Halloween Watch-a-Thon Mini Reviews 4

1) Stage Fright (2014)

Stage Fright is a fun and cheesy horror musical. It starts out with a starlet singing in the debut of The Haunting of the Opera (ripoff of Phantom of the Opera with completely original songs). She is then murdered in her dressing room and the rest of the story follows her daughter Camilla and her dreams of stardom. When she lands the lead role in a revival of the same musical, people start dying. I found this film adorable. It's kind of like Glee and Sleepaway Camp mixed together. The killer sings metal style songs while the rest of the cast sing music theater. The songs are pretty good and the acting isn't too shabby. Once the performance for opening night starts, the movie seems to stand still. It just wasn't well done at that point and took a long time to get anywhere. Other than that, it's a delightful horror comedy. I can see how fans of musicals would be repelled by all the gore and horror fans might be repelled by the music. I love both, so I enjoyed this fun mashup.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins

2) Hell Baby (2013)

Hell Baby tells the story of a clueless couple who bought a decrepit haunted house by saving money on the house inspection. Vanessa is very pregnant with twins and it becomes clear that she's carrying a devil baby that puts them all in danger. This movie starts of great, successfully skewering the Rosemary's Baby-like movies and haunted house movies. Great moments include when Vanessa starts downing glass after glass of paint thinner and smoking like a chimney; Vanessa kills the obstetrician, forges a prescription for Valium, and then guilts her husband into not confirming it with the disemboweled doctor in the next room. There are great moments of horror-comedy, but it's overall too heavy on the comedy side. Some of the gags go on for way too long and many of them don't involve horror. I lost interest by the end, but I'm glad I watched it. You would enjoy it if you're looking for a sarcastic and very obvious parody movie slightly more elevated than Scary Movie, but not reaching the levels of Shaun of the Dead.

My rating: 2/5 fishmuffins

3) Lords of Salem (2012)

Heidi, a radio DJ, receives a record labeled as a gift from the Lords. After she plays it on the radio, she experiences horrific visions and loses time. The incidents gets worse as time goes on and strange occurrences follow her. Is she going crazy or is something real happening to her? The Lords of Salem is a very visually interesting film. The images are striking, disturbing, weird, and very memorable. The colors are dynamic and Zombie mixes beautiful religious imagery with blood, demons, and the like. Unfortunately, the movie is sparse on plot and character development. Not much really happens while these visions are happening. Sheri Moon Zombie is beautiful, but doesn't hold up being the focus of the entire film. It's definitely very Rob Zombie and influenced by the 70's. It kind of plays out like one long music video. I'm a bit ambivalent about it. I love the images, but I would like a little more story to go with it.

My rating: 2.5/5 fishmuffins

4) Pet Sematary (1989)

*spoilers * An Indian burial ground has magic and can raise the dead buried there. This family is insufferably stupid. First, their child almost gets run over in the very busy road right in front of their house. Even though it seems these parents literally can't keep attention on two children at once,  this incident is an honest mistake. Then that same child dies because they were inattentive in that very same road. You'd think they would maybe build a fence or keep a better eye on their children since big rigs speed down the road all the time, but you would be wrong. Then the father brings the cat back to life because teaching kids that cats never die is so much better than teaching them about death. The cat is psycho and violent. So bringing the dead child back in the same way seems like an awesome idea. The undead kid is also psycho and the father kills both of the undead creatures. But those were totally just mistakes, so let's try it on the wife too. Really????? This guy is quite possibly one of the most moronic people in horror movie history. The movie is well made and has some admittedly cool scenes (especially the achilles tendon scene!), but nothing makes up for that horrible line of logic.

My rating: 2/5 fishmuffins