Television is a lousy bar at closing time. Tou walk in thinking you’ll get something strong, something to burn your throat and remind you you’re alive. Instead, The Playboy Club hands you a tall glass of melting ice. It clinks, it glimmers, it looks good from across the room. Then you take a sip and … Read More “The Playboy Club (2011) – Velvet Ears, Hollow Cheers, Amber Heard’s Turds” »
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Weird Science and One Million Years B.C. had an illegitimate child and left it on the steps of a Cinemax After Dark channel, the answer is Cavegirl. This 1985 sex comedy manages to be both prehistoric and painfully dated at the same time, like a VHS tape … Read More “Cavegirl (1985): Proof That Time Travel Can’t Save Bad Comedy” »
Dyanne Thorne was born Dorothy Ann Seib on October 14, 1936, in Park Ridge, New Jersey. Like a lot of future performers, she discovered the stage through school productions and local gigs, writing for her high-school paper and testing out her voice as a singer. After graduation she pursued acting seriously, studying in New York … Read More “Dyanne Thorne: The Life and Legacy of Cult Cinema’s “She-Wolf”” »
Introduction: When Lifetime Meets “Horror” The House Next Door (2006) is one of those movies that proves the old saying: “Just because you can adapt a novel doesn’t mean you should.” Based on Anne Rivers Siddons’ Southern Gothic classic, this made-for-TV Lifetime “horror” film manages to take a genuinely creepy story about suburban evil and … Read More “The House Next Door (2006)” »
There are bad sequels, there are pointless sequels, and then there’s I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, a movie so unnecessary it might as well have been subtitled I Still Can’t Believe You’re Watching This. Released direct-to-video in 2006, this is the third film in a franchise that should have died with frosted … Read More “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (2006): The Fisherman Returns… to the Bargain Bin” »
Introduction: The Monster Movie Everyone Pretends to Love Critics call The Host one of the best monster films of the 21st century. I call it Finding Nemo if Nemo had been replaced with a sewage salamander and Ellen DeGeneres had been swapped for a drunk uncle with narcolepsy. Sure, Bong Joon Ho would later gift … Read More “The Host (2006): When Godzilla Meets Family Therapy Gone Wrong” »
Introduction: “Fo’ Shizzle, This Movie’s a Drizzle” Let’s get this out of the way: Hood of Horror is not a movie. It’s a cry for help, a cinematic yard sale where three mismatched horror shorts are duct-taped together with Snoop Dogg in a bad wig mumbling exposition. Marketed as a horror-comedy anthology, it manages to … Read More “Hood of Horror (2006): When Snoop Dogg Sent His Career to Hell First” »
Sometimes Hollywood remakes a horror classic and breathes new life into it. Other times, Hollywood takes Wes Craven’s 1977 grindhouse shocker, feeds it radioactive sludge, and spits out The Hills Have Eyes (2006)—a movie that manages to be both brutally violent and brutally stupid. Alexandre Aja directed this remake, which promised savage scares and instead … Read More “The Hills Have Eyes (2006): Cannibal Mutants and a Trailer Full of Regret” »
If you’ve ever wandered into the horror section of a bargain-bin DVD rack and thought, “What’s the worst thing in here?” congratulations: you’ve found The Graveyard. This 2006 slasher “film” (and I use that word as generously as calling Taco Bell “Mexican cuisine”) is the third and mercifully final installment in the Bloody Murder series, … Read More “The Graveyard (2006): Where Slasher Movies Go to Die” »
Sometimes you hear the title of a movie and think, “Wow, that sounds ridiculous, I have to watch it.” Then you actually do, and realize you’ve been punished for your curiosity. That’s Evil Bong, a 2006 “stoner horror comedy” from Charles Band, a man whose entire career seems like a dare to see how many … Read More “Evil Bong (2006): High Concept, Low Quality” »
