Splatter

"Splatter" (2009, Joe Dante, Roger Corman, Netflix) is a short web series from the earlier days of the concept of TV streaming.

Johnny Splatter (Corey Feldman) was a troubled rock star who filmed himself graphically committing suicide. A small group of family, friends and colleagues are invited to his home for a will reading. Each, suspecting that they're about to be handed a massive payout, turn up, despite revealing that they didn't exactly like Johnny much.

Suddenly, the TV springs to life, revealing that Splatter filmed his will prior to his untimely demise... Or, is he back to take vengeance on his unappreciative acquaintances? As the episodes progressed, viewers were asked to vote for who would meet their death next.

The series suffers from its overtly corny style that comes across as a little too sincere, but overall I found the layout, practical effects and over the top characters to be tongue-in-cheek and a bit of fun.  There were, apparently, more episodes but only the initial run of three are available to view easily on Netflix. It is undeniably a disappointing effort from Dante and Corman, but this is likely down to the confines of the schedule and the gimmick.

Horror films have a great and long history of using gimmicks, and this early example of a Netflix original is no different. Feldman's vengeful zombie delivers a demanding "Who's next?" at the end of every episode and, at the time, the audience were given the chance to vote. It's cheesy, but that's what I was there for. I've also just always liked Corey Feldman.

We have the usual tropes and a small cast of characters including the ever awesome Tony Todd bringing us the only seemingly sane character in the bunch. While the short series is hammy and manages not to be particularly innovative, despite its natty gimmick, it delivers its resolution quickly and was certainly part of Netflix's foray into changing viewer's habits and a step towards the innovation and horror series being created today.

[Image: Netflix]

Hani 

The Lost Boys: The Tribe

"The Lost Boys: The Tribe" aka "The Lost Boys 2" (2008, P.J. Pesce, Thunder Road Pictures, Hollywood Media Bridge) is the sequel to 1987 vampire film, "The Lost Boys".

I am a huge fan of the original film. It's funny, silly and gross and full of good tunes. The sequel, unfortunately, pales sorely in comparison. Even the extremely goofy third film, "The Lost Boys: The Thirst" manages to outshine the second one, even if it's only because it actually attempts to alter the plot somewhat.

The problem with "Tribe" is that it is a badly done redo of the original. Instead of the two Emerson brothers being forced to move to the fictional seaside town of Santa Carla, California to stay with their nutty grandfather and their kind of loopy divorcee mother, it is brother, Chris (Tad Hilgenbrink), and sister, Nicole (Autumn Reeser), also named Emerson, who move to Luna Bay (also a beach town), to rent a house off of their nutty aunt after their parents are killed.

Other parallels include the surf shop scene which is essentially the same as the comic shop scene, except instead of meeting the Frog brothers there, they are recommended to visit the Frog brothers' van by the surf shop guys.

The surfer vampire gang attempts to follow the same layout as the previous film's biker vampire gang. This is pretty forgiveable because it would make sense, I suppose, that vampires share the same habits and hierarchy. I did appreciate Kiefer Sutherland's half brother, Angus Sutherland, playing the part of head boy vampire, Shane, but it really wasn't enough of a nod to save the film.

Hands up, I've admitted my, possibly misguided, appreciation of Corey Feldman before. But even I can say wholeheartedly that this film sucked and his performance did not help it. The nods to The Goonies also did it no favours.

Essentially, the protagonists are annoying and lack the more three dimensional characteristics of Michael and Sam from the original and the badly scripted dialogue doesn't give the impression of being tongue-in-cheek and comes across as more stilted.

I have a high tolerance for bad films, but I just wasn't feeling this one, and the end scene with Corey Haim remains a sad homage to the troubled actor. I also just feel plain bad for Jamison Newlander who's scenes were deleted. Although, maybe he's happy about not being officially credited in this film... I don't know.

All in all, I'd recommend either sticking to the wonderfully funny, cheesy 80s original and pretending there were no sequels at all, or giving the extremely crappy, cheesefest third one a spin and ignoring this one altogether.

[Image: Thunder Road Pictures]

Can I ask what's meant to have happened to Edgar Frog's neck tattoos between film 2 and 3 or do we not talk about those?

Hani 

Puppet Master Vs Demonic Toys

"Puppet Master Vs Demonic Toys" (2004, Ted Nicolau, Terry Kelley) is the 9th film in the Puppet Master series and the first cross over with the Demonic Toys Series. Definitely a made-for-TV film. And it's set at Christmas. And that should tell you all you need to know about it!

Ok, Ok, I'll tell you more :)

Robert Toulon (Corey Feldman) is the great-grandnephew (seriously...) of the original Puppet Master, Andre Toulon from the first movie. Robert and his daughter Alexandra (Danielle Keaton) live in a Doll Hospital, surrounded by toys which they repair. They're both kind of weird, like awkward children. I'm going assume that this was intentional.

Robert seems to have a bit of an obsession with bringing the original Toulon puppets back to life... Why, at this particular second, I don't know... but it's handy that he does because the Sharpe Corporation, an evil toy manufacturer run by Erica Sharpe (Vanessa Angel), are spying on him in order to steal his secrets and his puppets... and unfortunately his blood, because that's the main ingredient in the potion!

Erica is also quite childlike, but more like a little spoiled, bratty, girl. She kind of reminds me of Glory from BTVS, but that might just be her dress sense.

Robert and Alexandra work out how to animate the puppets on Christmas eve (ah, the magic of Christmas, bringing murderous puppets to life!) and explain to them that they are their new masters. The Puppets seem cool with that, and don't attack them.

Erica's recent line of Christmas toys are called "Christmas Pals" (damn original!) and they are alive. Well, they're demons inside the toys. The demons are there as Erica's misguided father sold his soul in order to please her with 'living' dolls. In order to control them, she has to sacrifice virgins (usually secretaries) to the demon Bael (who had surprisingly good makeup!).

The box said "Monsters, in-your-face-gore and breast-focused nudity".... there are none of these things, much to my buddy Jim's disappointment. It should have said "Evil toys and puppets, some fake blood and a secretary gets her shirt ripped open and her cleavage bitten by a demonic baby doll".... But I suppose that wouldn't have sounded half so good, right?

The demons are crass and rude, as demons tend to be, and Erica wants Toulon's secrets so that she can make obedient, yet nasty little guard puppets of her own. But she's selling Demonic Toys to children as she hopes to rule the Earth; as any modern business woman does, right? No?

After an attack by the Sharpe company, Robert and Alex flee their home and fix up the puppets with some kind of cyborg weaponry. The puppets seem pleased with this, which is good and well, else our story would have been cut short when Blade decided to cut up Toulon.

But the fun soon moves to the Sharpe company premises, where the puppets face off against the toys in a very retro-styled scene by special effects dude, David Allen, and Toulon seems to take 10 minutes to get past one guy to save his daughter from certain death by iron maiden (the torture device, not the band).

There's also a random cop lady, Jessica (Silvia Suvadova), who inspected the Toulon premises solo, decided she quite fancied a bit of Robert Toulon, and has since just been around, solo... Is it just me, or do cops usually run in pairs??? And how did she know where Toulon's ex-wife's mansion was?!

So who will win? The Puppets with their weapons, or the Demonic Toys with their teeth and apparently eye bursting laughs, I'm looking at you Jack Attack! Well you'll have to watch and see for yourself!

The special effects aren't great for a 00s movie. But the animation of Jack Attack is particularly good, especially when he, snake like, escapes his box. And I think the awkward, almost stop-animation technique adds some charm to the puppets and toys, as this is how I'd picture them moving! Also, I could get really geeky here and bring up the stop-motion master, Ray Harryhausen, and over-analyse by saying that maybe David Allen was paying some homage to him in some way. But then again, maybe it's just a low-budge made-for-TV film, and I'm just a SFX nerd... probably more likely.

Corey Feldman's Robert Toulon character is awkward and a bit nuts, but I find this entertaining. Plus, he keeps tripping over things, which I presume to be part of the plot, or else someone put the mark on the wrong bit of floor for him! He's also got that funny voice thing going on again (you know, the one Chrisian Bale is so fond of mimicking in Batman).

The plot is just nuts, the script is not the best, with lines like "What's the ruckus?" and a need to explain every move of every character, just in case you didn't think what they were doing was in any way to do with plot development.

And as I said, no nudity, other than Corey Feldman in his boxers, a secretary's bra and an evil corporation lady's almost boobs. Oh, and did I mention a particular lack of blood?

Also, Feldman and Keaton don't really look much like father and daughter. But I can assure you, he's about 33-ish in this film, and the pigtails she's sporting indicate 'young teens' in the movies, so I suppose it's ok.

But all in all, I laughed, Jim laughed and now we have something else to watch on Christmas eve along with 'Die Hard' and 'Scrooged'.

[Would you shake hands with Pinhead?

Picture: Sci Fi Pictures]

Hani

Lost Boys: The Thirst

"Lost Boys: The Thirst" (2010, Warner Bros, Dario Piana) is the third Lost Boys movie. If you've read my April review of the original Lost Boys, you'd know two things;
1) I love the original "Lost Boys"
2) I am a fan of Corey Feldman



But, note at the time of watching, I had not watched "Lost Boys: The Tribe"... despite having Corey Feldman in it, I'd just never gotten around to it... it looked that bad!



So this movie is pretty much Corey Feldman running around dressed like he's still in the 80s and he's still a 16 year old kid. Edgar Frog still has the same gruff voice which Batman stole (obviously), and is still pretty much useless at killing vampires (while also being surprisingly efficient at killing vampires).



The vampires are now uber-goth rejects with big teeth and terrible one-liners and the updated soundtrack is enjoyably reminiscient of the original film.



Jamison Newlander returns to the role of Alan Frog, who has now gone half-vampire after a bit of an error during a vampire-nest raid. He doesn't get to be as glamourous a vamp as Michael was, and instead spends the movie being gross with bad hair and a scowl. There is an attempt to go into his obvious depression throughout the film but it is slightly overshadowed by the movie's action.



Corey, as I mentioned, is still rockin' the 80s look, living in a caravan (or that would be 'trailer' in America) and has seemed to have forgotten how to brush his hair.



Casey B. Dolan plays Zoe, the part-time comic book shop girl, part-time vampire hunter and full-time admirer of Edgar Frog. I liked her, she was not a terribly annoying character, which is unusual in modern horror.



Edgar is talked (read as 'paid') into helping out mysterious vampire-teen-trash author, Gwen Lieber (Tanit Phoenix), in the search and rescue of her brother whom she believes has been turned into a half-vampire.



Edgar arms for bear and, along with a reality TV personality, Gwen, Zoe and a really useless cameraman, goes in to battle at the nightclub where everyone appears to be turning into vampires. As usual, the aim is to kill the head vampire, and naturally, there's a twist...or two.



Some terrible one-liners with wonderfully straight-faced delivery and some pretty good 'grr-ing' from Mr. Feldman just made this movie for me. Plus, who doesn't like a good vampire explosion???? But let's get this straight, it's not a patch on the original movie....it's just better than the second one.



A few nods to the late Corey Haim who had not been available to be in the movie anyway before he sadly passed away in 2010 (I am not sure whether Sam's death was mean't to be poignant or not). And some general background story on the other original characters is also included, although not in a way that does any justice to the plot.



If you thought the first one was tongue-in-cheek, be prepared to rip your face open. But it's a pretty good 'turn-off-your-brain' movie.

[Picture: Warner Bros]

Hani