The Human Centipede (Unrated Director's Cut) (2010) Review

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(More customer reviews)Most of us loony horror fans have sat around and had that conversation where we come up with some of the most deranged and gruesome ideas we can just for the fun of doing it. Well, Todd Six has had this conversation, and then he went ahead and made a movie out of it.
So, here we have Human Centipede, a movie generating a cult film buzz based solely on it's gimmicky and oddball premise.......and what a premise it is! I do have to give it full points for originality. However, the gimmick is where all originality ceases. The gimmick is really all it has going for it. Otherwise this movie plays out pretty much like any other recent torture porn flick. Remove the Cronenbergism from the film and you could easily have this wacko doctor running a basement torture chamber where he hacks off victims' limbs to create artwork or forces people to listen to Nickelback, or whatever the hell they like to do in torture porn films anymore. Basically it's on par with the standard straight-to-video type horror, but with a bit of an edge. That's really all I can say about it.
I really do have to give kudos to the three principal actors who make up the "centipede". They're really not required to do much heavy acting per se, but they have to spend the bulk of the film dirt smeared,(mostly)naked, crying, and in an all around degrading position. They're definitely troopers.
All in all, I wouldn't let the hype get your hopes up. It's got a bit of entertainment value, but it's not nearly as disturbing, frightening , violent or gory as you're lead to believe. To the average Iron Man 2 goer, maybe. But aside from the "centipede", there's nothing here that horror fans haven't seen done before.....and better.

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100% Medically accurate. The compelling simplicity of Saw. The stylish dread of Eraserhead. The black humor of A Nightmare On Elm Street. Those are the benchmarks of horror that the outrageous Dutch film The Human Centipede matches. The plot is diabolically simple: two stranded American tourists are given shelter by a famed German doctor (a maniacally intense Dieter Laser) who made his fortune surgically separating conjoined twins. Now his mad genius is pushing the doctor to do the reverse. He tells the women that they will be surgically attached to a Japanese businessman mouth to buttocks, one after the other and thus will be born a new creature: the human centipede! Compellingly perverse, hilarious, and shockingly straightforward, Dutch director Tom Six s new film is hands-down the most memorable horror film of the year.

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Salem's Lot - The Miniseries (2004) Review

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(More customer reviews)***Warning: Spoilers Ahead***
I've always loved the novel and the 1979 miniseries. When I heard they were doing a remake in 2004, I couldn't wait! Then I found out Rob Lowe was starring. Eeeh, he was in "The Stand" a decade earlier and that managed not to suck. So I gave him the benefit of the doubt and tuned in. And in all fairness to Rob Lowe he can hardly be blamed for how awful it turned out.
Now I can understand changing around elements for "dramatic purposes" and "updating" and "adapting for television". Let's not forget the novel was written and published in the 1970's when there were no cellphones, laptop computers or Internet. It seems the fellow who adapted the novel, Peter Filardi, and went hog-wild with it. The end result is that the only the movie characters have in common with their book counterparts are the names. Ben Mears was once held captive by the Taliban? Matt Burke is gay? Susan Norton is a waitress? Did Filardi even read the novel? Then there is the problem of the very minor characters getting way, way, waaayyyy more screen time than they deserve, as in they shouldn't have been in the movie at all. Sandy McDougall, Dud Rogers, Charlie Rhodes and Ruthie Crockett are all very minor throw-away characters who don't deserve a place in the movie. Ruthie didn't even have any dialogue in the book for crying out loud!!! What is so special about these characters that they managed to get on screen and take away precious time from the real characters? This is reason why Barlow is reduced to a cameo, because Peter Filardi felt the inexplicable need to cram in as many characters as possible.
My biggest complaint is the way they handled the scene where a vampire Mike Ryerson comes back to Matt Burke's house. Instead of being a terrifying encounter with the undead it winds up a truly bizarre homo-erotic/necrophiliac encounter so completely drained of any suspense that left me scratching my head and wondering 'what the hell was that about'? Hey people, if it ain't broke don't fix it! If you had $25 million to spend on this movie why didn't you hire a writer who could actually write a suspenseful scene!! Stephen King should sue! Excuse me, I'm going to watch the 1979 version and try to put this slop out of my memory for good.

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The vampiric Stephen King tale returns to the small screen, 25 years after the first made-for-TV "Salem's Lot", a Tobe Hooper-directed ratings hit. This time it's Rob Lowe as a successful writer who returns to his haunted hometown. As a kid, something awful happened to him in the spooky mansion on the hill; now that he's back, the mansion is once again buzzing with evil portents. The physical production (shot in Australia) is convincing, and it's fun to see old pros such as Donald Sutherland, Rutger Hauer, and James Cromwell cutting up in juicy roles. The storytelling, however, feels oddly disjointed, as though King's sprawl had been arbitrarily hacked away rather than adapted (a few big moments are bewilderingly left offscreen). The approach misses the basic assets of a vampire story:the disbelief, the lore, the sex appeal. Instead, it feels like a random collection of bits for short attention spans. "--Robert Horton"

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Deceived (1991) Review

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(More customer reviews)While some might call the plot twists of this 1991 thriller improbable, for me the tension and build to the film created a momentum that carried us to the incredibly scary climax. Doing less than 30 million in box office, this was not a big hit; but it is a film that holds up remarkably well 12 years after release. Goldie Hawn does an excellent job as Adrienne Saunders, a woman who seems to have it all with a beautiful child and happy marriage. Her husband Jack seems like the All-American father. Then when a colleague of her husband's gets murdered, clue upon clue seems to fly up in her face until Adrienne has to confront her husband. Then he mysteriously dies in a car accident. Director Damian Harris who seems to thrive on thrillers such as last year's "Mercy," does an amazing job of having event build upon event. The supporting cast of characters do a great job from Jack Saunders' sister to Paul Sullivan's mother. While this may not be a perfect film, it is a thriller that packs a wallop. Goldie Hawn delivers an understated and believable performance as the terrorized and deceived wife. This is a film worth discovering or revisiting a little over a decade after its release. Enjoy!

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