by admin | Oct 3, 2015 | Bad Horror Movies, Lists, Movies, Reviews |
The Houses October Built
The House that October Built – “Five friends hit the road to find the best gimmicky Halloween haunted house, but soon a terrifyingly real evil begins to hound their steps.” – Netflix
I wanted to like The Houses October Built. I’ve wanted to watch it for a while because it sounded interesting, then I realized it was yet another found footage movie and I lost interest for months. Finally, tonight I was ready to give it a chance. It’s the first week of October after all and The Houses October Built sounded like a great movie to start of my annual October horror movie, nightly marathon. So with an open mind I logged into my Netflix account and started the show.
It didn’t take long before The Houses October Built began to bore me. The first few minutes we’re hit with some stats about haunted houses and so on. Those stats are mixed in with news footage and interviews with people involved in the haunted house industry. It was interesting and then we’re informed about the the “footage” we’re about see. Still interested. It cuts to a person being thrown into a trunk and it goes down hill from there.
We have to watch this person in the trunk fall in and out of consciousness for maybe a minute and it’s starting to get boring because nothing is happening. Then it does the fade to black kinda thing and I already what’s about to happen. A second later, text fades in with “6 Days Earlier.” Great! I hate that! It’s stupid. Now, I already know this person is going to end up in the trunk. Knowing this is going to happen to this specific person ruins it. It’s not like we didn’t know who the person was. We already pretty much know no one survives or it wouldn’t be a found footage movie. Now, I already know it’s just a matter of time before this person ends up bloody in someone’s trunk. I’m bored and frustrated.
I felt her pain. This is pretty much how I looked watching the movie.
The characters aren’t really interesting, they don’t seem like bad people but none of them were really interesting. And, it’s not too long before some of the characters take part in some douchebaggery. One particularly douchy moment, a couple of the people, we’re supposed to care about, climb up on a roof that over looks the haunted house attraction they’re at. One of them shouts some shit at the crowd with a bullhorn. Were did they get a bullhorn anyways? The movie was full of dumb teen humor. I could tolerate that if there was a teen in the cast. But, no. The cast is all people in their mid to late 20’s if not early 30’s.
There was nothing scary about the movie. At times it was so dark you couldn’t even see anything. That’s almost never scary, it’s just frustrating to watch. Every time you think the movie is finally going to get interesting. It doesn’t. False alarm, just them getting scared at a regular haunted house attraction. And when shit finally starts to happen. The situation is creepy enough that any sane person would have said, “Fuck that!” and gotten the hell out of there.
She was creepy, not gonna lie. She should have been the story.
There were some good things in this bad horror movie. The Houses October Built has some creepy moments but they don’t go anywhere. You know it’s building to something else later in the film and everyone can see except for the idiot characters in the film. There was a lot of creepy looking characters at some of the haunted houses they visited. There was a girl, with a doll face. Fucking creepy! That should have been what the movie was about.
Last but not least, the acting. I thought it was pretty good. Some of the travel scenes seemed a little forced and fake but… it should seem that way a little. This is supposed to be real footage and sometimes moments in life are like that. So I can’t fault for them it. Oh and boobies, there were boobies in it. Not the boobies I wanted to see (I’m talking to you Brandy Schaefer) but there was the required boobies one expects from this type of horror movie.
In conclusion, I’d give it two out of four stars. If you’re easily scared by things jumping out at you. This might make you jump a little. And, if that’s all you’re looking for, check this movie out then. But, if you’re looking for a well thought out story, any depth of character or even any gore, you’re not going to find in “The Houses October Built.”
Cast of Characters:
Brandy Schaefer as Brandy
Zack Andrews as Zack
Bobby Roe as Bobby
Mikey Roe as Mikey
Jeff Larson as Jeff
by admin | Dec 16, 2014 | Bad Horror Movies, Movies, Reviews |
Shriek of the Sasquatch 2011…
It’s 1979 and Julie (Scarlet Salem, “Strip Club Slasher”) and Nick (Donny Versiga) are on a road trip which puts them unwittingly on a collision course with Bigfoot. Will either of them survive to learn the secret of the Sasquatch? Pseudo-retro drive-in fun, complete with film damage. Filmed in 2010.
– Written by Steve Sessions (Director)
I watched two movies last night instead of Monday Night Football. First, was The Pact and then sadly it was this movie. Shriek of the Sasquatch! tries to be a ’70’s campy type movie. There’s just so much wrong with this movie. Some of the acting is just horrible. I don’t know if that was intentional or not. At one point there’s a phone conversation between a deputy and the coroner. There are times when they coroner is just reading his lines off the paper he’s holding that is supposed to be the autopsy report. It’s supposed to be 1979 and yet there’s scenes that suggest it’s at least the early 80’s.
The isn’t campy fun but rather it’s tedious to watch. The story is hard to follow because it’s hard to tell who the main characters are. We meet characters and they either die because our Sasquatch likes to rip off heads. Seriously, heads are flying everywhere. That sounds much more fun than it really is, trust me. Or, we meet characters and then never meet them again. For example for some reason a teenager and a slightly older lady are hanging out by a tree off the side of the road. Like this is something people would do in the 70’s? The scene goes on for a few painfully long minutes until the teen boy walks for what seems like a mile to throw away his “soda can” and then sees something in a field off in the distance. Guess, what? It’s a head in a helmet! I am shocked! All that just to introduce another beheading by our Sasquatch? Really?
And, let’s talk about our Sasquatch. It’s a dude in baggy hairy suit and a rubber mask that jiggles when he moves. The guy in the Sasquatch suit doesn’t even attempt to change his walk. You know that traditional Bigfoot walk we see in every blurry video and movie? Well, not this Sasquatch. This Sasquatch walks exactly like a normal dude.
Not even Scarlet Salem’s extreme cuteness can save this movie.
And, as I mentioned, there’s the time frame. It’s supposed to be 1979. In once scene we have President Carter talking to the people. So that’s right. But, then in another scene we have the two random people talking by the tree I mentioned. Well, for a moment they are talking about the movie Jaws. The older female suggests that it was years ago when Jaws was re-released. When it was in fact ’78, when it got re-released right before Jaws II came out. In another scene, another random character is reading a magazine, it’s got a picture from the film Scanners of Louis Del Grande character’s head exploding. Scanners didn’t come out until 1981.
How do I know all of that? Because I was 5 when Jaws came out and living in Okinawa. My mom said I was too young to see the movie. I made her promise that if the movie ever came out again that I could go see it. 3 years later we’re back in the states and guess what, Jaws gets re-released and I get to see it! By the time Scanners came out, I was a horror movie fan. Every kid my was age talking about that head exploding in Scanners. It was just about the coolest thing we had ever scene in our young lives except for about every single death in Friday the 13th.
So, I get what this film is trying to do. But, it got the time frame wrong, the acting wasn’t all that great either. Though I don’t it was supposed to be bad on purpose. If that was the case, than the acting was actually really good. But, the movie just dragged, it didn’t come off as campy or fun, it just came off as really boring.
The good things about this movie. The boobs in the opening scene and the tiny, tiny boobies in the van scene because in my opinion, there is no such thing as bad boobies or even fake boobies. If you can touch them, their not fake. Then there’s what they tried to do with the ending of the film. It was almost good. It made me smile even. It wasn’t worth the boredom of the first 89 minutes but at least it was something. Oh! And, I like the movie poster, well done. However, the movie doesn’t live up to the poster.
If you want an example of how to make an homage film to a past era? Take a look at the movie Alien Trespass with Eric Eric McCormack. It’s like watching a 50’s sci-fi movie in vivid living color!
Shriek of the Sasquatch! Yet another movie, I wanted to like but it was just another bad horror movie.
Cast of Characters:
Sarah French … Julie (as Scarlet Salem)
Donny Versiga … Nick
Todd Cockroft … Deputy Hobbs
If the cast of Finding Bigfoot found this guy, they’d give him back.
