The Devil Inside
Director: William Brent Bell
Cast: Fernanda Andrade, Suzan Crowley, Simon Quarterman
Review by Brian M. Sammons

Let me start off by saying that I am largely a fan of the found footage horror films. From The Blair Witch Project to its lesser known rival The Last Broadcast, from the original very good [REC] from Spain, to the more lackluster US remake, Quarantine, I sort of dig them all. Even when they have some pretty big flaws, like Apollo 18, there can still be some fun and good spooky moments found in them. So keep that in mind when I say that I hated this latest entry in the (now overused?) subgenre. When I say that this boring, confusing, poorly made movie is in no way good, it’s not because of the first person shaky cam thing. It’s just a plain old bad movie. So if you want to save yourself some time, just stop reading right now and forget this movie ever existed. But if you’re still possibly interested in this flick, then keep reading and maybe I can change your mind and save you a few bucks. Hey, that’s what I’m here for.

The Devil Inside is a pretty basic, paint-by-numbers devil possession flick. And right there I could end this review. It’s not a horrible horror film in and of itself but it has the worst ending of, well anything I can remember seeing. Ever. But more on that in a second. The story here is that a documentary film crew is following around a young American woman as she investigates the reason why her mother was sent to an insane asylum in Italy. Hmm, three guesses as to why. Well the daughter and the documentarians hook up with some priests once in Italy who do secret exorcisms on the side. Then after a bunch of babble about if the institutionalized mother is possessed by Satan, it’s off to the nuthouse for some hot devil expelling action.

The one twist to this movie, which isn’t even original, is that mad mommy dearest isn’t just possessed by one demon, but four and they have body jumping abilities right out of the much better Denzel Washington movie, Fallen. If you can’t guess as to what that will mean for the movie, then I won’t spoil it for you. But hey, there is some of the same satanic taunting of the assembled exorcists that has been in every, and I mean every, movie since The Exorcist. So yay for more unoriginality.

Then there is the ending that I hinted at before. Now I won’t ruin it, because honestly, I don’t think I can ruin it as it’s so bad. All I’ll say is that this movie really doesn’t end. It just cuts to black. Yeah, no kidding, it just stops. Now I guess it’s trying to go for a dramatic, sudden, shock ending that in a way would make sense that no one would continue to film after a certain point. Still, movies should have an ending and this one just doesn’t. So it’s a derivative, completely unoriginal Exorcist rip off that all but gives the audience the finger at the end. Yeah, it sure sounds like a winner to me.

Oh, and do you want to get really mad? This slice of cinematic schlock made over 100 million dollars worldwide. Not only is that insulting to the far, far, FAR superior movie, The Cabin In The Woods (which has so far made less than half that), but it probably means that we will be afflicted with a sequel to this someday soon. Oh yay.

The new Blu-ray from Paramount, which is a Best Buy exclusive, looks as well as a shaky cam found footage flick can look. However it is also as bare bones as a disc can be. It has no special features. Not one. Were they embarrassed by this movie? Because it sure looks like it.

If you can’t tell by now, I can’t recommend this movie. Not at all. To anyone. As I said, it’s not a horrible movie, but it’s dull, unnecessary, and derivative of a hundred other films that came before, and that did it much better. Still if for some odd reason you do want to get this movie in your collection, you can go on over to Best Buy to pick yourself up a copy.

After Dark Films’ new action film franchise which combines the talents of Joel Silver, Dark Castle Home Entertainment and Courtney Solomon’s After Dark Films for a series of high quality, high-octane action pictures. After Dark Action will showcase five original films featuring international stars such as Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Peter Weller, Jim Caviezel, Cung Le and Christian Slater. The five films include:

• Transit – Starring Jim Caviezel, James Frain, Elizabeth Rohm, Harold Perrineau and Sterling Knight; directed by Antonio Negret and written by Michael Gilvary.
• Dragon Eyes – Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Cung Le and Peter Weller; directed by John Hyams and written by Tim Tori.
• The Philly Kid – Starring Wes Chatham, Neal McDonough and Devon Sawa; directed by Jason Connery and written by Adam Mervis.
• Stash House - Starring Dolph Lundgren, Sean Faris, Brianna Evigan and Jon Huertas; directed by Eduardo Rodriguez and written by Gary Spinelli.
• El Gringo - Starring Christian Slater, Scott Adkins and Yvette Yates; directed by Eduardo Rodriguez and written by Jonathon W. Stokes.

For theaters, show times, and tickets, visit: After Dark Action

Piranha 3DD opens in theaters on June 1st, 2012.

Description: After the terror unleashed on Lake Victoria in Piranha 3d, the pre-historic school of blood thirsty piranhas are back. This time, no one is safe from the flesh eating fish as they sink their razor sharp teeth into the visitors of summer’s best attraction, The Big Wet Water Park. Christopher Lloyd (Back To The Future) reprises his role as the eccentric piranha expert with survivor Paul Scheer (The League) and a partially devoured Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction) back for more fish frenzy. David Hasselhoff trades in the sandy beaches of ‘Baywatch’ to be a celebrity lifeguard at the racy water park. Prepare for double the terror, double the action and double the Ds in this sequel also starring Gary Busey (Lethal Weapon), Katrina Bowden (30 Rock), Danielle Panabaker (The Crazies), Matt Bush (Adventureland), Chris Zylka (The Amazing Spider-Man) and David Koechner (Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy).

Here’s the trailer:

Author Solutions, Inc. (ASI), the world leader in indie book publishing, has announced it has hired Hollywood screenwriter Ben Ketai to adapt the self-published horror novella, Hush for the screen. The AuthorHouse novella is the second project Author Solutions has green-lit for development through its Fuse Frame production company.

Hush is about a group of broke college students who start a phony ghost-hunting business to make some extra cash, and find success scamming the elderly residents of their town. However, they fall into trouble when they’re hired to de-ghost an old orphanage that is genuinely haunted and still occupied by a decrepit headmistress with a disturbing past of her own.

Ben Ketai, the screenwriter attached to the project, got his start working under Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert at Ghost House Pictures, where he wrote, produced, and directed multiple horror-genre web series. He went on to co-write and direct the sequel to 30 Days of Night for Sony’s Stage 6. He is represented by APA and Circle of Confusion.

“When we discovered Hush we knew it had all the makings of a great low-budget genre film. The source material is genuinely scary, and Ben has a fantastic take on how to bring it to the screen,” said Marcus Chait, Director of Film & New Media at Author Solutions and the head of its Fuse Frame division.

Hush will be produced by Chait and Thruline Entertainment’s Danny Sherman.

Author Solutions, Inc. (ASI) is owned by Bertram Capital and is the world leader in indie book publishing. ASI’s leading self-publishing imprints—AuthorHouse, AuthorHouse UK, iUniverse, Palibrio, Trafford Publishing and Xlibris—have helped more than 140,000 authors self-publish, promote and bring to market more than 175,000 new titles. Through strategic alliances with leading trade publishers, ASI is making it possible to develop new literary talent efficiently and provide authors with a platform for bringing their books to market. Headquartered in Bloomington, Indiana, ASI’s global reach includes imprints developed specifically for authors in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

Mother’s Day
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Cast: Rebecca De Mornay, Jaime King, Shawn Ashmore
Review by Brian M. Sammons

This is NOT a remake of the 1980s sort of slasher of the same name, and I don’t care what it says. Yeah at the end credits of this movie it thanks Charles Kaufman, the writer and director of the original film, and the executive producer of this one. However this new Mother’s Day is a remake in name only, as other than a crazy momma, it has NOTHING to do with the original movie. Now, is that a bad thing? I mean, I don’t think anyone out there is going to say that the ’80s movie was great, or even all that good. So does that mean this new version must be better?

Well not necessarily, as one thing I’ve learned by watching the ton of remakes that filmmakers keep shoving down our throats is that no matter how silly, stupid, inept, or badly made the original was, it can always get worse. So what’s the case here? Is the 2010 Mother’s Day (yes, that’s when this movie was made, but it’s only coming out on disc now) an improvement over the ’80s original, or yet another remake best forgotten? Well make sure you call your momma and tell her you love her, it’s her day after all.

Director Darren Lynn Bousman, who made his name directing Saw 2, 3, and 4, seems to have decided to play it safe by not venturing too far out of his comfort zone. Yes, shades of torture porn can be seen in this story of three bad bank robbing brothers breaking into their old house after one of them is shot in their last heist. But unbeknownst to them, their momma got booted out of the house a few months back and instead they bust in on the new owners, the Sohapi family (ha, get it?) and their guests having a party. They take everyone hostage, make a handy doctor at the party work on their injured brother, and then call their momma for help.

Enter the hands down best thing about this movie: Rebecca De Mornay as the titular mother Koffin (ha, get it? GET IT, DAMN YOU, GET IT!). Rebecca is very good as the crazy lady in charge and steals the show in every scene she’s in. She’s a smart, scary lady who’s mad about her family and will do anything to get what she wants. Unfortunately De Mornay is the only good thing in this you’ve-seen-it-all-before flick. Momma and family torment the new homeowners in all sorts of ways while looking for some money that the bandit brothers supposedly mailed to their mother, but after she had lost the house.

Such “highlights” include attempted rape, boiling water poured into ears, hand bashing, and forcing various hostages to fight each other. Yawn. Oh sorry, I almost nodded off there. But seriously, I’ve seen a hundred home invasion films like this, and I found this one to be a tedious chore to sit through, even with Rebecca De Mornay knocking it out of the park with her acting. Maybe that’s partially my fault for having seen too many of these movies, but honestly I think it’s more the director and writer’s fault for happily treading the same well-worn trail and doing nothing, and I mean NOTHING, new with the premise. You notice I don’t blame the actors. While none match De Mornay’s chops, they do a capable job with what they were given to do. Too bad that what they were given was pretty damn bad.

The makers of Mother’s Day never met a suspense/thriller cliché that they didn’t like, and they do their very best to shoehorn in as many as they can into this movie. For example, does this movie have the good friends suddenly turning on each other? Yep. How about a cute, young, and sympathetic sister of the brutal Koffin family that tries to help the hostages out? You bet. What about a cop putting two and two together only to be completely ineffectual? Sure thing. Hey, how about the old chestnut where a girl gets mad at her boyfriend for not helping her when one of the bad guys gropes her, even though he had a gun in his face? Oh hell yes, that’s here too. I could go on dropping examples of such stuff we’ve all seen a thousand times, but now let’s move on to the second reason this movie was a dud: nonsensical stuff done only for the sake of the story.

This starts off right at the beginning when we see a shadowy mother Koffin (she’s shot in near total darkness so we can’t see the face of the actress standing in as a young De Mornay) going into a hospital to steal a baby. Yeah, she’s that kind of mommy. Anyway the vast amounts of stupid in this one scene alone had me rolling my eyes so much that I started to get dizzy. From the deserted hospital right out of Hallowen 2, to the inept security guard that allows momma Koffin to stroll right on by, to the same guard confronting the woman after she took a baby in a completely dark room, without ever turning on the lights or even pulling a flashlight. I have already mentioned the “oops, we didn’t know our own mother got kicked out of our house” set up that this film relies on, and I’ll skip over the “tornado proof windows” that only exist to make sure no one can get out once the hostages are locked in the basement, and I’ll get right to my favorite scene of silliness in this flick. At one point one of the bad brothers takes one of the female hostages out to an ATM to get some money. Two vapid, barely twenty-something-airheads come up behind them, also to use the ATM. The hostage tells the girls that the bad man has a gun, and then he has to make sure the two girls don’t get away to tell the police. So what does he do? If you said shoot them as they run away and then quickly make his getaway because he’s outside, in the middle of a street, next to an ATM that obviously sees a lot of traffic (as the two girls in question did show up within seconds of the killer and his hostage pulling up), then you’re wrong. No, instead he makes both girls get on their knees right there in the parking lot, throws a knife down between them, and tells them that whoever kills the other one can get to live. He then wastes a bunch of time goading them into doing it, you know; time that could be used for getting away. All this in order to prove to his hostage that it’s a dog eat dog world and blah blah blah, mwah hah hah, ain’t I so evil? Really, that bit wasn’t suspenseful or edgy or daring or brutal or thrilling or believable or anything other than mind numbingly stupid. Sadly, this movie is full of scenes like that.

As meh as this movie is, the Blu-ray from Anchor Bay isn’t much better. Sure it looks good in HD, but that’s par for the course for modern made movies released on Blu-ray days. It’s the special features, or rather the lack of them, that I’m talking about. There’s an audio commentary track with director Darren Lynn Bousman and actor Shawn Ashmore, who plays one of the bank robbing boys, and … well that’s it. That’s all you get here. What’s funny is that during the commentary, director Bousman seems to go out of his way to mention a bunch of deleted scenes, but not a one of them could be added to this rather barren Blu-ray? Uhm, why? Oh, this is a BD and DVD comb pack, if that matters to anyone out there.

Mother’s Day is not a bad movie it’s just a very derivative flick. If you’ve seen any home invasion movie or just any flick where bad people do bad things to other people, then you’ve all but seen this movie. Rebecca De Mornay is pretty darn good in it, so fans of her may want to check it out. For everone else, give it a pass.

42nd Street Forever
Review by Brian M. Sammons

You’ll notice the review for this new Blu-ray from Synapse Films doesn’t have the usual listings for director and cast. That’s because 42nd Street Forever is a collection of trailers for the grindhouse classics that filled the dirty little theaters that once upon a time (namely the ’70s and early ’80s) made New York’s 42nd Street so notorious and infamous. Ok, they’re not the pornos that aired in the many porn theaters that shared the same street, but to Ma and Pa Middle America, they were almost on the same level.

And yes, you read that right; this entire Blu-ray is nothing but a collection of trailers. Now normally that sounds about as fun as watching a collection of end credit sequences, but these slices of schlocky sinful cinema were a real treat. There’s also a ton of them, 89 to be exact, and with a total run time of over three and a half hours. They also run the glorious gambit of all things exploitation. Blaxploitation, rape/revenge movies, women in prison, naughty school girl movies, skin flicks of all sorts, cheesy sci-fi/fantasy films, schlocky horror movies, surprisingly good horror movies (if you, like me, love cheesy ’70s and ’80s horror flicks), Mondo Cane rip offs, Japanese monster movies, biker flicks, samurai movies, goofy sex comedies, Kung Fu, Eurosleaze, and more.

These are the authentic grindhouse trailers, and that’s both good and bad. It’s good because they’re a little longer than modern trailers. They’re almost like mini movies in and of themselves. They’re also unedited, so since they were promoting movies that sold gore, nudity, and vulgarities of all sorts, the trailers are also loaded with profanity, blood, and naughty nudity. For a collection extoling the ‘virtues’ of the bygone 42ND Street era, I would not want it any other way.

However the (somewhat) bad side to these authentic trailers is that they are grainy, scratched up, blurry, and look like they’re being projected onto some grimy little screen in Times Square during the ’70s. Again, for a celebration of grindhouse flicks, I would not want it any other way. That said, there is no reason these should have been put on Blu-ray. High-def, these trailers are not. The only reason I can think of for this release being Blu-ray only is the storage capacity. Now true aficionados of exploitation flicks would expect and want these trailers to look exactly like they do here. Younger videophiles out there may be disappointed in the picture quality found here, especially considering the usual Blu-ray standard, thus the reason I felt the need to point it out here.

As far as special features, there’s an extensive audio commentary that runs the full three and a half hours. Done by three guys, the only one I recognize was Michael Gingold from Fangoria magazine, this trio had a wealth of information to impart about all of the trailers shown here. You can really tell that they’re huge fans of the grindhouse and it is well worth giving this Blu-ray a second viewing to hear what they had to say about all of the flicks found here.

42nd Street Forever is not a movie for everyone, but that’s ok. Usually things made for ‘everyone’ tend to be mediocre pap that ends up pleasing no one. So if you’re a fan of the sleazy, the weird, the taboo, and the downright strange (in short exploitation and grindhouse flicks) then you’ll love this collection. Note: Synapse Films has a long running, multivolume DVD series called 42nd Street Forever which, like this Blu-ray, are nothing but collections of trailers. So if you already got those DVDs then you do not need this new BD. Consider this disc a Best Of collection. However if you have yet to take a naughty, nostalgic trip down 42nd Street, then this is a great way to do it. Consider it highly recommended for those with deviant tastes.

Based on true events, The Possession hits theaters August 31st, 2012

Description: Based on true events, Possession tells the story of the Brenek family: father Clyde, mother Stephanie, and daughter Em. When Em purchases an ancient box at a nearby yard sale, she becomes obsessed with her new artifact, and with good reason – lurking inside is a dibbuk, a dislocated spirit that inhabits and ultimately devours its human host.

You can keep up with this movie by visiting their Facebook page here: The Possession