Poché Pictures

When Taxi Driver Becomes Ambulance Driver Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader teaming up again should have been cinematic gold. After all, these are the guys who gave us Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Instead, Bringing Out the Dead feels like a halfhearted remix: take Travis Bickle, make him a paramedic, add a lot more neon … Read More “Bringing Out the Dead (1999) – Scorsese’s ride-along with Nicolas Cage proves that sometimes the real horror isn’t the streets of New York” »

A Remake in Search of a Reason Joe D’Amato’s original Antropophagus (1980) wasn’t exactly high art—it was infamous video nasty fare, remembered mostly for a maniac ripping out and eating a fetus. It was trash, but at least it was memorable trash. Fast forward to 1999, where German splatter merchant Andreas Schnaas decided the world … Read More “Anthropophagous 2000 (1999) – A remake nobody wanted, delivered with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer dipped in cow intestines” »

Bloodsuckers Without Bite By the time Vampires hit theaters in 1998, John Carpenter was already a legend coasting on fumes. The man who gave us Halloween, The Thing, and Escape from New York now served up this limp, sun-baked horror-western hybrid that plays less like a stylish reinvention of vampire lore and more like a … Read More “Vampires (1998) – John Carpenter proves that sometimes the scariest monster of all is a studio contract” »

When Mars Attacks… Our Patience Peter Medak’s Species II is less a sequel and more a crime against both cinema and extraterrestrials. The 1995 original wasn’t exactly 2001: A Space Odyssey, but at least it had style, some genuine tension, and Natasha Henstridge’s breakout as Sil, the sultry alien killing machine. The sequel? It takes … Read More “Species II (1998) – The only alien invasion scarier than this film is the one happening to your brain cells while watching it” »

A Fang-tastic Mess That Works Anyway Jake West’s Razor Blade Smile is not a good movie—at least, not in the way film schools or Rotten Tomatoes would define “good.” It’s cheap, amateurish, and stitched together with the kind of plotting you’d expect from a goth teenager’s first screenplay. But here’s the trick: it knows exactly … Read More “Razor Blade Smile (1998) – Proof that sometimes bad acting, latex, and buckets of fake blood can stumble their way into cult greatness” »

A Phantom Nobody Asked For Dario Argento’s The Phantom of the Opera (1998) is one of those baffling films where you wonder if the director lost a bet. Adapted (loosely, drunkenly, and maybe sarcastically) from Gaston Leroux’s classic novel, this Italian-English production is a gothic romance with all the romance of a tax audit and … Read More “The Phantom of the Opera (1998) – The only horror here is watching Dario Argento set his career on fire with rat puppets and Julian Sands’ hair extensions” »

Killer Ants, Killer Boredom Fox executives in the late ’90s must have had a dartboard of “cheap monster ideas.” Sharks? Already done. Spiders? Too obvious. Ants? Perfect. Thus, Legion of Fire: Killer Ants! (also titled Marabunta, because apparently “killer ants” wasn’t subtle enough) was born. The premise: South American soldier ants invade a sleepy Alaskan … Read More “Legion of Fire: Killer Ants! (1998) – Proof that sometimes the scariest thing on TV is the movie itself” »

The Curse of Primetime Horror Based on Lois Duncan’s Gallows Hill, I’ve Been Waiting for You tries to mash together witchcraft, teen drama, and slasher tropes, but instead gives us a Lifetime Original Movie with cheap masks and even cheaper suspense. Directed by Christopher Leitch, it feels less like a horror film and more like … Read More “I’ve Been Waiting for You (1998) – Proof that the real curse of New England isn’t witches, it’s made-for-TV teen horror” »

Laurie Strode: From Final Girl to School Principal with a Flask It’s been twenty years since Laurie Strode first survived her brother’s cutlery cosplay in Haddonfield, and now she’s faked her death, changed her name to “Keri Tate,” and become a private school headmistress in California. You’d think that would be enough to leave the … Read More “Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998) – Proof that Michael Myers doesn’t die, but franchises sure can.” »

A Sober Horror Movie About Not Being Sober Michael Almereyda’s Trance is one of those strange late-’90s direct-to-video oddities that looks like it should be buried in the discount bin next to Leprechaun 4: In Space but somehow crawls out with dignity intact. The setup sounds absurd: a drunk American couple goes to Ireland to … Read More “Trance (1998) – or The Eternal, depending on which VHS box you stumbled across” »