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themightymartin
Reviews
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Belly Laughs and Body Bags
WARNING: This review will probably contain spoilers, I haven't decided yet.
Okay, let me first start off by clearing up a common misconception. Shaun of the Dead is NOT a direct spoof of Dawn of the Dead, instead it is a spoof of zombie movies in general.
Oh, and it's probably the funniest movie so far this year, and one of the goriest.
In case you haven't read any of the fifty-or-so other comments about the film on this site, here's the plot:
Shaun is living in a run-down flat with an ex-college pal and his slobbish best friend. He has a mundane job and a generally boring life. His idea of a romantic night out involves going down the local pub, The Winchester, with his girlfriend Liz and mates. Naturally, Liz disagrees with this and dumps him. Shaun resolves to get her back and prove how much he loves her, but there is a slight complication in that the entire city of London seems to have suddenly been overrun by the walking dead.
Although it sounds more than a little mushy there is no doubt that this is a horror film. Violent, gory and briefly genuinely scary! But first and foremost it is a comedy. Genre fans will have a field day spotting all the references to classic zombie films (Shaun's mum is called Barbera, and they phone her to tell her they're coming to get her ;-)).
Overall I'd say that Shaun is definitely the funnest film I have seen for quite a while, and that can't be a bad thing.
Return to Oz (1985)
The dark side of the rainbow
I saw for the first time when I was about 8 years old but didn't remember much about it. The BBC showed it just before christmas and as I watched all my memories came flooding back.
Return to Oz was the first horror film I ever saw. That's right... HORROR film. This film is so damn dark and, at times, almost unbearably scary!
Anyone expecting Judy Garland to come dancing across the screenwith Toto at her heel is in for a real shock with Return to Oz. Munchkins, living trees and Emerald City folk have been replaced with men made out of stone (Nomes), a witch who can swap heads (Mombi) and freakish things with wheels for hands and feet (Wheelers).
As you can tell, Oz has changed. The Nome King has conquered the kingdom and imprisioned the Scarecrow King and, you've guessed it, it's up to Dorothy to save the day.
Many of the characters are similar to the characters in the original film and book. There's Bulina the talking hen (toto), Jack Pumpkinhead (The Scarecrow), Tik Tok (The Tin Woodsman) and some sort of Mooses head attached to a sofa(The Cowardly Lion, and you really have to see the film to understand).
Overall, Return to Oz is a fantastic film. It pretends to be a kids film but I wouldn't reccomend it to anyone under the age of 10. In fact there are many scenes which I'm suprised got past the censors at all. Watch it to find out what I'm talking about.
Knightmare (1987)
Top 10 most memorable Knightmare rooms
10. The Antechamber. This is the room where Treguard, his assistant and the advisers would spend the entire quest, watching over the dungeoneer.
9. Level 1 Clue Room. Consisted of a table with several objects on it, of which the dungeoneer could only take a maximum of 2, and usually a wall monster who would ask the dungeoneer a question or two before they were allowed to take any objects.
8. The Room of Choice. Usually the first room in the dungeon. A rotating disc with four doors with logos above them. Adventurers would have to choose which quest to go for out of the crown, the goblet, the shield and the sword.
7. Smirkenorff's flight. Not really a room as such, but as the series went on and the adventure branched out beyond the confines of the dungeon a new method of travelling between levels 1 and 2 was required (in earlier series this involved the dungeoneer climbing into a well). Smirkenorff was a large friendly dragon who would fly dungeoneers between the two levels, for a small fee.
6. The Catacombite room. A large chamber containing a gigantic monster. The Catacombite was a large skull with two massive legs made of bone. Id the dungeoneer came into contact with this terrifying (well, terrifying when you're seven years old) monster it would mean instant death.
5. Merlin's Chamber. Basically exactly how it sounds. A large-ish room with walls lined with books and a chair in the middle. Adventurers would have to work out how to summon Merlin, who would then give them magic in return for them answering a few riddles.
4. The Cogs of Doom. Timing was of major importance when crossing the cogs of doom, as the path only stayed intact for a few seconds. Advisors would have to guide the dungeoneer across two giant cogs without him/her falling into the pit below.
3. The Beast's Stomach. Perhaps the most disgusting room. Sometimes a dungeoneer would somehow end up swallowed by a snake or another monster and not die. Instead they would come here. There is only one way out of this place (well, two ways I suppose, but we won't go into that) and the adventurers would have to work out how to give the monster an "upset stomach". This usually involved throwing salt down or rubbing the stomach lining with soap.
2. Causeways. There were hexagonal blocks reaching across a large chasm. The blocks would have symbols or numbers on them to tell the adventurers which blocks were safe to step on and which would send them plummeting downwards into oblivion. Usually the dungeoneer would have been told the proper combination earlier, in exchange for giving a character an object, answering a riddle or through the use of a spyglass. The combinations often ranged from the relatively easy (earth, fire, wind, water) to the insanely hard (removing a piece of a shape in each tile to work out which way it was pointing). Needless to say, many dungeoneers failed thanks to these devilish rooms.
1. The Corridoor of Blades. Imagine this: You're standing on a conveyor belt heading down a narrow corridoor. Suddenly, a large circular buzzsaw sticks out of the wall to your left. You narrowly miss it by jumping out the way, then find you have to dive underneath another one that has suddenly appeared on the right. Now imagine you're doing this blindfolded and are relying on three panicky fools to warn you when and where the blades are coming, and you have The Corridoor of Blades.
In my opinion these are the most memorable rooms in the history of Knightmare. You may disagree, if so then why don't you post yours up here as well?
Army of Darkness (1992)
Only a little disappointing
You've gotta hand it to Sam, he certainly knows how to make us laugh.
Ditching much of the horror and goriness of the previous two films for sheer childish hilarity, he takes us on a rollercoaster ride of a movie that only fails in a couple of places.
I like the idea of having an antihero rather than the usual Mr. Goody Goody. Poor old Ash has been stuck in a cabin with a bunch of murderous deadites for two nights and has now been catapulted back in time to the year 1300ad. To put it bluntly, he's having a bad week. So it's understandable that he's such an a**hole in this film, but the audience stays with him anyway because they realise they're stuck with him for the rest of the film.
Now the down points:
Although the film has some really funny moments not all the humour works all of the time. Also the special effects aren't exactly brilliant (although the stop-motion skeletons were really well done). At the beginning of the film Ash falls out of the sky and lands in the middle of a desert. You know... that really famous desert that was around in 14th century England.
On the whole. Army of Darkness is a very enjoyable movie, as long as you take it at face value and don't read too much into it.
Bloody Murder (2000)
YYou will be dumber for watching this film
I have seen a lot of films in a lot of genres over the years, but none of them comes close to Bloody Murder. This film will always have a special place in my heart... ...as the most terrifyingly BAD film I've ever seen!!!
From the very beginning of the film to the very end (I still don't know how I lasted that long) three words kept on running through my mind nonstop. Straight. To. Video.
The Plot: Characters we don't care about holiday in a camp we couldn't give a f**k about and are stalked and killed by a maniac who could be any one of them. They spend the movie trying to figure out who it is and never seem to realise that we don't actually care we just hope they all die and never do another movie again. This leads up to a twist ending that a blindfolded blind deaf mute who is insensitive to touch and smell could've noticed if it was on mars and he was standing in the middle of America.
The death scenes are agonisingly dull, the dialogue is so wooden it makes Plan 9 From Outer Space look like Shakespeare and the whole thing is so bad it's beyond the "so bad it's good" phase and almost unwatchable. I feel sorry for the cast, who have killed off their careers before they even started.
Overall, watching this film should be against the conditions of the Geneve Convention.
BASEketball (1998)
One of the grossest, wildest and funniest movies I've ever seen
I picked this up on video for £5 after seeing it in a bargain bin. I was expecting some sort of badly made low budget piece of crap. Boy was I wrong!
I really can't begin to tell you how excellent this film is. Sure it's sick sometimes (such as a scene where Coop drinks "fat liposuctioned out of Marlon Brando's ass") and definitely weird, but the director throws about 1,000,000 jokes a minute at the audience so no matter what your sense of humour is like some of them (or indeed ALL of them) are bound to stick.
I can't really comment on plot, characterisation or anything like that, as every single time I watch this movie I'm too busy laughing to pay attention.
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Almost Flawless
This is one of my all time favourite films. Mel Brooks broke almost every taboo going at the time, and in this day of political correctness it seems all the more funny and refreshing. The only complaint I have is the same as most others: The ending was way too over the top. Other than that, this is among the best films of all time, and actually features in the top 100 films of all time.