SEPT 20 — There are way too many B grade horror movies out there; no sane person can watch it all in his or her lifetime. This does not even include those made outside the holy constellation of directors like George A. Romero, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter and, to a lesser extent, Wes Craven. Even exploring the B movies that are released this year might be too much to ask of the average film fan.

Then again that’s why you have film freaks like me writing columns like this one to point you to the interesting things currently happening in the B movie dungeon.

Patrick

Horror remakes are not always a bad thing, especially when it’s a remake of an Australian horror B movie from 1978. Even more encouraging is that the remake is done by the guy who made the critically acclaimed and hugely entertaining documentary about the Australian B and exploitation movie scene of the 1970s, Not Quite Hollywood.

Imagine Carrie in a coma, except of course he’s a boy named Patrick who’s got a crush on his new nurse (who wouldn’t if the nurse is played by Sharni Vinson!) and whose affection soon spirals into a deadly bit of obsession.

With first class actors like Charles Dance and Rachel Griffiths in the big supporting roles, the only reason this film got stuck in B movie limbo is probably because it’s an Australian film, which is a shame because it’s a lot of fun!

Blood Glacier

A shameless remake of John Carpenter’s The Thing in all but name; my viewing of this Austrian film was slightly marred by the fact that the version that I got to see was the one that was dubbed into English, not the one in its original language.

But even then, the movie’s premise did more than enough to hold my interest — a bunch of scientists find a blood glacier, which they slowly discover is actually some sort of single-cell alien organism that transforms and mutates anything that it comes into blood contact with.

Goal Of The Dead

What a brilliant, brilliant concept. Have you ever asked yourself what would happen if football fans turned into zombies during a football match in a stadium? This French film, cleverly shared between two directors who divided their segments into “First Half” and “Second Half”, mirroring the two halves of a football match, hilariously answers that question in a film that, again, does not deserve to be stuck in B movie limbo, and is probably only stuck there because it’s French.

If you’re a football fan, then the satirical jabs in this movie will be even funnier. If you’re a football fan and you love zombie movies, well what are you doing still reading this? Go hunt this movie down!

Cold In July

Not exactly a horror movie, as there are no ghosts and monsters in it. But director Jim Mickle has been a staple on the horror scene with his last few films like Mulberry Street, Stake Land and We Are What We Are. With Cold In July, he’s chosen to mine another staple genre in the 1980s B movie scene – the revenge thriller. And he does it oh so brilliantly that this is surely his best film yet. Masterfully tense and beautifully acted by its leads Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepard and Don Johnson (yes, that one from Miami Vice), this is not just a great B movie, it’s a great movie, period.

At The Devil’s Door

I’m a huge fan of director Nicholas McCarthy’s last film, The Pact, so hunting this movie down is simply a must on my to-do list. After you’ve finished watching this movie, you may think that this is just another one of those “devil impregnating helpless women” movies like Rosemary’s Baby, but what this movie does differently (or subtly differently, to put it more clearly), is imagining the process of choosing that “helpless woman.” I’d still say that I loved The Pact more, but At The Devil’s Door is definitely no slouch either.

Interesting failures — Evil Feed and Alien Abduction

Probably the first movie ever to combine the “tournament film” subgenre of fight flicks with your classic cannibal gorefest, Evil Feed could have and should have been a better movie than it is, which is a shame because its story about an underground fight club in which the losers are then turned into fine dining for the people watching holds so much potential. That same feeling of wasted potential permeates Alien Abduction, a found footage horror film about a family vacationing in the mountains of North Carolina that’s already scary in quite a few places, but could have been more if it was really thought through better. They’re still worth a look if you have some extra time by virtue of their quite interesting concepts.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.