You will find galleries of Full Moon trailers and Videozones on the Trailers and Videozones page (wow, really?! you don’t say!)  as well on the sidebar. I will also be adding Full Moon news updates now exclusively via Twitter (since typing out a Wordpress post isn’t easy enough) and you’ll find those on the sidebar as well.

The rest of the changes are back-end type things that you’ll never see but they made me happy and will make life easier and encourage me to update this site more often. I’ve been on a long hiatus from doing reviews, I promise I’ll get back to them shortly.

I am also tossing around the idea of adding a forum on here. If I can get it integrated, look how I want it to look and do what I want it to do, you’ll see that coming here in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks as always for visiting.

These shows are going to be a great time and include live FX (decapitations!), talks, guest appearances and other great stuff from Charles Band and Full Moon.

Check out the promo video below and go to FullMoonDirect to get tickets for the low, low price of only $10! The show is hitting 20-some cities so if you are a Full Moon fan, be sure to make plans to hit up one of the shows!

I will be at the Columbus, Ohio show so if you happen  to be attending, drop me an e-mail and we’ll catch up!

Click here to view the embedded video.

There is now a Full Moon Horror page on cable onDemand including Comcast and Time Warner. I have TW here in Ohio and the page can be found under the Thrillers onDemand page. The page features almost a dozen Full Moon flicks including Subspecies (!), Dark Angel, Robot Wars, Dollman, Hell Asylum, Decadent Evil 2 and more. The movies are a low $1.99 each. Sweet.

Also, you can now follow Full Moon on Twitter. Click Here for the page or Click Here to follow via a handy RSS feed.

Also, also – new reviews coming soon. I have a few movies in my collection that went by the wayside in a recent move but I will be replacing and reviewing these shortly. As the weather cools down and my motivation for going outside decreases you will see a dramatic incease of updates to this page.

One more quick non-Full Moon related site note. I recently switched hosting for this site and am pleased to announce that things have gone extremely well. This site is optimized to the point of where it will load quickly just about anywhere but the new host, Downtown Host, has done a great job in delivering the site quickly and keeping it online 100% of the time. If you are looking for hosting, check Downtown out!

Toodles for now.

-FMR

David DeCoteau directed this and while I’m not a fan of the blatant homo eroticism that is clearly evident in basically every movie he has ever had any thing to do with, I am a fan, in general, of his movies. I had high hopes for this going in and hoped it would be as decent as the shortened version.

So.

Our movie opens with 4 friends headed to an ominous looking castle (in Romania, no less) with the sad duty of attending the funeral of their compatriot.  Add to that, these friends have not seen each other in several years and are also all involved, in some way, in paranormal research. Hm. This sounds, largely, really familiar.

The group of pals is lead by Kristof f and is rounded out by another guy and two realtively attractive females. In short – basically the same cast outline of every Full Moon movie that came out in the late 90’s-early 00’s.  Also in the mix are Kristoff’s bitter rival, Bill and his two friends who lurk around, mostly outside the castle, bent on making Kristoff out to be the total chode he is and getting some sort of revenge for making a fool out of Bill in the past. In short – these guys are going to get waxed pretty quickly.

As it turns out, the castle the funeral viewing is taking place in is also the exact location of an old prison who’s inhabitants were treated less than nicely and are rumored to still haunt the building, wiping anyone who stands in their way off the face of the earth. Then, in the “gotcha” moment of the movie, it turns out the friend who’s funeral they are attending isn’t really dead so hoo-ha, giggles and chuckles. Kristoff really pulled a fast one over on them.

This is where we are introduced to the actual plot of the movie. It seems Kristoff’s dad, a trash-rag publisher, is holding a contest. The baddies (referred to as ‘The Executioners’) who supposedly haunt the castle posess something called the ‘Talon Key’ which opens a cursed cell in the jail. Kristoff’s goal is to prove to dear old dad that the paranormal crap is, in fact, true by finding the Talon Key. The one who finds it wins…*drum roll* (in Dr. Evil voice) one..million..dollars. Clearly about 10 times as much as it cost to make this movie. Maybe CB will just rent the money like they do in all of those rap videos that are floating around these days. Then again, maybe they won’t ever really mention it again.

Most of the rest of the movie is comprised by the mostly boring and uncaptivating characters wandering around the castle/funeral home/prison/whatever searching for the key. Also along the way, The Executioners show up and start wiping out characters unceremoniously starting with the aforementioned Bill and crew (the ones who are out to get Kristoff). Speaking of The Executioners, they are kinna neat but their costumes are terrible. They look like they were purchased at the Cappel’s after-Halloween clearance sale and bear a strong resemblance to Dr. Doom of Spider Man fame. To me any way. Regardless, I still like them and I like the way they take out  the characters.  They remind me a lot of the zombie types in Dead and Rotting and apparently influenced the same killing method used in total crapfest Petrified.

You can choose to watch from this point if you want to find out what happens (and be let down).

As I feared, the full length (if you want to call it that, clocking in at around 70 minutes) of this movie was actually inferior to the shortened version found on Horrific. The amount of padding, in the form of aimless wandering throughout the castle with very little substansive dialouge in-between, really kills the movie. At least in the short version a lot of this is thankfully taken  out and the movie cuts to the chase.

The acting in Prison Of The Dead is, like most Full Moon Pictures “efforts” from this time frame,  terrible and this  movie actually jacks it up a couple of notches and can be filed under “inexcusably awful”. None of the characters are interesting in the slightest and I found myself not caring about them, or what they were doing, at all. I was looking forward to each of them getting 86′ed and  *spoiler kinna* was disappointed with the end result in this category.

The biggest problem I have with this movie is that it is basically the exact same as all of the other Full Moon movies from this era. Just change out the character names and stick them in the same over-used Romanian castle and you’ve got Prison Of The Dead. This was utterly boring and pretty much pointless. If it had been any longer than 70 minutes I may have fallen completely asleep as I did find myself dozing off while watching this at 4 or 5pm with the blinds open on a sunny day.

I wouldn’t recommend this unless you have enjoyed the other Full Moon flicks from earlier on this decade and even then, you’d still have to be a total glutton for punishment for watching this. If you really want to see it, I’d suggest getting the Horrific DVD from Amazon or at your local Blockbuster/Hollywood Video. At least then you will get a couple of other Full Moon flicks (namely edited versions of The Killer Eye and Totem) to kill some time with as well.

*1/2 out of 5.

Wow, what a gigantic pain in the ass this was to get a hold of. While VHS is great for some and sometimes gives older movies that “old school” feel, I was bound and determined to find a working DVD copy of Cryptz. I purchased this no less than 3 times on DVD and received it via both Blockbuster and Netflix and every copy was a dud. The movie froze about 25 minutes in with no recourse and taking measures to pull, if you will, the movie from the disc returned the same result.

The other day I figured I would visit my local Hollywood Video store and low-and-behold, they had a copy of Cryptz. I expected the same result as the previous discs when I got home but, believe it or not, it worked! So woooo!

As for the actual movie, I didn’t have many high hopes for it but read along.

The basic idea behind this (Fuck you, I’m) Danny (Motherfucking) Draven produced and directed Shadow Entertainment/Big City Pictures (re: Killjoy 1 and ..ugh.. 2, The Horrible Dr. Bones, The Vault, etc) installment circles around three “rappers” (who never actually rap) by the names of Tymez Skwared (Mr. Main Character Power), Fuzzy Down (aka Tardy Downz) and Likirish (who does a great low-budget Chris Tucker, down to the voice and all) on their search for that sweet pootenanny and the troubles it eventually brings them. Just a side note -  I’m sure I spelled the characters’ names wrong and honestly, I don’t care. I’m too lazy to IMDB it and they all had ridiculously stupid spellings to begin with, so butchering the spellings is not doing them  an injustice by any stretch of the imagination. Way to go, Draven.

One day while discussing their future rap careers, which apparently involves not rapping at all, an attractive woman walks by and after coming at her with several extremely bad pick up lines, they discover she works somewhere called “Cryptz”. She refuses to disclose the location of this clearly fine establishment and gives ol’ Tymez a pinch on the cheek and keeps moving.

Intrigued, Tymez calls our resident “creepy motherfucker”, Truck, to see if he knows where they can find this Cryptz joint and therein, this “fine honey”. Truck doesn’t know where its at but does warn them that it’s no good and to duct tape Tymez down to the bed before sunset. Of course our 3 fellows think this is some sort of joke and of course as soon as the sun sets, they’re off, at Tymez urging, sceeching around the city eventually finding the club.

Once inside, we’re treated to shots of the fine decor which is, according to the credits, some dude involved in the movie’s “place”. We’re also the happy recipients of a girl doing an admittedly fantastic pole dance routine to a horrible trance tune that literally goes on for about 15 minutes off-and-on.

Our boys soon find out that pole dances by flat chested women isn’t the only thing going on in “Cryptz” and, in fact, it is infested by evil vampire “bitches” hell bent on taking over the world.

I won’t spoil the rest for you.

While I hate Danny Draven much in the fashion that I would hate having my nuts unceremoniously stuffed in to a Salad Shooter ™, I must say that Cryptz was pretty good. It took after the first Killjoy flick in that there is some comedy to be had here along with a healthy dose of oozing, cheap gore. The acting is on par with the other Big City flicks (i.e – terrible) and the soundtrack is awful too. Production value is early 00’s Full Moon par for the course and the DVD does feature a few trailers as well as a making of (which I was too frightened to watch).

I’d recommend checking this out. I’m not happy about giving Danny Draven positive points for anything but he did a pretty good job with this and put together a terribly bad, yet fun movie.

***1/2 out of 5.

Reviews on the way for Prison Of The Dead and Witchouse 2.

Stay up!

You can read the articles here:

Article One

Article Two (with exclusive pics!)

I have put a lot of time in to making the channel what it and have worked hard to provide you with 50+ trailers and Videozones from Full Moon movies.

And I’m not done. I still have a plethorea of Making-Ofs to upload and will continuously update the channel. Thanks for viewing and if you’re a Full Moon fan and have yet to take a peek, I highly recommend it!

Netherworld

Buy Netherworld : Amazon

Just from reading the synopsis on the DVD, you can tell Netherworld isn’t going to be your average Full Moon flick..and it isn’t. Far from it. Written by Full Moon staple David Schmoeller (As Billy Chicago), Netherworld is definitely a very unique movie.

We open with a young gentleman with the early 90’s curl-let riding on a fishin (not “fishing”) boat and arriving at a massive structure of columns and giant concrete lions. Snazzy. Our friend, let’s call him…oh..Corey (how 90’s of you, Mr. Schmoeller) is met by a man, Beauregard Yates, Esquire,  in a sky blue suit and black leather fingerless gloves. YES. The guy is really reminiscent of Mr. Mascaro from Blood Dolls if you’ve been following along with this shit. Anyway, Masca…Mr. Yates carts Corey off to a giant southern estate that belonged to his father.

See, Corey’s father – Mr. Thornton – was massively rich but was also totally unknown to Corey as ol daddy did the stash’n'dash with  his old lady. Nice guy. Corey makes some illconceived attempts to get information about what his dad was like, but has no luck.

During this sequence we also meet Diane, a “smokin hot” 16 or 17 year old who ends up being a sort-of love interest for Corey. Somewhat offensive, but I’ll go with it. Diane’s overbearing and over protective mother, who is the caretaker of the Thornton estate is also introduced. We also notice that there are a literal shit ton (and that’s a technical term, kids) of birds around..and they seem to get a lot of focus. Mmmk.

While out for a jaunt one day with Diane, Corey runs in to a crazy guy named Bijou who tries to coax Corey in to going to a place called Tonk’s Place – a rough and rumble redneck bar just across the lake from the estate with the promise that he (Bijou) will tell him about his old man.

Oh shit, I forgot to mention – Corey gets his father’s last wishes documentation and it basically says “Lookee here boy, bring me back to life”. Nice. Corey becomes obsessed with this task and that convinces him, furthermore, to check out Tonk’s place where he is, eventually, introduced to Delores who is another a bird nut and also is the answer woman on how to bring Corey’s daddy back to life. Delores is some sort of super hooker that lures men in to her lair, only to steal their souls and place them in the bodies of birds. The birds are big time here. Five alarm weirdness call.

Our first meeting with Delores also results in a not-too-nice gentleman getting his eyes gouged *in* and eventually his head crushed by concrete hand. More weirdness, but whatever. The hand floats and flies around – ala The Tall Man’s spheres – when summoned for duty.

I’m sure I missed some key plot points, but that’s what you get when you have the short term memory of a retarded tit mouse.

With all that crap out of the way, I really really really liked this movie. The filming quality is good (good ol 35mm) and really shows a distinct difference in what Full Moon was capable of during their relationship with Paramount. I’m not sure what happened, although I’d guess it was due to a faux pau from Mr. Band, but it is nonetheless really unfortunate that the relationship couldn’t continue.

The music is also good here, being done by one of the guys from Bon Jovi (Hu-WAAAAHHHHHHH!) and also features a couple of performances from Edgar Winter. Good shot on that one.

The acting here is solid and on point and while the script (as always) could’ve used a little work, it still carries out nice and smooth and keeps you interested in the movie. Shocking.

The DVD itself is another high point. It’s chock full of a ton of extras including a 26 minute long marathon Videozone.

This has become one of my favorite Full Moon flicks and if you haven’t already seen it, it comes highly (standard “hehe”) recommended from me.

**** 1/2 out of 5.

Totem
Buy Totem on Amazon

Totem holds a special place with me as it, along with Jigsaw, was one of the first Full Moon movies I ever watched. So, I may be a little easier on this movie than most other reviews have been..or as I should be for that matter.You’re going to have to cut me some slack here as the first time I saw this was back in 2003ish and I watched it again about two weeks ago. If you’ve read some of my other reviews, then you know that my short term (and long term for that matter) memory isn’t the hottest so I may mix up the order of some shit. You’ll get the general idea though.

Totem follows the long-standing low budget horror movie tactic of keeping everything contained to one or two locations/sets and in this case it works pretty well with the script and action. Basically, 6 Full Moon stereotype young folks are mysteriously  drop what they are doing and summoned to  go to a cabin somewhere in the middle of east boo-foo. You’ve got your standard good guy, jocky type, high school girl, bitchy girl, smart girl and mysterious fellow who is supposed to be American Indian but looks more …. definitely not Native American.

Obviously, they have all tried to jet from this shit shack but have had no luck as it seems to be surrounded by some magic force field. Our last lady to arrive decides that she’s busting up out of there and begins taking off down a hill and in to the woods. She makes it further than any of the others, so naturally they all follow her. They end up in a cemetary of sorts with its centerpiece being a pretty cool looking totem pole. None of them have any idea what its for other than that it looks old. Of course everyone also looks to their “native american” friend who has no idea what it is…probably because he’s not native american. Whatever.

Business starts to pick up when the one of the girls goes to take a teedle in the outhouse but doesn’t come back for quite a while. Our good guy goes out to find her and soon comes back “covered” (ie slightly spattered) in blood holding the girl, who is clearly deceased. To liven things up a little bit, homeboy has no idea what happened – just that she is dead. Awesome. Time passes (ie – padding) and the girl comes back to life all zombie-like mumbling some shit and everyone is confused and frightened. The clear answer here is to not just toss her zombie corpse outside, but to chain her down to the table they had placed her on and see what shakes out. Pure genius.

Eventually they find a book that contains some information on what’s going on and essentially they are stuck in a spell-driven mystical universe where there are to be 3 executioners and 3 victims. Once the cycle is complete the Totem can come back to life and I dunno.. take over the world or something with its neverending evil.

Once others start biting it, the 3 Totem “monsters” (read: puppets) start showing up and things remain kind of boring. I would also like to note that the first Totem who shows up plops down out of the sky on to the cabin’s floor and you can clearly see the puppet rods. It’s like they weren’t even trying – at all. For a lot of folks, this is a major turn off..for me it’s typical Full Moon at its finest and I personally took it with a grain of salt.

If you want to find out what happens from there then you’ll have to buy or rent the movie, silly. I’m not giving this shit away for free and I’m sure FM can use the bucks from your DVD purchase or rental.

Alright, so I didn’t go easy on this, but in reality it was still a really fun movie for me to watch. A lot of folks say its extremely boring and while I can see how it would appear that way, it still held my interest and I have a pretty short attention span so I guess that counts for something.

I do have one gripe, the DVD for this is terrible. I popped it in the ol’ Sony and up comes a terrible hot-pink screen with two options – “trailer” and “play movie”. They definitely could have put a *lot* more effort in to this but hey..shit happens sometimes and we don’t always get what we want.

All in all, Totem was a good time and I give it the nod.

*** out of 5.