There are bad teen horror films, and then there’s Disturbing Behavior, a movie so mangled by MGM studio notes that it plays like someone fed The Stepford Wives, The Faculty, and a Blink-182 music video into a woodchipper. What comes out isn’t a story, but a sticky VHS smoothie made of clichés, missing reels, and … Read More “Disturbing Behavior (1998) – The Stepford Teens Get a Lobotomy and So Do We” »
Sequels are supposed to expand on the original. Aliens took the haunted-house-in-space concept of Alien and made it a war movie. Terminator 2 turned a time-traveling slasher into a blockbuster about fate. The Dentist 2, on the other hand, takes an already absurd movie about a psychotic tooth doctor and says, “What if we added … Read More “The Dentist 2 (1998) – Open Wide and Say “Why the Hell Was This Made?”” »
Direct-to-Video Hell By the sixth film in the Puppet Master franchise, one might assume the formula would be perfected: creepy dolls, cheap gore, and just enough story to justify the violence. Instead, Curse of the Puppet Master gives us a direct-to-video experiment that feels like the cinematic equivalent of leaving milk on the counter for … Read More “Curse of the Puppet Master (1998) – Proof that even puppets deserve better agents.” »
A Slasher That Trips Over Its Own Shoes Some horror films are scary. Some are funny. Some are so bad they’re endearing. The Clown at Midnight is none of these. It is the cinematic equivalent of a rubber chicken painted white and handed a bloody axe—awkward, squeaky, and desperate for laughs that never come. Directed … Read More “The Clown at Midnight (1999) – Proof that Canadian tax breaks can’t always buy dignity.” »
There’s a moment in Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror where you realize that Dimension Home Video probably didn’t care if you finished the movie. They already had your rental money from Blockbuster, and now you were just a hostage, staring into the flickering television, trying to decode why David Carradine looks like … Read More “Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998) – A Fertilizer Fire of Bad Ideas” »
If baseball is America’s pastime, then The Catcher is the diseased cousin who shows up to the family reunion uninvited, drinks all the Budweiser, and then tries to sodomize you with a Louisville Slugger. Directed by Guy Crawford and Yvette Hoffman, this 1998 direct-to-video gem promises the thrills of a slasher and the passion of … Read More “The Catcher (1998) – Swing and a Miss, Straight Into the Dugout of Hell” »
A Carnival Nobody Wanted Tickets For Some remakes ask a question: Can lightning strike twice? Adam Grossman’s Carnival of Souls (1998) instead asks, What if we got hit by a flashlight battery instead? Slapped with the misleading “Wes Craven Presents” label, this movie carries all the cachet of a gas station hot dog “presented by … Read More “Carnival of Souls (1998) – Wes Craven’s name on a poster, Bobbie Phillips on the screen, and ninety minutes of psychological horror that’s scarier for the audience than for the characters.” »
Opening Coffin: A Horror Film That Horrifies the Wrong Way When a movie opens with a title as unwieldy as Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy—also known in some corners as Bram Stoker’s The Mummy—you know you’re in for a rough dig through cinematic sand. This 1998 fantasy-horror misfire is “based” (and I use that … Read More “Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy (1998) – Proof that some mummies should have stayed buried.” »
Before the MCU was a twinkle in Disney’s eye, before Hugh Jackman growled his way into our hearts as Wolverine, before Ryan Reynolds became Ryan Reynolds™—there was Blade. Wesley Snipes, sunglasses glued to his face like they were surgically implanted, showed up in a trench coat with a sword and said: “Yeah, I’ll save Marvel. … Read More “Blade (1998)” »
Jonathan Demme’s Beloved is one of those cinematic curiosities where you find yourself whispering halfway through, “Is this supposed to be scary, sad, or just an elaborate endurance test?” By the end of its nearly three-hour runtime, you realize it’s all three—scary in its ability to bore, sad in its waste of talent, and an … Read More “Beloved (1998): A Haunted House Movie That Forgot the Horror” »