TheRetroCritic

For a film that's sat on the shelves for so long, The Cabin In The Woods has done rather well for itself. It's been called a "game-changer" within the horror genre and it's been compared to Scream for its self-awareness and satiric take on a familiar horror template. The result? One hell of a fun movie! And pretty darn clever. ... and spoilers so if you haven't seen it: beware. As the trailers spoilered (new word), The Cabin In The Woods mixes sci-fi with Evil Dead -style slasher conventions to create something resembling a cross between Cabin Fever and The Truman Show but altogether infinitely better than the former, don't worry. Actually, the sci-fi twist isn't much of a "twist" at all: the film begins with both genres firmly meshed together. You've got the ever reliable Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford casually chatting in a futuristic Bond villain-style lab setting before the title bangs on the screen loudly in bloo

  "Hey you guys, we need someone to play a tiny obese evil clown, is John Leguizamo free?". This is the kind of question the producers of 1997 supernatural comic book film Spawn were asking themselves. Who did they originally cast as Spawn then? Danny DeVito? Against all odds, Leguizamo's trippy turn as a Joker-style maniacal clown turns out to be the film's driving force and best asset. Which is not to say there's nothing else appealing about the film: a lot of effects are pretty creative and the whole thing is admittedly entertaining. Unfortunately once you see what Hell looks like you soon forget the good stuff and find yourself wishing you were playing a 90's PC video game instead of watching a film in which entire sequences could have been directly lifted from one of those very games. Like I said, some effects are creative and some do work but that Devil thing and its army of minions all standing around moving like tiny CGI puppets in a sea of fire i

Absolutely brilliant reimagining of the first Evil Dead as a slapstick comedy. Consistently creative and hilarious, Sam Raimi clearly has the time of his life here as Bruce Campbell gets drenched in every bodily fluid known to man whilst giving cinema some of its best and least subtle one liners ever. "Groovy!" indeed this is. And as if the first Evil Dead wasn't insane enough we now have evil hands, laughing deer heads, headless dancing corpses and god knows what else to worry about. Evil Dead 2 is probably one of the most chaotic films you'll ever experience but if you have a slightly twisted sense of humour and enjoy a good horror film, this is a treat. This sequel has a notably more significant budget than the first Evil Dead which relied mostly on DIY practical (and make-up) effects not to mention lots and lots of screaming to create the required atmosphere. Here, Raimi spends the dough wisely and makes this second instalment the best and most

John Carpenter makes the very best of an inherently silly idea to create one of the best movie killers ever.  A personal favourite of mine, this "typical" story of boy meets car, car kills people is a lot of fun from start to finish and is probably one of Carpenter's most underrated little gems. Keith Gordon is brilliant as the nerd-turned-rebel and his growing insanity is a delight to witness. Not to mention Robert Prosky's slimy, foul-mouthed mechanic who almost steals the show by being hilariously repulsive. As far as Stephen King film adaptations go, this is one of the good ones. Carpenter's moody score and playful direction creating a slightly tongue-in-cheek but genuinely unnerving slasher movie (without any slashing). Some scenes are just ridiculously awesome like when Christine is set alight and pursues one of the piss-taking bullies down a deserted road or when the car is smashed to pieces and it fixes itself...by itself. All in all,

From the director of Invisible Dad and Invisible Mom comes a supernatural horror/comedy starring David Carradine, Dick Miller ( Gremlins ) and a whole bunch of porn stars and strippers. Truly this is recipe for cinematic success. As bums and boobs are thrown at us whenever there's a lull, what we get otherwise is an admittedly so-bad-it's-funny ride complete with some of the worst acting you're likely to witness and one fatal flaw: only ONE evil toon! I know that with all the rubbish a film like Evil Toons has to offer, lines like "Are you the guy with the phone?" for example, I shouldn't be picky about one thing in particular but... I'm sorry, I am. You've got something terrible and the only thing the poor, defenceless victims watching it are waiting for (besides breasts) are toons, evil ones! And all we get is some poorly animated raping demon dog thing for like 5 minutes? How dare you, sir! Worth a look only to see David Carradine c