DVD Collectors Online

The Legend of the Hell House, a review by addicted2dvd

Title: The Legend of the Hell House
Movie Count: 23
TV Ep Count: 5
Time Started: 4pm
Plot:
 It sits here, shrouded in mist and mystery, a nesting place for living evil and terror from the dead. It's Hell House. Roddy McDowall heads the cast of this exciting chiller about four psychic investigators and the dark, brooding mansion they themselves call "the Mt. Everest of haunted houses." It's already destroyed one team of researchers. Now this brave quartet ventures in for another try at unraveling its secret. But before they succeed, they must suffer through madness, murder and everything else the spirits that dwell here have in store for them. Yet learning the truth just might drive them all insane. An ingeniously-devised ghost story, THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE will thrill and delight veteran horror fans from the first creaking door to the very last slithering shadow.

My Thoughts:
This was another Blind Buy I got from Wal-Mart for $5 from their Halloween Display. I bought this one because a good friend of mine suggested it... and since she knows my tastes in movies I felt comfortable checking it out. And let me say... I am really glad I did! This movie had me glued to the TV from start to finish! At times there is nothing better then a good haunted house story... and when you are in that mood this movie is a perfect solution. I highly recommend it!

(From Month-Long Horror/Halloween Marathon on October 7th, 2007)

House of Bones (2009), a review by addicted2dvd

House of Bones (2009/United States) SyFy Director: Jeffery Scott Lando Writing: Anthony C. Ferrante (Writer), Jay Frasco (Screenwriter) Length: 90 min. Rating: Unrated Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 1.78:1 Audio: English: Dolby Digital: 5.1, English: Dolby Digital: 2-Channel Stereo Subtitles: English, Spanish

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Stars:
Charisma Carpenter as Heather Burton
Marcus L. Brown as Greg Fisher
Ricky Wayne as Tom Rule
Collin Galyean as Simon
Kyle Clements as Bub
Corin Nemec as Quentin French

Plot:
Psychic, Heather Burton (Charisma Carpenter, "Angel") and a team of TV ghost hunters travel to investigate a haunted house surrounded by rumors of paranormal activity. Upon their arrival they find a foreboding house with a mind of its own, and as darkness falls, the house begins to kill the crew one by one. With time running out, will they be able to outwit this terror and make it out alive?

Extras:

• Scene Access
• Bonus Trailers

I have forgotten about this one when I bought it... but I did indeed see this movie before. When it originally aired on the Syfy Channel back in January 2010. I got this one mainly because I like Charisma Carpenter. The movie is better then I was expecting it to be. Sure some of the effects were cheesy... and there was some predictable stuff in it. But I definitely enjoyed it. Charisma Carpenter plays a psychic that joins one of those shows where they go off investigating supposedly haunted houses called Sinister Sites. On her very first episode they end up in the "real thing". While it may not be the best haunted house movie I ever seen... I am glad I added it to my collection. It's worth the time put into it to watch it.




(From Alphabet Marathon: The Unwatched Version on September 17th, 2011)

Farscape Marathon, a review by DJ Doena

Synopsis: D'Argo has brought an alien onboard who claimed that he could cloak the electromagnetic field of Moya's. They would become invisible to sensors which has become necessary since Scorpius deployed wanted beacons all over the place. Thy make a test run on Farscape-1 and it actually works and then they agree to follow T'raltixx to his home planet, but they have to pass a cluster of five pulsar stars and their light has side-effects on less-developed life-forms. Soon the crew starts to get aggressive and suspicious towards one another but it doesn't stop even after they passed the pulsars. Something else is going on.

My Opinion: The funny thing is that John didn't wear the "armour" shown in the picture above when he was nuts, but when he started to get a clear head again. I love it when fictional characters go crazy and paranoid, it's a lot of fun to watch them: "Why don't you want to show me the record, what are you hiding? ... So now you suddenly want to show it to me? Why? What's on it?" and so on. And why was John the hero of the day? Because Humans have less precise senses and aren't affected as much by the light. Inferiority can help survive.

Synopsis: Chiana finds a Peacekeeper recording device which documents that Aeryn has been on Moya before and that her squadron has killed the former pilot. Aeryn didn't know that it was Moya because she had been on many Leviathans. Slowly she begins to remember what happened back then and how Pilot became Moya's pilot. But she's not the only one remembering, Pilot does it as well and he's not amused.

My Opinion: Everyone has a past and naturally Aeryn's isn't one painted in pink. I really liked the flashbacks because it gave both Aeryn and Pilot more background and once again it wasn't all black/white. OK, Aeryn's past was black, but Pilot's past wasn't exactly white. And again there are some parallels to Stargate SG-1: Both Teal'c and Aeryn had to leave everything behind even though Teal'c's leaving was more a choice than Aeryn's. Both were necessary to get the show moving but both seemed sudden. And both series showed in later episodes such as this one that it wasn't such a sudden move after all. It just seemed that way because we the viewers didn't know their past.


Synopsis: Rygel and Chiana trade for some items and Chiana discovers a picture that seems to depict her. But the picture is changing, it seems to predict the future: First her legs get broken and then she dies in a fire. The crew is still shocked about this when the picture suddenly shows D'Argo and his death. Every attempt at destroying the picture fails and they fear to get picked one-by-one. Back at the trading ship they find out that the picture is a creation by Maldis - the sorcerer who captured John and was defeated by Zhaan.

My Opinion: I'd would have liked to see Maldis longer, he's such a good diabolic character. But to introduce him earlier would have meant to reveal the answer to soon. This way the episode turned from "weird in the beginning" to "really weird in the end". I love it. The special effects may not be so special but you have to have the idea and the ultimately go through with it and tell the story.

Synopsis: The crew is seriously starving and Zhaan begins to blossom (literally). She needs meat or she will die. So Moya lands in the corpse of a Budong*, the greatest space-living creature known. There is a mine and a colony in which Chiana and her brother have lived a while ago. The minerals in the Budong's bones are valuable, but it's dangerous because there live other creatures, too, who feed from the rotting corpse or a miner.

My Opinion: I loved the way John killed the Keedva. It simply had to be a homage to Luke's killing of the Rancor in Return of the Jedi. But I also liked how Chiana was willing to do anything to get meat for Zhaan and how D'Argo couldn't bear it because he cares for Chiana. We've seen traces of this development in previous episodes but after the kiss in the end it's very obvious.

*The classification of the Budong on the Farscape Wiki is also fun to read:
Height of average adult: Big
Average length: Really big
Average wingspan: Really REALLY big

(From Farscape Marathon on April 18th, 2009)