Tough Films For The Rough Crowd

  I don’t hang out with the same crowd I hung out with twenty years ago. Nothing wrong with those old friends, but people change. Some got married and had kids. Some got married and didn’t have kids. Some just had kids. Some got divorced. A few people died. I…

  In the mid to late ‘90s, there was a glut of films featuring wiseass criminal types, non-linear storytelling, and of course, an abundance of pop culture references and retro tunage. This era of Quentinsploitation came about due to the success of both RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION and while…

        Noomi Rapace (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO) is the perfect choice to play the heroine in this action-packed sci-fi horror film. Her emotive face expresses both her relationship with son and ex-husband in the establishing scenes in the beginning of the film, and then outright…

  The Fifth Chicago Critics Film Festival ran from May 12-18, 2017 at the historic Music Box Theatre.   This was my third year attending the Chicago Critics Film Festival. Unlike previous years, I no longer live in that great city so I was only able to make it back…

Paranoia is powerful. At its grandest, it can bring down entire empires and nations and more intimately, it can also destroy friendships and families. It has also been a helpful seed in many a horror and sci-fi screenplays. Both Howard Hawks THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD and John Carpenter’s reimagining…

“I always had it in there that the God-like creature that you will see is not so nice, and is certainly not God. I’d love to explore where she goes next and what does she do when she gets there, because if it is paradise, paradise cannot be what you…

        Title: CONTAMINATION Other Titles: ALIEN CONTAMINATION; ALIEN ON EARTH; TOXIC SPAWN Year: 1980 Director: Luigi Cozzi, a.k.a. Lewis Coates Cast: Ian McCulloch, Louise Marleau, Marino Mase, Sigfried Rauch   Nasties: Slo-mo exploding torsos Exploding rat Point-blank gunshot to the head Man-eating avocado cyclops Machine gun killing…

    FRANKENSTEIN CREATED BIKERS is a depraved, sick, and twisted film that takes the concept of good taste, drags it out back, and beats it savagely with fists. So in other words, it’s a great piece of grindhouse cinema, and is perfect for people who love their movies ridiculously…

    Back when the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon was in full swing and the movie was in the works, Lionsgate produced a feature film adaptation of Addicted. The novel by popular erotica author Zane concerned a happily married woman who harbors a dark secret: sex addiction. It was…

    Boston, sometime in the 1970s. A van barrels down the mean streets of Beantown, a dilapitated jalopy piloted by a pair of knuckleheaded, wiseacre junkies, jawboning about the night before, when Stevo (Sam Riley), a scrawny macho misfit with a needling whine of a voice, got a black…

  One of the best things about comic books is that they can be anything. They can be incredibly light and funny or dark and violent, characters die and are resurrected, and storylines change and reset. The possibilities are endless, and that’s why they are so fun to read. You…

    As is befitting what should be an outlaw region of filmmaking, there are very few rules when it comes to indie genre films. Really, there is only one rule that I expect a film like SLASHER.COM to follow: Do not be boring. That’s it. It’s very simple. I…

On the surface DEVIL IN THE DARK seems like it is going to be a fairly typical story. Estranged brothers go on a weekend camping and hunting excursion only to find themselves stalked by an unseen force that appears to be hostile in nature. Yet, as the story unfolds you find…

He walks down the street alone at night, nervously looking an address he can’t seem to find. A car pulls up alongside him, idling, its driver making no indication of what they want. There’s a twist — the street, with its leafy trees and well-kept yards, is in the middle…

        Last month at the Sundance Film Festival, Macon Blair’s directorial debut I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Drama, the festival’s top honor. It was a surprise for many but not to those who have followed Blair’s…

This review contains spoilers for YETI: A LOVE STORY.   The current state of independent filmmaking is a strange and wondrous place. As digital cameras, editing software, and sound equipment have become higher in quality and cheaper to own, nearly anyone with a dream of making a film can make…

Admittedly, UNBROKEN GLASS is not the usual type of film we review here at DAILY GRINDHOUSE. But we love all good films and it does not hurt at times to expand our coverage beyond the grindhouse to the arthouse. As a viewer, I find that the personal documentary is the…

  Keanu Reeves can be painful to watch at times. His acting capabilities are subpar. Or in other words, he’s bad…really bad. I still love him though. However, he is incredibly skilled with firearms and he proved in the inaugural JOHN WICK film that he could kick some ass on screen….

      Some of us watch a LOT of movies. Some of us enjoy many of those. When all you ask for from a movie is a better and more interesting experience than one would receive by simply sitting and staring out a window doing nothing, it’s a fairly…

    I adore good stories. I love consuming them, I love telling them, and I’m always looking to improve my writing skills. In an effort to become a better storyteller, I sat down a few evenings ago and completed a fun little screenwriting exercise in which I created a…

Despite coming out in 2007, David F. Walker’s BLACK SANTA’S REVENGE is even more poignant today than when it was first released. The level of outrage from narrow minded racists due to Minnesota’s MALL OF AMERICA having a black man portray the holiday icon whose role is to bring joy to…

    Like many movie nerds of a certain age, STAR WARS has been a part of my life since I can remember. One of my earliest memories is seeing A NEW HOPE with my parents at the Ben Hur Drive-In in Crawfordsville, Indiana (now long since demolished). I saw…

  Taika Waititi (WHAT WE DO IN SHADOWS, EAGLE VS. SHARK) is quickly becoming one of my favorite filmmakers. His films have a unique, dry humor that are very intelligently written and creatively directed, and HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE may be his best film yet. He implements creative camera work, jump…

  Being pleasantly surprised by a movie I expected to have fun with is an unusual experience. Much more common is the film that I expect nothing out of that exceeds my expectations. Of course, I see those films in a more favorable light because they have a lower bar…