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Reviews
Unhinged (1982)
Don't judge a book by it's cover. Or in this case, a DVD.
I walked passed this movie many times in my local Suncoast. Occasionally I'd pick it up and read the back. Words like "banned" and "truly shocking" drew my attention. Not to mention the cover looked awesome. But you know what they say about judging a book by it's cover. Or in this case, a DVD.
The menu screen is the best part of this movie. I'm not even being sarcastic because the menu shows every death scene in the freakin' thing. As for the film itself...
Starts off as a basic horror plot. Three girls are on their way to a concert. It's raining and their car is disabled. They wake up in a mansion. It's creepy. They die.
The above paragraph is probably word for word what the script looked like as the dialogue is uninspired even for an 80's slasher flick. The use of the camera during dialogue scenes doesn't help either. I swear at one point the camera was fixated on this lady for like ten minutes and didn't even cut away. It was like the camera man just set it down and went to go watch a more interesting film. He wouldn't have had to go far.
There is a surprise twist at the end, which I'll admit I didn't see coming. I didn't see it coming because I was half asleep and the twist is pretty ridiculous.
Overall, this is worth renting if you can find it. Despite being boring at times, it had potential to be really good if the writer did more than one draft of the script (if there even was a script).
I give it 3/10.
Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004)
What do you get when you take a TV commercial director and add a rushed script?
Nothing special. And that's a shame.
Ginger Snaps Back is a retelling of the storyline used in the original, with a few changes here and there. I got this movie the day it came out and couldn't wait to watch it. However...
This is a period piece and while I respect the fact that the director didn't want the sisters to speak with phony accents, the dialogue really didn't match up with the time. Lines like "These people are f***ed" really took me out of the story. It actually started to remind me of watching a high school play put on by jaded teenagers.
But being the fan and overall geek that I am, I still watched the movie again with the director's commentary track. I expected it to be boring. I didn't expect it to make me angry. The running theme for the commentary was "not enough time". I really angered when I found out that the script wasn't done until there was only ten days until the first shooting day. That along with the director and writer talking about how they came up with the idea for the film was infuriating. You see, they thought it would be a "treat for the fans" to do this movie. Maybe I'm just cynical, but that sounds like a lame attempt to make some money off of a title many horror fans have come to love.
But I'm getting off topic.
Overall, I liked this film. It's good to see Canada's finest (Katharine and Emily) on screen together once again. The dream sequence felt very abstract and Argento-like, which was cool. The only real complaints that I have are the dialogue and certain subplots that didn't belong. They should've gotten Karen Walton to write this one (she wrote the original).
I give it 6/10.
Oh yeah, one more thing...
This might be nitpicking, but where was the original song? It only appeared once in Unleashed and is completely absent from this one. This is disappointing to me because I always thought of that song as the theme for the films.