Thursday, March 28, 2024

Tag: 1990s

Three Sickxty horror movie
A general rule of thumb in identifying a bad movie: if two or more people in the credits go by a single name -- say, Madonna and Prince -- chances are it's not Oscar material. In Three Sickxty's case, there are actually five: Aerletaree, Earthquake, Chocolate, Navangia and Lashaun....
Trilogy of Terror 2 horror movie
The creators of this long-awaited sequel certainly knew where their bread was buttered, as they chose to feature the ol' Zuni fetish doll on the video artwork with no regard whatsoever to the human stars. As with the original Trilogy of Terror, the first two stories, fine as they...
Snoop Dogg in Urban Menace horror movie
Generally speaking, urban horror is hit or miss...without the hits. Urban Menace is certainly no hit, but it's (slightly) above average for the genre, thanks in part to the direction of direct-to-video action guru Albert Pyun. Pyun covers up the budgetary constraints of this movie by shooting with some...
Vampire in Brooklyn movie poster
When I was in college, I remember seeing an early screening of Vampire in Brooklyn featuring a Q&A session with director Wes Craven. To this day I regret not asking, "Why shouldn't I bludgeon you?" His answer, I imagine, would've been something along the lines of "Just because you...
Grey Knight Ghost Brigade horror movie poster
I suppose you could call this a voodoo and/or zombie film, but it feels more like period drama than horror. As with many voodoo flicks, Grey Knight focuses less on the black people who are the purveyors of said voodoo than the white people who suffer its effects --...
House on Haunted Hill 1999 horror movie poster
Sleepover at the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane? Count me in! House on Haunted Hill was one of the first in a glut of glossy remakes of horror classics that came out in the late '90s and into the 21st century, and it's still one of the...
Chuck Norris in Hellbound movie poster
Hellbound is an '80s movie trapped in 1994, from the Miami Vice attire to the police chief outraged at her "loose cannon" cop to, well, Chuck Norris, the aforementioned loose cannon. And, of course, there's the black sidekick, doing what black sidekicks of the '80s did best (besides dying):...
Elliott Gould in Dead Men Don't Die movie poster
I had assumed that the classic mammy stereotype died sometime between the cancellation of Beulah in the 1950s and the re-design of Aunt Jemima's waffle mix in the '80s, but lo and behold, turns out she was alive and well as late as 1991. I should've known that Elliott...
Back from Hell horror movie poster
This minimum opus was filmed in 1993, although its blurry look is more like an early '80s snuff film. It has a Z-grade budget with Z-grade acting, Z-grade writing and Z-grade effects (For instance, a knife that supposedly slits a guy’s throat comes maybe within six inches of it.). When...
Bats horror movie
I know that Leon isn't exactly Sidney Poitier ("They call me Mister...um, er, well, Leon it is."), but even he is above the demeaning role of Jimmy in Bats. (Then again, his abhorrent role in Cliffhanger featured him threatening to rape the white "bitch" heroine.) I mean, modern "spook"...