THE BURNING MOON (1992) It’s always disheartening when you sit down to watch a movie that has notoriety and, by the end, you find yourself more bored than shocked – a good example is A Serbian Film. This is also the case with The Burning Moon, an infamous, shot-on-video German splatter flick that’s just a 90-minute geek show of outrageous but very low-budget gore FX. A cretinous teenage drug addict tells his kid sister two violent bedtime stories: “Julia’s Love” depicts a young woman and her family being butchered by an escaped mental patient; “The Purity” has a psychopathic priest who believes rape and murder cleanses the soul and sets his victims free. The makeup ranges from mediocre to piss-poor, done by people who don’t seem to understand human anatomy. Despite the low-grade gore, whenever it’s not on screen the movie is super lame, with too many instances of dull characters performing mundane daily activities, like emptying a dishwasher. The film crescendos during a hallucination depicting hell, a nearly 10-minute sequence in which a lot of fake blood and body parts are thrown around, including a bit where a man is split in half when his legs are pulled apart. What filmmaker Olaf Ittenbach doesn’t understand is if the viewer doesn’t believe anything that’s unfolding in front of them, all the decapitated heads in the world won’t amount to a hill of beans. D–
DRACULA (1931) One of the most influential horror films of the early part of the 20th century, this crisp, elegant adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel is still a great example of classic Hollywood horror. Bela Lugosi takes the story to new heights with his portrayal of Count Dracula that is both seductive and sad, giving the movie a layer of mastery that’s still untouched within the genre – Christopher Lee is probably the closest an actor has come to matching Lugosi’s intense charisma. Tod Browning’s exquisite direction and Karl Freund’s beautiful B&W photography creates an atmospheric work of originality that inspired countless gothic horror films in the years to come. The script (by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, from their 1924 play) is simple and to the point – wisely switching out the rather dull Jonathan Harker subplot with Dwight Frye’s more interesting Renfield – and while some scenes seem a bit campy and outdated, the overall effect of the film works splendidly. A–
THE EXORCIST III (1990) William Peter Blatty adapted his own novel, Legion, for this third outing in the Exorcist series, and in doing so created an excellent film that more than makes up for the train wreck that is Exorcist II: The Heretic. When Det. Kinderman (George C. Scott) discovers similarities between a string of recent murders and the crimes of the Gemini Killer from 15 years earlier, he begins to wonder if the serial killer (Brad Dourif), executed the same night of Regan MacNeil’s exorcism, is truly dead. Things get complicated when an unidentified patient at a local sanitarium claiming to be the Gemini Killer looks to Kinderman exactly like Father Karras (Jason Miller). Blatty (who also wrote the screenplay) wisely balances the broody tone of the film with moments of dark humor, especially between Kinderman (played by Lee J. Cobb in the 1973 movie) and Father Dyer (Ed Flanders). Scott is first-rate, and Dourif equally impressive as Patient X, a role that seems to have been a warm-up to his chilling performance as psychopathic con man, Luther Lee Boggs, in The X-Files. Good dialogue mixed with classic scares make The Exorcist III a worthy sequel. B+
TRICK (2019) An uninspired slasher about a seemingly unstoppable killer nicknamed Trick who returns every Halloween to massacre teenagers, despite the fact the main suspect (Thom Niemann) in the first series of murders was shot down by cops. The local police think it’s the work of a copycat, but seasoned detective Denver (Omar Epps) believes the original killer is still alive and will continue to slaughter people until he’s finally put down for good. A lifeless, by-the-numbers script littered with too many plot conveniences and holes, this is further harmed by awful, over-lit digital photography, cheap makeup effects, and a lotta non-acting by its talented cast, most of whom probably signed on for the paycheck. Tom Atkins is wasted. D