 2006 was not a good year for direct-to-video horror and it wasn't a good year for me watching direct-to-video horror. Here I am the guy known for sitting through the worst of the worst so you don't have to and by about Halloween I found myself pawning off some of the DTV horrors I couldn't even bring myself to sit through onto other Dread Central staffers. I actually got a Christmas card from Dread Central staffer Melissa Bostaph. After being responsible for her sitting through ELECTRIC ZOMBIES, I'm amazed that Christmas card wasn't laced with anthrax. It took me quite awhile to get used to watching films shot on digital because I'm just so used to watching films actually shot on film that actually look like film. Now just when I finally grow accustomed to this I again find myself sighing whenever I pop a DTV horror movie into my DVD player and see that it was shot on digital because, well, most of them are reprehensibly bad. The current horror boom has lead to numerous DVD distributors snatching up horror films for release with little regard to quality. The market horror DVD market is now so overrun with films, many of which are little more than glorified backyard productions undeserving of a wide DVD release (a reality that's about to come back and bite the horror genre in the ass as international distributors are reportedly not so hot on low budget horror anymore). About half the movies on this list fall into that category; the other half are movies that had either some money and professionalism behind them yet still wound up being rotten to the core. Now I admit I didn't see every DTV horror flick that came out in 2006 but I think I can safely say that I've seen enough to make a list. Are there really any on this list that one would argue wasn't thoroughly abysmal in some way? So here you go, complete with a blurb from each review and a link to the full one - my picks for...
THE TOP 10 WORST DIRECT-TO-DVD HORROR FILMS OF 2006#10 
Motor Home Massacre is about: A) A masked maniac hiding within a motor home killing the people staying in it B) A masked maniac that kills his victims by running them down with a motor home C) A masked maniac that kills a bunch of young idiots on a weekend trip in a motor home D) About 91 minutes too long MOTOR HOME MASSACRE REVIEW #9  "Let me wrap up this review by being the first to introduce to the world the Hillside Cannibals drinking game. Whenever the zombified Bill Paxton-looking cannibal starts spouting gibberish, raise your beverage up and exclaim, "Sawney Bean!" Every single time director Leigh Scott decides to use a shot of the sky or the moon as a buffer between scenes, take a shot. You'll be singing the praises of Sawney Bean and be stupid drunk in no time at all, and stupid drunk is probably the best way to get through this ordeal." HILLSIDE CANNIBALS REVIEW #8  "Voodoo Curse: The Giddeh manages to completely sabotage itself within the first few minutes by telling us specifically which characters are going to die. Sure, with a movie of this type you can you can pretty much deduce which characters are dead meat anyway, but for goodness sake, don't tell us right off the bat. This film opens with the last remaining survivor recounting the ordeal and running down a list of her friends that lost their lives, going so far as to put their image on the screen and nearly even tells us exactly what order they die in too. Last time I saw a movie do that it was House of the Dead and we all know how well that one turned out." VOODOO CURSE: THE GIDDEH REVIEW #7  "Forget 7 Mummies; this film is all about the 7 P's: poor, pointless, plodding, putrid, pungent, punishing, and pathetic." 7 MUMMIES REVIEW #6  "But neither the look nor the acting matter since Blade of the Vampire is as uninteresting as it is derivative and trust me when I tell you that this is one of the most divisive modern vampire flicks you'll come across. If vampire movies are worth a dime a dozen then this one's story and characters are worth only about a nickel. Forget about the showdown between the vampire and the knife-wielding vampire hunter; the real showdown was between this DVD and the remote control-wielding me, and I confess that the DVD made me blink. I gave the film a chance but it insisted on trying my patience with its absolute nothing of a tale and all around uneventfulness. Boring bad makes for the worst kind of bad movie and Blade of the Vampire is boring bad from start to finish. And that's even with liberal use of the fast forward button!" BLADE OF THE VAMPIRE REVIEW #5  "I’ve always said that a boring film is the worst kind of bad movie there is and Warriors of Terra may very well be the worst direct-to-DVD horror movie I've seen thus far this year. Unlike the countless no budget, do-if-yourself, shot-on-digital flicks that pop up on DVD racks on a regular basis, Warriors of Terra clearly had some money behind, and unlike the makers of most of those other flicks, the director of Warriors of Terra is technically efficient. So what went wrong?" WARRIORS OF TERRA REVIEW #4  "And I asked the Lord, "Why? Why hath thou forsaken me?" The Lord responded, "I gave you free will. I did not make this movie nor did I make you watch it. The choice was yours, and the consequences are yours as well." And then the fiery flames of hell began to crackle at my feet. My fate was sealed as I slowly descended into the lake of fire. The devil, as it turns out, is actually a demonic clown. Why am I not surprised?" MR. JINGLES REVIEW #3  "The Damned is sort of like Fright Night in that it has to do with a murderous vampire that moves into the neighborhood of a young man who uncovers the terrifying truth and needs the help of his friends and a supposed vampire hunting expert to deal with the murderous bloodsuckers. There are some differences though -- tremendous differences. The Damned is set in the barrios of Oakland, the vampires all look and behave like drug thugs whose skulls should be getting bashed in by Vic Mackey on an episode of "The Shield", Todd Bridges of "Diff'rent Strokes" fame replaces Roddy McDowell in the role of the hapless vampire hunter, the trio of friends spend most of the movie sitting on the couch arguing over how they should deal with their vampire problem, the production values are slightly above the level of homemade porn, and in the biggest difference of all, The Damned sucks on a monumental scale. This is easily one of the sorriest excuses for a horror movie I've ever seen." THE DAMNED REVIEW #2  "Just how pathetic is Dark Harvest 3: Scarecrow? There' a scene not long after they arrive at the cabin where the lights go out. First of all, everyone immediately begins shrieking in terror over the lights going out in far too freaked out a manner given there had yet to be any sort of tension built up or menace to them at this time. Worst of all, the accompanying crash on the soundtrack designed to elicit a cheap jump scare was a full two seconds too late. The people that made this thing couldn't even time the loud noise to precisely the moment of the lights go out. Pathetic." DARK HARVEST 3: SCARECROW REVIEW And #1 (Preferably with a bullet!) is a movie that achieved the double whammy of not only being indefensibly bad, but also succeeded at pissing me off for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that the film barely even delivers on its own title. #1  "Now I know full well that one does not go into a movie called Komodo vs. Cobra and expect a great film. One does not go into a movie by Jim Wynorski and expect a great film. One sure as hell should not go into a movie called Komodo vs. Cobra directed by Jim Wynorski and expect a great film. However, even low expectations do not justify how indefensibly bad Jim Wynorski's Komodo vs. Cobra is. Folks, this is not a movie. This is a scam. How many times is Jim Wynorski going to remake the same damn movie with only some minor tweaking? The Sci-Fi Channel premiered Wynorski's A.I. Assault a short while ago, and that film was just a reworking of his earlier Sci-Fi Channel movie Curse of the Komodo, only with the giant komodo dragons replaced by giant robotic battle droids. It had many of the same plot points and was filmed in virtually the same locations. It wasn’t a terrible film, but it was still insultingly derivative of his previous film. And now he’s done it again, and this time it’s inexcusably wretched." KVC: KOMODO VS. COBRA REVIEW
But I'm not quite done just yet. One more movie deserves mention, a film that I would have slotted in #1 if not for the fact that I'm not sure the movie was ever intended for public consumption. If you read the review you'll understand what I mean. So rather than slot it with the rest of the films in the list I've just decided to put it in a category all its own. Believe me, this one earned it.
 SPECIAL RECOGNITION FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN THE FIELD OF CINEMATIC PUNISHMENT: CURSE OF HALLOWEEN "Curse of Halloween was such an abomination that I'm now legitimately concerned that this wasn't a real movie after all but some sort of Ring-like scenario that'll lead to my untimely death in a week or was a Videodrome-esque experiment that'll cause me to start having hallucinations and begin pulling videocassettes out of my abdomen. Maybe that's the real Curse of Halloween?" CURSE OF HALLOWEEN REVIEW |