Twice a year, you’re supposed to spread pre-emergent fertilizer on your lawn to prevent weeds from ever popping up. Someone should have done the same to THE RUINS, a terrible killer-vines horror flick based upon Scott Smith’s not-at-all-terrible 2006 book of the same name.

Two couples of college kids vacationing in Mexico meet a charismatic German guy who needs help finding his brother, from whom he’s heard no word since venturing out on a trip to check out some ancient ruins in the nearby jungle. Somehow, this seems like a viable alternative to another day of drinking and doing it, so our quartet of all-American students agrees to help the complete stranger out.

Bad move. No sooner do they arrive on the site — which looks like a stair-step stone temple — than locals speaking a foreign tongue shoot one of their new friend’s friends, via an arrow to the heart and a bullet through the nose. This drives our imperiled heroes and heroines to the top of the site, where they’re imprisoned by the growing armed throng below.

Then there’s also the matter of the ruins’ plant life: It’s, like, alive, dude. And it eats people by burrowing into their skin and moving around. With precious little food or water and seemingly no hope to get through the human gauntlet below, the collegians’ future doesn’t look so rosy.

It’s hard to fathom why THE RUINS is as bad as it is, because the talented Smith is also responsible for the screenplay. (He also pulled double duty on A SIMPLE PLAN, and both novel and film turned out splendid.) It follows his book rather closely, with a strange exception of letting things that happened to one character in print happen to another on film, and allowing one character who expired early on now survive to the end, while giving another the vice-versa treatment.

Your first clue at its quality is how ugly and cheap it looks, with the exception of a pair of beautiful location shots on the beach. Director Carter Smith makes his feature debut, having previously helmed a gay-themed dramatic short. How that qualifies someone for a big-studio thriller is beyond me.

Worse, it’s simply boring, which is weird, because what played out as gripping over 336 pages seems an absolutely tedious uphill climb at just 93 minutes, credits included. Part of the reason may be we’re given no insight into who the characters are, so we don’t really care about what happens to them. We know they like to pound back the booze, and that’s about it. All of them are like ciphers. The one thing the movie does better than the book is allow us to keep track of who’s who, but that’s only because of the visuals.

If anything, THE RUINS movie deserves a bravery badge for not diluting the shock moments of Smith’s original novel. Having missed this in the theaters (and now I’m glad I ditched the free screening), I’m unsure how this “unrated” DVD compares to what moviegoers saw, but it contains some sickening graphic scenes, most notably of an impromptu double amputation in grisly detail.

But it chickens out of presenting the book’s chilling ending, going for one of those insipid Hollywood “gotcha” moments — the cinematic equivalent to a middle finger hoisted toward the audience. (The alternate ending’s just as bad — yet another one that unimaginatively rips off CARRIE.) Don’t “ruin” your night with a rental. —Rod Lott

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Recently we saw the release of the latest Stephen King cinematic adaptation, THE MIST. It is trashy King done by a classy director and I loved every minute of it. It straddles the line between “good” Stephen King film and “bad” Stephen King film.

You know what a “good” Stephen King film is: THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, THE SHINING, CARRIE, STAND BY ME, THE GREEN MILE. While that’s all well and good, I have to be honest with you: I’ll take lousy, shitty Stephen King flicks anyday over any of those classy ones. No need to church it up for me. Give me the low-budget junk, the spectacular misfires, the ridiculously plotted storylines, the overwrought amateurish acting and the AC/DC soundtrack. Why? For the simple reason that the worse a Stephen King film is, the more entertaining it is.

Can you honestly look me in the eyes and tell me that four kids on a summer search for self-discovery is more entertaining than a group of kids who stalk and kill all the adults in a small town because they follow the teachings of a demonic being known as He Who Walks Behind the Rows? No, you can’t. STAND BY ME may be the better film, but CHILDREN OF THE CORN is the fun film.

Here’s a list of my personal “bad” King faves that no matter what time of day, if it’s on television, I’ll be watching it …

MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE
This is the only film ever directed by Stephen King, based on his short story “Trucks.” Hilariously enough, it’s also widely regarded as the worst King adaptation of all time. But, oh, how wrong they are …

Emilio Estevez leads a group of truck stop denizens the day that a comet’s tail passes over the earth and causes all mechanical equipment — from blenders and soda pop machines to gigantic semi-trucks and army tanks — to come magically to life and, even worse, carry on normal brain functions. They, the machines that is, trap and kill anyone who crosses their path, all to a soundtrack by AC/DC. Run me over and call me roadkill!

SILVER BULLET
I wish Gary Busey were my uncle. Not only would he be a constant drunken mess who offers wholly inappropriate advice to me at all times, but, if I were handicapped, he’d make me a high-tech, engine-powered wheelchair slash motorcycle slash death machine called, of course, the Silver Bullet.

That name would be especially ironic when I come face to face with our local werewolf, whom I proceed to shoot in the eye with a bottle rocket. I would also be played by a young, unsullied Corey Haim.

There’s still time, right? Right, Uncle Gary? Uncle Gary?

CHILDREN OF THE CORN
It’s a fear that we’ve all had when driving though a small town that’s strangely devoid of adults: that all the kids have killed the grown-ups and are led by a gravel-voiced boy-girl named Isaac, who has started a cult based around delicious, golden ears of corn — their god being a demon known as He Who Walks Behind the Rows. It’s completely rational and, for all intents and purposes, probably quite accurate. I mean, have you been to Kansas?

It’s also the plot of CHILDREN OF THE CORN, a movie that actually had my mom praying for the souls of my brother and me after viewing it, saying that we let “evil in the house.” Yep, when it makes your superstitious Mexican Catholic mom call for an exorcist, you known that you’ve done something right. I guess it didn’t help when I started talking in the Isaac voice, calling her an “interloper.”

THE RUNNING MAN
You know what a kick-ass flick is? Why, it’s the Arnold Schwarzenegger actioner THE RUNNING MAN. Not based on a Stephen King novel, technically, but on a book by his alter-ego Richard Bachman. But, to be fair, the book and the movie share only a title in common and very little else.

Instead, the movie is about a disgraced futuristic cop who, after being framed by a corrupt government, is given the choice of either death row or fighting for his life on the game show THE RUNNING MAN, which is hosted by, in the most genius casting of all time, Richard Dawson. Yes, that Richard Dawson. Filled with classic one-liners, massive amounts of needless violence and gratuitous Jesse “The Body” Ventura, I can say with pride that THE RUNNING MAN is one of the greatest films of all time. Eat it, CITIZEN KANE!

DREAMCATCHER
This big-budget adaptation directed by Oscar-nominated director Lawrence Kasdan and starring Morgan Freeman as a bloodthirsty, crazed Army general, was supposed to be one of the “good” Stephen King films, along the lines of SHAWSHANK or MISERY. There was actually a little bit of Oscar buzz around it. It was going to be a classic King flick.

But somewhere along the way, people forgot that the book is about an alien that possesses people by going up your butt while you crap. Yeah: up your butt. They might has well of called it INVASION OF THE BOOTY SNATCHERS. The last time I checked, Academy Award-winning movies don’t have alien menaces entering your anal orifice. Let me make sure: KRAMER VS. KRAMER, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, PLATOON — yep, no ass-chugging aliens. But really, it’s their loss, don’t you think? —Louis Fowler

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In 1985, when I was a 14, all I wanted for Christmas was Stephen King’s SKELETON CREW, then fresh in hardback. I got it, and the cold winter nights were perfect for reading “The Mist,” the eerie first of 22 stories in the collection.

But really, what were the Weinstein brothers thinking in realizing Frank Darabont’s THE MIST movie over Thanksgiving weekend? While it is mostly faithful to King’s original, 100ish-page story, its drastically different ending doesn’t exactly scream “holiday family motion-picture experience.”

Thomas Jane (THE PUNISHER) stars as David Drayton, an artist and all-around family man living the quiet life in coastal Maine until the night a freak storm tears the outdoors to hell. The next day, facing no electricity, he and his little boy head to town to pick up food and supplies at the Food House grocery store, leaving his wife back at the house.

Given the storm, the store is packed with people of all backgrounds, which will make for a real pressure cooker (mostly thanks to apocalyptic religious zealot Marcia Gay Harden) once the eerie fog envelopes the place and traps them inside. Despite attempts at escape, gooey tentacles and oversized insects from the mist thwart those desperate plans. But what’s really in there? And will anyone who sees live to tell?

It’s the third go-round for Darabont in King features, having written and directed THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and THE GREEN MILE prior. Hey, at least this one gets out of prison … or does it? People trapped in a grocery store – may as well be San Quentin.

Although this film is faithful, there are differences, but they are mostly subtle; trimmed from King’s text are a lot of fiddling around with the radio and a scene in which Drayton cheats on his wife with the Amanda character, played by Laurie Holden (SILENT HILL).

And then there’s the biggest change of all: the ending. I won’t spoil it for you, but it brings to mind a point Jeffery Deaver made in the introduction to his TWISTED anthology: “Authors have a contract with their readers and I think too much of mine to have them invest their time, money and emotion in a full-length novel, only to leave them disappointed by a grim, cynical ending. With a thirty-page short story, however, all bets are off.”

True, this is a movie, not a book, but its extended running time makes it the equivalent of a novel. And it’s worth noting that King didn’t take the cynical route in his coda. Darabont, however, crosses the line. Up until that point, I was with it all the way — a suspenseful, purposely paced thriller that delivers some old-school, B-movie scares. —Rod Lott

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It’s not for nothing Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel I AM LEGEND has now made it to the big screen three times: 1964’s THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, starring Vincent Price; 1971’s THE OMEGA MAN, starring Charlton Heston; and now last year’s I AM LEGEND, starring Will Smith. The only one to retain the title, it’s this latest and greatest version that seems most faithful to the spirit of its source.

By now, even those who have never read the novel know its premise, which can be accurately summed up in a simple phrase: the last man on earth vs. vampires. But the reason the novel remains so well-regarded is the amount of heart and humanity built into its shack of shocks, and CONSTANTINE director Francis Lawrence’s film takes care to preserve this as well.

Will Smith isn’t the likeliest actor to take the role of the solitary Robert Neville, but he wears it well. Depressed and near-despondent, he drives through the weed-ridden playground of New York City by day, hunting deer and renting DVDs, with only his faithful German shepherd as a companion.

At night, he holes up like a prisoner in his own multilevel apartment so as not to become the midnight snack of the “hemocytes,” vampire-like creatures who are sensitive to light and travel at super-speed. They once were humans, but a cure for cancer mutated into a strain that changed all that, for everyone but the immune. The hemocytes have made mincemeat out of those precious few, but Neville has been street-smart enough to survive this long.

Smith plays Neville with a quiet intensity; it’s a grounded performance that never gets showy, even when the special effects kick in. He’s not an action hero, but a methodical scientific mind still at work, trying to find a cure – more actively than Matheson’s protagonist ever did.

In other words, this is not the kind of motor-mouthed role that made Smith such the box-office superstar he is today. Gone are winks to the audience, absent are supposedly witty catchphrases. (Ironically, the DVD begins with a trailer with a most egrerious counterpoint, with a wooden-implement-gripping Corey Feldman staring directly into the camera, asking the fanged bloodsuckers of the sure-to-suck LOST BOYS: THE TRIBE, “Who ordered the stake?”)

After a really strong first two acts, I AM LEGEND does come to a halt when – big spoiler here – Neville learns he’s not exactly the only human left (shades of Matheson’s Ruth character), and it derails the film for about 15 minutes, before picking up steam again for the expected slam-bang finale.

It is the end that’s likely most responsible for so many viewers’ negative perception of the movie. People are so used to seeing Smith kick butt and succeed no matter what the odds that – even bigger spoiler here – they can’t believe that not only does his character die, but that his character chooses to die. Again, this is not the “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!” Smith they know and love; but a Smith whose character is true to the end of the novel.

Those who have a problem with that can rejoice in the two-disc set’s alternate ending, which gives you the Hollywood feel-good close. I’d argue it’s nowhere near as effective, and worthy of excision. –Rod Lott

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Who knew the works of H.P. Lovecraft would one day be so ripe for plundering by DIY filmmakers? Lurker Films has made a cottage industry out of primarily releasing compilations of these features and shorts onto DVD, and the fifth now is available in THE H.P. LOVECRAFT COLLECTION: VOLUME 5 - STRANGE AEONS: THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP.

The centerpiece of the disc is 2005’s feature-length STRANGE AEONS: THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP, based on Lovecraft’s well-known – but not always well-liked – 1937 story “The Thing on the Doorstep.” I was looking forward to seeing the adaptation, but that’s because I had it confused with “The Outsider,” for some reason.

Once that misunderstanding was cleared up, it was obvious that director Eric Morgret’s film follows the original plot pretty closely, even retaining the occasionally odd character names – Asenath, anyone? – despite being set in the present day. Its hero is bearded, mild-mannered college professor Dan Upton (J.D. Lloyd), whose graduate assistant Edward Derby (Erick Robertson) falls under the spell of the mysterious and beautiful Asenath (Angela M. Grillo).

And no wonder: He has magical sex with her, during which she implants all sorts of weird-ass thoughts and tentacled visions directly into his brain. That kind of thing tends to set a girl apart from the rest of the pack, especially when she does so while naked.

Seriously, though, this relationship marks changes in Derby’s personality, thus driving a wedge in his friendship with the professor, thus creating a bizarre love triangle that can’t end well. At all. (And you know that even without the appearance of that infernal Necronomicon).

While DOORSTEP has no shortage of freaky-deaky imagery, it also sports a few sound issues and performances that bend toward the amateur level. Its main problem, however, is even with the benefit of variances from the source material, there are simply not enough ideas to sustain it for an hour and a half.

It might help if its characters seemed more real. For instance, when someone shambles into your house on a dark and stormy night, saying nothing, their head tucked down and hidden under a hat, hell, yes, something is wrong! Be. Fucking. Scared!

AEONS’ strengths lie in the handful of bonus shorts. The German-language MARIA’S HUBRIS is a companion piece to AEONS, taking up the same theme of body transference, but in one-sixth the running time. Its narrator relates his friend’s telling him of “experiments” from a strange book that he and his gal Maria did. You can guess just what tome they’re referring to, can’t you?

Michael Granberry’s FROM BEYOND is a 10-minute stop-motion animation that’s absolutely cool, genuinely freaky and more effective than the beloved (included by me) Stuart Gordon movie. But even brevity can’t help the super-short preview for LET SLEEPING GODS LIE, which shows nothing but footage of computer-animated Lovecraftian creatures.

Also really brief and animated – this one via Flash? – is DON’T FEED THE BOOK, a comical short taking place in a bookstore. It’s not based on Lovecraft, but certainly couldn’t exist without him, as a customer browses at a tabletop copy of the Necronomicon and gets more than he bargained for. It’s a one-trick pony, sure, but nicely done.

In the extra features, there’s a trailer for an upcoming Lovecraft documentary, featuring notable talking heads Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, Guillermo del Toro and Ramsey Campbell. And for more well-respected artists paying tribute to ol’ H.P., check out the interview with John Carpenter singing the author’s praises for about six minutes. (Too bad he couldn’t put that much enthusiasm into his Lovecraft homage IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS!)

Among the choice bits, Carpenter reveals he tried to set up a miniseries based on “The Colour out of Space” for NBC – shame on you, peacocks – and thinks that Lovecraft must’ve had a real problem with fish. If that observation doesn’t elicit even an internal, knowing laugh, this disc is not for you. –Rod Lott

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Here’s how little I understood BEOWULF when I had to read it in English class in junior high and again in high school: I thought the title referred to the monster, and that the monster was a wolf. Laugh all you want, but Anglo-Saxon epic poems of the 8th century aren’t the easiest things to decipher.

Luckily, Robert Zemeckis’ BEOWULF is different, and I don’t just mean because it’s animated. It’s his “no-bullshit” version of the epic poem, as he promises on the making-of documentary featured on the DVD’s extra features: “This has nothing to do with the BEOWULF you were forced to read in junior high school. It’s all about eating, drinking, killing and fornicating.”

Actually, as scripted by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, the movie doesn’t stray all that far from the story of its source. It’s just that it ditches much of the boring elements and amps up the saucy ones, leaving an action-oriented, sometimes ribald and unapologetically over-the-top experience. Should Beowulf really be shown punching his way out of sea monster by going through the eye? Sure, why the hell not?

Getting a CGI slimdown in the process, THE DEPARTED heavy Ray Winstone assumes the lead role of Beowulf, a hero – here, made flawed, in direct opposition to the poem – who arrives at the castle of King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) to slay the monster Grendel (Crispin Glover), a giant deformed beast from a nearby village who doesn’t like all the noise their merriment makes.

Beowulf agrees, Grendel attacks and – while stark naked and opting to use no sword – our hero kills the creature. That doesn’t sit well with his serpentine mother, who takes the form of Angelina Jolie, whose breastastic reveal sent the tongues of Internet bloggers a-wagging when the scene was leaked just prior to its theatrical release. She offers Beowulf a truce: He can say he killed her if he promises to leave her be. Because she looks like a nude Jolie, he agrees.

Women are known to change their minds, however, which results in Beowulf having to engage in the fight of his life with a huge, fire-breathing dragon. Like much of the movie, this sequence is a thrill to watch. Even when the narrative lags – and at nearly two hours, it does here and there – the visuals are something to behold. While I’ve never been a fan of motion-capture animation, BEOWULF represents a huge leap for the medium; it’s difficult to imagine Zemeckis being able to make it live-action.

While I haven’t compared, I don’t have to see the theatrical cut to know that the unrated director’s cut is the one to watch. Laden as it is with violence, gore and nudity, it makes the ages-old story more exciting and accessible (Seamus Heaney or no Seamus Heaney) than it ever has been, or could ever hope to be.

For a more trash-oriented but still vastly entertaining take, don’t overlook 1999’s BEOWULF, from ALIEN NATION director Graham Baker. It plays fast and loose with the source material, as you’d expect a straight-to-video Christopher Lambert vehicle would.

Here, the inhabitants of a big, spooky castle are under constant threat of being made a meal by a ghost demon named Grendle. Their saving grace comes in the form of visiting mysterious stranger Beowulf, played by Lambert, the HIGHLANDER refugee and graduate of the Angry Whisper School of Acting.

Beowulf has a gift of sensing danger, so he knows when the monster is near. The beast is mostly a CGI creature given a wavy effect that looks like someone dragged a big magnet across your TV screen. The fight scenes – set to a techno score by Juno Reactor – alternately ape those found in MORTAL KOMBAT, THE MATRIX and EVIL DEAD II, and Beowulf himself busts out some GYMKATA moves. Assisting Beowulf is a foxy brunette (played by Rhona Mitra of HOLLOW MAN) who has a name, but I didn’t catch it because her boobs hang out the entire film.

How faithful is it to the poem? Again, it was a chore to read, but I’m pretty sure if the castle dudes were being visited in their dreams by a horny Playboy Playmate, I would’ve remembered, and maybe even aced the test. –Rod Lott

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Yet another retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s split-personality novella comes to the screen – this time with rockin’ tunes – in THE DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE ROCK ‘N ROLL MUSICAL. The title says it all.

It begins in classic movie-musical style, panning in to Stevenson’s quaint countryside home, as he awakes from a horrible dream and sees visions of the characters who populate his nightmares: our cast. For a $55,000 budget, this opening is admirable. Flash-forward to the present day – or 2003, when this film first was released – and Dr. Jekyll (writer/producer/composer/makeup artist Alan Bernhoft) is mixing up something special. He drinks it, and you know what happens next: He becomes Mr. Hyde, who kind of looks like a cross between Meat Loaf and a hobo, and embarks on a killing spree.

Oh, and the characters sing. A lot. It’s in the grand rock-opera style of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW or TOMMY, with that exact 1970s vibe. The songs are competent, but not memorable. Often, the tunes make way for the filmmakers to throw in cheesy, ’80s Chroma key effects, where you’re left wondering whether you should laugh at it or with. As it went on, I still was uncertain how much of the goofiness was intentional, so I chose to laugh at it.

I’m afraid it has more ambition than to which it could live up, and the gimmick wears thin by the second song. But this film is a full 90 minutes, so prepare for many more of them, with Bernhoft giving it his all throughout. My attention quickly wavered, but did perk up later at a scene in a bar, where Hyde had his paws all over some whore in a black leather bra, singing about how he loves little girls. But my sudden reinterest had nothing to do with the bar or the song, I can assure you. –Rod Lott

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As awesome as the four FILM CREW discs are, I got the biggest “original MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000” contact high yet from CINEMATIC TITANIC. After all, it’s a project featuring MST’s first trio of stars – creator Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu and J. Elvis Weinstein – as well as two later players in Mary Jo Pehl and Frank Conniff. Silhouettes, wisecracks and totally shitty movies – MST is pretty much back, kids, just minus the robots and network interference, and with the added bonus of a rhyming name.

The first CINEMATIC TITANIC project is skewering THE OOZING SKULL, aka BRAIN OF BLOOD, a 1972 mad-scientist cheapie directed by Z-movie legend Al Adamson. The roast starts with little fanfare and zero introduction; as it begins to unspool, our five principals take their spots on a stair-stepped balcony silhouette on both sides of the screen. Some are seated; others stand; all poke holes in this turd with razor-sharp wit.

There’s no “getting used” to it, nor “settling in.” So “on” is their rapport, it’s as if these guys never stopped working together in the first place. Rather than stop the movie as MST episodes did for transitionary host segments, Hodgson and company merely pause it to make some extended comment that requires more attention, such as bosomy starlet Regina Carroll’s horrendous makeup job.

I barely remember plot points from the mind-numbing SKULL, but that’s because there were so few. In a nutshell, an old coot of a scientist needs to transplant a brain ASAP – like, now – so he’s forced to pick the nearest body: his facially challenged mongoloid retard henchman. The (comparatively) smart brain doesn’t cotton to his new host body, so he takes advantage of his newfound brute strength and goes bonkers on everybody. And there’s a midget sidekick, who bears the brunt of many, many jokes … all merited, in my view.

There are no extras on the disc, but who needs ‘em? The feature alone is all you need for your humor RDA. Welcome back, guys; please don’t leave again. –Rod Lott

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What’s in the water o’er at The Horror Channel? Their original programming continues to impress me greatly – first with SHADOW FALLS and now even more so with HEARTLAND HORRORS: SEASON ONE, another online series rounded up in its entirety for DVD.

Ten short films await you on HEARTLAND HORRORS, none of them related other than the behind-the-camera talent – primarily Patrick Rea and SHADOW FALLS’ Kendal Sinn. Once again, this proves you don’t have to have a big budget to do horror right – just the heart for the material (well, competence goes a long way, too).

It begins with THE THING ABOUT BANNON’S LOOKOUT, which may be the most predictable of the bunch. But from there, things get more original and better, starting with COPY, in which a Xerox warns a woman not to hire the guy she’s just interviewed for – and promised – a job. It’s original and clever. So is THE LAST LAUGH, with a clown torturing a mime to try and coax a sound out of him. The ending is creepily dark, and kudos to whomever plays the mime; he turns in a hilarious silent performance.

WOMAN’S INTUITION has a young lady visiting the doctor because she feels something is wrong. As revealed in the shocking ending, boy, is it ever! A FEW MILES BACK feels like an adaptation of an old urban legend. It’s decent, but goes on a big too long at just over 10 minutes, beating you over the head with the obvious. (OUT TO PASTURE and BITTER SWEETS also carry the ring of a strong folklore influence, but succeed more with less time.)

SMOKED is kind of a one-joke bit, but done well, subverting expectations, and SHED OUT OF LUCK (great title, that) has a guy being held captive in a barn by … well, you just have to see it. When he’s offered a bowl of dinner, I just about lost it. And if you like zombies (these days, who doesn’t?), CAFÉ AT THE CROSSROADS will be you cup of undead tea.

Don’t click around and watch just a couple; hit “play all” and treat yourself to what amounts to a surprisingly satisfying indie-minded CREEPSHOW. The production values are superb for this sort of thing, and these guys clearly know what they’re doing. I just hope they get to do more of it.

But, wait! There’s more! Four additional shorts appear in the extras. Being all comedy-oriented and less polished, they wouldn’t fit in all that well with the main episodes, but as bonuses, they’re welcome. THE CLICKER is concerned with a remote control with a mind of its own, while THE PIRATE P.S.A. decries the oppression of the salty seafarers. MULTI-TASK is a six-minute mockumentary about an DIY filmmaker so fed up with his crew that he clones himself, so he can serve as director, writer, actor, etc. – all at the same time. Lastly, MIME AWAY is a commercial parody that is exactly like what it sounds.

At under $10, this is really quite a steal. Indie horror is alive and doing very, very well. –Rod Lott

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As if the name didn’t suggest such, Shadow Falls is a creepy small town. Located somewhere in the Midwest, it apparently died in the mid-’80s after something terrible happened at its local hospital. Now it appears to be all but deserted, but an evil still populates within its borders. Billed as the first horror TV series made for the Internet, the first eight episodes have made it to DVD as SHADOW FALLS: VOLUME 1.

With many strikes against it from the outset (ultra-low budget, shot on video, no-name cast and crew), I was as skeptical as anyone to check out this Horror Channel show, but it’s surprisingly pretty good. For one thing, it contains a great air of mystery. For another, most episodes are under 10 minutes in length, so they have little chance to bore. Each stands alone, but as becomes evident about midway through, there are threads woven and clues embedded in each that eventually will come to an all-makes-sense end (in episode 32, according to writer/director Kendal Sinn in the extra-feature interviews).

The first episode, “Jabberwocky,” seems utterly random: A little girl all alone in a classroom – except for her teacher – recites Lewis Carroll’s poem of the same name, and is rewarded with a disembodied human hand on which to snack. The end. On the surface, there appears to be no story, but stylistically, the seeds of the series have been planted.

Next is “Dead to Me,” in which a man is interrogated by someone unseen about a disastrous trip to the town; its final shot chills. “The Man from Lod” has a carful of teenagers stranded on its outskirts at night (car trouble will be a recurring theme of the series), and is the one episode I wouldn’t want to watch in the dark while home alone. Although initially humorous (”Where have I heard that before? Oh, yeah, FRIDAY THE FUCKING 13TH!”), it has a genuine scare and tension to burn.

“Daddy” brings a man to Shadow Falls, in search of his daughter who’s been missing for 20 years. “Crazy Joe’s Haunted Videotape” is the most overtly comedic, setting up a CLERKS-type scenario between two slacker store workers, but the enigmatic VHS they screen sets up a lot of mythology that gives you the most backstory thus far, and is creepy. In “My Pixie Valentine,” a girl is brought back to the town’s fields by the arrival of a letter from a past lover. But you just know she isn’t going to find roses awaiting her.

“Nurse Lemming’s Responsibility” concerns a dresser at a garage sale with a key hidden within its drawers, taking its discoverer to Shadow Falls’ graveyard, and “The Funny Scream of Nurse Karen” is an exchange between a seemingly insane doctor and his tied-up prey. Played out partly as grainy security-cam footage, this episode hints at more horrific things to come, but it’s also the season-ender.

The acting ranges from decent to amateurish, but Sinn smartly lets the silence permeate much of the running time. The shorter the episodes are, the better they seem to be, and that also goes for the ones with the least amount of dialogue. It’s the mood these create that makes SHADOW FALLS mildly addictive. Although I had better things to do, I couldn’t stop myself from watching “just one more.”

Season two was supposed to start running last fall; hopefully it’ll start soon, because I’m anxious to see what further secrets the town holds. –Rod Lott

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The damned thing is that MASTERS OF HORROR: THE DAMNED THING has the nerve to call itself an adaptation of Ambrose Bierce’s classic short story. In that 1894 tale, a group of men in a cabin hear a chilling account of the death of a man by an unseen force in the forest that ripped him to shreds. In this one-hour episode … well, at least someone gets ripped to shreds. Similarities, you end there.

This THING opens 24 years ago, when – shortly after black goo drips from the ceiling – a dad goes nuts, shoots his wife dead and almost kills his son, too, but he gets eviscerated and does whirly-loops as his guts spill out on the ground.

Surviving Kid grows up to be a small-town sheriff with a permanent limp, played by Sean Patrick Flanery (THE YOUNG INDIANA JONES CHRONICLES), and his obsession with events of the past have driven off his button-cute wife (Marisa Coughlan of TEACHING MRS. TINGLE) and their only child. At least he has a right to be, because with the anniversary of That Night coming up, the people around town are starting to act crazy.

How crazy? Oh, like kill-yourself-with-repeated-blows-of-a-hammer crazy.

With a script by Richard Christian Matheson, THING errs in many ways, including trying to find a credible explanation for the monster. Bierce’s was ingenious, revealing only that it exists in a plane of color human eyes cannot see, but this show leaves nothing to the imagination, giving us a Sandman-style petroleum-based beast.

Director Tobe Hooper – responsible for two certifiable scare classics (POLTERGEIST and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, of course) and other flicks on the other end of the quality spectrum – is not at the top his game here, although production values are strong. His camera forever swirls about, scenes go on too long and – worst of all – it isn’t the least bit frightening. He gets off a couple of good gross-outs – the aforementioned toolbox murder and an encounter with a car-crash victim – but that’s about it.

Bierce’s story would be challenging for anyone to adapt without going into it knowing it’s all in the suggestion. But the MASTERS OF HORROR team has made so many alterations, the title no longer fits. Even if it weren’t based on a pre-existing piece of literature, the THING has little life to it. –Rod Lott

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The best thing about DORM OF THE DEAD is its title, but don’t expect the movie to fulfill that promise. In fact, don’t expect the movie to seem much like a movie. It’s a hair shy of unwatchable.

Dealing with a zombie outbreak on the campus of Arkham University, very little of it takes place in a dorm. Very little of it actually involves zombies. It’s more like an excuse for several extended, scored-with-bad-techno sex scenes that recall the lurid but boring Cinemax After Dark features, only shot on video. The box plays up the fact that Andrea Ownbey – aka “Miss Howard Stern” – is one of the stars, but this means nothing to me. Besides, none of the girls really look attractive, and that includes B-movie staple Tiffany Shepis.

There are two things the Donald Farmer-directed DORM does well: 1) Making special effects look homemade, and 2) overdoing it on sequences involving people walking. When your credits feature an actor who calls himself “Dukey Flyswatter,” you know you’re not to take it seriously, but I’d rather not take it at all. –Rod Lott

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Forty-three stories up, someone’s terrorizing a very dorky-acting Lauren Hutton in SOMEONE’S WATCHING ME!, a 1978 made-for-TV movie most notable for being written and directed by one John Carpenter, and shot merely weeks before he started filming a little indie thing called HALLOWEEN.

Fleeing to L.A. after a bad relationship, Hutton rents the apartment high atop the Arkham Tower, which directly faces another high-rise tower. It’s from there that an unknown man watches her every movie via telescope, leaves her presents, bugs her place, menaces her with phone calls, threatens her with notes and basically terrifies her to the point where there’s a huge gap between her teeth.

For help, she turns to lesbian workmate Adrienne Barbeau and professorial love interest David Birney, as well as the police, who can’t do anything about it until “he” does something. And believe it, that hellish moment eventually arrives.

With a dash of REAR WINDOW, the movie conjures up a fair amount of supsense on a low, low budget. But Carpenter finds effectiveness in efficiency, and even gets off a shot early in the film that’s one of the more frightening things in his oeuvre. As a Carpenter fan, I’ve wanted to see this “lost” film for years, and I wasn’t disappointed.

It’s now available on DVD, either separately or as part of Warner’s six-disc TWISTED TERROR COLLECTION, a boxed set of seemingly randomly chosen horror flicks like Oliver Stone’s THE HAND, EYES OF A STRANGER, Amicus’ FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE, Wes Craven’s DEADLY FRIEND and, um, DR. GIGGLES. –Rod Lott

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No-budget writer/director David Heavener’s DAWN OF THE LIVING DEAD is the kind of movie MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 would have had a heyday with. And from all evidence, I’m fairly sure it was intentional. This is – in more than ways one – a messy film, as if the zombie genre raped the Indian burial ground genre, and this was the bastard child.

Here, a woman (Amanda Bauman) still reeling from the death of her daughter moves to a California home near little more than the Mexico border with her husband (Joe Estevez, quickly morphing into Gary Busey’s dopplegänger), who also happens to be her sponsor for her post-tragedy addictions. She starts experiencing strange visions at all hours of the night that feel very real, but her hubby tells her these are side effects of all her crazy meds.

Yet she actually has good reason to be freaking out. Her humble abode once was a safe house for illegals, and a whole family was slaughtered there. And now they’re coming back alive to pay the new owners a visit! And, hey, they’ve even brought a zombie baby!

Heavener himself shows up midway as the guy in charge of keeping the local windmills running, because, he explains, “When you have no energy, you have no life.” He wisely scripts himself some nudity-laden slow-motion sex with the missus, and appears to playing his role for yuks, whereas everyone else (Bauman especially) seem to be fully invested in motivation and all that nonsense. You don’t motivation for a movie in which some white-trash woman starts stripping for no good reason for two Mexicans her husband has captured (”We left Mexico for this?” the subtitles read. “Look at those melons. Ripe.”), complete with cheesy ’80s-style music video effects.

The gore effects are actually pretty good for this sort of thing (look for blood as thick as Welch’s grape jelly to ooze out that aforementioned zombie tot’s empty eye socket), even if all other production values are sacrificed. Yet this thing is full of entertainment – not for general audiences, but the Friday-night-beers-with-the-guys crowd who can appreciate bad films for their sheer, utter B-ness. –Rod Lott

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Although the story may be as stripped-down as the Spartans themselves, 300 is one of those phenomenon films worth seeing just for imagery alone. Of course, it has Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s graphic novel to thank for that.

Proving his DAWN OF THE DEAD remake was no fluke, sophomore director Zack Synder lensed this rooted-in-fact actioner, based upon the ancient Battle of Thermopylae, in which 300 determined Spartans held their own against exponential armies of Persians.

Gerard Butler – to me, he’ll always be DRACULA 2000 – stars as King Leonidas, the Spartans’ leader. He looks just like the character from the book, and indeed, this is a recurring trend. The film makes a better point of Leonidas’ internal struggle between doing what is right for his people vs. doing what is right for himself.

Much of this hinges on the film’s one true departure from the book: the addition of his wife, Queen Gorgo, played by a radiantly beautiful Lena Headey. While the Spartans square off against legions of spear-wielding soldiers and the occasional monster, the queen is shown defending her husband’s honor back home, by any means necessary.

The first half of 300 is all buildup – and admittedly, boring at patches – as it paves the way for the true reason moviegoers turned over $210 million for tickets: the battle scenes. And, oh, those battle scenes! They’re as visually exciting as anything you’re apt to see all year. Actually, even the slow stuff upfront is stunning, with every scene a marvel of production design and a work of art. One could grab a random frame from the film, have a print made, and hang it above the fireplace, and visitors would be envious.

In these sequences, one can see how panels from Miller’s work were lifted directly onto Synder’s viewfinder. The latter does an excellent job of using the former’s work as a template, but then building bridges between the individual scenes to fill in the action and make it come truly alive. Has there ever been a case where a film followed its source material so closely?

The DVD’s bonus features make just how clear, with side-by-side comparisons of certain key scenes. More interesting is a conversation with Miller himself, in which he reveals his main – and unlikely – influences in writing 300: hard-boiled crime writers like Jim Thompson and Mickey Spillane, particularly for their to-the-point approach in dialogue.

At the end of this feature, Miller turns to Snyder and asks how in the heck the director is going to make his next project work: an adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ WATCHMEN. One thing’s for sure: It won’t look dull. –Rod Lott

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Slasher films are targets of scorn from critics and other high-minded pillars of the community, yet a nonstop source of fun for movie buffs. Adam Rockoff’s 2002 study GOING TO PIECES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLASHER FILM, 1978-1986 stands as the definitive guide to this sub-genre – extremely well-written and well-researched, with neither a dry spot nor scholarly leaning within its pages.

Now the same can be said for the documentary based on the book, GOING TO PIECES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLASHER FILM, originally broadcast last Halloween on the Starz cable channel and now out on DVD.

In the book, Rockoff is quick to defend his beloved slashers, making a good point about how tame they are violence-wise when compared to the body count of actioners like COMMANDO and RAMBO III. Better yet, he’s honest; as willing as he is to call HALLOWEEN a classic (and it is), he’s just as willing to call a stinker a stinker (and there are more than a few). By interviewing some of the prinicples behind the seminal slashers – and even the fringe ones – Rockoff gives us a detailed and eye-opening all-access pass into some juicy, behind-the-scenes stories. And who knew there were any such tales to be told regarding TERROR TRAIN, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME or MY BLOODY VALENTINE?

The documentary seems practically lifted from the pages, with the added benefit of bloody footage from the films being discussed. (It’s one thing to read about SLEEPAWAY CAMP’s disturbing twist ending, but another thing altogether to see the damned thing.) In addition to the heavy-hitters, the B- and C-titles like those above are given equal time, making them appear even more watchable than they actually are in full. Though the filmmakers – that includes Rockoff, who scripted – deserve credit for seeking so many on-camera participants out; I only wish they wouldn’t have employed the annoyingly pretentious device of having them walk while talking.

From the slashers’ early days of PSYCHO to its post-modern parody days of SCREAM and SCARY MOVIE (and, in the doc, the current revival with the likes of SAW and HOSTEL), Rockoff has all the gory bases covered. If Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger are your idea of a good time, his book was written just for you. Ditto the doc. –Rod Lott

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When I was 13, a friend gave me Stephen King’s CYCLE OF THE WEREWOLF for my birthday. Though I was overjoyed, my mom wasn’t too thrilled with Bernie Wrightson’s illustrations of disembodied pig heads and werewolf sex. Yet a year later, she had no problem dropping me off at Northpark Cinema 4 to see the book’s R-rated adaptation, SILVER BULLET, recently re-released as part of a sweet, affordable DVD box set containing new special editions of PET SEMATARY, THE DEAD ZONE and, um, GRAVEYARD SHIFT.

Not exactly a novel, CYCLE depicts a tense year in the town of Tarker’s Mills as its residents are terrorized by the unexplained arrival of a lycanthrope, with each short chapter representing a month. For the most part, the chapters aren’t even related, and with their sheer brevity, they come off like tone poems rather than pieces of an overall linear tale.

That’s not a criticism of CYCLE, and King transplanted a majority of those 12 stories into his own screenplay for SILVER BULLET. There’s the attack on the lonely fat woman, there’s the mauling of the cop in his car, there’s the kid flying the kite for the very last time. But a series of thinly related sketches wouldn’t work as a film, so King chose to center his narrative on Marty, the disabled kid who escapes death by shooting the werewolf’s eye with a bottle rocket.

Corey Haim stars as Marty, a casting decision that immediately dates the film. But it’s Haim before his testicles descended, so it’s all good. While every other townsperson falls victim to the werewolf despite having two legs, it’s the disabled kid stuck in the wheelchair who outlasts them all. He gets help from his homely sister (Megan Follows) and their crazy drunk uncle, “played” by Gary Busey.

Busey is incredible in this flick, and by “incredible,” I mean semi-retarded. And this was a few years before his head-injury-causing motorcycle accident. There’s this amazing reaction shot at the end where the werewolf bursts through the wall, and Busey’s looking right into the camera and goes through half a dozen amazing facial contortions in the span of half a second. Hilarious.

TWIN PEAKS‘ Everett McGill plays the town reverend, who tries to plead with his congregation not to kill the beast. (Semi-related side note: King’s decision to greatly compress time for the film was smart, because I never believed the rev could go unnoticed for three months as he does in the book.) LOST’s Terry O’Quinn has a small role as the sheriff, and RESERVOIR DOGS‘ Lawrence Tierney is, appropriately, a bartender.

As a whole, the film is fairly cheesy, but what does one expect from a mid-’80s effort from producer Dino DeLaurentiis? I’d argue that it’s comfortably cheesy, because it’s enjoyable for all of its 95 minutes, and has its share of good scenes of horror. In these days of CGI overkill, it’s actually quite nice to see a werewolf that’s just a guy in a suit.

Today’s audiences likely would laugh at Carlo Rambaldi’s work on the monster –  as well as the entire film –  but I have to admit a soft spot for this one. I think I even liked it more today than the several times I saw it two decades ago. CYCLE is kind of an interesting one-off experiment – the calendar as novella –  but SILVER BULLET brings its ideas to life. –Rod Lott

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In elementary school in the very early ’80s, I saw a lot of great movies with David Huckabay. FLASH GORDON. UNDER THE RAINBOW. And, as part of one of his birthday parties, SUPER FUZZ.

Today, I don’t how such an Italian cheapo flick ever got a major theatrical release, but I’m glad it did. For a quarter of a century, pieces of it have been forever stamped on my brain. And now, as with FLASH, its cheesy greatness can be appreciated on DVD. (Carrie Fisher’s dress being removed by a midget, however, sadly remains relegated to VHS.)

Sans usual partner Bud Spencer, the great, toothy Terence Hill stars as Dave, a cop who suddenly gains super powers from a nuclear explosion, much to the amazement of his rotund partner Willy, played by a so-hammy-he’s-on-rye Ernest Borgnine and his screwed-up teeth. Dave can make things happen with his mind! He can predict when elephants will round the corner! He can float! He can walk on water like Jesus Christ! He can run in fast-speed! He can catch bullets with his teeth! He can do all of this and more … unless he sees the color red. Then he’s shit outta luck.

Dave and Willy pursue the stock villains behind a counterfeit money scheme, as Dave learns more about his powers and romancing Willy’s flat-chested laundress niece (Julie Gordon, the poor man’s Susan Dey). Accompanying every single feat of superhuman strength is perhaps the greatest theme song ever written in the history of cinema. If you’ve already seen this flick, no doubt you can hum it. It must be played something like every five minutes in the movie, yet it never gets old. Be-boop-be-boop-be-boo-boo, be-boop-be-boop-be-boo-boo!

Somerville House’s disc features a passable print of the film (retaining its original SUPER SNOOPER title), but I’m not looking for pristine visuals in SUPER FUZZ. As long as it retains that madcap zaniness, all’s good. It does, so it is. More movies should end with the heroes falling through the Earth all the way to China. Then they’d be memorable. –Rod Lott

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Lurker Films’ first two H.P. Lovecraft DVDs gathered up short films based on the author’s work, but this one – THE H.P. LOVECRAFT COLLECTION: VOLUME 3 – OUT OF MIND – features an interesting take on his writing.

Originally shot for the Bravo channel in Canada, OUT OF MIND: THE STORIES OF H.P. LOVECRAFT – the disc’s centerpiece – is a quasi-biography program about Lovecraft, in which the author interacts with one of his fictional characters. What starts out looking like archival footage of Lovecraft speaking into a camera is actually from now, just made to look old-timey.

We watch as Lovecraft walks in the woods, working out some of the names that will become some of his most important creations. Cut to today, where we are introduced to a man named Randolph Carter, who meets an lawyer with a package that’s been waiting for him for some 30 odd years. That package contains a mysterious book that will rock Carter’s world in a huge way.

The movie takes various themes from Lovecraft’s work and combines them in this interesting overview of his work. If you’re familiar with “The Statement of Randolph Carter” and “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” you’re in for a treat. Despite an obvious low budget, they get it right, even getting in a few jabs at other movies made out of Lovecraft stories.

The acting in the film is top-notch; portraying Lovecraft, Christopher Heyerdahl will make you think he is the real deal. My only gripe – and it’s a big one for me – is that there is a scene at the end where Lovecraft walks around a cemetery and comes across his own headstone, large and ornate. Sorry, but Lovecraft’s actual headstone is a lot smaller and is just a granite-type brick with his name and a quotation.

But I’m just nitpicking. Included with OUT OF MIND are two audio commentaries. Both feature Heyerdahl and director Raymond Saint-Jean, while the second also has cinematographer Serge Ladouceur with them. Expect long pauses, even for a film that is just 55 minutes long.

Also included on this DVD compilation are three Lovecraftian shorts. THE OUTSIDER gives away the surprise of the story right away, but for a five-minute flick, it will make readers of the story pleased. The second – a really short piece titled MY NECRONOMICON – shows a man rushing home to read his new book, with dire consequences. Both feature audio commentaries.

The final short film is the real treat of the package: THE MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN, which looks exactly like you would imagine it. Yes, it’s a low-budget student film, but wow! Lovecraft’s story is captured so well, it will make you wonder why no one ever tried to redo it, especially with the technology today that could really go to town with the climax. For this alone, the DVD would be worth grabbing. Following the movie, you get interviews with the ZANN filmmakers; it’s really informative and shows their love for the project.

Also included is an interview with Lovercraft historian S.T. Joshi, who discusses the stories that were adapted for this collection. If you’ve read Joshi’s introductions to the Penguin Classics editions of Lovecraft’s work, some of the info will repeat itself. Still, this is a great collection of films that makes me itching for the previous two volumes. –Bruce Grossman

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For all the hype being spilled on this year’s crop of Oscar front-runners, I think much of it is misplaced, having now seen Christopher Nolan’s THE PRESTIGE, an outstanding adaptation of Christopher Priest’s outstanding 1995 novel. Not only is the film visual storytelling at its best, but also a sterling example of a seemingly-impossible-to-adapt novel making a triumphant journey to the big screen without artistic compromise.

Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale star as warring Victorian magicians, both two-bit tricksters whose rise to fame is marked by constant one-upsmanship and sabotage. At first, they’re friends, until an onstage mistake by one results in the tragic death of the other’s loved one. From then, they’re bitter enemies, and the stakes are raised when one conjures the ultimate illusion – one with which the other become obsessed.

If any more plot was revealed – for the film or the book – it’d be all but ruined. The joy is in letting its labyrinthian turns twist your brain every which way. If you thought Nolan’s MEMENTO was an enigma, it’s a kindergartener’s board puzzle compared to this giant jigsaw.

Nolan adheres closely to Priest’s narrative, even if it jettisons the modern-day wraparound and the progressive weakening of one magician; neither are missed. As with Priest’s telling in print, the way the story unfolds onscreen is nothing short of masterful. And once you see it, you’re going to want to see it again just to see if the clues were there all along. I’d read the book less than two years ago, and I still couldn’t completely predict what was coming.

But don’t think it’s a one-trick pony; this is no M. Night Shyamalan gimmick where the emperor has no clothes. There’s a real richness to the plot – inherent in the novel and elevated with the sumptuous visuals. Jackman and Bale wear their roles quite well; Jackman actually gets to act for a change and Bale strengthens his rep as one of our more intense but under-the-radar thespians. As a woman who comes between them, Scarlett Johansson doesn’t have much to do but serve as window dressing, but what nice-looking window dressing it is.

Ready-made for endless discussions and unjustly ignored upon its release – not to mention awards season – THE PRESTIGE is one of the very best films from 2006, spurring from the pages of one the very best novels I’ve read in this decade. –Rod Lott

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