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I Walked With a Zombie, a review by Jon

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE
4 out of 5

A young Canadian nurse (Betsy) comes to the West Indies to care for Jessica, the wife of a plantation manager (Paul Holland). Jessica seems to be suffering from a kind of mental paralysis as a result of fever. When she falls in love with Paul, Betsy determines to cure Jessica even if she needs to use a voodoo ceremony, to give Paul what she thinks he wants. (from IMDB because I couldn't bothered to type one, alright? So sue me.)

Another example of Val Lewton being far ahead of his time. This certainly fits the horror bill in atmosphere, set in a far off land with strange customs. The story is again, much more subtle and is especially noteworthy for its depiction of Voodoo, normally such a big obvious target for villains to employ. Even modern representations clumsily try to show "good" voodoo and "bad" (Bones for instance). Here it is shown to be far from that simple and it works beautifully as a plot device.

It's less about there being a good/evil split, and more about having the courage to make decisions that are for the greater good. In simple terms, very cruel to be kind. It's a moral and challenging film dressed up in b-movie fun. The atmosphere is again superb and you get a tangible sense of this girl being so far from home, dealing with strange customs. The "zombies" obviously aren't gory corpses wandering around groaning, but the blank hypnotised characters (the wife and a strange, imposing figure under voodoo control) are just as creepily effective.




(From Val Lewton Horror Marathon on October 4th, 2008)

Megafault , a review by addicted2dvd

Megafault (2009/United States) IMDb | Wikipedia Echo Bridge Home Entertainment Director: David Michael Latt Writing: Paul Bales (Screenwriter) Length: 90 min. Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 1.78:1 Audio: English: Dolby Digital: 2-Channel Stereo Subtitles: N/A

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Stars:
Brittany Murphy as Dr. Amy Lane
Eriq La Salle as Charley "Boomer" Baxter
Bruce Davison as Rhodes
Justin Hartley as Dan
Paul Logan as Boyd

Plot:
Solid ground gives way, skyscrapers crumble and cities are buried in this thrill-a-minute, action-packed movie event! A deep seismic fault has been triggered in America's heartland. Now, it threatens to slice North America in half. Amidst unpredictable aftershocks, chaos and destruction, seismologist Amy Lane (Brittany Murphy, Deadline, Sin City) and Charley "Boomer" Baxter (Eriq La Salle, TV's ER) must race to predict the fault's direction and warn the millions in its engulfing path.

Extras:

• Scene Access
• Digital Copy

I have always been a fan of disaster movies... including the low budget ones you see a lot on SyFy Channel. (And I am still not used to the new spelling for SyFy Channel!) Matter of fact this movie is a TV movie that originally aired on the SyFy Channel. This one stars Brittany Murphy. It is one of her last roles before her untimely death. There is a couple other familiar faces in this one. There is Eriq La Salle who played Dr. Peter Benton on ER and Justin Hartley who played Oliver Queen on Smallville. I enjoyed this movie quite a bit... but one thing I had a problem with through-out this movie was Brittany Murphy as a seismologist. Not that her acting was bad or anything like that... but I just felt her size and how young she looked just worked against her in this role. Sure... there is some unbelievable stuff in this movie. But that is pretty much true about any of these type of disaster movie. I really enjoyed both storylines in this movie. Dr. Amy Lane and her team trying to stop the earthquake as well as her husband and child trying to survive the earthquakes as they make their way home. While I wouldn't say it is the best movie of it's kind... I did find it to be well worth watching.




(From What Movies I Been Watching on May 22nd, 2011)

Pete's Pilots, a review by addicted2dvd

The Jeff Foxworthy Show
At last, a family comedy fit for the whole trailer park! Jeff Foxworthy, popular stand-up comic, stars as a hardworking husband and father. With his loving wife Karen (Anita Barone), precocious son Matt (Haley Joel Osment) and trouble-making kid brother Wayne (fellow comedian Jay Mohr), Foxworthy has a single-family house full of double-wide laughs! Together, the Foxworthy clan is giving the Midwest a taste of Southern hilarity. As the owner of a heating and air company, Jeff takes his signature brand of humor and turns the American dream on its ear. Between paying his mortgage, running his business and raising his son, he learns what every self-respecting redneck knows: tractor pulls come and go, but family is forever!

Jeff's Life, 101
As soon as Jeff repays half of a loan from his Father-in-law, he gets hit with a series of unexpected expenses and has to figure out how to get the check back.

My Thoughts:
I actually forgot how funny this show is. Of course I have always been a fan of Jeff Foxworthy.  I had to laugh at the opening of this episode. Jeff's son asked what a redneck is... that he was called a redneck at school. So of course we get a good little string of redneck jokes to open the series with. This is a series that didn't last long. Only 2 seasons... but it is one full of laughs. Especially for someone like me that was raised around rednecks.

My Rating:

(From Pete's Pilots on February 22nd, 2010)