Let’s play “guess the production company,” okay?
It’s a mixed cast of attractive twenty-something unknowns…
They’re confined to a single location…
Something supernatural is after them…
And the supernatural something involves legalistic rituals and rules the require a flowchart.
Still don’t have it? Final clue: Directed by David DeCoteau, written by Benjamin Carr.
That’s right! Although I have reviewed what seems like dozens of late-’90s Full Moon flicks, there are still more to be dissected!
#1 by Blake Matthews on April 3, 2008 - 6:39 am
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I remember reading a review of this film in the Godzilla issue of “Fangoria” back in 1998. I was more interested with “The Haunted Sea” than with this one. My neighbor and second mother was incredibly excited about this film, after which she said it disappointed her.
#2 by El Santo on April 3, 2008 - 6:54 am
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Honestly, “It’s being reviewed on the internet by Nathan Shumate” is probably clue enough at this point.
#3 by Nathan Shumate on April 3, 2008 - 7:03 am
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Are my forays into forgettable western series and British-made crime dramas so quickly forgotten? Sniff.
#4 by Matthew Fudge on April 3, 2008 - 7:35 am
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Were Full Moon the Hammer of the 1990s? Think about it…endlessly recycled sets, one location standing in for pretty much anywhere in the world, a small coterie of writers and directors churning out an endless slew of near identical movies which had to be made quick and cheap because the profit margins were so low. Don’t get me wrong, I love Hammer, but if the DTV market had existed in 1965 that’s where they would have ended up. The main difference being that they started well and would occasionally chuck a lot of money at a movie, something Full Moon never did.
#5 by Matthew Fudge on April 3, 2008 - 7:38 am
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Of course you could say that about pretty much any low budget movie house, so I’ll shut up now. It was just the thought that this movie has pretty much no reason to exist.. no-one wanted to make it especially and no-one wanted to see it, just like the later Hammers, they made them because that’s waht they did and they would carry on until the very last penny was wrung out of it. Now I’ll really shut up.
#6 by KeithA on April 3, 2008 - 12:33 pm
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I love the 70s era Hammer films. Well, except for To the Devil…A Daughter. And all those “On the Bus” comedies. But their 70s horror output was, I think, really good and surprisingly complex. Just like Full Moon’s Zone Troopers!
#7 by Nathan Shumate on April 3, 2008 - 12:43 pm
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Zone Troopers was actually made by Empire Pictures, Band’s prodco prior to Full Moon that concentrated on theatrical releases. Can you imagine seeing Zone Troopers in the theaters? Or Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn? Creepozoids? Eliminators?
[yakov smirnov]What a country![/yakov smornov]
#8 by El Santo on April 3, 2008 - 12:51 pm
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While I did not see Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn in the theater, I vividly remember seeing the commercials on TV and wanting to. And considering how many times I watched it when it appeared on cable subsequently, I’d probably have gotten a kick out of it if I had.
#9 by Nathan Shumate on April 3, 2008 - 1:12 pm
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The movie commercial I now recall with astonishment was for Super Fuzz, the Terence Hill comedy. Kids these days, they don’t realize what it was like: Lame Italian-made comedies would show up in our cinemas!
#10 by lyzard on April 3, 2008 - 3:33 pm
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I say this knowing full well I’m giving away my age, but….when I was young and impressionable and scared by everything, I used to get freaked-out by the newspaper ads for films. The two I remember most vividly (i.e. most upsettingly) came not just in the same year, but at the same time: one of a frog with a woman’s hand hanging out of its mouth, one with a man with his head trapped in some kind of weird wooden cage.
The first film I knew the title of even back then, of course – duh! – but the full significance of that second ad didn’t hit me until many years afterwards…. It staggers me now to think that actually got a cinema release here.
#11 by Blake Matthews on April 3, 2008 - 3:51 pm
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I remember seeing the commercial for a horror film called “Infested” or something when I was a kid. I guess it came and went without leaving much of an impression on the box office. A few months later, my neighbor rented a movie called “Ticks” and as I watched it, I had that strange sense of “déja vu” before figuring out it that it had been released to video under a different title.
#12 by JessicaR on April 3, 2008 - 6:10 pm
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Goodbye Uncle Tom?, wow. Good ol’ Sleazoid Express, I may not know my checking account number but thanks to that book I know my morally abhorrent mondo movies. I’m not sure if it’s time to start being proud or depressed by that.
#13 by Nathan Shumate on April 3, 2008 - 6:37 pm
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I thought that was Man From Deep River.
#14 by lyzard on April 3, 2008 - 6:59 pm
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Ching-ching! We have a weiner.
#15 by Nathan Shumate on April 3, 2008 - 7:24 pm
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I may not have seen as many movies as I would like, but I do know me some movie posters.
#16 by JessicaR on April 3, 2008 - 7:34 pm
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I like that “people with disturbing cages around their heads” can be a subgenre of poster art.
#17 by lyzard on April 3, 2008 - 8:33 pm
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For the record, it was this one:
http://onesheetindex.com/movie_posters/horror/man_from_deep_river_6439.html
#18 by Chadly on April 4, 2008 - 5:19 am
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And here’s a look at the other one:
http://scenesfromthemorgue.blogspot.com/
#19 by El Santo on April 4, 2008 - 6:34 am
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“It staggers me now to think [The Man from Deep River] actually got a cinema release here.”
Then again, by the standards of Italian cannibal movies, that one’s pretty harmless.
#20 by The Rev. D.D. on April 4, 2008 - 8:24 am
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I’m glad I wasn’t the only one disquieted by that frog with the hand in its mouth as a youth. (Although I was disappointed years later when I found out that movie didn’t have any large, maneating frogs…and was also boring and crappy.)
I remember occasionally being spooked by ads in TV Guide (back when they’d sometimes put big ads in the listings featuring some movie, usually on TBS)–along with the frog one, I remember not liking a pic of a couple of ghoulies from Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and a very savage-looking dog for (I think) Zoltan: Hound of Dracula.
And then there was that newspaper ad with the cheerleader with the skull face. (Yes, that movie got a theatrical release, at least where I grew up.) That one really made me nervous. Something about skulls with eyeballs…just not right, man. (The cover of one of my favorite movies ever scared me as a kid…not only was it a skull with eyes, but the eyes seemed to follow me.)
(Oddly enough, so did David Hasslehoff’s on a Knight Rider poster I used to have.)
#21 by Elizabeth the Ferret on April 4, 2008 - 1:30 pm
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“(Oddly enough, so did David Hasslehoff’s on a Knight Rider poster I used to have.)”
…That’s because David Hasslehoff is ALWAYS watching! (nods sagely and eyes the poster of Hoff laying on his side, wearing nothing but some puppies)
#22 by KeithA on April 4, 2008 - 2:38 pm
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I did see Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn in the theater.
as for being scared of things: I never saw Escape to Witch Mountain, but I used to lie in my bed and dwell on the concept of a mountain full of witches, so much so that I got to the point where I was absolutely terrified of Escape to Witch Mountain.
#23 by Nathan Shumate on April 4, 2008 - 3:06 pm
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I hate you. Die die die! You suck. (sob)
#24 by KeithA on April 4, 2008 - 3:34 pm
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Oh Nathan, if only you’d grown up in Kentucky in the late 70s/early 80s. You could have come with us to see Treasure of the Four Crowns, Metalstorm, Krull, Buck Rogers, Space Hunter, that movie about the kid stowing away in a spaceship that was constructed out of special effects shots from Battle Beyond the Stars — we were young men of sophistication and refined taste. I would gladly have put you in the group and gotten rid of Jimmy, the kid who wasn’t allowed by his mom to see Ice Pirates because it “looked too Satanic.”
#25 by lyzard on April 4, 2008 - 3:52 pm
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Wow. You used the words “standards” and “Italian cannibal movies” in the same sentence.
#26 by Nathan Shumate on April 4, 2008 - 4:26 pm
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Yes, Keith, but then I would have had to grow up in Kentucky, and there are already enough people who can pull out a good “Deep South” accent from their childhood, while few of us who can pull off the bastardized Scottish/Irish mumble that is “Islander.”
#27 by El Santo on April 4, 2008 - 6:34 pm
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“that movie about the kid stowing away in a spaceship that was constructed out of special effects shots from Battle Beyond the Stars”
That would be Space Raiders.
#28 by Nathan Shumate on April 4, 2008 - 10:30 pm
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That would indeed. Did you guys know that after I reviewed it and was sooo mean to the child actor star, somebody tried to give me grief over being a heartless hater? ‘Tis true. Scroll about halfway down here (or just search the page for “raiders”).
Wow. That email exchange was over seven years old. I’m ancient…
#29 by Ed on April 5, 2008 - 11:44 am
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I remember that, Nate. Very strange. Great review, by the way.