Change Your Image
bramdorff
Reviews
Escape from Chernobourg (1999)
Extreme ultra-violent fun from Alaska!
Lots of low-budget productions always make the mistake of padding the running time with useless dialogue and plot, but not this one. Sure, there are times when it stops for a minute to tell a bit of story, but then it quickly goes back to what matters most: the action scenes, which are done quite well. There's several references/homages to Italian and Hong Kong exploitation, but it's all entertaining enough to stand it's own. Plenty of overacting, bad dubbing (intentional of course, which adds to the fun), great dialogue, wild style, and some nice homebrew gore FX too!
Too bad this is so hard to find on tape! A US video company like EI oughtta give this a proper release, instead of all the garbage camcorder crap they poop out. Life's not fair.
I look forward to Mr. Martinez's future work, and here's hoping he'll do a 35mm cinemascope feature some day!
Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
"Omigawd, the van's on fire!"
This is a very bad movie. Bad acting, dumb story, corny one-liners, routine stalking and slashing. But in 3D, it's one of the most enjoyable movies ever made, with some of the best 3D effects ever. If you've only seen it on video, it's flat and cropped and you're really missing out.
So there's my review. But now I that I have your attention, here's some interesting useless trivia for you:
I saw a special screening of this last year, which was a life-long wish for me, after being way too young when it first came out. The 3D supervisor was there to introduce it, and to share a bit of previously unknown fanboy trivia. He said the idea for Jason to put on a hockey mask (instead of a potato sack like in part 2) was an inside joke among the Canadian members of the crew (who were responsible for the 3D effects), who wanted to add something that represented Canadian culture to the movie. Ever since then, while the hockey mask has made an important mark on American horror, nobody ever pondered the reason why he wore a hockey mask, instead of a baseball umpire mask or Quiot Riot mask. So if Jason had also put on a toque, plaid lumber jacket and carried a 2-4 case of Molson Canadian, he'd be the third McKenzie brother!