SALLY'S ESCAPE FROM HELL (2016)

  This is a well made short film that re-imagines the ending to THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. Maybe the gal playing Sally coulda taken out her nose-ring but that really only stood out to me because everything else seemed fairly accurate. This was originally supposed to be a full-length deal and I would think that couldn't than any worse than any of the other remakes/sequels/prequels that are out there.  

 There's a follow up to this called GASOLINE that gives the same treatment to PART 2  but I have yet to view that one.

MARTYRS (2016)

 Of course remaking director Pascal Laugier's French horror/downer epic into an Americanized version is completely retarded. I mean going in you know they aren't going to top the insanely depressing mode of the original and regurgitating something that was so fresh at the time only 8 years later is totally pointless. For about the first half of this film it's a pretty straight-forward remake. Then there's a point where the films diverge a bit. I will give this version credit for one thing, and one thing only, they sorta shift the focus from the main character of Anna to the original victim and vengeance-seeker Lucy which makes a bit more sense plot-wise. Sadly I think this was the only good idea they had. The rest of the "originality" involves stupid out-of-place action scenes with Anna(Bailey Noble) gaining some super powers after being buried alive. The ending tries to pack the same punch as the original but by then it's gone too far off the rails to garner much of an emotional response. Luckily I think this thing will pretty much sink into obscurity as a footnote and the original will continue to be remembered as the nihilistic masterpiece that it is or at least I hope that's the case.

WEB OF THE SPIDER (1971)

 Klaus Kinski doesn't look very much like Edgar Allan Poe but that didn't stop director Antonio Margheriti from casting him as such in this goth tale. It all starts off with a raving mad Kinski making a bet with Anthony Franciosa that he can't stay the night in an old haunted castle. After Franciosa gets there he runs into some ghosts. It's all a bit too slow-moving for me but Margheriti as usual delivers on the creepy atmosphere so if you're into old dark castle flicks this might be of interest. Of course if you've seen Margheritis earlier CASTLE OF BLOOD you've basically already seen this except now you don't even get Barbar Steele to ogle. Perhaps if Kinski had a bigger role this might have more to recommend it for.  AKA IN THE GRIP OF THE SPIDER and DRACULA IN THE CASTLE OF BLOOD(weird title since there's no vampirism going on)

DRACULA IN THE CASTLE OF HORROR!!:

BLIND FURY (1989)

 I wanted to like this movie being a Rutger Hauer fan and all but I shoulda known better since this is basically a remake of the Japanes Zatoichi films all American-ized for big round eyed people to enjoy. It starts out OK with some Vietnam-flashbacks and the story of how our hero gets blinded and then trained to be a superhero-like swordsman. Somewhere along the way though it turns very comedic and stupid like many 80's movie do and this is where I realized this would not be the classic I had hope it might be. Also there's an annoying kid character which is another big minus. technically these elements may exist in some of the original Zatoichi films but I guess I'm able to overlook them there since they seem like much better-made movies to me whereas this seems just like so many other dumb 80's action movies. Still looking for another Rutger Hauer movie besides BLADE RUNNER where his acting talents are not wasted.
 For ninja fans you do get Sho Kosugi showing up for the big finale although he does not don his ninja outfit here.

THE BLOB (1988)

 Back in the 80's the world had not yet been saturated with the glut of terrible, cash-in, soulless remakes that we currently have so when stuff like the THE THING or THE FLY came out everyone didn't wretch in terror at the idea of a remake. Also those movies were around 30 years old by the time they were remade and not something that was solely redone for the purpose of inserting white or black American faces into a foreign-made film from the year before. Basically what these 80's remakes accomplished was to update the practical FX work and put a new spin on something very familiar. This particular example might be the last time Hollywood did a halfway decent retread. Not that this movie is perfect. It suffers from typical late-80's cheesy dialogue and some of the FX are a bit clunky(on the flip side some are actually done really well) but it's basically just a gorier version of the original. It even takes place in a small town that has a very 50's feel to it and has the "no one listens to the teenagers" device used a bunch in that era. While it might not be up there with THE FLY or THE THING I still think this is worth checking out for horror fans from back in a time when remake didn't automatically equal forgettable garbage.

THE MASK OF THE DEMON (1989)

 I've seen a few people refer to this as Lamberto Bava's remake of his father's BLACK SUNDAY(a.k.a. THE MASK OF SATAN) but after watching it I think it's definitely more in the crappy rip-off department. The only thing that it takes from Mario Bava's film is the whole mask with the spikes in it thing and a witch who comes back and gets revenge. It also goes under the alternate title BLACK SUNDAY which is pretty ballsy for such a shitty imitation. The majority of the plot varies greatly from the original SUNDAY film though and is unfortunately way less stylish and iconic. Also we have no one here that is anywhere near the great Barbara Steele so they let a guy be the lead and he seems like an extremely dumb fellow throughout.  
 The movie starts of with a bunch of nitwit skiers who end up trapped in an ice-cave where they unleash some evil forces. Pretty quickly things stop making sense until we devolve into one of those- "was it a dream or did it really happen"-types of stories, and I hate those! Needless to say this was not a fun watch. Perhaps the fact that it was originally made for Spanish TV may have been a big reason. For a TV movie though it does feature a bit of nudity and gore which I doubt you would see in anything made for TV here in America.
 This one is also alternately known as DEMONS 5:THE DEVIL'S VEIL which kind of makes sense since our group do sorta resemble the monsters from DEMONS and all the DEMONS sequels I've seen(besides part 2) are terrible!

CAT PEOPLE (1982)

 It's nice that in the 80's the remakes they made were at least remakes of old movies and not things that had just been made a year or two before like they do now. Being a big fan of the original 40's CAT PEOPLE I had to check this one out.  Also being a fan of the works of director Paul Schrader(HARDCORE) I figured this one couldn't be that terrible but unfortunately it's not very good.  The main problem I had is the pacing of the movie is really ponderous and hard to get through with your eyes open.  It is a beautifully shot film and the the sets and stylistic choices look really nice, unfortunately it takes so long for stuff to happen that you lose interest pretty quickly.  There is one gory scene where Ed Begley Jr. gets his arm ripped right off by a panther which was the highlight for me and it was nice that we get lots of totally naked Nastassja Kinski but that wasn't enough to make me choose a nice nap over ever watching this again.  As is usually a good rule stick with the original formula.

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978)

While it might be hard to believe today, at one time Hollywood didn't just remake every single movie that had ever been made and done so with no creativity. That started sometime around the 90's and I believe it was that piece of shit PSYCHO remake that kicked all that nonsense off. So anyway, back in 1978 remakes were still sorta novel and they would usually try to put some sorta different spin on things. That being said this one isn't all that different from it's 50's original except for some updated effects work which show more of the actual transformations from a regular person to one of them pod people and you also get to see where the evil spores come from. The film also replaces the Communist-scare paranoia of the original with a more general societal paranoia. You get the classic 70's downer ending and even some total nudity by one of our main actresses thrown in towards the end which is nice. Also Mr. Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy, shows up as a psychiatrist and Jeff Goldblum plays a smart-ass type character which he does a lot.  While this one never matches the quality of the '56 version it's still an interesting update and is way better than the Abel Ferrara '93 remake and though I've never seen it I'm also willing to bet it beats the 2007 Nicole Kidman version also since I've never heard anything good about that one.