Cinco de Pain-o. SAW V opens with its now-characteristic gore-porn, that gives the victim a torturous choice, in this case, be sliced in half by a swinging pendulum, Edgar Allen Poe style, or stop the swing by crushing your hands to dust in vices. The victim opts to mangle his hands, as penance for his past sins – but the … Read More
SAW IV
Fourth Time’s the Harm. Jigsaw is dead. Lying naked on an autopsy slab. Skull being sawed open by morticians, brain being pried loose from its succulent base, ribcage spread wide, slippery organs removed (I’d love to know what surgeons think of this authentic-looking scene) – but wait! In his stomach – a micro-cassette tape! Not foreseeing that Radio Shack would … Read More
DREAMCATCHER
Same Shit Different Director. So why is it that films made from Stephen King’s stories turn out, for the most part, to be movies that look as if they’d been chiseled out of Silly Putty by escapees from the Home For the Terminally Inept? — Harlan Ellison, Oct 1984, “In Which We Scuffle Through The Embers” (Magazine of S&SF). DREAMCATCHER … Read More
SAW III
Now it’s just painful. A horror movie with brains… splashing all over your feet as they fall out of someone’s skull. Okay, now it’s officially gratuitous. SAW III begins the ruination of the SAW franchise. Not only is it needlessly gory, original SAW writers Leigh Whannell and James Wan try to connect the existing SAW movies in a Grande Trilogy … Read More
SAW II
Seen it once, SAW it again… The opening scene of SAW II is as compelling and horrifying as anything you will ever see as a human being with pain receptors: A man wakes in a dungeon with an open bear trap locked around his neck, lined with nails. It is on a timer to snap shut on his head, but … Read More
RIGHTEOUS KILL
Righteous Swill. Dream cast, nightmare script. What a shameless waste of Acting’s two elder statesmen. RIGHTEOUS KILL re-unites Robert de Niro and Al Pacino as two New York cops on the trail of a killer who is wiping out the city’s vilest criminals. The plot of MAGNUM FORCE resurrected, except in this movie, it’s Dirty Harry without the Dirty. Or … Read More
RANSOM
Blow me the money. Mel Gibson is billionaire airline owner Tom Mullen, whose son gets kidnapped in RANSOM. Rather than play to the kidnappers’ ransom demands, Mullen’s status allows him to go on national TV to offer the 2-million dollars ransom money as reward for any info on his son’s kidnappers – the ransom money becomes bounty money! Serpentine Gary … Read More