Label: Scream Factory / IFC Midnight
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 93 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Stereo 2.0, Surround 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.40:1)
Director: Travis Z
Cast: Lin Shaye, Gabrielle Haugh, Grayson Gabriel, Emily Haine, Louise Linton, Michael Sirow, Robert Englund
From director Travis Z (the Cabin Fever remake) comes yet another remake - this time it's a remake of an Irish supernatural chiller, the film opens in 1953 where we find three young children playing a strange board game in a mansion, an occult game with a very specific set of rules which when executed properly summons a demonic urban legend named The Midnight Man, who stalks you around the house until a certain time, preying in your deepest fears. Game night ends with two of the children dead, one is gruesomely decapitated while the other pops like a blood-filled zit outside the home, spraying blood over the snow-covered lawn. It's honestly a pretty fantastic little opening with some surprising gore. From here we go modern day, we have teenager Alex (Gabrielle Haugh) caring for her senile granny Anna (Lin Shaye, Insidious) at the very same mansion from the open of the film, in fact in turns out that granny is the lone survivor of that gruesome night.
While rummaging through the attic of the home Alex and her friend Miles (Grayson Gabriel) stumble across a strange box hidden away inside a trunk, inside it they find the Midnight Game game complete with written instructions, and decide have a go at it, even after granny catches them in the act and nearly strokes out at the sight of the game, you think that would warn them off of it, but nope, they go forward, even after having to call a doctor to check in on granny, by the way the doc is played by horror legend Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street), not that it matters. Despite being incredibly complicated with it's myriad of rules involving protective circles of salt, knocking on doors and keeping candles lit, they start the game, and also invite their friend Kelly (Emily Haine) over to play, and she's totally into it, she immediately drops some creepy[pasta knowledge on them, already aware of the game, but as expected she's just more meat for the demonic-game grinder.
The movie is well-made and attractively shot, but the story is too been-there-and-done-that, and don't even get me started on character motivations, I don't know what any of these people were even thinking, the game is so hard to get going I never would have gotten it started, let alone having to worry about the elderly relative you're supposed to be taking care of! I do have a soft spot for urban legends and folkloric horror though, so I did enjoy the premise to a degree and I like the look of the cloaked reptilian Midnight Man, but the rules as complicated as they were didn't seem to matter all that much when it's revealed that the demon regularly cheats anyway!
This is not a horrible movie, but it's perhaps something worse than horrible, it's largely forgettable, pissing away the considerable talents of Lin Shaye and Robert Englund with poorly written characters. I could see this getting some play on Netflix on a night when nothing else presents itself as viable entertainment, but it's not a movie you're gonna be sitting around turning your friends onto at some later date, you're gonna forget about it an hour later, and someday think to yourself, "what was that one lackluster movie with Lin Shaye and Robert Englund?", and you definitely won't remember the name, because there are at least four other movies with the same generic name, and there will probably be four more by the time you think about this movie again.
This is another one of the IFC Midnight/Scream Factory titles, they're very hit and miss for me so far, for every The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) there's four of these. The single-disc Blu-ray includes a trailer for the film and the original Irish film from 2013 which I think is cool that they included, but given that I didn't enjoy the remake all that much I don't know when or if I would ever make the time to watch the original. This release also includes a sleeve of reversible artwork and a slipcover, I'm curious to know how it is decided over at Scream Factory which releases are deserving of a reversible wrap and a slipcover,
Like the Cabin Fever remake, also directed by Traviz Z, this one is not awful but it's not anything you're gonna be thinking about afterward. I give it that it's a well-made film, the visuals look good, but there no substance, there's nothing original about it, which make The Midnight Man a proverbial one and done for me.
THE BLACK ROOM (2017)
Label: Cleopatra Entertainment
Region Code: Region-FREE
Duration: 94 Minutes
Rating: Unrated
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Surround 5.1 (No subtitles)
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen
Director: Rolfe Kanefsky
Cast: Natasha Henstridge, Lin Shaye,Dominique Swain, Tiffany Shepis, James Duvall, Lukas Hassel
All aboard for campy erotic demon-sex weirdness with a movie from Rolfe Kanefsky, the director of the pre-Scream ironic-horror film There's Nothing Out There (1991), who has since gone on to direct softcore stuff like The Erotic Misadventures of the Invisible Man (2003) and Emmanuelle 2000: Emmanuelle Pie (2003), the latter stuff I haven't seen but his softcore leanings are quite evident here. Paul (Lukas Hassel) and his wife Jennifer Hemdale (Natasha Henstridge, Species) movie into a new house, they got it for a steal since the former occupants have disappeared under mysterious circumstances.. you know, that old nugget.
Turns out that the house is home to a sex-demon, an incubus, that begins to meddle in the lives of the newlyweds. The entity lives in a secret room down in the basement of the home, manifesting itself as steam at first, making its way through the house via the furnace duct work, introducing itself to the coupe by giving them both ghost-gasms, but soon enough the demon takes on a physical form by possessing Paul. Not long after the guy begins to molest, fuck, rape and kill every woman in sight, including his wife's goth sister Karen (Augie Duke, The Badger Game) and their sexy neighbor (Dominique Swain, Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre),
The movie is fun in a campy sort of way but the mix of goofy possession eroticism is awkwardly married with the rape-y weirdness, I imagine the prospect of directing a demon-rape comedy is fraught with challenges, like the fact that the tone changes from low-budget horror to demon-rape comedy every few minutes. The tonal shift make for an uneven viewing, not helping is the over-the-top scene chewing from co-star Lukas Hassel, playing a sexually frustrated, arrogant dimwit, the character is sinisterly dumb and he seems to be in a completely different movie than everyone else, he really amps up the camp to the nth degree, spouting off one-liners and groan inducing puns at an alarming rate, which is fun but weird. The rest of the cast is not too shabby, some familiar faces here, we have Natasha Henstridge from the Species movies as the wife, she seems pretty game for the camp-drenched horror movie, while she never drops her clothes completely she does lean into a washing machine for some masturbatory fun and makes an o-face in the bathtub when the sex-demon gives her some otherworldly pleasure.
There are also appearances from Al Jourgensen of the industrial-metal band Ministry, Michael Reed (Disco Exorcist), Tiffany Shepis (Tromeo and Juliet) as a realtor, James Duval (Donnie Darko) as a horny Maytag repairman, and Victoria De Mare, who plays Batty Boop in the Killjoy movies. However, the biggest shock for me was the appearance of Lin Shaye (Insidious) as the former owner of the house, in a pre-credit sequence we see her freak out when the demon escapes from its basement prison to seduce and rape her sexy granddaughter, which features some strange nipple manipulation, which pretty much sums up what you can expect for the next ninety-minutes, fun but goofy stuff.
The special effects of the movie are actually pretty decent, enjoyed the horned-demonic makeup effects and some of the gore was quite good. The latex wall with the groping red demon hands was not one of the better effects but overall I was pleasantly surprised how good the special effects were for otherwise fairly awful movie.
Special Features:
- Commentary with Director Rolfe Kanefsky and star Natasha Henstridge
- Deleted and Extended Scenes (31 min) HD
- Behind the Scenes(1 min) HD
- Bloopers and Outtakes (1 min) HD
- Storyboards (44 images) HD
- Slideshow (73 images) HD
The Black Room (2016) is a bad movie; a campy, sex-drizzled slice of lust-horror loaded with bad dialogue and softcore silliness, every once in awhile we get a decent special effect, a decent song, and plenty of naked ladies, but this is not anything I would willingly watch again. It's trashy, but not a trashy good time, I have to say avoid this one unless you catch it for free on some streaming service or pick it up cheap for just a few bucks.
LABEL: Image Entertainment
REGION CODE: A
RATING: Unrated
DURATION: 120 mins
AUDIO: DTS-HD MA 5.1
SUBTITLES: English, Spanish
VIDEO: 16:9 Widescreen (1.78:1)
DIRECTORS: Adam Rifkin, Joe Lynch, Tim Sullivan, Adam Green
CAST: Adam Rifkin, Sarah Mutch, Owen Benjamin, Richard Riehle, Joel David Moore, Ray Wise, Kane Hodder, Eric Roberts, Lin Shaye
TAGLINE: The Ultimate Midnight Movie!
I don't know about you but I just get pleased as punch whenever I hear about a new horror anthology coming down the pipeline. The omnibus fright format has always been a personal favorite of mine but they just don't seem as prevalent today as they were in the 70's and 80's - they've definitely fallen out favor. Perhaps it's just cause I was catching up with some of my favorites like Mario Bava's BLACK SABBATH (1963) and one of the many Amicus entries TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972) some decades years after their initial release, either way there's not exactly a glut of 'em these days no matter how you slice it up and the format seemed to have peaked in the early 80's with the one-two punch of CREEPSHOW (1982) and TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1983). The nineties weren't exactly overflowing with anthologies either with the notable exceptions of FOUR ROOMS (1995) and PULP FICTION (1999) but in recent years there's been a resurgence with the Tarantino/Rodriguez feature GRINDHOUSE, TRICK R TREAT (2007) and effective, low-budget indies like THE DRIVE-IN HORRORSHOW (2009) and III SLICES OF LIFE (2010).
So, when word began to spread about this love letter to the schlocky drive-in films of the 60's and 70's from a handful of talented young directors I was pretty psyched and primed for some b-movie omnibus action. Beginning with the directors we have Adam Rifkin whose 70's stoner-comedy DETROIT ROCK CITY (1999) is a perennial favorite of mine, Joe Lynch who won me over with WRONG TURN 2 (2007), Adam Green who most recently nailed it with the winter-bound horror of FROZEN (2010) and lastly we have Tim Sullivan, director of 2001 MANIACS (2005).
The film CHILLERAMA is a series of vignettes that really sets out to celebrate the b-movie schlock cinema of yesteryear beginning with a wrap-a-round story called ZOM-B-MOVIE from director Joe Lynch that right away gets to the gritty with some distasteful necro-felatio which goes horribly awry, I would ask is there anyway necro-felatio could go well, I guess it's all a matter of perspective, right? The amorous grave robber leaves the cemetery injured to say the least with his naughty bits having been shredded by his graveyard girlfriend. Not something I would do myself but this guy actually limps his way back to his night job at the drive-in movie theatre where it's a special night, it's their last hurrah before the drive-in closes it's doors forever. To commemorate this sad occasion the aptly named drive-in proprietor Cecil Kaufman (Richard Riehle, OFFICE SPACE) is sending his beloved cinema out in style with a four film marathon of rare splatterfests projected on the big screen for a jam-packed crowd of gore-hounds and splatter-fiends.
This is not a horrible movie, but it's perhaps something worse than horrible, it's largely forgettable, pissing away the considerable talents of Lin Shaye and Robert Englund with poorly written characters. I could see this getting some play on Netflix on a night when nothing else presents itself as viable entertainment, but it's not a movie you're gonna be sitting around turning your friends onto at some later date, you're gonna forget about it an hour later, and someday think to yourself, "what was that one lackluster movie with Lin Shaye and Robert Englund?", and you definitely won't remember the name, because there are at least four other movies with the same generic name, and there will probably be four more by the time you think about this movie again. 
Like the Cabin Fever remake, also directed by Traviz Z, this one is not awful but it's not anything you're gonna be thinking about afterward. I give it that it's a well-made film, the visuals look good, but there no substance, there's nothing original about it, which make The Midnight Man a proverbial one and done for me. 
