Day of the Dead (1985)

It seems that out of all the Hollywood trends, the one that stands out the most is the trilogy. A story told across three movies. Every movie nowadays has to be part of a trilogy. Everything from to The Godfather to American Pie have been made into trilogies, and there's even been two Star Wars trilogies. But one trilogy in particular doesn't get the attention it deserves. Hell, most people don't even know that it is a trilogy. I'm talking about George Romero's "Dead Trilogy." The first two installments (Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead) are both hailed as horror masterpieces, but the third doesn't get as much respect. The black sheep of the series, Day of the Dead, isn't the classic that the others were, but it should be. Let's get to the review, and maybe I can explain why…

Our story begins with a group of people in a helicopter flying over a desolate Florida town, and we're introduced to four of our main characters: Sarah (Lori Cardille), John (Terry Alexander), McDermott (Jarlath Conroy), and Miguel (Antonè DiLeo). The helicopter sets down so the group can search for any sign life. Humans are the minority now, as the zombie plague seen in the prior two movies has become so bad that one character theorizes that the zombies outnumber the normal humans 400,000 to one. Unable to find any survivors, the group returns to their safe haven, a deep underground military bunker and missile silo.

Cooped up in the bunker for months, the sanity of even the strongest group members has begun to fade, with Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato) becoming the biggest victim of cabin fever. The self-appointed leader of the soldiers in the bunker, Rhodes has become a hot-tempered, over-zealous dictator, obsessed with maintaining his power over the others. His strength among the soldiers is contrasted with Sarah's group of scientists, led by the eccentric Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty), whom the soldiers call "Dr. Frankenstein" behind his back. Logan's madness is not as obvious and volatile as Rhodes's; he's obsessed with the dead and the possibility of controlling them.

Logan's guinea pig (Howard Sherman), nicknamed Bub, is slowly re-learning the simplicities of human life in a childlike fashion. Using things like shaving, brushing one's teeth, operating a Walkman, and reading a copy of Stephen King's Salem's Lot, Logan attempts to see how much the zombies are cognizant of, and his research gives promise in the thought that one day the humans may be able to domesticate zombies, and suppress their desires to feed.

Unfortunately for Logan, he's not progressing quickly enough for Rhodes, who demands changes be made while threatening to leave the scientists stranded. As they try to round up more zombies to study, problems ensue and tensions rise. Rhodes and the soldiers revolt against the scientists, while a near-dead Miguel (who'd suffered a nasty bite on the arm while wrangling some zombies for research) unleashes legions of zombies on the bunker as he dies. Will the two groups be wiped out, or will humans prevail again?

Day of the Dead was the little horror movie that was never given an ice cube's chance in Hell. From budget disputes that forced drastic script rewrites, to low box office receipts, to bad critical reviews (Leonard Maltin calls it "the least of the trilogy"), it's been building a loyal fanbase during its two decades on home video. It's a shame that in a year that produced such well-received cult classics like The Return of the Living Dead, Fright Night, and Re-Animator, Day of the Dead wasn't as successful as the others. Perhaps it's biggest knock against Day of the Dead is that you really don't want to cheer any of the characters, but that doesn't stop movies like Taxi Driver and The Rules of Attraction from being really great movies. The characters here are all self-centered jerks, but can you blame them? They've been in a cave with a bunch of skin-eating dead people for months, maybe years. If you were in that situation, you'd probably be a little crabby too.

What separates Romero's zombie movies from the rest is his relevant social commentaries. Day of the Dead offers two distinct groups, science and the military, and puts them up against each other. As society crumbles around them, they too crumble as the movie progresses. As interesting as this is, the best parts of the movie often revolve around Bub. You'd figure that if you're gonna live around something for an extended period of time, you're gonna study it, and Dr. Logan does just that with Bub and various other zombies. With all of the humans so unappealing, Bub is the most appealing of all. Howard Sherman's performance as Bub is extremely effective, and he doesn't even have any lines. All his acting is done through facial expressions and movements, but he manages to convey emotions in an emotionless mind.

Sherman isn't alone though, as Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joe Pilato, and the late Richard Liberty also give stellar performances. Cardille plays Sarah as a stone-faced, tough woman that the horror genre desperately needed. Most horror movies have simpering, whiny heroines that don't do anything until they absolutely have to, but Sarah takes charge and is very vocal about how things go. Alexander was also good, playing the third strong black man in the Dead Trilogy. Like I said in my Dawn of the Dead review, I think it's great that Romero gave prominent roles to black people in such landmark movies. You don't see that too often. The character of John is a much-welcomed character, one who would likes to wax intellectual about the future of humanity and the bigger reasons for the zombie plague.

Pilato's over-the-top acting and his pretentious, overbearing monologues are some of the most memorable parts in the movie, and Liberty gives Dr. Logan a quirky sense of imagination regarding all of his studies. The way he regards Bub is both sweet and patronizing. Actually, the best way Dr. Logan can be described is as demented version of Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown from Back to the Future. The performances of Pilato and Liberty were so great, their characters are two of my favorite movie characters of all time. The ensemble cast is definitely up to par with the other two parts of the Dead Trilogy.

Two other things stand out in the movie. One is where the movie takes place. Filmed outside of Pittsburgh at a storage facility that was once a limestone mine, the claustrophobic atmosphere and the stark, muted colors add a bleaker feel to the movie. Day of the Dead's other stand out is the awesome effects by legendary makeup designer Tom Savini. His past work in movies like Friday the 13th, The Burning, and Dawn of the Dead are nothing compared to what he does here. While the zombies themselves look like crap (thanks to the same blue-grey greasepaint as seen in Dawn of the Dead), the sheer viciousness and graphic detail are astounding, as victims are literally torn to pieces on screen. Rivaled only by Rob Bottin's work on John Carpenter's The Thing, Savini's effects here are jaw-dropping, and Day of the Dead serves as the trilogy's high point when it comes to disgusting gore.

The common question with an extended movie series is this: "Which one is the best?" Which of the four is the movie that can stand head and shoulders above the others to be the flag bearer of the series? Day of the Dead isn't it. Personally, I'd pick Night of the Living Dead, but Day of the Dead is a very well done movie. And to be honest, it's one of my favorite movies. The three installments of the Dead Trilogy are all fine as they are, and I really can't compare them to each other fairly. I could always toss out more compliments, but I don't think I should have to. Four stars.

Final Rating: ****

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

When George Romero's nihilistic zombie film Night of the Living Dead was released in 1968, it became an instant cult classic, and could be credited for creating the late-night B-movie Creature Feature shows. So of course, it only made sense to do a sequel, and a sequel is what we got in Romero's 1978 movie Dawn of the Dead. The second chapter of Romero's famed "Dead Trilogy," Dawn of the Dead has become just as legendary and beloved as its predecessor in the three decades since its first release, often hailed by many critics as the definitive zombie movie. But I'm here to ask, is it worthy of its reputation?

Apparently set a few days after Night of the Living Dead, the world is starting to go to hell. Martial law has been declared in most major American cities. Amidst reports that the dead are returning from the grave and attacking the living, the crew at Philadelphia TV station WGON has no idea how long they'll be able to stay on the air, if at all. A man who I can only assume is some kind of scientist or city official argues with a news anchorman, claiming his warnings about the zombie attacks have gone unnoticed. Station manager Francine (Gaylen Ross) struggles with other crew members as she tries to relay information about rescue stations to viewers, but she's soon given an offer that strikes her interest. Her boyfriend Steve (David Emge), WGON's traffic reporter, asks her to meet him on the roof of the building later in the evening, so they can both escape in the station's traffic helicopter.

Meanwhile, in a poor section of town, a SWAT team surrounds a housing project that's been taken over by a gang of thugs. After a violent shootout, the team enters the building. Unfortunately, Wooley (Jim Baffico), the trigger-happy and racist leader of the team, goes haywire and starts firing at every minority he sees. One of his men shoots him down, but not before he can kick in the door of one of the apartments, which is littered with human body parts. Turns out the gang isn't the only thing the SWAT team has to worry about, as the building is also populated by a huge group of zombies that start taking everyone out

As the zombies start to wreak havoc, Roger (Scott H. Reiniger), one of the SWAT team members, retreats to the basement for a reprieve. Peter (Ken Foree), another SWAT team member, finds him, and Roger invites Peter to join him, Steve, and Francine on the helicopter. After taking out a group of zombies a priest had just given last rites to, they meet up with Steve and Francine at a police station before taking off into the night.

Long story short, the group ends up at a huge shopping mall. The mall is stocked with everything from food to weapons, but it's too bad that the place is chock full of zombies too. They block the doors with a bunch of 18-wheelers they found in the parking lot, then kill all the zombies inside and get the place all to themselves.

As the film progresses, we watch as the characters interact with each other and their surroundings. They start out enjoying life in the mall. They try out fancy clothes, help themselves to all the food and candy they can stomach, go wild at the arcade, and even break into a bank branch inside the mall and take huge stacks of money while posing for the security cameras. However, Roger soon succumbs to the zombie bites inflicted while was blocking the doors, and the three remaining survivors begin to grow weary of their listless existence inside the mall. Before cabin fever can set in, they're discovered by a huge gang of bikers (led by makeup wizard Tom Savini). The bikers, followed by a mob of zombies, storm into the mall, and the dull lives of our protagonists get a whole lot more interesting.

Dawn of the Dead is one of those movies that I didn't particularly care for when I saw it for the first time. My thoughts were, "All that hype for this? What a load of crap." But after giving it a second chance, it started to grow on me, and I realized my initial judgment of the movie was unfair. It's actually not that bad. It's not the super-awesome, "run over your grandma to see it" kind of movie that its reputation would have you believe, but still good.

All of the characters are believable, playing well off each other. I really enjoyed Ken Foree and Scott Reiniger as the two SWAT team members. It was a refreshing change to see characters in a horror movie that could handle themselves and kick butt. Gaylen Ross and David Emge were also good, but I just didn't find them as likeable as the other two. Your mileage may vary however. I also want to applaud George Romero for doing as he did in Night of the Living Dead, and casting a black man to be a strong lead character. That's another uncommon thing in the genre: a black person that's more than just another victim. Romero's direction is also superb. He makes things tense and uneasy with the weird, tilted camera angles.

On the makeup and effects front, I felt there was a lot to be desired. Sure, some of the effects used to dispatch some of the zombies are cool, but the zombies themselves look like crap. If you haven't seen the movie, just take blue-grey greasepaint and smear it all over your face. That's what they look like. Tom Savini might be a makeup master, but he could have done a lot better here. Meanwhile, the score (composed by legendary Italian horror director Dario Argento and European prog-rock group Goblin) is also give or take. Throughout most of the movie, it's really good, but other times, I wanted to stab myself in the ears. However, I think that was supposed to be the point. I'm sure being forced to listen to crappy mall musak from the 70s would have bugged the hell out of our four heroes too.

The mall setting was very effective, in my opinion. If you had open access to everything inside a mall, you'd probably do everything imaginable, like the characters do. But after living in the mall for months and months, things would get boring. So boring, you'd just wanna scream. That's what happens to our protagonists. Cabin fever starts to set in, and their paradise becomes their prison. The zombies that crowd the mall's doors every morning also serve as a kind of social commentary. Even in death, the zombies feel the need to shop because it's just something they mindlessly do.

Despite my complaints, I liked Dawn of the Dead. I think its reputation has been overblown somewhat over the last 25 years, but it's still a fine zombie movie. Sure, it could have been better in some places, but it could have been a lot worse. The "zombie pie fight" scene and the bikers were freaking cool, I will admit. All things considered, I'll give Dawn of the Dead three stars. Not exactly the epic that I was expecting, but still a good movie.

Final Rating: ***

Chasing Amy (1997)

Most romantic comedies seem to follow the same formula. Someone with a secret falls for somebody else and they have a relationship, but when the secret is revealed, the fit hits the shan and the couple has a falling out before making up by the end of the movie. But when Kevin Smith made his third movie, he took that formula and turned its on his ear, resulting in Chasing Amy.

Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck) and Banky Edwards (Jason Lee) are two comic book artists slowly gaining fame from their Jay and Silent Bob-inspired comic "Bluntman and Chronic." When the two attend a comic book convention in New York, their friend Hooper (Dwight Ewell) introduces them to his friend Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams). Holden is immediately smitten, and he and Alyssa soon form a close friendship.

After a while, Holden develops a crush on his new friend, but he soon finds out Alyssa's secret. It turns out that he's fallen in love with a lesbian with a salacious sexual history. Go figure. Confronted by his feelings for Alyssa and the confusion caused by them, Banky's jealousy and homophobia (which may or may not be a cover for his own closeted sexuality), and his own self-doubts, Holden's life has just got turned upside down and he doesn't know how to fix it.

Chasing Amy is arguably the best movie Kevin Smith's ever made, and it's definitely my favorite. It has more real emotion than most comedies I've seen, probably due to both the extremely talented cast (as with Mallrats, many scenes here are stolen by Jason Lee) and Smith's semi-autobiographical script. The main cast have a great chemistry together, and they all try their best to make the movie seem real. Each of them can be easily identified with, and they're all likable as well. Affleck is believable as the lovelorn cartoonist, while Lee and Adams are absolutely perfect as Holden's loud-mouth sidekick and love interest, respectively.

Dwight Ewell is great as Hooper, the militant black man by day/gay bartender by night, and the brief one-scene appearance of Jay and Silent Bob (played for the third time by Jason Mewes and Smith himself) is excellent, making Jay and Bob more than just a brash drug dealer and his silent comrade. They're helped by Smith's brilliant screenplay, which works in racism, the Star Wars movies, and the differences between "inking" and "tracing" in the comic book industry, but still speaks with a lot of heart and feeling while managing to be hilarious at the same time. His characters are complicated, and each of them has their own thing going on.

Overall, there's nothing else I can say about Chasing Amy, except that it should be seen by everyone that thinks they have love figured out. With a great script, great acting, and jokes abounding, I'll give Chasing Amy five stars. It doesn't deserve any lower than that.

Final Rating: *****

Mallrats (1995)

Okay, pop quiz: You've just directed a critically acclaimed, low-budget independent movie about a bunch of slackers that hang out at a convenience store. You want to go ahead and start work on another movie. What do you do? If you said, "I'd make a movie about a bunch of slackers that hang out at a mall," a winner is you! That's exactly what Kevin Smith did following the success of Clerks. Let's get to the review...

When slacker twenty-something T.S. Quint (Jeremy London) is dumped by his girlfriend Brandi (Claire Forlani), he turns to the only person he can for help: fellow slacker Brodie Bruce (Jason Lee). Having been dumped by his girlfriend Rene (Shannon Doherty) earlier in the morning, Brodie can empathize with his friend's plight. He suggests that they can deal with their loss by spending a day at the local mall.

Along the way, they encounter an odd cast of characters, including Willam (Ethan Suplee), a dim-witted guy obsessed with a Magic Eye picture; Gwen (Joey Lauren Adams), one of T.S.'s ex-girlfriends; Tricia (Renée Humphrey), a 15-year-old girl writing a book on her extensive sexual experiences; a topless fortune teller from the nearby flea market (Prescilla Barnes), and bad boys Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith). Eventually, T.S. and Brodie decide to win back their significant others while embarrassing their respective enemies, Brandi's father (Michael Rooker) and a fashion store clerk (Ben Affleck).

Sure, critics and theatrical audiences didn't care much for Mallrats, but that doesn't make it a bad movie. Actually, Mallrats is pretty funny if you give it a chance. While it may not have the same feel as Clerks, it still has the same wit and charm. Smith's knack for writing humorous and intelligent dialogue is once again apparent. With the larger cast, the comedy more fast paced, and at times is almost funnier than Clerks. Once again, the cast is extremely talented, holding the viewer even during what would seem like the most boring stretches of dialogue. Jason Lee is the best example of that, stealing every scene he's in. All of the scenes featuring Jay and Silent Bob are also really fun. Even if they go from drug dealers in Clerks to a simply mischievous duo in Mallrats, they still make a fun on-screen team.

It's sad that a movie as fun and entertaining as Mallrats is more cult classic than mainstream hit. The black sheep of the Askewniverse movies, it certainly fits the "teen sex comedy" mold of movies like Porky's (oddly enough, the producers called Mallrats "a smart Porky's") and the American Pie trilogy, yet can stand alone without being compared to them. Overall, despite a few times where it just tries too hard to be funny and falls flat, I'll give Mallrats three and a half stars. It's not quite up to Clerks material, but it's still great and still funny, no matter what any critic tells you. Check it out.

Final Rating: ***½

Clerks (1994)

Perhaps one of the most thankless jobs out there is that of a convenience store clerk. The pay is lousy, the customers can often be uncooperative, and the work itself is generally mind-numbing. Clerks the world over finally got a little bit of respect in 1994 when Miramax Films released a modestly produced film appropriately titled Clerks. The directorial debut of independent film darling Kevin Smith, Clerks is very much a slice of Generation X life, which we see while it follows two twenty-something slackers as they waste a day at their dead end jobs and try finding their way into the real world.

The plot is effortlessly simple, yet very involved. Woebegone convenience store clerk Dante Hicks (Brian O'Halloran) is called into work on his day off. Though he assumes it'll be just another day at the Quick Stop, he's dead wrong. Once there, he's forced to deal with more problems than he knows what to do with. Dante's girlfriend Veronica (Marilyn Ghigliotti) reveals certain parts of her sex life that knocks him for a loop; Caitlin (Lisa Spoonhauer), the ex that Dante never got over, is getting married to an Asian design major; and Dante's friend Randal (Jeff Anderson), a clerk at the video store next door, spends all his time at the Quick Stop hassling Dante's customers. Add in various insane and moronic customers, an anti-cigarette lynch mob, a funeral, a rooftop hockey game, detailed discussions of sex, a debate over whether The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi is better, and wild drug dealers Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith) raising hell in front of the store, and Dante's day just can't get any weirder.

While Clerks is not perfect, I find it to be an great debut for Kevin Smith and the View Askew team. For a movie shot at a convenience store in black and white for less than 30,000 dollars with no professional actors, it's pretty darn good. The movie's extremely low-rent feel only adds to its charm, making it seem like it was all filmed with convenience store security cameras. As the movie takes place in and around your average run-of-the-mill convenience store, one would think that it would get tiresome after a while. It'd be easy just to have everyone sitting around doing nothing while reciting their dialogue, but the handling of each scene is well done. One early scene features Dante and Veronica sitting under the counter, having a chat. While it seems like a rather boring setup, a touch of feeling is added by having Dante paint Veronica's fingernails while they talk. Even though it's a little detail, it contributes a lot to the scene.

On the acting end, I did very much enjoy pretty much everyone. I wasn't exactly sold on Marilyn Ghigliotti, but that's no fault of hers. I didn't think the character was exactly solid, more of a shrew than a love interest. But eh, what can you do. Lisa Spoonhauer is charming in her role as the flirtatious Caitlin, while Jason Mewes and Smith himself are hilarious in their first appearance as Smith's popular weed peddling duo Jay and Silent Bob. However, the best parts of the cast are its leads, Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson. Their interaction with one another is quite entertaining, with O'Halloran's Dante playing the straight man to Anderson's uncouth Randal. They're helped by Smith's excellent script, which not only boasts great dialogue, but looks into the lives of Generation X society. The characters of Dante and Randal are at that awkward stage in life, stranded somewhere between adolescence and adulthood, going through life on cruise control, waiting for their big moment to find them instead of finding it themselves. If this aspect was Smith's intent, I don't know. Either way, it makes the movie that much deeper and stronger because of it.

Quentin Tarantino may have gained fame as a video store clerk that went on to make movies, but Kevin Smith has gone above and beyond that by being a convenience store clerk that made a movie about the convenience store itself. While the language is filthy and crude (which originally warranted an NC-17 rating from the MPAA, but was changed to an R after Miramax appealed), Clerks serves as a very real, yet very over the top, look at twenty-something Gen-X slackers in the mid-90s. And because it features quite a few laughs, I'll give it three and a half stars, leaning toward four. Go check it out, won't you?

Final Rating: ***½

Cabin Fever (2002)

If you don't know me all that well, I should say right now that I love horror movies. If you didn't realize it form all the horror reviews I've got up, you probably wouldn't know. As a lifelong fan of horror movies, I'm of the opinion that 2003 was a very good year when it came to the genre. Movies like Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses, long-awaited slasher crossover Freddy vs. Jason, British import 28 Days Later, and Michael Bay's remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were all released to much success, but perhaps the most surprising success story was first-time director Eli Roth's Cabin Fever.

Roth's attempt at a throwback to 1970s horror, Cabin Fever was the talk of the Toronto International Film Festival in 2002, where it was quickly picked up for distribution by Lions Gate Films and given a wide release last summer. The movie's hype painted it as a film that rolled together everything I love about the genre, but how did it turn out?

As a last hurrah after college, five friends — Paul (Rider Strong), Karen (Jordan Ladd), Jeff (Joey Kern), Marcy (Cerina Vincent) and Bert (James DeBello) — head out to a cabin in the middle of nowhere to celebrate before heading out into the real world. After an encounter with a hermit (Arie Verveen), the group suddenly finds themselves dealing with a problem beyond their wildest nightmares. Karen discovers that the hermit has infected her with a nasty virus that slowly eats away at her flesh. Her friends become so repulsed by their friend's deterioration that they lock her in the shed to avoid infection.

As they struggle to find a way to save her, they look at each other and realize that any one of them could be infected as well. What began as a struggle against the disease turns into a battle between each other, as the fear of contagion makes them incredibly paranoid, fearful of one other. They have to find help before they're all killed by the virus, or by the local mob of rednecks out to dispose of anyone who may have come in contact with the virus.

I was so blown away the first time I saw Cabin Fever. Sure, it looks like (and actually is) a low-budget B-movie, but that's far from being a bad thing. Director Eli Roth definitely loves and respects the horror genre, and any hardcore horror buff will obviously pick up on the many subtle and not-so-subtle nods to horror flicks of the past. There's references to classics like The Evil Dead, Deliverance, Night of the Living Dead, John Carpenter's remake of The Thing, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Roth also takes the opportunity to use a song from The Last House on the Left at one point in the movie.

However, there's more to Cabin Fever than the various shout-outs to the gold that came before it. It's got its own thing going on as well. The screenplay penned by Roth and Randy Pearlstein has its moments, and though the characters aren't very developed, they're certainly appealing in their own ways. The dialogue is very snappy, which was helped by having a strong cast that obviously loved doing the movie. It took a while for the movie to get into full-on horror mode, but in the meantime, Cabin Fever tries its best to be entertaining. With the fun character interaction and bizarre situations, it's not hard to get into Cabin Fever's groove if you allow yourself to. The movie also has a ballsy, in-your-face attitude that's much welcomed. With the threatening and psychotic events (including the gross "finger-bang misfire") going on, it's the movie's intent to either gross you out or mess with your head.

I should note, however, that the script is not without its flaws. The movie is about a flesh-eating virus, but why does it take forty-seven minutes — right at halfway through the movie! — for any of the main cast to start showing any signs of infection? If Roth really wanted to make the best homage to the horror of the past that he could, then the insanity would have started twenty minutes into the movie at the latest.

And it really doesn't help that there's really not a lot happening. Sure, there's some stuff going on, but none of it really goes anywhere or leads to anything important. And that's not to mention the handful of scenes that contribute absolutely nothing whatsoever to the movie. I think if the infection also affected the brains of its victims and turned them into zombies or feral, blood-slobbering lunatics similar to 28 Days Later, then maybe there could have been a bit more drama or suspense. But the whole movie just rambles on and on, never reaching anything even remotely resembling a point.

I'll give Roth's direction great big props right now. He keeps us right with the action and captures many well-done shots, thanks in large part to cinematographer Scott Kevan. I also felt that the acting was also top-notch. Rider Strong moves above and beyond his role as Shaun Hunter on Boy Meets World, and delivers a command performance. If he keeps doing roles like this, I think he could become the Bruce Campbell for the twenty-first century.

Jordan Ladd and Cerina Vincent handed in good performances as the "good girl with a wild side" and the "slut with a heart of gold" respectively, while Joey Kern and James DeBello steal so many scenes, you'd think the movie was all about them. I also really enjoyed the group of rednecks, as well as Matthew Helms as a mullet-headed, pancake-obsessed biting machine and Giuseppe Andrews as the worst police officer on the face of the planet. I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention the simultaneously haunting and beautiful score by Nathan Barr and Angelo Badalamenti. Many of the cues in the movie are just so gorgeous, that when something disgusting happens (like the aforementioned "finger-bang misfire"), the score makes things even creepier and more disturbing.

Unfortunately, the movie runs out of steam in the last few minutes. I'm not upset, but I was just expecting more out of it. The previously mentioned flaws are distracting, and it was just too lighthearted given the brutal pace that the movie had been building up. And that's really Cabin Fever's biggest problem. Roth has come up with a promising concept, but his final execution left some to be desired. It wasn't a bad movie, just a real letdown. But I have to admit, when all was said and done, I can't say that I hated Cabin Fever. It's not exactly the best movie ever made, maybe not even fifth best, but it's definitely worth a good late-night Halloween viewing. It's like a Troma movie with a bigger budget. There's plenty of outrageous moments, funny scenes, and vomit-inducing effects here, folks. Cabin Fever gets three stars from me, and I give it a recommendation if you're ever in the mood for an B-grade horror movie.

Final Rating: ***

Joy Ride (2001)

Way back in 1971, a then-unknown Steven Spielberg made a TV-movie called Duel. The tale of a sadistic trucker hunting a man on a cross-country road trip, it became a cult classic (at least among my circle of friends in college) and was one of the more well-known films in the unheralded "automotive vengeance" genre. In 2001, another film came along bearing a strong resemblance to Duel, titled Joy Ride.

Our story starts with Lewis Thomas (Paul Walker), who's about to get out of college for summer break. He begins a journey across the country to his New Jersey home, stopping to bail his brother Fuller (Steve Zahn) out of jail. Fuller decides to accompany his brother home, and the two hit the road. During a random pit stop, Fuller gets a mechanic to install a CB radio on the car, and the two start messing around, joking with truckers over the radio. They proceed to play a practical joke on a trucker calling himself "Rusty Nail" (the voice of Ted Levine), pretending that Lewis is a woman named "Candy Cane."

Lewis talks Rusty Nail into meeting the non-existent Candy Cane at a roadside motel, telling him that Candy Cane will be waiting in a particular room (one occupied by a man who picked a fight with Fuller in the motel lobby). Rusty Nail eventually arrives at the room, but lacking a sense of humor, Rusty Nail proceeds to brutally murder the man.

Lewis and Fuller flee the next morning, only to be continually taunted by Rusty Nail's voice over the radio and on the highway. The duo encounters their foe at a gas station, and he proceeds to chase them into the woods, almost destroying their car in the process. When they hastily apologize, Rusty Nail backs off, seemingly forgiving them. Stopping only to pick up Lewis's long-distance girlfriend Venna (Leelee Sobieski), they soon discover that Rusty Nail is still watching them, never letting them get a moment's rest. The demented trucker follows them across the country, playing his own sick joke on the trio.

Having never seen Duel, I can't really compare it to Joy Ride, but I will say that Joy Ride is a better film than you'd think. It's got good acting, fun dialogue (thanks to a well-written script by Clay Tarver and J.J. Abrams), and plenty of scares. As one would suspect, most of the movie takes place in the trio's car, and the interaction between Walker, Zahn, and Sobieski is very entertaining, to say the least. All three put on fantastic performances. Even when things take a turn for the worst, they do a great job in making you feel bad for them, even if its their fault that Rusty Nail is after them.

And one also feels sorry for Rusty Nail, who was the butt of a joke and now wants retribution. Just hearing Ted Levine's voice is enough to make you simultaneously pity and fear him, and I think that makes him come across as a more intimidating villain because he's got nothing to lose. I also commend John Dahl's direction and Jeffrey Juhr's cinematography, as the movie is visually great, with many great camera angles and colors highlighting and downplaying the action onscreen. Marco Beltrami's score is also astounding, lending a haunting "bump in the night" feel to the movie that is much welcomed.

Overall, I'm gonna give Joy Ride three stars. Despite a lackluster, almost unsatisfactory ending, and a weird "been there, done that" feeling, I recommend the movie. It's not perfect, but it's got enough to make it a great thriller. Plenty of fun car chases, good cheap scares, well done action scenes, and good acting puts Joy Ride on my list of movies that would make a fine rental from your local video store.

Final Rating: ***

Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)

So you have a horror film that becomes an unexpected sleeper hit, but can't think of any way to do a sequel? Just set it a few days later and let 'er rip, of course. That's what Victor Salva's done with Jeepers Creepers 2.

We begin in a cornfield, with young Billy Taggart (Shaun Flemming) putting up scarecrows. Turns out one of them isn't what it appears to be; it's actually the demonic Creeper (Jonathan Breck). He snatches up the boy and flies into the sunset, with his father Jack (Ray Wise) and brother Jack Jr. (Luke Edwards). The next day, we meet a school bus on a road in the middle of nowhere. Get used to seeing the bus, because a good 90 percent of the movie takes place in and around it.

We discover that it's four days after the events of the original Jeepers Creepers, and it's the final day of the Creeper's 23-day feeding frenzy. If you'll remember the detail from the prior movie, the Creeper gets to eat for 23 days following a 23-year hibernation. Why he has to follow such a strict schedule, I have no clue. One would assume a flesh-eating monster from the bowels of Hell would have a little bit more in his itinerary. He only gets out for a month every two decades, so you'd think he'd wanna see the sights between meals.

Anyway, the bus is loaded with a bunch of teenagers returning home from a victory in the state's championship basketball games. We're introduced to some of our stereotypical main characters, which include Scott (Eric Nenninger), the racist; Deaundre (Garikayi Mutambirwa), the token black guy; Bucky (Billy Aaron Brown), the geek; Izzy (Travis Schiffner), who may or may not be a closeted homosexual; and Minxie, the goody-two-shoes cheerleader (Nicki Aycox). The guys are celebrating their victory, when bam! A tire blows. The driver and the coaches get out to check out the problem, and discover a ninja throwing star made out of bone embedded in the wheel.

The driver decides to limp along the road, until bam! Another throwing star pops a tire. It's worth noting that these stars are some hardcore stuff. The first one had a tooth stuck in it; the second had the belly button of the Creeper's prey in the first movie (which is evidenced by the tattoo). So we've had bone throwing stars with body parts stuck in them. I wonder what the third one would be made out of. A nose? An eyeball, maybe? I don't know, but they're pretty cool weapons.

By this point, everybody decides that the bus isn't going anywhere. Their repeated cries for help over the CB radio go unanswered as the Creeper picks off random people on the bus, one by one. He starts with the driver and the coaches, then starts terrorizing the students. Pretend that you're an immortal demon with one day before you go into hibernation, and you've got a buffet of stupid, scared teenagers right there for the taking. You've got two options: A.) Climb on board and start eating, or B.) jam the door, make goo-goo eyes at them, and lick the windows. If you picked Option B, then congratulations! You too can star in a Jeepers Creepers sequel!

While the Creeper decides to freak out the kids by looking at them funny, Minxie starts having weird nightmares about Darry Jenner (Justin Long, reprising his role from the original Jeepers Creepers) warning them about the Creeper, and the two remaining Taggarts craft a giant harpoon gun out of some farm equipment before declaring hunting season on man-eating monsters with wings.

The rest of the movie flies by in an endless blur of empty scares. None of the characters on the bus are very redeeming at all, and some of them aren't even given names or introduced or anything. Why should I worry about them getting eaten when I don't give a damn about any of them? While I enjoyed the original Jeepers Creepers, the sequel just comes across as being a lot less. More characters means a bigger menu for the Creeper, but it also means that we don't get to know the characters as well as we did in the original. It's also too bad that Gina Phillips refused to come back for this one, because her character's strength was something that the characters lacked here. The only characters that I didn't want to see get eaten at one point or the other were the Taggarts.

On the subject of the Taggarts, the lack of screen time they got bugged me to no end. They're the ones that had the personal vendetta against the Creeper, yet we spend more time with the paper-thin losers on the bus than with them. If they're on a huge Ahab-esque quest, isn't that worth following? And what was the point of having sexually-confused characters and racial tension in the movie if they were barely gonna touch on that at all? Both subplots felt horrendously tacked on and unnecessary, and I just didn't get the purpose. It didn't bring anything to the movie at all.

What I also didn't like was the repetitive action sequences. Even though they started off being cool, they just started to seem like the same thing over and over. Why not spice things up a bit? Maybe let the Creeper go crazy with that huge battle-axe he had in the first movie. Another thing I seriously missed was the Creepermobile. That was one mean truck, but they just totally left it out here. It would have been cool to see the Creeper ram into the bus with his truck instead of swooping down on it a million times.

The movie isn't all bad, though. There's plenty of cool effects. The Creeper looks much more horrific and monstrous (not to mention slimy and disgusting) than in the prior movie, and there are some neat moments (such as the Creeper growing a new head after getting stabbed in the face with a javelin). Nicky Aycox and Ray Wise turn in watchable performances (which is more than I can say for the rest of the cast), and Jonathan Breck's portrayal of the Creeper, while not as menacing as in the prior movie, is really... well, creepy. I didn't wanna say "creepy," due to the obvious pun, but sometimes you just can't avoid things. I also liked Bennett Salvay's extremely tense score, which I found to be really similar (but in a good way) to his score for the first movie.

Overall, I found Jeepers Creepers 2 to be a disappointment. I liked the first Jeepers Creepers, but found this one to be lacking the depth of its predecessor. Sure, the first movie had its bad moments, but the sequel was just "blah" almost all the way through. That's why I'm going to give Jeepers Creepers 2 two stars. No more, no less. If there's ever a third Jeepers Creepers, maybe it won't be as big of a letdown as this one.

Final Rating: **

Ginger Snaps (2000)

How many really good werewolf movies can you name? You'd probably be able to count them on one hand and have fingers left over. At one time, I could only think of two: The Wolf Man and An American Werewolf in London. However, the pair became a trio when I saw Ginger Snaps, a little-known Canadian movie that's managed to find life in America as a modern cult film.

I'd heard about it through numerous favorable reviews I'd read online, but I'd never found the opportunity to see it. But the stars were in alignment while I was watching Cinemax during a late, sleepless night. I finally got a chance to see the film I'd been coveting, and all the good reviews in the world couldn't have prepared me for what I saw. What I watched one of the most wickedly entertaining horror movies I've ever seen. And dear readers, I've seen a lot of horror movies.

Mousy teenager Brigitte Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins) and her older sister Ginger (Katherine Isabelle) are a team. Obsessed with death and bound by a morbid childhood pact ("out by sixteen or dead in this scene, but together forever"), the pair of social misfits loathe their existence in the Canadian suburb of Bailey Downs. On the night of Ginger's first period, the duo wanders into the woods on the edge of town to pull a prank on an abusive classmate. Before they can arrive at their destination, Ginger is brutally mauled by a wild creature known as "The Beast of Bailey Downs."

Ginger survives as her horrible wounds miraculously heal, but something is different about her. She becomes irritable and denies that anything is wrong, but Brigitte sees something deep inside her sister has taken hold of her. The hair growing from Ginger's scars and the tail emerging from the base of her spine convinces Brigitte of only one thing: Ginger is becoming a werewolf. Driven by the insatiable bloodlust growing inside her, Ginger slowly transforms from a disdainful outsider to an aggressive, sex-crazed young woman on the prowl.

Afraid to tell anyone but desperate to save her sister from the lycanthropy overtaking her, Brigitte has no one to turn to but Sam (Kris Lemche), an amateur botanist and local drug dealer that accidentally ran over the Beast of Bailey Downs following Ginger's attack. They work together, searching for a way to save Ginger from the infection that threatens her sanity and strains the tightly forged bond between the two sisters.

Borrowing elements of the 1984 movie The Company of Wolves, Ginger Snaps serves notice that not only can werewolf movies be good, but that girls in horror movies can be much more than ditzy, big-breasted bimbos that serve only as fodder for a knife-wielding psychopath. The movie not only works as a horror movie, but it also works as a metaphor for a girl's entry into womanhood. It's got awkwardness, mood swings, physical changes, a need to be accepted, a hunger for sex. It's one of the very few "girl power" horror movies, of which there are a scant number.

See, I thought I'd have a hard time getting into the movie. I mean, why would I want to hear a graphic description of the menstrual cycle? Being a single male, I don't necessarily have to worry about that sort of thing, nor am I absolutely dying to know about it. I like to block that sort of thing out of my head whenever I can. But fortunately, the movie becomes much more than a feminist horror movie. It brings up many themes that I wouldn't expect a horror movie to tackle, like family loyalty, love, and loss. However, the movie is not without its imperfections. Having the lycanthropy virus be sexually transmitted gives us a subplot involving a character played by Jesse Moss. While it's not a bad idea in theory, it wasn't fleshed out enough to justify actually being there. It's like they just added it to make the movie longer.

Karen Walton's screenplay gives the characters a lot of depth, and the cast makes it seem real, though a little on the overstated side. Mimi Rogers is great as Ginger and Brigitte's clueless-yet-loving mother, and both Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle are absolutely wonderful as the pseudo-Goth sisters. Perkins and Isabelle are the movie's heart and soul, and without them, the movie wouldn't have the same emotional "oomph." Also superb are the outstanding makeup effects. When Ginger starts to transform, the facial makeup and fangs makes her look both sexy and scary, while the "Gingerwolf" in its full glory is quite a sight to behold. The understated, melancholy score by Michael Shields is excellent as well, especially once Ginger starts to lose her mind near the end of the movie. The quiet, subdued string instruments in the score work to make the movie much more sad and depressing.

Ginger Snaps is absolutely not a happy movie at all. If you're used to your horror movies having lots of comic relief or happy endings, you're not gonna get it with Ginger Snaps. The atmosphere is gloomy, most of the main characters aren't anybody you'd wanna hang out with, and the ending isn't very happy at all. If you enjoy commercial movies that substitute blood for brains, you might be let down. But after seeing it two or three times, it becomes obvious what the movie is: a very original and intelligent look at two teenage girls going through the hardest days of their lives... and one of them is a werewolf. If you're looking for a fun roller-coaster ride of a horror movie that wraps everything up with a cute little bow, Ginger Snaps is not for you. If you want something original with lots of brains, heart, and some scares and dark humor along the way, Ginger Snaps is definitely a movie you should check out.

Final Rating: ****½