My Bloody Valentine, 11:14, and...Movie Reviews on the quick side

If you like horror, please take $10 of your hard-earned dollars and go see My Bloody Valentine on the big-screen in 3D. It really deserves to be a big hit. It made over $20 million opening weekend, but could use your support this week and next weekend.

Another movie I caught on cable over the weekend was 11:14, one of the hundreds of small budget films that gets lost in the shuffle of huge releases from the major studios. It is a film that details a number of events that occur at 11:14 one particular night, leading to a number of macabre and interesting twists.
The cast includes Henry Thomas, Patrick Swayze, Hilary Swank, Rachael Leigh Cook, and Ben Foster.

One to avoid is Blackballed: the Bobby Dukes Story. It stars Rob Corrdry, who is known for his work on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. What happens when the world's greatest paintball player is caught cheating? About an hour and a half of unfunny material. I was reminded a lot of the Foot-Fist Way, a similarly unfunny representation of one man's triumphs and failures in a minor sport/athletic activitity. I appreciate what they were going for, but it doesn't work.

A campy favorite I recently was finally able to view was Zoltan: Dracula's Hound. It is a film that is hard to take seriously - Zoltan has a flashback, the "Igor" in the film keeps saying Zoltan over and over again, the musical score does not match what is happening on screen - but it is a campy gem that would be a fun viewing experience for a horror fan.

Today I watched a Guillermo Del Toro film from his earlier works called The Devil's Backbone. It kept me interested, in a Euro-horror sort of way. They develop the horror at a much slower pace than US films do. Characterization is key in this film, and it works. If I pitched a horror film starring two adolescents during the Spanish Civil War to my investors, they would laugh me out of the building.

Also recommendation to skip - a Jason Biggs vehicle called Guy X. Although you do get an appearance from Michael Ironside, and Natascha McElhone has a starring role, which is never a bad thing.

One wonders where some of these films come from. There are hundreds of films made every year, but only a few are given the public chance to fail or succeed, with a majority of them winding up where the above did: in my DVR, mailbox from Netflix, on a borrowed VHS tape...
It does give me hope that our plans for Stifler to star in my magnum opus horror film will come to fruition.

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