House of mortal sin
A nutty priest is recording confessions and then using the recordings to blackmail people into letting him help them. When they refuse or simply annoy him he heads out and murders them. This one carries the similar dark and nasty tone of house of whipcord and Frightmare and makes a few interesting observations on the catholic church between the mayhem.
Home before midnight
Perhaps a film that's a little too close to home post-saville and yewtree. The film deals with a songwriters sexual relationship with a 14 year old girl and the resulting legal fallout. A little too soft focus and schmaltzy for my tastes and given the actual abuse cases from the 70's involving celebrities then the fairly graphic sex scenes are more than a little uncomfortable.
The unborn
Roger corman produces a take on the Larry Coen ITS ALIVE pictures. Brooke Adams plays a woman desperate for a child. She goes to Dr Richard Mayerling's (Return of the living dead's James Karen's) fertility clinic and successfully becomes pregnant. However this being a horror, naturally something is wrong with the child.
The unborn is a trashy yet entertaining pot-boiler that never manages to be as successful as Larry Cohen's killer baby movies. Mainly because Cohen simply asks what's going to happen to unborn kids with how we are polluting the air, Unborn however takes a massive swipe at IVF which feels a little distasteful given how many people the process has helped. Also, the ITS ALIVE pictures are generally better made. That said The unborn is worth watching, it may be trashy nonsense but it's entertaining nonetheless.
Also, look out for an early pre-friends Lisa Kudrow as a receptionist.
Unborn 2
A direct sequel to the Corman picture without Brooke Adams. A young woman with a mutant baby is hiding out in suburbia, meanwhile another woman who was also a patient of Mayerling's is hunting down the kids and killing them one by one to prevent them from growing up to destroy the world. Like the first movie, unborn 2 is a lurid, trashy piece of nonsense saved by virtue of it being a lot of fun. Ups the ante in terms of gore and has some decent performances.
Blood Glacier
A group of climate change scientists discover a recently uncovered blood-red glacier. The stuff in it has the abiltiy to fuse DNA and create hybrid monsters. Pretty soon the team are fending off a variety of well realised mutant creatures.
Blood Glacier feels like the set up for a much bigger movie. The idea is interesting even if the plot is somewhat sleight. I really dug the creature FX which actually looks practical and this is one film I really hope gets a sequel as I feel there's even more interesting ideas than can be explored with the material
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