Hostel Part II (2007, Eli Roth)

"Three American college students studying abroad are lured to a Slovakian hostel, and discover the grim reality behind it."

I liked Cabin Fever a lot and I thought Hostel was a lot of fun. Now Eli Roth tries to take himself seriously and a create a film that will stand the test of time and leave everyone in awe. How do I know this? Eli Roth hasn't shut up about this one being amazing and how it would shock everyone and how the ending would be one of the greatest horror scenes of all time. He isn't right about any of those statements at all.

Hostel 2 is about three girls who once again happen to check into the wrong hostel at the wrong time and etc... This is basically the same as the first film. The movie is also about two businessmen getting into the club and experiencing their first kill, who happen to be two of the three girls. This sounds like a great premise and a real good point for Eli Roth to truly prove himself.

He doesn't and what we get is a bad attempt at trying to achieve depth. All the characters are cliched characters that we have seen over and over again. We get the smart girl, the nerdy timid girl, and the party girl. As for the two businessmen we get an asshole type of guy and a nice guy who, you guessed it, isn't sure if he can go through with it all. Even though these characters are all cliched they are a good starting point for making something at least interesting with them. Roth doesn't at all with the 3 girls and at the end of the movie they are still cliched characters.

As for the two businessmen Roth fails badly at creating something original and great with them. The whole aspect of telling the story through their eyes sound like it would be great but it isn't. When the characters reach their emotional climax it feels odd and out of place instead of shocking and interesting.

As for the end, the gore, and what not...it also fails to deliver. I'm not a gorehound but I know that some people are and after reading Eli Roth's comments about the violence in his film being great I was curious to see what he would do. He doesn't even deliver the gore which was really shocking to me. There are few "gore scenes" and none of them deliver as great as Roth makes them out to be.

Now as for the ending, it doesn't deliver at all. Roth decides to build up characters instead of going for gore scenes every couple of minutes, like in Hostel. The thing is that since he fails at that we are actually looking forward for the climax that Eli Roth builds up through out the whole film. At least the climax should be great, right? There is no way that Roth can mess this up, right? Well he sadly does. When certain twists happen they are not shocking since they could be seen coming for a long time. When certain characters take a sudden turn its more laughable than intense or scary and when the final gore scene comes that Eli Roth has been talking about so much finally plays out it is rather lame and a cheap gag that Roth feels would have left a lot of people squirming and going "owwwwwwww" It instead left me going "that's it?" as did the movie as a whole.

Hostel Part II is a failed attempt of creating something greater than it thinks it is. I'm amazed at the delusional mindset that Roth is in towards this movie. It's nowhere near a great film and it's nowhere near of making any cut of great horror movies, both past and modern ones. Although I had problems with this film I am still curious to see what Roth will do next. I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what he will do with adapting Cell.

As for now Roth fell on his face with this one. At least to me he did but I'm sure there are enough people who will eat this up and name it great and will still continue to praise Eli Roth as the modern king of horror which should be great for him and only help feed his cockiness some more.

- *1/2

Eyeball (1975, Umberto Lenzi)

"Killer in red cape and hood is killing off tourists on a tour bus by gouging out their eyeballs."

Unlike Autopsy, this description does the film justice. It's one hour and 20 minutes of people on a tour bus getting killed one by one and them trying to find out who the killer is. It's got plenty of cheese and it's silly at times but it's always fast and a lot of fun. Plus, the film has one of the coolest posters ever.

There really is not much more to say. There is nothing out of this world in the film. There is no super cool style in the film. No great direction. no great acting. The twist ending is not that great either. It's just a fun film, plain and simple. I wish I could write more but the first paragraph sums up everything the film has got going for it.

- *1/2

The Black Dragon (1974, Chin-Ku Lu)

"Man goes to big city. Man finds job. Man finds out that his boss is shipping drugs. Man joins some random kung fu gang and takes down bad man"

Once again, nothing much to say here. Another mediocre kung fu film. The only thing worth mentioning is that this one of those odd 70's films that tried to cash in on every type of exploitation genre. It's a kung fu film, with a black guy who pops out for 10 minutes at the most, who they tried to advertise as a black star. They also named him "Von Clief" so that people would think he was somehow related to Lee Van Cleef.

It's again a film filled with cheese. Nothing amazing to point out, or anything great. It's a lot of fun to watch with a group of people, which is how I saw it.

- *1/2

Chinese Hercules (1973, Choy Tak)

"Man kills girlfriends brother. Man swears to never use kung fu. Man has to use kung fu to protect people."

Not much to say about this one. It's a mediocre kung fu film. Cheese to the extreme. There is only about 10 minutes of Bolo action and all the kung fu scenes are nothing out of this world. It's a fun film if you are a fan of the genre I guess.

- *1/2

Fire in the Sky (1993, Robert Lieberman)

"A group of men who were clearing bush for the government arrive back in town, claiming that their friend was abducted by aliens"

What a bunch of bullshit this film is. A big pile of bullshit.

This is the film that is "based on the true story" of Travis Walton. His alien abduction is the most written about alien encounter ever. What makes it so special is that Travis Walton was not the only person who saw the abduction, his 7 friends did also. Over the years they have all taken various lie detector tests and they have all been proven to be telling the truth. Truly chilling stuff.

The film is told through the aftermath of the abduction and how the town reacts to the situation. They of course all suspect murder and accuse Walton's friends of covering it up by making up this bogus alien story. The film is then told through a series of flashbacks as we start to slowly see how everything happened. Then all of a sudden Walton is found naked by a gas station. He can't remember a thing but he slowly begins to remember what happened to him when he was on the ship.

This sounds pretty damn interesting, right? It really is. We are really wondering what the hell actually did happen to Walton on this ship. The film is about to end and then all of a sudden comes the very infamous "disturbing" alien sequence. We finally find out what happened to him. These series of scenes really do their job to creep you out and really makes you squirm. That's at least if you havn't read anything on the real case that this film is based on.

It's a gigantic pile of bullshit. The climax of this "based on a true story" film is 100 percent fake. None of this actually happened. Even the real life Walton has claimed that the film is nothing like what happened to him on the ship. Since it's Hollywood though we are treated to a lot of overblown scary alien scenes that did not happen at all. Once again, the payoff/climax of this "BASED ON THE TRUE STORY" is all fake. Thats just wrong on so many levels.

I just hate it that the film used the "Based on the true story" quote to sell itself, and lets be honest, to also sell the whole "alien sequences" Yet, it is ALL FAKE. I felt so beyond cheated and lied to when I found all this out. It really takes away anything scary that the film had going for it.

Really, what a bunch of bullshit. Seriously.

- *1/2