Horror That's Just Horrific - Bad Movies, Games, & More

[High Priest Mikhal]

More like I'm describing every slasher movie ever made.

[vortexgods]

The Abominible Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again
... But I could barely sit through these 2 monstrosities.

You are dead to me. (Well, okay, I'll concede the sequel is pretty useless.)

There is also Theater of Blood, a movie with almost identical premise The Abominable Dr. Phibes

The first Doctor Phibes movie was actually the basis for a classic Call of Cthulhu scenario called "Nemesis Strikes!" in Chaosium's cinematic RPG book, Blood Brothers. http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13375.phtml

One review I read notes a potential problem with it, but didn't have the...imagination... to see the solution. The problem is that Phibes and Vulnavia are the protagonists of the Phibes movies... making the player characters extras when it was recreated with Nemesis Strikes. So, that means that the PCs should have been taking on those kinds of roles...

Confession time, when I first got AGT (Adventure Game Toolkit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Game_Toolkit) the games I made were loosely based on the Phibes movies. (They were toys for my own amusement, though.)

[Brandi]

The first Doctor Phibes movie was actually the basis for a classic Call of Cthulhu scenario called "Nemesis Strikes!" in Chaosium's cinematic RPG book, Blood Brothers. http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13375.phtml

One review I read notes a potential problem with it, but didn't have the...imagination... to see the solution. The problem is that Phibes and Vulnavia are the protagonists of the Phibes movies... making the player characters extras when it was recreated with Nemesis Strikes. So, that means that the PCs should have been taking on those kinds of roles...

Gee, guess who wrote that review. Also, keep in mind that in the review I didn't want to propose radical changes to the scenarios. If a player takes on the Phibes role you suddenly turn this into a solo or at least very low player-count game, short of deliberately setting the player against each other and refereeing it. An Ars Magica-style troupe approach might be better (this actually works well if the story skews more towards Theatre of Blood, since Lionheart had recruited a whole bunch of homeless people to work for him. Phibes, on the other hand, was practically a solo operative).

Yeah, thinking about it more, a troupe system would've worked quite well (you could have players being the killer and his minions, alternating with playing the cops and detectives and maybe even the victims). But now you've pretty much removed the scenario from running under Call of Cthulhu's Basic Role-playing System, so it still makes it an iffy include in Blood Brothers.

But dang it, it WAS fun to read!

[Wiccy of the Fraternity]

I quite enjoyed Dance of the Dead, it had me chuckling. Still, not are funny as the classic Dance ot the Vampires (AKA - "excuse me or are those your teeth in my neck?"). The Fri 13th reboot would be predictable as it's based on the first 3 movies (movies 1 and 2 cut down to fill the first 23 minutes of the movie, urk!).

Still, some pretty bad movies are...

The Breed:
Mad wild dogs on a island terrorising some 20 somethings... yawn.

Reeker:
A smelly undead serial killer in the desert with acting that's even worse than his deoderant.

Feast 1 - 3:
All terrible.

Dark Floors:
Lordi's second horror flick (not counting all the music videos which are great mini horror flicks), but this time it's feature length. Not very good throughout and predictable. The big ending you expect is also more of a whimper.

Quarantine:
I'm sorry but the cast ruins this movie, what I enjoyed about the characters in the original is more than destroyed and the last 10 minutes makes me just want to bludgeon to main protagonist sensless with a chair (and I'm a pacifist, lol). The tape reveals nothing and doesn't even raise questions like the one in the original. All round bland, which isn;t surprising of a Hollywood remake of a foreign movie.

The Hollow:
Cheesey, low budget movie set in modern times about the headless Horseman returning to Slepy Hollow and killing a few people that are so idiotic I'm amazed they didn;t choke to death on their marbles when they were 5.

[Pale]

Perusing this topic, I might have some vague insight to offer to the earliest posts, where Uwe Boll's works are mentioned.

The rumor is that his movies are specifically intended to fail. He doesn't make them out of a love for the medium, respect for the material, or anything else - the movies are merely a tool in a larger strategy involving German tax laws.

The law he was using was changed a bit in 2005, but the bombs he's most (in)famous for, House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, and Bloodrayne, were all made prior to that. I don't know how the law's changed since, but he's still making movies - whether that's due to a taste for fame or another tax loophole, I can't speculate on.

There's also an article here that kind of spells it out: http://www.cinemablend.com/features/Uwe ... g-209.html

But, it's on the internet and not really cited, so take that how you will.



As for films... I know it's kind of a classic, but Wolfen was one of the most inexplicably dull horror films I've ever seen. And I never could take Carpenter's Prince of Darkness seriously after Alice Cooper stabbed someone with a bike frame.

[High Priest Mikhal]

Return to House On Haunted Hill

I can't believe I picked this up. The story is trite, predictable, relies too much on gratuitous sex and nudity, focuses on gore over horror, and it's just not scary. Avoid this steaming pile.

[Zettaijin]

Shaitani Dracula, because Harinam Singh is GOD!

[Brandi]

Shaitani Dracula, because Harinam Singh is GOD!

You realize this thread was about so-BAD-they're-good (and sometimes so-bad-they-just-stink) films, right? It sounds like you were trying to recommend something genuinely good.

[Zettaijin]

Shaitani Dracula, because Harinam Singh is GOD!

You realize this thread was about so-BAD-they're-good (and sometimes so-bad-they-just-stink) films, right? It sounds like you were trying to recommend something genuinely good.

My bad...

http://tarstarkas.net/index.php?option= ... &Itemid=46

[nothri]

I could list hundreds of movies, but the top of them would be remakes of Asian horrors (Ring, Dark Water, Ju-on, The Eye, etc)

QFT! I have yet to see an Asian horror movie that's been "Americanized" and remains any good. Save yourself some time and don't bother with any American adaptations; the originals are always better.

But....but if I see the originals, I'd have to cope with the trauma of watching protagonists who are....oh god.....NOT WHITE! Or American! I mean, it makes no sense! You have people of other ethnicities in the movie....but they seem to be taking central roles in the film rather than acting as comic relief or canon fodder for the monster! What on earth is going on????

::sigh:: The one thing I hate more than the 'americanization' of these films is the implication behind their making. It says to me the producers either expect the audience to balk at the casting, or even worse that the american studio can just inherently do it 'better' than the original. Which, come to think of it, is why I hate so many 'remake' movies that have recently come out. Except maybe Batman Begins, which felt like less of a 'we can do it better' and more of a 'there is no coming back from Batman and Robin, we're just gonna have to burn the old franchise down and start from scratch'.

[Wiccy of the Fraternity]

I could list hundreds of movies, but the top of them would be remakes of Asian horrors (Ring, Dark Water, Ju-on, The Eye, etc)

QFT! I have yet to see an Asian horror movie that's been "Americanized" and remains any good. Save yourself some time and don't bother with any American adaptations; the originals are always better.

But....but if I see the originals, I'd have to cope with the trauma of watching protagonists who are....oh god.....NOT WHITE! Or American! I mean, it makes no sense! You have people of other ethnicities in the movie....but they seem to be taking central roles in the film rather than acting as comic relief or canon fodder for the monster! What on earth is going on????

LOL! I loved how you put that and it gave me a good chuckle. As for the remake of The Eye though, I'm still not certain if Jessica Alba is white... Then again, the jury's still out over whether she can actually act or is just thrown into a movie coz she "looks cute".

[Ail]

QFT! I have yet to see an Asian horror movie that's been "Americanized" and remains any good. Save yourself some time and don't bother with any American adaptations; the originals are always better.

But....but if I see the originals, I'd have to cope with the trauma of watching protagonists who are....oh god.....NOT WHITE! Or American! I mean, it makes no sense! You have people of other ethnicities in the movie....but they seem to be taking central roles in the film rather than acting as comic relief or canon fodder for the monster! What on earth is going on????

LOL! I loved how you put that and it gave me a good chuckle. As for the remake of The Eye though, I'm still not certain if Jessica Alba is white... Then again, the jury's still out over whether she can actually act or is just thrown into a movie coz she "looks cute".

Just to get on the bandwagon on that comment from Jessica Alba: the other day I was listening to an interview on the radio about culture, more speciffically writing books, and at a some point, the conversation went over racism. And there was this delicious comment there:

"many brasilian people found the first time they were not 'black' when they went to Kenya"

The point here is: being black or white is a relative convetion of the people who are speaking, and the general rule is that you are either black or white in a good sense if that is the colour of the community deciding and you do not have any trace of the other.

As such, the same brasilian guy would be a black in the states and a white in Kenya, because he's most likely a 'mestiço'. Both societies (America and Kenya here) show an equal grade of racism, classifying someone as something like 'not pure'.

In my view, it's a great abuse to say Jessica Alba is not white. I'd guess that's almost the same as saying everyone born to the south of Germany is not white, or something like that... which reminds me too much or arianism and all those sinister things. We should just drop this stupid race distinction for once and for all. The main reason is or course human dignity, but even from a practical point of view it is undoable: there are far too many varieties now people have been mixing for centuries and even more with all this globalization.

P.S.:by the way, that particular comment from the Kenyans was in context: the brasilian guy in question wanted to attend a religious ceremony and it was open only for black people... by which they mean, purely black people, without mixed blood.

[High Priest Mikhal]

Halloween II (2009)

Rob Zombie did some okay to good (if not really creepy) movies (House of 1000 Corpses, The Hills Have Eyes) but Halloween II crosses a fine line between "okay" and "bad" movies. Personally I didn't find it that scary. But then I'm rarely scared by slashers so much as grossed out.

It picks up literally where the first left off and Laurie Strode has just shot Michael Myers in the head. The opening scene explains what happened after--to a point. I'll stop there to avoid spoiling the plot.

Throughout the movie the recurring theme of the White Horse, "A dream symbol of bodily needs to act out on intense emotions such as rage," is used. This is an actual medical term from The Psychosis of Dreams, as shown at the very beginning of the movie and is used to help explain WHY Michael Myers does what he does. IMO it comes across as a twisted Oedipus Complex since his mother is part and parcel of the White Horse, urging him to kill Laurie "so they can be a family again." It also smacks too much of Jason Voorhees and his bizarre worship of his mother's severed head in Friday the 13th Part II and his continued loyalty to her even in undeath as shown in Freddy vs. Jason when Freddy uses the illusion of Jason's mother in the opening scene.

Dr. Loomis returns, miraculously having survived, but his fame has turned him into an arrogant a-hole. To his credit he does realize what he's done with his second book and tries to save Laurie from Michael yet again at the end. But it's too little, too late.

But it was really the ending that pushed this into "bad movie" territory. In the originals Laurie Strode is a victim, but here there's an implication she might have become a second Michael Myers just before the credits roll.

If you have to follow the story of the Halloween remakes, rent this if you can't find anything else.