Friday the 13th (1980)

There are times when a movie succeeds in creating a whole new sub genre. This is often a positive development, since variety is the spice of life. Hollywood flicks all too often get bogged down in the same old, same old cookie cutter formulas. In the case of the 1980 flick Friday the 13th and the slasher sub genre that it spawned, this was not a positive development. This is especially the case since the new sub genre came with a brand new cookie cutter formula that subsequent slasher flicks have rigidly adhered to.

Friday the 13th has an absurd premise. Camp Crystal Lake is reopening after 23 years. The reason why it had closed is that a six year old child, Jason Voorhees, was presumed to have drowned while camp counselors were engaged in immoral acts. The next year, two camp goers were killed. 23 years after the drowning of the young Jason, with the camp reopening, the crazed old mother of Jason Voorhees who is still known as “Mrs. Voorhees” (Betsy Palmer) wants revenge against the new camp counselors even though none of them had anything to do with Jason’s death. If anything, none of the reopened camp’s counselors even look old enough to have been born by the time of Jason’s tragic drowning. However, Mrs. Vorhees has become crazed to the point of becoming utterly psychotic and she must have her revenge no matter what.

There is at least one person in the community who is on to Mrs. Voorhees’s evil plottings. This is an old man known as “Crazy Ralph” (Walt Gorney) who warns both prospective campers and camp counselors that the camp is doomed to face unimaginable horrors. Naturally, everyone disregards his warnings. Likewise, there is a truck driver named Enos (Rex Everhart) who tries to warn a prospective camper named Annie (Robbi Morgan) about how Camp Crystal Lake is “jinxed.” She ignores him to her peril.

Camp Crystal Lake opens up and it turns out that just about everyone who shows up, both counselors and campers alike, are nothing but a bunch of perverts. Then the killer shows up and runs amok spreading havoc despite getting repeatedly whacked in the head with blows that would knock a full grown man down. When the killer is finally revealed as Mrs. Voorhees, the absurdity of such an old lady sustaining all that physical punishment becomes apparent. In the end of the movie, the presumably drowned son Jason springs up from the lake to wreak even more havoc and set the stage for a whole series of awful slasher flicks.

Friday the 13th is an awful flick in almost every regard. The writing is horrible, the acting is terrible and the cinematography is mediocre. The screenplay is amateurish. Although the idea of teenagers being killed at a summer camp at night is a good premise for a horror movie, it is poorly executed in this movie.

Unlike almost all of the pre-1980 horror movies, Friday the 13th and the slasher flick sub-genre that it spawned is not with the victims. These poor excuses for movies are with the killers and the whole point is for the audience to anticipate the next murder or killing spree. Slasher flicks like Friday the 13th are movies to avoid like the plague.

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

What do you get when you take a horrible movie that did well at the box
office and proceed to make a sequel with minimal resources devoted to
the new flick? Well, in the case of Friday the 13th Part 2, you get a
movie that is even worse than the awful original. This is also the case
with the Friday the 13th series as a whole: one pathetic excuse for a
motion picture after another.

The basic setup for Friday the 13th Part 2 makes zero sense. Camp
Crystal Lake has been shut down due to the events depicted in the
original movie. However, a new camp has just been constructed right by
the old camp. Why bother building a new camp when the old one would do
just as well? In the first flick, the mad dog killer was Mrs. Voorhees
who was still grief stricken because she believed that her son Jason had
died at the camp. In Friday the 13th Part 2, the killer is Jason who
witnessed the death of his mother in the first film. Of course, Jason
wants revenge for that death and is bith willing and able to kill
indiscriminately to feel that his vengeance has been fulfilled. Also,
Jason had been living in the woods as a hermit since the near drowning
incident that had caused his mom to go stir crazy in the first place.
With the construction of the new summer camp, Jason’s secret hideout is
now threatened with the possiblity of discovery and Jason will kill like
crazy to prevent the outside world from learning of his secret living
quarters and the contents inside the shack.

Naturally, Jason’s first target is Alice Hardy (Adrienne King) who
beheaded Jason’s slasher/mother. He does not even wait for the new camp
to be constructed before stabbing Alice by an ice pick in the temple and
causing her to disappear about two months after the events in the first
Friday the 13th. Of course, the producers ask us to believe that after
this ghastly slaying, Jason can now keep his murderous proclivities
under wrap for another four years and ten months until the new camp is
constructed.

Other than the identity of the insane slasher, Friday the 13th Part 2,
is for all intents and purposes a rehash of the first flick. Once again,
just about all the camp counselors are just a bunch of moronic perverts.
Once again, Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) makes his fearsome prophecies that
nobody heeds about how the new camp will become “Camp Blood.” Once
again, there is only one counselor who has brains and is able to beat
off the attacker, except her name in this flick is Ginny Field (Amy
Steel).

Of course, as so with all the other post-Friday the 13th slasher flicks,
the movie ends with the lone survivor apparently killing the mad
slasher. Of course, if the slasher film is profitable, then there will
be a sequel or so in which it is revealed that the killer really did not
die. This pathetic excuse for a major motion picture did make a bundle,
so Jason got to live on in numerous sequels.

This review should suffice for any of the later Friday the 13th sequels
since there is, for all practical purposes, zero variety amongst them.

The Old Movie Maven

The Old Movie Maven is the website for a magazine of the same name and has some interesting stuff about old movies and such.

DarkSider's Realm

All Links courtesy of the Internet Wayback Machine


DarkSider's Realm Blog

DarkSider's Review of Remote Control

The Original Website of DarkSider's Realm

DarkSider's Review of Troll


DarkSider's Realm was a major GeoCities-based horror flick review website later turned into a blog that is now dead as a doorknowb...........for now at least.

Racks and Razors Interview of Raine Brown

Racks and Razors Interview of Raine Brown .


Free Sample:

Brian: Let's brush up on our Shakespeare! You've performed quite a bit of the old Bard. Do you have a favorite Shakespearian play? (Mine is 'Titus Andronicus'! It's bloody and twisted nasty!)

Raine: Wow crazy and untypical choice. I would have to say the romantic in me will always love Romeo and Juliet. I think it is the most perfect love story depicting first innocent love. I also have a fondness for Hamlet, such a well written play with lots of psychology. And there will always be a place in my heart forMidsummer Nights Dream. Maybe because I will forever be cast as Hermia, the petite, loud mouthed, opinionated, tough but loveable one.

Dreadful Things

Dreadful Things offers a limited number of horror movie reviews.

Racks and Razors

Racks and Razors is a horror flick website specializing in Splatterpunk aka movies that have lots or gore just for the sake of having lots of gore.

Doomed Moviethon

Doomed Moviethon offers a wide assortment of movie reviews, articles and interviews of interest to the horror flick flan.

Clay Guy's TV Horror Show Hosts Figures for Sale

Clay Guy's TV Horror Show Hosts figures for Sale .  Just what the link says.

American Scary

American Scary  is about TV horror show hosts and related topics.

Eccentric Cinerma

Eccentric Cinema offers a large number of reviews of mostly horror flicks.

Exploitation Retrospect

Exploitation Retrospect  carries a huge number of reviews of horror flicks made in the past three decades.  ER originally started as a print publication back in 1986.

Internet Archive: FearScene

FearScene is a website that although dead today that has a lot of interesting horror stuff including reviews.

2005 Winners at the Chicago Horror Festival

Following are the award winners from the 2005 Chicago Horror Film Festival :

Best Director – Dylan Bank (Nightmare)
Best Feature Film – Nightmare
Best Short Film – Mexican Hat
Best Animated Short – Little Dead Girl
Best Comedic Horror Film – Dead Shift
Best Screenplay – Cost of Living
Best Concept – Death Squad
Best Cinematography – Puca
Best Visual Effects – Alien Abduction
Best Actor – Doug Bradley (On Edge)
Best Actress – Nicole Roderick (Nightmare)

:::People\’s Choice Awards:::

Friday, Oct. 28th – The Mangler Reborn
Saturday, Oct. 29th – Bad Reputation
Sunday, Oct. 30th – Nightmare
Tuesday, Nov. 1st – Experiment
Wednesday, Nov. 2nd – Alien Abduction
Thursday, Nov. 3rd – Camp Daze

Guests:

Dylan Bank, Dir. (Nightmare)
Weston Blakesley, Actor (The Mangler Reborn)
Steve Christopher, Actor (Confederate Zombie Massacre)
Terry L. Robbins & Ioana A. Miller, Prod. (WIthIN)
Angelique Hennessy, Jerad Anderson, Sean A. Mulvihill, and T.W. Porrill,
Actors (Bad Reputation)
Forrest Allison, DP (Bad Reputation)
Chris Landers, Prod. (Bad Reputation)

My All-Time Favorite Films as of 2005

Back in 2005, I wrote down my 20 favorite flicks.  If I were to do it all over again, there would be some differences.  Here they are:


1. Quo Vadis? (1951)
2. Gunga Din (1939)
3. The Robe (1953)
4. Ice Pirates, The (1984)
5. Excalibur (1981)
6. The Rocketeer (1991)
7. Nate and Hayes (1983)
8. The War of the Worlds (1953)
9. Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
10. The Affair of the Necklace (2001)
11. Zulu Dawn (1979)
12. The Black Hole (1979)
13. Clash of the Titans (1981)
14. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
15. Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
16. The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)
17. Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983)
18. October Sky (1999)
19. Evil Roy Slade (1972)
20. Villain, The (1979)

Fiendish Dramaturgy

Fiendish Dramaturgy is a website that now exists only on the Internet Archive.  This was  a website that reviewed a whole host of flicks with a particularly strong leaning towards the horror genre. Here was how the webmaster defined the mission of his website:

My Tastes In Movies :.
I do not watch a movie to raise anyone’s estimation of my movie knowledge. I do not post anything to impress anyone. I like what I like, regardless of what’s “trendy” or “in.” I don’t lie about my opinion of a movie just to fit in with the “in crowd.”

I’m true to myself, first and last. I don’t expect anyone to agree with my opinions. I don’t need that kind of validation. I give my opinions in the hopes of finding others of a like mind, with whom I share interests. Nothing more.

My reviews are my honest thoughts, feelings and insights concerning the movies about which they are written. They are not posted to make anyone see or stay away from a movie. I write my most honest critique of a movie for my own enjoyment. Not to make friends or influence enemies. Neither do I attempt to make enemies or influence friends. I am here solely for my own enjoyment.

When it’s no longer enjoyable, I will move on.

To find movie news and updates, simply locate the movie name on my movie review list, and see what’s up with that movie. After the movie is released, the news will be pushed down, and the review will be featured at the top of that same page. While I do my best to authenticate the news and updates I publish here, I will not attest to their accuracy. There are simply too many rumors running rampant on the internet, and I do not wish to add to them. However, sometimes it is unavoidable. We movie fans sometimes grow frustrated with a total black out of updates from working producers, studios, etc. that it is not within our power to wait any longer. But understanding the cause of these rumors does nothing to halt them. As I said; I do my best to authenticate the news I report, but I am not responsible for any inconvenience which may arise due to misinformation posted here.

I won’t bother with a comprehensive list of my movies, as it is constantly changing as things become available on DVD. New acquisitions and older VHS tapes are constantly in a state of flux. I will say that, as of today, 2/26/05, I have 1,074 movies. That is in DVD and VHS media, combined. We just counted them.

Thank you,

the Fiend :.

Fred Huebner's Favorite Movies

From the files of the now dead website FlickZone and its blog Fornax:

The favorite flicks of Fred Huebner:

1. Rooster Cogburn (1975)

2. Deliverance (1972)

3. Death Wish (1974)

4. Ugetsu monogatari (1953)

5. The Dirty Dozen (1967)

6. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)

7. To Hell and Back (1955)

8. The Longest Day (1962)

9. Kelly’s heroes (1970)

10. The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

11. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

12. Stroker Ace (1983)

13. Hooper (1978)

14. The Mechanic (1972)

15. Viridiana (1961)

16. Bronco Billy (1980)

17. THE GAY RANCHERO (1948)

18. COWBOY SERENADE (1942)

19. The Deer Hunter (1978)

20. Delta Force 2: Operation Stranglehold (1990)

Are Westerns Dead?

Are Westerns dead?

Discuss in the comments.

Lordi Films

Lordi Films is a production house of low budget films that generally are a cut above the rest quality wise.

Savage Film Group

The Savage Film Group that is headed by the allegedly named “Rock Savage” is a company that has been shooting movies on Super 8 since 1980 or so they say. However, their productions are available only on DVD or VHS and not on Super 8 itself. Previous productions include The Vampire Pierre, Discovering Witchcraft, Operation Witchforce and Maxx Bloodd: Vampire Spy.

Roger L. Simon

Roger L. Simon is a longtime screenwriter who believes that Hollywood has gotten too liberal.

American Scary

American Scary is a website focusing in on TV horror movie show hosts.

FrankensteinFilms.com

FrankensteinFilms.com is a website that focuses in on the various and sundry movies based on Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein.

Internet Archive: Horror Classic Films

Horror Classic Films was a website that, among other things, carries movie reviews. Focus was on the slasher subgenre.

Sir Graves Ghastly

Sir Gravers Ghastly is a website devoted to the long running Detroit TV Horror movie show host of the same name.

Internet Archive: HorrorAvenue

Internet Archive: Horror Avenue

This was a major website devoted to interviews with horror flick makers and film clips and trailers.

Horrorview

Horrorview is a website that bills itself as being a major horror news source. In reality, it is mostly horror flick reviews and a source of a sizable number of such reviews.

The Bone Jangler

The Bone Jangler  is a local TV horror movie host whose show is shown on public access channels, mostly in the Chicago area. Shows are amateurishly produced on an obviously tight budget.

Why so Few Mystery Movie Review Websites?

There are literally dozens of horror movie review websites.  In fact, far more movie review websites than any other genre.  Mystery movies popular, yet thee are hardly any these in existence other than those devoted to the film noir sub-genre.

Why is this?

YMDB

Back in the day there was a website called Your Movie Database where folks could post such things as their 20 all time favorite movies.    You can access the remains on the Internet Wayback Machine at http://web.archive.org/web/20061115035739/http://www.ymdb.com/index_ukuk.html .

Horrorwatch

Horrorwatch is a News and Resources website for the horror fan that also carries a sizable number of horror movie reviews.

Reel Opinions

Reel Opinions  is a blog that runs reviews by Ryan Cullen focusing on recently released big budget Hollywood flicks.

The Unknown Movies

The Unknown Movies is a website run and written by Keith Bailey aka Greywizard who focuses on movies that are “obscure, unknown, & little shown.”

Opposable Thumb Reviews

Opposable Thumb Reviews is a website that primarily reviews movies made since 1980. Ratings are done with the patented “Hoff Scale” in which the good movies have no more than 1 picture of David Hasselhoff by their name and the bad motion pictures have up to 4 pictures of David Hasselhoff by their name.

MovieCrypt.com

MovieCrypt.com is a horror/science fiction movie review website run and written by Kevin A. Ranson. Movies are graded on a 4-skull rating system.

Dr. Gangrene

Dr. Gangrene is the resident horror movie host on Channel 58 in Nashville, TN. His show is also carried on a large number of public access channels around the country. Unlike most local TV movie hosts, this show also carries a significant number of recently made movies including amateur and semi-professional efforts.

CowboyPal

CowboyPal is one of the pre-eminent fansites covering the Western genre. Main focus is on what it calls “Silver Age” Westerns of the 1930′s through the 1950′s.

The Defamer

The Defamer is a blog that concentrates on mocking stupid people in Hollywood and their moronic statements. Great source of ammunition to use against politically involved Hollywood types. Folks in Hollywood tend to pontificate first and think later on and that is even assuming that they are capable of intelligent thought in the first place.

Icons of Fright

Icons of Fright is a tremendous resource for the horror flick fan.  This website is literally chock full of all sorts of neat stuff including news, interviews and feature articles in addition to the usual movie reviews.

Icons of Fright Interview with Raine Brown

The Icons of Fright Interview with Raine Brown is an excellently done interview with the Queen of B Horror Flicks, herself, Raine Brown.

Good Bad Flicks

Good Bad Flicks is a celebration of movies that are so bad that they are actually good.  Website makes heavy use of original video produced especially for the website.

Terror Trap

Terror Trap is a horror flick review website that goes out of its way to emphasize lesser known movies.

Kitley's Krypt

Kitley's Krypt is an up and coming horror review website that focuses on reviews of lesser known horror flicks.

Last Drive-In on the Left

Last Drive-In on the Left  is an up and coming horror review website that focuses on reviews of lesser known horror flicks.

Monsters at Play

Monsters at Play is a horror flick review website that features over 1,000 reviews, many of which concern direct to video movies.

Internet Archive: Slasherama

Slasherama is a now dead website that was devoted to news, views, interviews and reviews pertaining to slasher flicks.  It was an excellent enterprise complete with all sorts of links for fans of horror, terror and just plain slasher flicks.

Savage Cinema

Savage Cinema s a webzine devoted to “cult” movies and features an extensive number of reviews of such flicks.

Shade.ca

Shade.ca is a website that contains hundreds of movie reviews, all of which are done in a annotated shopping list style.

Pete Hammond

Pete Hammond is one of the most outstanding film critics today.


Here is the life story of this excellent gentleman and real life inspiration for would be professional film critics everywhere:

Pete is the Awards Columnist for Deadline Hollywood where he covers the Oscar and Emmy Seasons. He is widely considered to be one of the pre-eminent awards season commentators for film and television.

Before joining Deadline, Pete was a regular contributing awards columnist for the online and print editions of The Los Angeles Times/ The Envelope, where he wrote the NOTES ON A SEASON blog for four years. He was also a film critic forMaxim Magazine/Maxim Online and Hollywood.com.

Pete was a frequent contributor to HollywoodWiretap.com and Daily Varietywhere he wrote numerous articles on various Award Shows including the Golden Globes, SAG Awards, PGA Awards and the Academy Awards. He also covered numerous film festivals including Cannes, AFI and Telluride where he reported on potential awards contenders.

Additionally, for the past twenty years, he has been the Contributing Editor, writing over 600 reviews, for the best-selling annual paperback, Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide.

In addition to writing, Pete is also the host of the extremely popular year-round KCET Cinema Series and UCLA Extension’s Sneak Preview Winter Session where he screens a selection of films prior to their theatrical release and interviews the filmmakers.

Pete served four years on the Board of Governors for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences representing writers and is the recipient of five Emmy nominations for his own television writing. He is also the winner of the 1996 Publicists Guild of America’s Press Award.

Michael Medved

Michael Medved is a film critic, author of books about film and a solid grade radio talk show host.

Hell Horror

Hell Horror is a major resources website for horror flick fans. Contents include a significant number of very well written in-depth horror film reviews.

The Duck Speaks

The Duck Speaks  is a unique film review website that compares movies to the books that they were ostensibly based on.

Stabbed

Stabbed is a horror fansite that has a lot of well written movie reviews accompanied by several stills from the movies being reviewed.

Debbie Schlussel

Debbie Schlussel is a conservative political writer and blogger who is ardently pro-Israel and who also reviews a great many movies. Schlussel also writes a great deal about the Hollywood scene and the movie industry. Schlussel’s blog is an indispensable resource for the film fan.

SFWA Fascists

Screeching Feminist Witches Association (SFWA) is an anti-Political Correctness group with its mouthpiece on Twitter.  This is an indispensable resource for all those who are interested in science fiction, including sci-fi movies.

Cindy Pearlman

Cindy Pearlman is one of the best known film critics today whose quotes grace a great many movie ads & posters.  Her day job consists of entertainment reporting for the Chicago Sun-Times while at night she watches as many movies as she can at the theater.

Vox Day

Although he does not write about movies very often, Vox Day  is one of the most highly respected science fiction writers around.  When he does write about film, he is one of the most listened to and respected writers of the present day.

Peter Travers

Peter Travers is justifiably one of the most famous film critics in America, despite the fact that that he works for the worthless, terrorist worshiping rag Rolling Stone.

Deadline Hollywood

Deadline Hollywood .  Deadline Hollywood is one of the finest, if not in fact the very best movies oriented website around today.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Back in the good old days when Hollywood operated under the Production
Code, it was verboten for filmmakers to glorify evil. The bad guys
simply could not be favored over the good guys in a motion picture.
However, in 1965, the Motion Picture Association of America did away
with the Production Code and Hollywood was never the same. Within a few
years, movies in which the criminals were glorified and the law was
trashed were being made. One of the most significant of these flicks is
the 1969 movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid tells part of the story of the
eponymous outlaw duo and their Hole in the Wall Gang. The movie starts
when the outlaws attempt to rob a bank and wind up getting ambushed by a group of law
enforcers hired by railroad magnate E.H. Harriman. The movie then chronicles the attempts
of the outlaws to shake off the pursuing lawmen. Finally, Butch & Sundance wind up
attempting to leave the outlaw life and migrate to Bolivia.

The basic problem with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is that
in real life, they were ruthless outlaws who scarcely hesitated to kill
anyone in cold blood. However in the movie, both Butch and Sundance are
portrayed as being kindhearted folks. Throughout the movie, they are
presented as being the good guys while the law enforcers are pictured
as being pretty bad company. The buddy-buddy chemistry aspect was
played up to the hilt, but the movie comes across as being
something akin to a live action cartoon and leaves a bad taste.

The characters of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are a bit on the
unbelievable side. The movie’s music is not very good and it does not
fit into the emotional content of the movie. This movie only briefly
sketched the story of Butch, Sundance and the Hole in the
Wall Gang. The Sundance Kid in real life did not have the super quick
draw that this movie attributes him having. Contrary to what is
portrayed in this movie, there is not a single known gunfight that
either Butch or Sundance ever engaged in real life. In the movie, Butch
and Sundance were a most affable pair, but in real life, they were
nothing but a couple of two bit cold blooded killer outlaws.

This flick does not feel like a conventional western, just like a couple
of guys joking their way through a bad western. Additionally, some of
director George Roy Hill’s artistic devices are annoying. This movie is
also a classic instance of how movie critics revise their assessments in light of a flick’s
reception by the public. Initially, the critics were rather cool towards this movie. However, once it
became clear that it was a hit with the moviegoing public, the critics began calling this movie a
classic and still do so to this very day.

In many ways, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is not a bad movie. It
boasts several standout performances particularly by both Newman and Redford and in terms of direction, music and technical aspects, it is a well made flick. However, the script is less than ideal in that it is a work
of revisionist history and the movie basically glorifies evil. It is cartoony and bears little relation to
reality. That being the case, it cannot be recommended here.

The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting (2003)

The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting was presented to the public as being a
sequel to the classic 1986 horror flick The Hitcher. In actuality, it
is nothing but a cheap and pathetic ripoff. The alleged “twists and
surprises” in this movie are so lame, it is hardly surprising that it
did not take long for the DVD and VHS editions of this show to reach the
dollar store market.

Essentially, The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting is really a Kari Wuhrer
thriller masquerading as a sequel to the original classic Hitcher.
Wuhrer is good looking, but this does not make up for either her poor
acting skills or the bad script for this flick. Just what were they
thinking when they greenlighted this project?

As with so much recent inferior grade flicks from Hollywood, The Hitcher
II: I’ve Been Waiting is a direct to video release. This all but
guarantees that it will receive little if any critical scrutiny.
This in turn aids and abets thepurveyors of this trash in their efforts
to deceive the viewing public into purchasing this drivel.

This movie is horrible and is nothing but a pointless remake of a
classic masquerading as a sequel. It is full of clichés, bad acting
and is completely predictable to boot. The first five minutes or so
is very good but soon dissipates into a mess of mediocrity and worse.
The rest of the movie is an exercise in unintentional absurdity and
none of the situations are resolved.

The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting begins when Jim Halsey (C. Thomas
Howell)is unjustifiably fired from the local police force. In order to
shake the bad feelings from his life, Halsey and his girlfriend Maggie
(Kari Wuhrer) travel to Texas to see an old friend. However, the
traveling pair soon encounter a strange and sininster hitchhiker named Jack (Jake
Busey) who has evil plans for both Jim & Maggie.

However, Jack is only an inferior ripoff of the hitchhiker played by
Rutger Hauer in the original The Hitcher. This hitchhiker fails to
project anything like the level of malice or evil that Hauer did. In
any event, Jim & Maggie flee from the hitchhiker who follows them and leaves a trail of
corpses in his wake. Essentially, Jim & Maggie are pawns in the evil hitchhiker’s psychotic
game.

Up until this point, about one third of the way into the movie, The
Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting was a near carbon copy remake of the
original The Hitcher. All of a sudden, it detours from the classic
story and becomes a Kari Wuhrer thriller that revolves around a
standard Hollywood cookie cutter formula. C. Thomas Howell dies in a patently
unbelievable manner and it is up to the manifestly talentless Wuhrer to
carry the show. In other words, the movie goes to Hell in a hen basket.

The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting is a good example of the kind of dreck
that Hollywood all too often releases as direct to video movies. It is stupid, hackneyed,
poorly thought out and suffers from poor production values. It is a movie that ought to be avoided
like the plague. Definitely not recommended.

Jeff Craig

Jeff Craig is the host of the nationally syndicated radio show Sixty Second Preview.  It is aptly titled for in the space of just one minute Craig gives you the plot, who stars in it and how good the movie is.  Given just how little time he has to work with, Craig does an amazingly good job.

Stephanie Frederic

Stephanie Frederic is a nationally syndicated TV film critic whose opinions are broadcast as parts of local TV news shows on TV stations all around the USA.

Mike Sargeant

Mike Sargeant is the film critic of the long running New York City late night radio show Niteshift.  He is also the chief film critic for radio station WBAI and its weekend film radio show Reel World.  

Mose Persico

Mose Persico is the film critic for Channel 12 in Montreal.  He is also a distinguished interviewer of movie stars and other celebrities.  He is generally regarded as being the finest TV film critic in all of Canada.

Tom Long

Tom Long is the outstanding film critic of the Detroit News.

Crypt Crawl

Crypt Crawl is a directory of Horror and Horror related websites.  Includes a subdirectory of  Horror movies related websites.

Shawn Edwards

Shawn Edwards , who is one of the leading film critics in the USA, is the film critic for WDAF, Channel 4 in Kansas City.

Bill Zwecker

Bill Zwecker Bill Zwecker is both an entertainment reporter and movie reviewer for
both the Chicago Sun-Times & WBBM-TV Channel 2 in Chicago.

Jeanne Wolf

Jeanne Wolf  is the West Coast editor of Parade Magazine as well as the
producer/host of the syndicated radio program Jeanne Wolf's Hollywood.
Her work is also prominently featured on the TV show Entertainment
Tonight.

Steve Oldfield

Steve Oldfield  is the entertainment reporter and movie reviewer for Fox Channel 19 WXIX in Cincinnati. His work is also featured on Fox TV stations over the country.

Joanna Langfield

Joanna Langfield  is the producer and host of such programs as Joanna Langfield's People Report & The Movie Minute that are broadcast on hundreds of radio stations daily around the world. Langfield is also a frequent guest on such outlets as CNN, Fox News & MSNBC.

Roger Friedman

Roger Friedman  is the principal entertainment news reporter, movie reviewer and gossip monger for Fox News.

Steffanie Pitt

Steffanie Pitt has racked up an impressive resume of mostly TV roles. She is also an artist and graphic designer with impressive skills.  She is best known as the daughter of the late actress Ingrid Pitt.

Lar Park Lincoln

Lar Park Lincoln is a veteran of made for cable TV movies and guest spots on TV shows. Most of her notable work has been in the horror genre.

Adrienne Barbeau

Adrienne Barbeau is a long time favorite of horror movie fans as she has played a number of leading roles in horror flicks.

Amy Lynn Best

Amy Lynn Best  is an actress, director and producer who specializes in horror movies, particularly of the direct to video variety.

Raine Brown

Raube Brown is an up and coming actress who has appeared in an impressive number of movies and TV shows. To date, most of her movie credits are in direct to video horror flicks.

Boston Globe Movie Nation

Boston Globe Movie Nation  is a blog written by Boston Globe staff reviewers Ty Burr and Wesley Morris along with freelancer Janice Page.

Village Voice

The Village Voice has an extensive movie review section and has several staff reviewers.

Films In Review

Films in Review is the web version of the world's oldest movie reviewing magazine. Website includes film reviews and editorials.

Time Out New York

 The film review section of Time Out New York that has several film reviews written in an easily understandable manner that are short and to the point.

Gene Autry

Gene Autry  was one of the most popular cowboy stars of all time. He was certainly the single most popular singing cowboy of the movies. Although he passed away in 1998 at the age of 91, his official website is positively loaded with all sorts of interesting material.

Kevin Spirtas

Kevin Spirtas is a young actor who has mainly appeared in soap operas, although he has been appearing in a growing number of movies, many of which are of a horror nature.

The Bone Jangler

The Bone Jangler  is a host of a show that is shown on cable TV public access stations all over the USA. The movies shown are all in the public domain.