Fool's Views (6/30 – 7/6)

The dog...um...rat...um...dogs-as-rats days of summer are here.

Back again!

Having spent the last couple installments building up to it, the Views this week culminated in the viewing of Jake West’s exhaustive, 7+ hour examination of the Video Nasty era, watching trailers and commentary from fellow fiends about the films on the chopping block. It’s probably my favorite home video release of the year, an essential purchase for genre aficionados.

Rewarding myself for having gone the distance, I sallied out to Jon Kitley’s and kicked back a quartet of quirks from around the globe (Spain, Canada, England, Russia), then returned home to kick off summer with a revisit to a certain croc-infested Maine lake to see if the water had gotten any better on second go-round. With killer rats, sexy witches, and trash-talking Betty White on the menu, it’s hard to go too far wrong.

As always, feel free to leave your two cents worth – we’ll make sure you get some change back.

Enjoy!

BEYOND THE GRAVE (2010) movie review

Beyond the Grave (aka Portos dos Mortos) (2010) d. Davi de Oliveira Pinheiro (Brazil)

Set in “Another Time, Another Place,” we are introduced to a mysterious black-suited, bespectacled, two-fisted ex-cop known only as “The Officer” (Rafael Tombini) who crosses paths with a young teenaged couple, a sardonic youth named Shooter (Ricardo Seffner) and his mute female companion Nina (Amanda Lerias). We learn that Officer is in pursuit of The Dark Rider, a body-jumping demon straight out of Fallen, The Other Side, or The Hidden (minus the slimy alien worm) that possesses each mortal vehicle until it expires and then bounces to the next and nearest. Continuing in this fashion, the Rider, the Ultimate Evil, is immortal and it falls to our triumvirate of antiheroes to somehow take him out.