At The Movies with Bryan, the Wannabe Filmmaker

A phrase often associated with the Golden Age of Hollywood is, “They don’t make them like they used to." In this age of remakes, reboots, and sequels, it is common to be overly nostalgic about the good ol' days of cinema; when Hollywood seemingly could no wrong and was consistently pumping out quality, and original, movies. Of course, this is one big lie - reboots, remakes, and sequels are nothing new to cinema; they go back to the very beginning of film itself. The 1940s, in particular, may have been of the most sequel heavy decades in movie history – and the studio that was pumping them out on a regular basis was Universal. Modern audiences groan on the endless string of Saw and Paranormal Activity movies, but Universal was basically doing the same thing with their classic Monsters line up - in 1940, they released The Mummy's Hand and The Invisible Man Returns (with Vincent Price); the former being a reboot of  the Boris Karloff classic, and the latter being a belated

The only controversy that really surrounds Halloween: Resurrection is whether it is the worst or second worst movie in the franchise. Occasionally, a brave soul will come out of the woodwork and admit that they “kind of” liked it, but otherwise it’s greeted with absolute disdain from the fans.   I admit, while I find the movie terrible, I am compelled to watch it every now and again, but more on that later. The main reason for the hate is that it completely negates  the ending to the previous movie, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later – which saw Laurie Strode beheading Michael Myers with an axe. Halloween: Resurrection retcons the ending of the previous film, so that instead of beheading Michael Myers, Laurie Strodie mistaken decapitated a paramedic wearing the Michael Myers mask – he pulled the old switcheroo on Laurie. Laurie, haunted by the guilt of killing an innocent man, spends the next few years in a psychiatric hospital, convinced that Michael will come for her.   When aud

The Town That Dreaded Sundown is one of the most infuriating horror movies ever made! It is the classic case of a hack director (Charles B. Pierce) taking a surefire premise and some how botching it. The Town That Dreaded Sundown has the makings of a classic horror movie - a genuinely scary villain (the hooded menace known as "The Phantom Killer"), a great setting (Texarkana, 1946), and even a few strong performances to boot - and, yet, Pierce manages to undermine it every step of the way. This is characteristic of most of Pierce's works; his most famous movie, The Legend of Boggy Creek, starts off as a compelling documentary on the Fouke Monster (a Bigfoot like beast the supposedly stalks Fouke, Arkansas), but is quickly done in by ponderous narrations, an overbearing blue grass soundtrack, and truly bad acting. There is a genuinely creepy scene in which the monster attacks a family in a trailer home, but the rest of the movie is pure schlock. Pierce must hav

WARNING: This review has nothing but SPOILERS in it! So, if you haven’t seen the cinematic atrocity that is I Still Know What You Last Summer, then I suggest you skip the review altogether. On the other hand, if you have seen, or really don’t care, then please read on.  I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is one of the most ridiculous sequels in the Slasher genre, which is saying quite a lot.   It is so bad that it makes the first movie look like an absolute masterpiece. What ever flaws I Know What You Did Last Summer had, it was at least a serviceable horror film with solid performances from Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar, and a few scares to boot. There was at least an attempt by the filmmakers to build suspense and give the characters an arc; the sequel tosses all of that out the window and replaces it with a higher body count and a horribly contrived script.   The first film was riding on the coattails of Scream; when Wes Craven’s self aware horror