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Goshzilla.com - Now in colour!
| Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - Horror |
Hack-O-Lantern [1988] - A boy is destined to be the devil's son, but 80's horror cliches get in the way. 80's horror can at times be divided into two age group camps: Adults and children, and then others that just deal with teens or young adults acting like teen. Hack-o-lantern starts out like the former, but then switches gears half way through. The movie begins with a child and creepy grandfather meeting at a pumpkin patch. The grandfather apparently has some otherworldly plans for the boy, and after giving him a pumpkin to carve, the boy starts exhibiting behavior that his parents don't like. He throws pumpkin guts at his sister, pretends to shoot her with a toy gun, and then cuts his hand while stating that blood tastes good. When asked, he says that blood is good for him according to his grandfather. This prompts his father to confront the grandfather, only to find him in a satanic circle, but is soon killed so the boy could continue being pushed towards whatever this cult wants. continue reading...
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| Monday, October 25, 2010 - Classic Comedy |
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken [1966] - A coward spends a night in a haunted murder house and uncovers the secrets it holds in this hilarious comedy starring Don Knotts. About every Halloween or so, I cringe like I do with any holiday of note because I know that the same holiday specials I’ve seen time and again will be replayed for my amusement. Just in case I forgot how The Nutcracker ended or if I still thought Home Alone was funny (it still, kinda is). However, sometimes I see something unexpected and I just have a reaction. My mouth squeezes and contorts into that curvy, curled shape, and a horrifying sound issues forth. I’ve been told this is a laugh.
Anyways, that very thing happened when I caught The Ghost and Mr. Chicken on television not too long ago. I would consider it a classic, not because I want to make it seem esoteric but because continue reading...
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| Friday, August 20, 2010 - Action Sci-fi |
Princess of Mars [2009] - Prepare for manly martian fighting action as The Asylum offers up another polished turd! If you've never seen a film produced by The Asylum, then I envy you for being happier than me. They are a sinister cabal of marginally talented people known for preying upon the unwary. Let me ask any of the Gen Z's out there who may be reading this: have you ever asked your grandparents to get you the movie Transformers only to have them send you Transmorphers without realizing their blasphemy? How about Snakes on a Plain only to instead receive Snakes on a Train? The Asylum has been cashing in on these subtle differences between their movies and major motion pictures for several years now. This one in particular, Princess of Mars, is a little strange in that they are clearly mirroring the upcoming Pixar production, but overshooting it by at least two years.
It would not surprise me right now if the name continue reading...
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| Thursday, August 19, 2010 - Horror |
Lurking Fear [1994] - Subterranean creatures foil a mob's plan to dig up a stash of money. We've covered Lovecraftian movies in the past, and they usually run all over the place. Some deal more with intangible entities while others delve into technological aspects of the occult. With Lurking Fear, we have Jeffrey Combs in one of his many roles simply fighting off underground creatures who don't get much sun. Most of the movie is about a ragtag group who want to set up traps to destroy them all, but are met up with a mob related plot about some buried money. continue reading...
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| Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - Sci-fi |
Bad Channels [1992] - A controversial shock jock starts at a new radio station, but some otherworldly interference causes some trouble. Here's another early entry from Full Moon, but they certainly started showing their campy side. Not a way that it became self-parody, but almost in the way most 80's comedies with the Corey's were portrayed.
I didn't have much expectations for this movie, and I really hadn't heard about it as much as many of the other more notorious Full Moon movies. The idea of a movie centered around a shock jock didn't do much for me. And for the first portion of the movie, little happens aside from the antics of the DJ, and some news reporting team trying to make a mark in their small town. continue reading...
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| Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - Horror |
Netherworld [1992] - After a man inherits his father's southern estate, he finds that his dying wish is to be brought back to life. I have a strong dislike for this movie, and it has nothing to do with the actual plot or really anything else. For some reason I just can't seem to tie the title with the actual movie.
Case in point: I first saw this either on sci-fi or some other cable channel many years ago, probably when it first came out. With moderate indifference, I don't think I even finished it. Then later on, I believe I rented it through netflix, and soon realized that I had already sort of watched it. Then I get it on DVD and see the same thing. As a final insult I was continuing with these Full Moon reviews, and couldn't remember what this title was about, but sure enough I see that same bar on the bayou opening shot that instantly reminds me that I've seen this at least four times but still couldn't make the connection. I guess it needed one last kick. I'd like to say that after reviewing it now, I won't have this happen again, but I'm sure that I'll trip over the same trap in the future, just as I have many times before. continue reading...
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| Monday, August 16, 2010 - Sci-fi |
Shadowzone [1990] - Experiments on dream manipulation lead to chaos and monsters. This is one of the earlier Full Moon productions. You can tell they were really trying to be series at this stage, so there isn't much camp involved. Shadowzone is played as a straight sci-fi movie and in that respect is works. Despite a few odd characters the only silliness comes from seeing the monster at the end, but overall it's solid.
When a movie is neither so bad nor so good, I'm really forced to go through with a plot oriented review. I don't like these as much, as I have to avoid spoilers while still trying to at least say something about the movie. Plus they're a little drier. If possible, I prefer to ramble on in a stream on consciousness and vaguely touch upon the movie from time to time. continue reading...
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| Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - Animation |
Blood Tea and Red String [2006] - A bird-girl is fought over by a group of mice and birds. Stop-motion is one of my favorite forms of animation. The works of Jan Svankmajer and the Tool videos are some of my favorites. There's just something about the final production that, while not as smooth or realistic as CGI can be nowadays, the level of detail is unsurpassed and often results in many surreal environments. continue reading...
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| Monday, July 26, 2010 - Games (1 comment) |
Hugo's Whodunit? [1991] - Hugo's girlfriend tries to solve a wacky murder mystery in what might be the most frustrating adventure game ever made. It's been a while since I've written anything for Goshzilla, and I'm all torn up about it! I'm seriously doubled over in agony as I struggle to type out this article. I'm going to present you with the infamous sequel to the shareware adventure game Hugo's House of Horrors. A game not only infamous for daring to actually follow up the weirdness of the first Hugo game, but for also being mercilessly difficult, especially compared to it's predecessor. continue reading...
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| Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - Foods |
Soda Batch #4 - Black Jack and Cintron Energy Drinks This review cost me over $4, so I think I've hit my quota for spending on reviews. I suppose that isn't too bad for six rather large cans, but then again I suppose they should be six good cans of something. Either way we all still lose.
Ranging from 60-70¢, each of these came in an over-sized can and probably per ounce are many times cheaper than Red Bull or otherwise, but I wouldn't say they are a better value by any means. We're split between energy drinks, and teas/lemonades. Let's dig into the teas first. continue reading...
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| Monday, June 7, 2010 - Horror |
Seedpeople [1992] - Another adaptation of body snatchers takes the form of spitting flowers. I'm not really a huge fan of body snatcher-esque movies, as they usually tread the same ground from one to the next. This one isn't too different as people get possessed, others don't know who's real or not, and somehow the survivors have to figure out how to end the infestation. continue reading...
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| Monday, June 7, 2010 - Article |
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Full Moon Features Movie List - Charles Band produced some of the greatest modern B-movies. This list will attempt to provide a gateway to them all.
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| Friday, June 4, 2010 - Horror |
Dark Angel: The Ascent [1994] - A demon from Hell is tired of torturing the sinners and decides to punish those on Earth before they die in an attempt to lessen their afterlife of suffering. Dark Angel is one I hadn't heard about from Full Moon. But as it came with several others, I now have it. Of course the several others were new to me, but be that as it may.
Being from the hey day of Full Moon films, they were able to really nail down the high budget look, despite I imagine minimal funding. The movie was filmed in Romania, so there were plenty of existing locations that I imagine saved a lot on set design. The city, while looking like any other (and stocked with American actors), was also in Romania, so it gave off an older vibe. continue reading...
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| Thursday, June 3, 2010 - Sci-fi |
Arcade [1993] - A virtual reality game becomes a lot more real once several teens get sucked in. For a short while, this was playing on cable a lot. I remember first seeing it at 15 in a hotel room in Delaware trying to pass the time. Later on my parents had actually gotten a better cable package, so it was on HBO or one of those channels. At the time sci-fi was making a decent comeback with the 80's sci-fi machinery being replaced with the dawn of affordable CGI (or Silicon Graphics as we said back in the day trying to impress people). continue reading...
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| Wednesday, March 24, 2010 - Blog |
Be back soon - Be back shortly Due to a hectic schedule, we will be taking a break for a while from reviews. Posting will resume once things free up a bit.
continue reading...
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| Thursday, March 11, 2010 - Horror |
A Crack in the Floor [2000] - A man who has lives under his abandoned house's floorboards most of his life, kills off local trespassers. I rented this a long time ago. Gary Busey was misleadingly given one of the top billing slots. Now I don't know why that fact alone was the tipping point for renting the movie, but I also don't know why I ended up buying the movie in the sales bin year later either after knowing the movie was terrible. I guess I just don't make good decisions. I suppose that's a given though.
The Car Ride Cliche pretty much plays out note for note. Some random couple that we don't care about is killed off, and then there's 10 minutes of driving and talking after five minutes of packing. Some young adults are heading off for a camping trip, and we all know how well those end up. continue reading...
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| Monday, March 8, 2010 - Horror |
Hellspawn [1993] - Yet another demon child kills people, but he feels realy bad about it, and just wants to be loved. And here we are, the final disc in the Spawn of Satan 4-pack. As I've come to notice, Satan was noticeably absent from pretty much all of these movies. I think this one comes close though. I also was hoping that the last movie would be the absolute worst, and there's no doubt that I struck gold here.
It's apparently by the same guy who did [Night Crawlers], and one of the extras here got promoted to lead actor for that movie. Well it was also the director's brother, but pretty much most of the cast played similar yet expanded roles later on. That said, this movie is absolutely hilarious. In fact, I'm seeing flaws in my rating system since it is so bad and perfect for riffing that I want to max out the Bad-Good side, yet that would put it in the same category as Monsturd and Terror Toons. I can't very well put it in the Bad-Bad extreme as it was enjoyable for all the wrong reasons. This leaves me no way to convey the extreme absurdity of this effort. But such is life. continue reading...
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| Friday, March 5, 2010 - Horror |
Lukas' Child [1993] - Actresses auditioning for a movie role, are later kidnapped to be fed to a demon child. In furthering the attempt to work my way down the Spawn of Satan pack, we move to the last two movies both produced in 1993. It's hard to say if this was really worse than The [Screaming] or [Night Crawlers], but it's certainly pretty bad.
There is one high point that balances out the mess. Now first off, this movie does pretty much play it straight, and there isn't really any cheese to it. The actor that plays the old man cult leader is actually pretty good. He's provided some decent lines and despite having to feed women to his demon child, he is able to portray that these events do trouble him. Everyone else is pretty shallow, and you end up having quite a bit of difficulty separating actors and actresses. At times, I saw someone locked up in the dungeon in preparation for the demon's feast, but then I see someone I thought was the same woman, and she's still at home. But this matters little in the end, since they don't tend to have much screen time. continue reading...
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| Thursday, March 4, 2010 - Animation |
Dead Space: Downfall [2008] - The animated prequel to the hit video game is less horror and more exposition. From Goshzilla: We are still trying to locate Brian, but we have no word of his location at this time. We received this review from an anonymous P.O. Box which has since been used by a different client.
Update From Goshzilla: For those of you telling me I should call the police. Yeah, sure, and then admit to how we pretty much kidnapped him to begin with.
Update From Goshzilla: Plus, I'm a talking monster! Think they'll ask first, shoot second?
I have mixed feelings regarding this movie. At the time of its release (October 28, 2008; three days before the hit video game's release), EA's marketing department was in full swing informing the entire world of their latest game: Dead Space. There were comic book miniseries, alternate reality games, interactive websites that functioned like adventure games; a tremendous amount of work went into this (I'm sure we'll see this again with Dead Space 2 on the horizon).
I played Dead Space before continue reading...
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| Wednesday, March 3, 2010 - Horror |
Night Crawlers [1996] - An evil bug kills people when they move into a new home. But it apparently can kill people in other places too. And on to another entry from the Spawn of Satan 4-pack. I'm attempting to go from the better entries to the most horrible. I've only been able to manage to skim them, so it's a rough guess, but I figure reverse chronological order might also be a good bet.
Unlike The [Screaming], which had somewhat of a plot and sort of went somewhere, this just makes a huge mess out of a simple plot, but fails so gloriously that I can't help but like it to some degree. There's really no saving grace presented here, it's all bad from top to bottom. However the badness does make it interesting to a degree, so that prevents the dreaded so-bad-it's-actually-bad syndrome. continue reading...
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