

The deaths were good particularly the massage parlour crushing, however, I can see why they retired the franchise for a while after this, the deaths have lost some of their creepiness and creativity, and it does just seem like they were going for gross out shock value.

My main issue with the film was that there was too much talking and melodrama, the film seemed to be more focused on this than Death getting its vengeance at times.

I would argue that this is better than the fourth and sixth films in the franchise but worse than the original trilogy.

Overall, a mixed bag of a film.

3/5

Pros.

The ending

The love for past films

The massage parlour death

Cons.

Too much melodrama

A thin plot

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Jurassic Park: Overrated In The Extreme

Summary

The older I get the more I realise that Steven Spielberg is not a good director.

Removed from a childlike lens of whimsy I wanted to see how this film held up. If it was the masterpiece people seem to think it is, turns out they are wrong.

Whilst I appreciate what this film was doing, when it was doing it, and the lasting impact it has had. That does not change the fact it is just the same thing over and over again, dinosaur attacks, kills a person and moves on to the next, yes there are a few tense scenes where the dinosaurs are looking for people to kill but don’t find anyone, but that’s it. I think if this film had not been so visually impressive when it came out many people wouldn’t have bat an eye, it is just a generic shark film plot but with dinosaurs.

The plot is glacially slow in actually getting off the ground with the dinosaurs breaking out, and the film feels so bloated at times that it is distracting. One could argue what it would be like if it was not given to Spielberg at the height of his power and was instead given to someone who actually wanted to make a tight film.

Overall, disappointing and highlighting the very worst of Spielberg

1/5

Pros.

It is visually interesting

Cons.

It is badly paced

The acting isn’t very good

It is repetitive

It is bloated

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The Strangers Chapter Two: Destroying The Myth Of The Franchise

Summary

The Strangers are back.

Did you want to know that the Strangers met at a Christian school? No, well maybe this film is not for you. So this film is incredibly intent on trying to tease out and explain the origins of the Strangers, the people behind the mask, and when it gives you that information it is the most generic thing you could imagine.

There was absolutely no need to make this a trilogy, really the Strangers as a brand should have been left alone after Prey At Night, we didn’t need this. If anything this effort is just ruining the brand by overly explaining everything.

Then there is the pacing as you can imagine, remember, trilogy, this film is slow to the point of being off putting. It is basically just one long chase sequence of the Strangers going after the one who got away, the film starts and ends like that, there is no final showdown in the film it is clearly an in-between effort.

Really the only cool thing here is when the Strangers set a blood hound boar onto the lead in an effort to track her down and presumably kill her. That was unexpected and fun, but that was it.

Overall, this was a bad idea.

0.5/5

Pros.

The boar scene

Cons.

The plot

The reveal of who the Strangers are

The pacing

The scares

The filler new characters

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The Thing: Action And Horror Don’t Mix Well

Summary

The Thing is deeply overrated, I just want to say that now and get it out of the way.

Let’s move past the anger.

Whilst the film may have been impressive at the time, and whilst I can appreciate the lonely and haunting beauty of the polar landscape it takes place in, nothing can remove the fact it is terribly paced. The film takes a long time to get going and when it does it spends a lot of time meandering, hanging out in rooms talking rather than actually having the characters spend all that much time with the creature.

The creature effects are okay, I always prefer practical effects over CGI, so I will give it its credit for that. However, it is not the scariest thing in the world, it is grotesque but not anything more than that.

Personally, I think that The Fog is a much better John Carpenter horror film.

Overall, it is brutally long, and boring.

1.5/5

Pros.

The setting

The score

Cons.

It is far too long

It isn’t scary

The action and the horror are not blended well together

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Final Destination Four: Cheap Tricks To Appease James Cameron

Summary

Death is at the races.

After the height of the franchise in the previous film we now get to the low point. This is easily the worst of the films.

I think for many people this was the worst of the franchise and shed a lot of fans. Certainly this one doesn’t try and do new things from a plot point of view and instead just adds in some cheap visual gimmicks, for a now dead format.

Whilst there were a few good deaths, such as the red neck in flames death, I thought for the most part they lacked some of the creativity of the previous films and felt a bit like a franchise film going through the motions. Moreover, whilst it was nice seeing the credits reference previous deaths from the other films, this would only go on to show how disappointing the deaths we get here are. Particularly the final death when the survivors just get ploughed into by a truck.

The survivors are also a lot more intensely dislikable herein, with the couples best friends being the worst of the lot, one is a brat and the other a creep and a cheat. I know we need to have side characters to not like so we can enjoy their gory deaths, but this felt like the film was taking things that bit too far in making them the worst.

Overall, this hurt the franchise in a number of key ways.

2.5/5

Pros.

Some good deaths

It is watchable

Some nostalgia plays land

Cons.

The characters are awful

It is gimmicky

The ending is terrible

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Final Destination Three: Oddly Prescient

Summary

Death is hanging out at a theme park this time around.

So this is my personal favourite Final Destination Film, whilst the ties to the previous films are less, and Bloodsworth doesn’t come back. I think Wren, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, is an incredibly relatable protagonist, and has a similar likeability to the Alex and Clear.

I also enjoyed the ‘There is someone walking behind you’ song and think that it should have become a franchise calling card ala Jeepers Creepers to me this song is more memorable and impactful than the log truck from the second film.

I also found the inciting incident, the rollercoaster going off the tracks to be particularly effecting, more so than the plane or pile up of the previous films. It put me off going on rollercoasters for a while when I first saw this film over a decade ago now.

The main negative I will say about this film is that it is more pervy, and whilst there is nothing wrong with a bit of nudity, the sun bed death felt quite over the top with its amount of nudity, and it feels very teenage boy aiming.

Overall, the best of the series but not without issues

4.5/5

Pros.

Wren

There is someone walking behind you

The inciting incident

The deaths

It tries to do new things

Cons.

It is needlessly pervy

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