Director: Glenn Withrow
Writers: Ivy Withrow, Hallie Todd, Glenn Withrow
Stars: Hallie Todd, Thomas Wilson Brown, Karli Blalock, Brooklyn Tate
Rating: 
If you’re looking for a survival horror film involving a group of teens being hunted in the woods by a psychopath, but would like one that didn’t have you rooting for the killer, then I’d like to suggest Glenn Withrow’s THE MOORING.
It’s about a group of teen girls who’ve gotten into trouble because of online activities like cyber-bullying, online gambling, and a hacking. They’ve been entered into a program that will teach them that “there is more to relationships than pushing buttons” by stripping them of their online access, and placing them on a houseboat for some camping in the great outdoors. Unfortunately, their excursion is interrupted by a pair of psychopathic drifters.
Here’s the synopsis from the THE MOORING’S official site:
Every 40 seconds a person goes missing. In northern Idaho, a group of teenage girls attended a summer camp to help them connect with nature without technology.…
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Here, Now – It’s been awhile since I posted a movie recommendation, but not from a lack of watching any. I have six movies I think a lot of you DD’ers will enjoy, starting with LOVELY MOLLY. It’s a horror film directed by Eduardo Sanchez, one of the creators of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, who went on to direct a few direct-to-video movies that didn’t come anywhere close to being as popular with audiences or critics as Blair Witch (although I did enjoy ALTERED). From the looks of the MOLLY reviews, it seems like that streak continues with yet another VOD release.
MOLLY currently has a 42% ranking at Rotten Tomatoes, and top critics use terms like “reductive and histrionic,” as well as “depressing and lazily nonsensical” when describing the film; those who enjoyed it call it creepy, disturbing, and effective at creating a sense of unease. I fall somewhere in the latter camp. I really liked LOVELY MOLLY and thought it was disorientating enough, with just enough creepiness, to overcome its flaws.…
Continue ReadingMan Angry Over Open Captions Pulls Fire Alarm During “Avengers” Movie
May 18, 2012 at 11:11 am by Morbid
ABINGDON, Md. – A man in Maryland is facing prison time after his dumbass pulled a crowded theater’s fire alarm during a showing of THE AVENGERS.
David Walters was at the theater Monday night to watch the latest super-hero flick (it’s damn good, btw) when he got upset over the theater’s decision to accommodate the hearing impaired with open captions.
Open captions are sort of like subtitles, but the text on the screen includes descriptors of dialogue, song lyrics, and important sound effects during the film. I think it’s pretty cool of the studio to provide it and awesome of the Regal theater to show it.
Walters didn’t think so, however, and felt the text was ruining the movie. He decided that if he couldn’t enjoy the movie like the hearing impaired in the audience, then no one was. So with tears streaming down his face, and blood flowing from his weeping vagina, Walters used his balled-up fists to pull the fire alarm in protest.
Because of his actions, Walters is looking at up to five years in prison.…
Continue ReadingTeen Blames DUI Crash On Boyfriend Not Taking Her To See ‘Twilight’
November 23, 2011 at 2:12 pm by Morbid
Illinois – Police arrested an 18-year-old drunk chick who crashed her car on Saturday because, according to police, she was upset over her boyfriend not taking her to see that crappy Twilight movie.
Olivia Ornelas, 18, was charged with drunken driving and unlawful consumption of alcohol by a minor after her car was found in a ditch at 12:04 a.m. Saturday morning. The car she was trying to drive while “extremely intoxicated” was missing a front right tire.
She reportedly told deputies that she had ended up in the roadside ditch because her boyfriend had upset her when he didn’t take her to see the new Twilight movie as planned.
I gotta commend the boyfriend if he bailed on this loopy broad on purpose as sometimes the vagina just isn’t worth the hassle. Hell, Sofía Vergara could ask me to go to the new Twilight movie and my immediate response would be me telling her to go f*ck herself.
I know, I know… it’s almost cliche to hate on Twilight. But I’m dead serious.…
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I know we deal with some nasty crimes, so watching a film depicting a violent home invasion in a realistic manner may not be something you’re inclined to watch while escaping the crap you read on here. But if you’re a glutton for punishment, boy do I have a film for you.
Kidnapped is a Spanish home invasion film directed by Miguel Ángel Vivas that echoes a bit of the original Funny Games, The Strangers, or more recently, Cherry Tree Lane. But unlike those films, Vivas seems to abandon any form of social commentary or cheap scares, simply turning those who choose to watch into a neutered witness to a horrific crime.
Jaime (Fernando Cayo), his wife Marta (Ana Wagener) and their teenage daughter Isa (Manuela Vellés) have just moved into their new home located in a gated community when, on their first night there, three masked men break in and hold them hostage.
Their motive is money. and they plan on getting it by forcing Jaime to accompany the gang’s leader around town and empty out his bank accounts at various ATMs.…
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It was pointed out to me that I have been real slack on movie suggestions lately, leading the two people who actually take my movie advice to believe that I have not watched any films worth a crap. This is not true. In fact, I have watched a number of good movies this year worthy of a D’D reader’s time.
So while I wait for someone to do something stupid enough for me to write about, I figure I would tell you about one I watched earlier this year — a revenge film titled RED WHITE & BLUE. This slow burner is so bleak and unpleasant that I absolutely love it to pieces. Here is the plot, taken from their Facebook Page.
“Set in Austin, Texas, this “slacker revenge movie” follows the disaffected and promiscuous Erica (Amanda Fuller – Buffy The Vampire Slayer) as she sleeps with a series of nameless men, until she is befriended by Nate (Noah Taylor – Submarine, The Proposition), an ex-Iraq war veteran with a sociopathic streak.
Nate, unusually, seems interested in Erica for more than just sex – but when one of her previous partners, hard-rocking mamma’s boy Franki (Marc Senter) resurfaces, Erica’s actions come back to haunt her, leading to a terrifying climax which has shocked audiences worldwide.…
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HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN started life as a faux trailer used to help promote the 2007 release of the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino extravaganza, GRINDHOUSE. It probably should’ve remained as a kitschy, grimy celebration of scratchy B-movie promotion. Since iffy internet jokes never seem to die peacefully anymore, we now have a feature-length version of HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN, and the upgrade is mostly unbearable camp disguised as hip homage, splattered with enough blood and guts to distract from a cinematically empty reality, with director Jason Eisener declaring screen war without any notable scripted ideas.
Into the decaying Hope City comes Hobo (Rutger Hauer), a broken man with dreams of owning a lawn mower in an attempt to rebuild his shattered existence. Facing life on the street, Hobo witnesses a daily parade of brutality, orchestrated by crime lord Drake (Brian Downey) and his two sadistic sons, Slick (Gregory Smith) and Ivan (Nick Bateman). The ghouls own the town, leaving Hobo disgusted and aching for change. Salvation comes in the form of a shotgun, which gives the homeless man an opportunity to fight back, soon cleaning up the streets with his boomstick brand of justice.…
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I’m a sucker for revenge films. Hell, most of the films I’ve reviewed for Dreamin’ Demon have had some sort of revenge element going for them. I’m also a sucker for supernatural thrillers, particularly anything dealing with the occult. When I first saw trailers for HEARTLESS, I didn’t quite know what to make of it. It was clearly dealing with elements of the occult, and there seemed to be a revenge tale present as well. My issue was I kept getting a CONSTANTINE vibe, and I never want to get a CONSTANTINE vibe from anything. Luckily, HEARTLESS is nothing like that film and is, surprisingly, a rather unique experience, even if not entirely successful.
In HEARTLESS, a young photographer (Jim Sturgess) with a heart-shaped birthmark on his face, enters into a deal with the Devil as a gang of hoodie wearing thugs start setting Londoners on fire with well-placed molotov cocktails. Saying too much more about the plot will not only ruin the fun but would take forever. If the film has anything hindering it, it’s that it is needlessly convoluted.…
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I’m back with another Netflix Watch Instantly recommendation titled NAKED FEAR. Yeah, I know it sounds like a Steven Seagal movie, but this Canadian thriller starring Joe Mantegna (before his CRIMINAL MINDS stint) and a very naked Danielle De Luca, turned out being a pretty decent flick — if you skip the first 45 minutes.
A small town girl is forced to strip in a New Mexico shit-hole that also happens to be an active serial killer’s stomping grounds. A serial killer whose modus operandi is abducting prostitutes, then setting them free in the wilderness where he hunts them down like animals.
The film is based loosely off of American serial killer, Robert Hansen, who would hunt down prostitutes he’d abducted and set free into the Alaskan wilderness. This is one of the reasons why I even gave this film a shot and the fact that it’s directed by Thom Eberhardt, the man behind one of my guilty pleasures, 1984′s NIGHT OF THE COMET. Check out the trailer followed by a bit of my blurb-free rambling.…
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Where life had no value, Death sometimes had its price. — Sergio Leone
With these immortal words from FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (for my money, the best of the DOLLARS trilogy), the film BIG TITS ZOMBIE (aka THE BIG TITS DRAGON, original title KYONYÛ DORAGON: ONSEN ZONBI VS SUTORIPPÂ 5) begins. The film follows stripper Lena Jodo (Japanese adult actress Sora Aoi) as she returns home from Mexico. She takes a brief dancing gig in a rundown strip club in a mostly-deserted suburb. With little to do, she and her fellow dancers — Ginko, Maria, Nene, and Darna — mostly squabble and lay around. A stray draft leads them to a hidden door in their dressing room, which they soon discover leads to the club’s basement. And what just happens to be stored in this basement? Why, a copy of the Book of the Dead, of course!
Reading aloud from the Book of the Dead results in all Hell breaking loose as the dead rise from their graves, hungry for the flesh of the living. Now it’s up to Lena and her friends to arm themselves in any way possible — chainsaws, katanas, lengths of pipe, etc.…
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Sounding like a direct-to-video Chuck Norris film, ACT OF VENGEANCE was originally released under the much better title, RAPE SQUAD. This title more accurately describes what the film is about, even though it’s probably a little too sleazy for its own good. But no matter what the film goes by, VENGEANCE is a pretty solid rape-revenge effort that gets points for absurdity even if it doesn’t live up to the sleazy nature of its original title. Check out the trailer for more, but be warned, it does feature minor spoilers:
If the idea of watching women being sexually assaulted bothers you (and it should) than proceed with caution as this is a rape-revenge film. The rape footage in VENGEANCE isn’t close to the brutality and degradation featured in films like I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE or LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, but it is present and is still not enjoyable to witness.
While many rape-revenge films pride themselves on being as brutal as possible, VENGEANCE does not. In actuality, it’s more ridiculous than vicious with a rapist who wears a hockey mask (and this is about eight years before Jason put his on) and forces his victims to sing “Jingle Bells” while he sexually assaults them.…
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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, current European horror makes contemporary American horror look shameful. The films coming out of European countries — Spain, Italy, and, especially, France — are keeping the genre alive. I’m not saying all American horror is bad; that’s not the case at all, but the work coming out of the states, more often than not, pales in comparison. Where we seem to have embraced the audience aspect of horror (jump scares, gross out factor), the Europeans are crafting films that are terrifying in their intimacy. HIGH LANE, produced by French company Gaumont, is one of the more recent examples of this, and the results are exceptional. You can check out the spoiler-filled trailer if you want, but be warned, it really ruins a lot of the tension.
HIGH LANE begins with four friends going on a nature-filled adventure in the Balkan mountains. But this isn’t a “nature’s revenge” film like THE LAST WEEKEND; it’s more an “off the beaten path” flick like WRONG TURN.…
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I am a serious devotee of what is sometimes called Psychotronic Cinema. I am on a constant search for weird, obscure movies the likes of which most people can never conceive existing in the first place, and the weirder and more obscure they are, the more I like them. Mexican masked wresters being superheroes and fighting aliens? You better believe it. Ultra-gory kung fu? Yes please. Nazi sex crime extravaganzas? I’ll take two. Today I’ll be looking at a very special piece of mid-1970s sexploitation flick with a crime-themed plot. Well, there’s a Mob element, but it’s largely obscured by the oversized jiggling fun-bags that are the true stars of the film.
Let’s take a look, shall we?
Meet Crystal (“Chesty” Morgan). Now meet Crystal’s colossal rack (her measurements are 73FF-32-36). Now meet Crystal’s boyfriend, Larry. Crystal would really love for Larry to make her his wife, instead of just his girlfriend, but he keeps delaying. It’s soon a moot point as he’s rubbed out by the Mafia.
Crystal is heartbroken, tears spilling down rosy cheeks on to oversized pleasure-zeppelins.…
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Before directing the 2008 horror film QUARINTINE, the decent, shot-for-shot remake of the Spanish film REC (our review), the Dowdle brothers directed another “found footage” movie titled THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES. The film had an interesting premise regarding police finding boxes of VHS tapes left behind by a serial killer. These tapes contained hundreds of hours of footage recorded by a killer who’d been operating undetected for years, filming the abductions, torture and disposal of his victims.
I saw the trailer to this film when I watched THE MIST in the theaters, and even remember the movie poster hanging up in the lobby. It definitely got my hopes up for another film done in the spirit of cinéma vérité, but then, nothing. No more trailers, the movie posters disappeared and the film seemed to have been shelved.
While I am not sure what happened, there is a story about the 2007 Butt-Numb-A-Thon film festival put on by AICN.com. THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES was shown there with the Dowdle brothers in attendance and scheduled to take part in a Q&A after the movie.…
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After reviewing John Landis’s BURKE AND HARE (our review), a failed attempt at turning the tale of two real-life serial killers into a black comedy, I felt I owed it to myself, and to you, to re-watch THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS starring Peter Cushing and the great Donald Pleasence. This is a good film about William Burke and William Hare, the vile men responsible for Edinburgh, Scotland’s notorious West Port murders.
Back when religion had a stronger grip on medical practices, researchers could only dissect the bodies of criminals who met their demise at the end of a rope. When supply couldn’t keep up with demand, two Irish immigrants stumbled upon a way to fill the demand for fresh bodies after selling a fairly fresh corpse to local anatomist Dr. Knox. The pair felt corpse selling could be a lot more lucrative if they sped up the dying process a bit, so Burke and Hare began murdering the weak and downtrodden that populated their social circle, selling the bodies to the good doctor before the corpses even had time to cool.…
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If the recent resurgence of 3-D has done anything positive, it’s primarily brought back exploitation cinema to American multiplexes. These films may be a far cry from the lurid grindhouse fare of the late ’60s and early ’70s, but films like MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3-D and PIRANHA 3-D (our review) have utilized their so-prominently-advertised third dimension for the sole purpose of thrusting copious gratuitous carnage and nudity before viewers’ eyes. DRIVE ANGRY 3-D may not be the best of these films — it may not even be the most fun — but it is the one that most proudly adheres to the aesthetics and principles of films it so obviously emulates. Basically, it plays out like a road trip movie through Jerry Springer’s America filtered through the mindset of Garth Ennis. And in 3-D, naturally.
As ridiculous as the film may be, it actually follows a rather simple revenge film storyline. In other words, Nic Cage’s character has a bunch of people to kill — and for a purpose.…
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CHAIN LETTER is yet another movie that has languished in the sort of release hell that only a select group of films enjoy (THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES and ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE being two others of recent note that still have yet to see a decent release). The production was completed in 2007, it saw a very limited theatrical release in 2010, and it hit the home entertainment market just this year.
CHAIN LETTER is a basic slasher flick in which a group of kids are slaughtered one-by-one by a hulking disfigured killer. Where the movie falls apart is in its attempt to trying to work in a socially relevant message about our obsession with technology, such as the Internet and cell phones. No one has any privacy any more, we’re all connected 24/7, and so on, and this is the basic premise. One of the kids receives an anonymous chain letter on his computer that implies that if he doesn’t forward it to five friends someone will die.…
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You know damn well when you sit down to watch a film titled CHOOSE (which boasts taglines like “Time to Decide” and “He Makes the Rules, You Make the Choice”) that you’re not about to behold a stunning piece of artwork. In all honesty, I doubt the filmmakers ever intended to make such work, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have at least tried to make a decent genre flick. Reading the taglines alone, you may suspect that this is a SAW rip-off, and, for the most part, you’d be absolutely correct.
CHOOSE is as basic a slasher entry as you’re going to get. It has everything: an introverted, disturbed, seemingly aggressive female protagonist; her overprotective father; her idiotic friends; a nameless killer who lurks in the shadows; and, of course, the obligatory death scenes. That’s it. You know exactly what you’ll get before you even press “Play.” At least CHOOSE tries to be clever in the way it goes about ripping off the SAW films (basically, the victims choose the way they are maimed/killed), but it’s a far cry from being able to be considered torture porn.…
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ALL GOOD THINGS has a lot of potential. It is helmed by Andrew Jarecki — the man behind the devastating documentary CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS (2003), co-produced by Barbara A. Hall (who was partially responsible for bringing Gus Van Sant‘s MILK to screen), and stars Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, and Frank Langella. If the talent behind the camera and on screen isn’t enough to sell this, then how about the fact it’s based on the true story of the biggest missing persons case in the state of New York’s history?
The case upon which the film is based is that of Robert Durst, who was suspected of murdering his wife after she disappeared in 1982. That case remains unsolved today. The names of the players have been changed, with Gosling playing the Durst-based character David Marks and Dunst playing that of his wife Katie Marks. Unlike many true crime films, this is surprisingly not based on a book. The screenplay is credited as being “original,” and, from what I can tell, no book has been written about the incident(s) as of this time.…
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It’s been 12 years since John Landis directed a movie and about two decades since he directed a good one. But now he’s back with BURKE AND HARE, a black comedy about two real-life serial killers from Ireland who operated in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the 1800s, selling their victims’ bodies to the local medical college for dissection. So how does Landis do? Pretty friggin’ bad. Lets check out the “hilarious” trailer, which is almost as bad as the movie. Almost.
The crimes of William Burke and William Hare have already been adapted for the big screen about five times, from The Body Snatcher (1945) to The Doctor and the Devils (1985), all to varying degrees of success. And why wouldn’t someone want to adapt this nasty bit of history? It’s a morbidly fascinating tale that doesn’t need to be embellished or altered to make a compelling film. That’s why I have no clue why Landis decided to make a black comedy in which Burke (Simon Pegg) and Hare (Andy Serkis) are made out to be two aloof scoundrels who simply stumbled into their ghoulish profession and continued committing their heinous crimes for justifiable reasons.…
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