Monster Scholar

For those of you who remember, I was against a new Final Destination from the start, but since no one ever listens to me they went ahead and released the latest film in the FD franchise anyway. That said filmmakers did what they could considering that they were following an established formula. Enjoying a day at the racetrack with his friends, Bobby gets vision of their fiery and violent deaths caused by cataclysmic crash. Interestingly enough, this latest film follows the formula of the original more closely than any other. Bobby experiences his vision and while trying to get his friends out, causes a fight which gets his buddies as well as a larger group of people thrown out of the arena. He saves their lives but death starts coming for them one by one. The extra people who get thrown out are used by the film as “death padding,” so we can enjoy their gruesome ends before we get close to the core group of friends--the same formula at work in the first film when Devon Sawa’s frea

Okay so I’m kinda riffing off Pax Romano’s gig over at Billy Love’s Stu , but imitation is the highest form of flattery right? Anyway here are the things about life I learned from Clash of the Titans, in theaters now. Have multiple fabulous costume changes—one outfit is never enough for one movie. I could not help but notice how many different looks Io, Perseus’s love interest, has in Clash—all of them fabulous of course. She starts off in a drapey number and pristine up-do, revealing only her face. This gives way an off-the-shoulder tunic and loose locks when she has to get down and dirty fighting giant scorpions. Io then ditches the cape and sets her look to stun with a fancy drape adorned with a knitted, faux fur accent. Just goes to show you girls, make your pieces multi-task and you can look better than Aphrodite herself.   Accept gifts, they might come in handy Perseus persists (wow, that was a lot of s’s) in refusing the gifts of his father Zeus, like Pegasus and a magical

In a genre dominated by gore and torture porn (Hostel and Saw), a film like Otis brings a much needed laugh break to the carnage. The titular character is Otis, a 40 year old pizza delivery guy with a hard on for his sister-in-law (Kim) and a desire to live out his brother's football glory days. To satisfy these secret yearnings he kidnaps young blonde nymphets and keeps them chained up in his basement. Once trapped, he plays out an elaborate fantasy where he courts "Kim" and takes her to the prom in his trans am. But when the girls refuse to "play-play along" he kills them and cuts their bodies into bits. But Otis isn't the only killer in this movie. When the Lawson family finds out who kidnapped their little girl Riley, they're out for blood and mistakenly torture and kill Otis's brother. Otis is a smart little film that takes the torture elements of torture porn, which echoes the very real atrocities of places like Abu Ghraib, and gives it a me

Because it's such a popular genre, horror has been used to peddle everything from shoes to drinks to search engines. Here's a broad sampling of some ads that use horror to sell their wares.

I find recently that I’ve been on a informal quest to find a decent ghost movie that scares me. I like gore just as much as the next guy, but there is just something about the subtlety and atmosphere of ghost movies that goes a long way for my sense of terror. So I’ve been searching the internet, haunting my library and scouring Blockbuster looking for the perfect thrill. What I’ve found has been less than thrilling. Take for example the Haunting in Connecticut. The film had everything it needed for a great ghost tale—creepy house, restless undead and an extra creepy embalming/necromancy room in the basement. But instead of coming across as atmospheric and terrifying, the film’s fractured narrative doesn’t give the scares the support they need. Paranormal Activity came real close to satisfying my ghostly craving, but even it had its flaws. Predicable plot, inane dialogue and the Blair Witch style camera work were only made tolerable by the jump-out-at-you scares, which were few an