Kyle Warner's Blog, page 18

31 Days of Horror: Film #7 The Monster Squad

31 Days of Horror: Film #7 THE MONSTER SQUAD

Keeping a daily log is a good way to make a week feel long. Anyway. . .

“Creature stole my Twinkie!”

Monster Squad isn’t scary and it’s barely a horror film. However, it features so many classic monsters that it feels right at home on a Halloween watch-list. The Monster Squad is kind of like a horror-obsessed version of the Goonies, with a team of kids fighting off monsters to save the world from annihilation. The best of Universal’s classic mon...

31 Days of Horror: Film #6 V/H/S: Viral

31 Days of Horror: Film #6 V/H/S: Viral

V/H/S is a horror anthology series with disturbing short films shot in a found footage style, with themes that include the supernatural, alien abduction, murderers, and zombies. I found the first V/H/S legitimately frightening. Not every short worked but the ones that did are disturbing, scary, and inventive. V/H/S/2 is a weaker compilation but it does feature Safe Haven, the best short of the entire series. Safe Haven -- which is directed by The R...

31 Days of Horror: Film #5 Phantasm II

31 Days of Horror: Movie #5 PHANTASM II

I’ve never seen any of the Phantasm sequels before today (they’re currently working on Phantasm 5). The series goes back to the 70s and remains a favorite of horror fans today. I saw the original almost ten years ago so my memory of it is a bit fuzzy, which made watching Phantasm II kind of weird. I was lost from time to time. I remembered the monsters but not exactly what they were about and I had no memory of the heroes whatsoever. I figured it o...

31 Days of Horror: Film #4 Grabbers

31 Days of Horror: Movie #4 GRABBERS

Check this. Alien squid things are falling from the sky, see? They fell into the ocean off Ireland, see? And now those squid bastards are attacking a nice little island township with a population of not-that-much. These squids -- we’ll call ‘em Grabbers since Paddy found them and that’s what he wants to call ‘em -- they hold onto you while their pointy tongue thing sucks the blood out yer body like a kid on a juice box after soccer practice. The thing...

31 Days of Horror: Film #3 The Evil Dead

Movie #2 THE EVIL DEAD

With Ash vs. Evil Dead coming this Halloween to Starz, I considered the Evil Dead trilogy a must-see this October. I think everyone has their own favorite from the series (though I’ve yet to meet anyone who considers the remake their personal favorite). Ignoring the remake, the original film is my least favorite Evil Dead film. Which is not to say that I dislike it – The Evil Dead is nasty, weird, hugely influential, and it’s cool to see where genre icons Sam Raimi...

31 Days of Horror: Film #2 Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil

31 Days of Horror: Movie #2 TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL

Here’s a good horror comedy. Taking a riff on the Southern subgenre of slasher horror films –stuff like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Wrong Turn, and Deliverance – Tucker and Dale vs. Evil attacks genre and society clichés, supplying plenty of laughs in the process. The film is about good natured hillbillies Tucker and Dale who are heading to the woods to fix up their vacation home (which looks a lot like the cabin in Evil Dead). Along the...

31 Days of Horror: Film #1 The Babadook

Happy October!

October is my favorite month. It’s not too hot, not too cold, I dig the changing colors, and best of all SO MANY MONSTER MOVIES.

So there’s this movie challenge called the ’31 Days of Horror’ (or alternatively the '31 Days of Halloween') where you watch a horror movie every day in October.

Count me in!

Movie #1: The Babadook. This movie has a lot of hype behind it. The Babadook was a hit with critics (it currently sits at 98% at RottenTomatoes) and audiences generally liked...

Film Reviews & REcommendations: September 2015

Recently I was given the chance to dive into Arrow Video’s new Blu-ray box set for the Stray Cat Rock series. It’s a strange series -- sometimes a Stray Cat Rock film is a gritty crime drama, other times it’s a youth comedy. One film deals with the subject of racism, another film has a dude dying from sexual excitement while using a jackhammer. The Stray Cat Rock series is part Nikkatsu action movie, part Easy Rider, part counterculture comedy, and 100% 1970s. Until now, only the third film...

Film Reviews & Recommendations: July and August 2015

I’m going to start doing this monthly instead of bi-monthly because sometimes by the time I get to talk about a movie it’s no longer in theatres.

First some of the reviews I've done for CityOnFire.com...

Police Story: Lockdown – One of Jackie Chan’s greatest films ever was the 1985 action classic Police Story . It mixed humor, martial arts, and the crazy stunts we’d come to know Jackie for. Since that film, Jackie’s returned to the series time and again. And now we have Police Story: Lockdown...

Book Review: Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

I discovered the books of Kurt Vonnegut sometime after the author’s death. The first one I read was his most well-known novel Slaughterhouse-Five and I absolutely loved it. I think I consider that novel one of my Top 3 favorite books. Since Slaughterhouse-Five, I’ve returned to the works of Vonnegut a couple times every year. Mother Night is a masterpiece. Breakfast of Champions is perhaps the funniest book of his that I’ve read but it’s not the deepest. The Sirens of Titan isn’t as ‘easy’ a...