The Gore-Gore Girls

Starring:Frank Kress, Amy Farrell, Hedda Lubin, Henny Youngman, Russ Badger, Jackie Kroeger, Nora Alexis, Phil Laurenson, Frank Rice (II), Corlee Bew, Emily Mason, Lena Bousman, Marina Salli, Norman Dachman, Menda MacPhail, Luba Cherewchenko, Vikki Carr, Marlene Berger, Peter Sande, Ray Sager
Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Description
The screwiest, sexiest, goriest one yet! A lunatic with a grudge against G-strings, pasties, and pretty women is slaughtering the sexy strippers who work for night club impresario Marzdone Mobilie (Henny Youngman. Yes, the Henny Youngman). Not content with mere murder, the psycho enthusiastically mangles and mutilates the women, thus turning Marzdone's go-go girls into The Gore Gore Girls. Trying to solve the gruesome goings-on which include buttocks bashing, eyeball popping, face ironing, and body boiling in a bowl of French fries are obnoxious private eye Abraham Gentry (Frank Kress) and ditzy reporter Nancy Weston (Amy Farrell). And by coercing Nancy to perform in an amateur strip contest, Abraham offers the killer the perfect bait...A wicked mix of sick comedy, topless dancing, and ultra-violence makes the final film from director Herschell Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast) one of the ultimate B-movie gross-outs of all time!

The Herschell Gordon Lewis Collection (The Gore Gore Girls / A Taste of Blood / She-Devils on Wheels / The Gruesome Twosome / The Wizard of Gore / Something Weird)
Average customer rating:

Marvelous!

The Herschell Gordon Lewis Collection (The Gore Gore Girls / A Taste of Blood / She-Devils on Wheels / The Gruesome Twosome / The Wizard of Gore / Something Weird)
Starring: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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The Blood Trilogy: Blood Feast/Two Thousand Maniacs!/Color Me Blood Red

Blood Feast

Beauties & Beasts Box (Night of the Bloody Apes/ Feast of Flesh / Mighty Gorga / One Million AC/DC / The Beast that Killed Women / The Monster of Camp Sunshine) (Something Weird)

Two Thousand Maniacs

Color Me Blood Red

ASIN: B00029RSWC
Release Date: 2004-07-06

Description

Six Blood-Spattered Cult Classics from the Creator of Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs !The Godfather of Gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis, is back and ready to paint the room red with six outrageous tales of terror! A wigmaker and her psycho son make a Gruesome Twosome when they decide to use real human hair to stock their shop, fresh from bloody scalps! Enjoy A Taste of Blood as an elixir from Count Dracula turns an all-American businessman into a blood-craving creature of the night! Experience Something Weird when an electrical shock disfigures a man who makes a deadly deal with a cunning witch involving ESP, LSD, and killer bed sheets! Then an all-girl motorcycle gang of She-Devils on Wheels turns a small town into a rip-roaring bloodbath after a young girl's initiation sets off a chain of jealousy and murder! Grab a front row seat as The Wizard of Gore mutilates audience members in an act too gruesome to be real, or is it? Then get ready for lots of shakin' and screamin' as The Gore Gore Girls take the stage, where a psycho is picking off the strippers at a nightclub run by Henny Youngman! Mixing pitch-black humor and jaw-dropping blood and guts, these drive-in cult classics will leave stunned, shocked, and begging for more!

Customer Reviews:

Marvelous!.......2004-07-06

In 1963 Herschell Gordon Lewis, an independent filmmaker known for making limited release "cutie" pictures, changed forever the face of American cinema when he released "Blood Feast." This film, as low budget as you could possibly get, ushered in the era of the gore film. While it would be quite some time before Hollywood caught on to the fact that certain segments of the movie going public hungered for films containing nauseating scenes of explicit violence, H.G. Lewis took one look at the receipts for "Blood Feast" and decided he better quickly make another movie similar to this one. What followed was a series of gruesome zero budget shockers, films like "The Wizard of Gore," "A Taste of Blood," "2000 Maniacs," "Color Me Blood Red," and "The Gruesome Twosome." Lewis lensed the downright offensive "The Gore-Gore Girls" before retiring from the film business in 1972 in order to devote his time to the advertising industry. It wasn't until 2002 that the director returned to form with "Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat," a movie which proved beyond a doubt that the Godfather of Gore still has what it takes to gross out an audience. It's elevates the soul to see something as audacious as a "Herschell Gordon Lewis Collection" hit stores. They even threw in a couple of Hersch's non-gore flicks for good measure.

I just can't get over a Lewis boxed set. First up is Lewis's ghastliest film, "The Gore-Gore Girls," a movie so repulsive that one must see it to believe it. What's the plot, you ask? What are you, somebody who needs a coherent plot? Well, there is a plot here if you look hard enough. Some nut's been going around dispatching the female employees at the local "men's clubs," so a newspaper hires crack detective Abraham Gentry (Frank Kress) to investigate the crimes. A ditzy local reporter, Nancy Weston, tags along and generally gets in the way whenever see can. You won't care about the plot when the gore starts rolling in. Lewis gives us a scene where a gal bobs for French fries, a hot iron applied to something other than clothing, and the grisly capper involving two types of milk. A head scene that rivals the atrocity we saw in "Toxic Avenger" makes an appearance, in case you were wondering. Whew! If you get through this movie intact, give yourself a pat on the back! Heck, if you can get through the cheesy canned jazz soundtrack, you'll be a winner in life. Look for Henny Youngman playing sleazy club owner Marzdone Mobilie, as well as Ray Sager from "The Wizard of Gore" hamming it up as a sniffling bartender.

Speaking of "The Wizard of Gore," this cinematic nightmare shows up in the set as well. Montag the Magician (Ray Sager) puts on a heck of show when he hypnotizes his audience and then proceeds to massacre a volunteer from the crowd in stomach churning close up. The tricks include a sword swallowing bit, a punch press, and the old railroad spike through the head gag that's so popular at kiddie birthday parties. No one sees what Montag is up to-they're hypnotized, remember-until the victim falls to pieces after the show. A suspicious feminist talk show host eventually catches on to the wizard's foul deeds and, with the help of her boyfriend, attempts to bring the malevolent magician to justice. The conclusion of the film is memorable only because it actually makes the viewer think, a rarity in the world of Herschell Gordon Lewis films. "The Wizard of Gore" is probably my favorite Lewis gore film, so it's nice to see it again here. The acting is as wooden as it could possibly get, the effects are dirt cheap, and there are more continuity errors than you can shake a stick at, but it's all done in good fun. You'll love it. Really!

"A Taste of Blood" and "The Gruesome Twosome" represent lesser H.G. Lewis productions (!). The former is the director's take on the vampire genre, as a chipper business chap named John Stone receives two mysterious bottles of wine from a recently deceased relative. Turns out that the stuff is blood from a vampire, which means by the time Stone finishes off the bottles, he becomes a walking Dracula. His wife Helen knows something is wrong, but can do little to stop the unfolding disaster. Not much gore in this one, but it is one of Lewis's better works in terms of cinematography and even (gasp) acting. "The Gruesome Twosome" also boasts a good actress in the form of Mrs. Pringle, a chirpy dame who runs a wig shop out of her house. Local college girls go there to buy hairpieces but never leave thanks to Pringle's demented son Rodney, a goofy looking miscreant who supplies mother with the raw material to make new wigs (think about it for a second and you'll get the idea). I got a kick out of the film, especially the cheesy dance number and Pringle's pet, the ever silent Napoleon.

Description

The screwiest, sexiest, goriest one yet! A lunatic with a grudge against G-strings, pasties, and pretty women is slaughtering the sexy strippers who work for night club impresario Marzdone Mobilie (Henny Youngman. Yes, the Henny Youngman). Not content with mere murder, the psycho enthusiastically mangles and mutilates the women, thus turning Marzdone's go-go girls into The Gore Gore Girls. Trying to solve the gruesome goings-on which include buttocks bashing, eyeball popping, face ironing, and body boiling in a bowl of French fries are obnoxious private eye Abraham Gentry (Frank Kress) and ditzy reporter Nancy Weston (Amy Farrell). And by coercing Nancy to perform in an amateur strip contest, Abraham offers the killer the perfect bait...A wicked mix of sick comedy, topless dancing, and ultra-violence makes the final film from director Herschell Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast) one of the ultimate B-movie gross-outs of all time!

Customer Reviews:

Lewis's Giallo?.......2007-05-07

Well, Lewis will never be confused with Argento that's for sure. There are similarities to the Italian giallo pictures, but this is a Lewis film all the way. A killer's knocking off strippers and a snobby investigator and a journalist are on the case. That's about it. Lewis seems to be trying to outdo the gore of his previous films, and at times he succeeds. But as gory and sadistic as it is, this film is a comedy through and through. The whole thing is tongue in cheek making it easy to laugh with the film rather than at it for being cheap and silly. A good portion of chuckles comes from the investigator, Gentry, with his high falootin', arrogant, insulting and sarcastic attitude. The guy is almost like a cartoon character, and certainly wouldn't be able to go about like he does in real life without getting his teeth knocked out. His sarcastic, low key response to the killer's demise is hilarious...so is the killer's demise itself come to think of it. I also didn't realize back in 72, some people referred to their homes as "cribs" like they do today. Learn something new everyday, huh? Though comedic, I couldn't recommend it to just anyone, coz the violence could certainly be off putting, even for some horror fans. But anyone reading a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie review knows what they're getting into, so enjoy.

The most outrageous gore film ever made!.......2005-02-11

This has got to be the most outrageous gore flick I have ever seen and by far the funniest. The gore effects in this movie are so outlandish that it is actually not frigthening at all but extremely humorous (for those of us with a taste for black humor). A movie like this could only have been created by the "Godfather of Gore" Herschell Gordon Lewis. Known for his mix of sex and extreme gore, Lewis out does himself in this one as Go-Go girls at a nightclub are hacked to pieces one by one. A hot iron is used to melt the face of one helpless victim, another has her face fried in french fry oil, still another has her rear end turned into hamburger meat and of course the infamous scene where a girl has her nipples cut off (the left bossom spews out whole milk while the right spews out chocolate milk!). Faces are mutilated, eyeballs are squished, and even the killer appears to have a dark sense of humor (a lit cigarette is found between the toes of one dead girl and the word "OK" is written on her leg in blood). There is even a cameo by the "King of the one-liners" Henny Youngman (who denies ever having been in this film to this day). After making this film, Lewis retired from the film making business and went on to become a successful investor. That is untill 2002 when he is coaxed back into the director's chair for "Blood Feast 2: All you can eat". Gorehounds will LOVE this flick...most others will be repulsed by it but then again, that is the point of the movie.

Zombies, pasties, and french fries, anyone?.......2004-02-04

Ladies and gentlemen! H.G. Lewis, the Godfather of Gore, proudly presents an amazing shockfest of striptease slaughter! Released in 1972, the "Gore Gore Girls," a stomach-churning and brain-twisting follow-up to Lewis's infamous "Wizard of Gore," is one of the first horror films ever to be rated X! While assembled upon a generous budget of $63,500, "The Gore Gore Girls" is a cult masterpiece of blood, black humor, and burlesque. With its smart dialogue, laughable acting, and plenty of bare exposure, this movie will entertain and nauseate even today's audiences. Best of all, despite the slightly crude subject matter, the overall content manages to stay risque without excessive raunch.
Actor Frank Kress adapts the role of Abraham Gentry, a snobbish and arrogant private eye who is offered $25,000 to investigate a series of gruesome murders. He's hired by an attractive Globe reporter named Nancy Weston (Amy Farrell), who will do anything for a scandalous story. Thinking that Nancy is merely a novice in solving crimes, Kress doesn't want anything to do with her, and he doesn't make that obvious just by whipping his cane around. Thanks to his charms, poor Nancy spends the entire second half of the movie drunk on zombies and tequila shots (not to mention the winner of an amateur strip contest). Still, the two manage to travel from one strip bar to another. Audiences will be given the pleasure of watching several voluptuous women in their tassels and pasties...up, close, and personal. Eventually, Abraham and Nancy gather enough clues to target four suspects:
Joseph - a shy student who was seduced and jilted by the killer's first victim, Suzy Creampuff.
Grout - a sadistic ex-marine who crushed and disfigured the faces of several Viet Cong soldiers.
Mary - a radical feminist who thinks that topless dancers are degrading to women.
Marlene - a fuming barmaid who was once a famous female wrestler, only to have her perfect figure horribly disfigured in a fire.
A lot of dark and sexual comedy is laced in the plotline. Viewers will especially enjoy how Abraham's bon mots test the patience of the Police Department's hotheaded Lieutenant. Not only does Abraham refuse to provide accurate information to the Lieutenant, but he even tricks him into thinking that the killer is a devout Christian! And, of course, let's not forget the outrageous stand-up comedy of Henny Youngman, who plays the ambitious club owner Marzdone Mobilie.
Meanwhile, the mysterious psychopath is killing the dancers one by one, slashing their throats and mangling their bodies beyond recognition. Like "The Wizard of Gore," this movie makes the art of mutilation the main attraction. Even before the opening credits appear, the murderer grabs Suzy Creampuff by the hair and smashes her face against a glass mirror! From there, each victim's demise gets more grisly than the last, and the seemingly cheap effects will make viewers cringe to this day. In the film's latter half, Lola, a ditzy lady with false eyelashes, is attacked by the unnamed psychopath, who then bludgeons her buttocks with a meat tenderizer! The final two murders are perhaps the grossest ones ever to be filmed. The sick assailant burns one woman's face with an iron. Then, he/she has the other victim's skin sizzled in a pot of cooking oil!
If you are a fan of H.G. Lewis's lurid legacy, "The Gore Gore Girls" is worth buying. But, it's not for the easily squeamish. In fact, once you see this movie, you will never want to eat french fries again!

Icky even for Lewis.......2003-12-25

In 1963 Herschell Gordon Lewis, an independent filmmaker known for making cutie pictures, changed forever the face of American cinema when he released "Blood Feast." This film, about as low budget as you could possibly get even in the 1960s, kicked off the era of the gore film. While it would be quite some time before Hollywood caught on to the fact that certain segments of movie audiences hungered for films containing nauseating scenes of explicit violence, H.G. Lewis took one look at the receipts for "Blood Feast" and decided he better quickly make another movie similar to this one. What followed was a series of gruesome zero budget shockers, films like "The Gruesome Twosome," "A Taste of Blood," "2000 Maniacs," "The Wizard of Gore," and his final cinematic gore masterpiece "The Gore-Gore Girls." Lewis retired after making this 1972 picture in order to concentrate on a career in advertising, an endeavor he found much more profitable than his work in the film business. It wasn't until 2002 that the director returned to form with "Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat," a movie which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Godfather of Gore still has what it takes to gross out an audience.

A gruesome series of murders committed against some local club employees inspires a newspaper to offer a boatload of money to famous private detective Abraham Gentry (Frank Kress, a guy who looks a lot like Sydney the psychiatrist from M*A*S*H). The contact between the tabloid and Gentry is one Nancy Weston, an eager reporter who quickly develops a thing for the arrogant investigator. Abraham agrees to take the case and immediately begins prowling the local go-go clubs, asking questions about the victims and narrowing down his field of potential suspects. One man in particular, a Vietnam veteran with the odd habit of squashing fruit, initially attracts Gentry's attentions. Another suspect turns out to be the head of a small cell of rabid feminists who routinely turn up at the clubs to protest the squalid behaviors of its denizens. The case would probably be resolved in a speedier manner if Gentry didn't have such an annoying personality. He ambles around dressed in a three-piece suit with cane, making it a habit to insult everyone from a sniffling bartender (played by Ray Sager of "The Wizard of Gore" fame) to an obnoxious waitress to the owner of a string of clubs named Marzdone Mobilie (Henny Youngman, of all people). He even misleads the local police with a crazy story about a bible-toting killer just so he can solve the case and collect the award.

Meanwhile, the killer continues the rampage. Herschell Gordon Lewis created some nasty looking special effects during the course of his career, but the scenes of carnage in "The Gore-Gore Girls" plumbs the depths of sadism. Describing all of the crimes here in gruesome detail probably won't do, but if you can imagine the effects of bobbing for French fries or the result of applying a hot clothing iron to flesh, you are half way there. Even worse, Herschell plays some of the scenes for laughs, with the grisly highlight involving both chocolate and regular milk. One scene involves a head and a car that equals, if not surpasses, a similar situation in Troma's "The Toxic Avenger." Lewis's final film is only for the stoutest souls, those hardy individuals inured to this type of stuff because they have watched dozens of horror films. Weak hearted people should probably stay well away. Besides, if you cannot stand terrible acting, go-go dancers with about as much onstage energy as a group of geriatrics, or canned jazz music as a soundtrack you won't make it through this one anyway.

"The Gore-Gore Girls" initially resembles a giallo film. A black-gloved killer toting a whole mess of sharp instruments spends a whole lot of time tracking down decidedly unattractive go-go dancers in order to kill them. The first murder looks like it is straight out of a Dario Argento film. If it looks, tastes, smells, and feels like a giallo, it must be a giallo, right? Wrong! This is H.G. Lewis, the Godfather of Gore. The emphasis here is on shocking the audience to the core of its being rather than wasting a huge amount of time building up suspense, investing energy in coming up with inventive camera angles, or constructing a complex plot. Instead, "The Gore-Gore Girls" gives you lots of seedy atmosphere, pedestrian pacing, and amateurish editing (some of the dance sequences run on for WAY too long). One bright spot is the actress who plays Nancy Weston, a nice looking redhead out of place in a Herschell Gordon Lewis film unless you take into account her lousy acting skills. Yes, the film is painful to watch, but you know if you are a Lewis fan you will do it anyway and you will enjoy the trip.

The DVD is another winner in the Lewis catalogue. The director's commentary illuminates many of the hassles both big and small encountered during the production shoot, as well as providing lots of laughs over Lewis's philosophy about making low budget films. As for the picture quality, well, it leaves a lot to be desired. Colors look overexposed on numerous occasions, although that is probably how the movie looked when it was originally shot because anyone familiar with Lewis's films knows he had only a rudimentary knowledge about lighting a scene. Not my favorite Lewis film, "The Gore-Gore Girls" is still an important entry in the Lewis canon due to the over the top gore and the fact that it was the last film the director made for nearly thirty years.

HGL at his best.......2003-11-19

For those unfamiliar with HGL, I would recommend seeing Blood Feast first, for all others, skip the mediocre films that followed and go staight to the Gore Gore Girls. Don't get me wrong, his other films are entertaining in their own right if you are a fan of 'bad' cinema; however, this film is quintasencial 'bad' cinema. This is HGL at his finest, superbly combining slap-stick humour with over-the-top, albeit ridiculously executed, gore and violence. Do not approach this film expecting a horror film. It is not. It is an hilarious comedy that happens to be exhuberantly bloody (but in a darkly, twistedly funny way). You will never look at a glass of chocolate milk the same way again after viewing this film. Again, those familiar with HGL's work know that his films are far from 'slick'. They are characterized by rudamentary camera work, baddest of the bad acting, minimal production values, all doused liberally in vibrantly red blood. If these weren't present, they wouldn't be HGL films and they would certainly suffer for it. This is what exploitation filmmaking is all about, brilliantly executed by the master himself. If you haven't seen it yet, get it. You won't be disappointed.

Average customer rating:

Great release!
very original
one of his best
PHENOMENAL FILM
PHENOMENA (110 Minute Version)

Phenomena
Starring: Fiore Argento , Fausta Avelli , Patrick Bauchau , Franca Berdini , and Marta Biuso
Manufacturer: Anchor Bay
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Tenebre
Inferno
Deep Red
Opera
Suspiria

ASIN: B00000IBRI
Release Date: 1999-03-16

Amazon.com

Italian horror maestro Dario Argento made his name by turning homicide into modern art with a cinematic flourish, but with Phenomena he takes his stylish mayhem in new directions. The film opens with the dreamy grace of a fairy tale: a young girl wandering the green meadows of Switzerland and discovering a gingerbread house, wherein lives a monster more modern than mythic, a psychopathic maniac who plunges the picture into a lush nightmare. Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly in her first starring role), a gifted young girl at a Swiss school, has a psychic link to the insect world and develops a connection with the killer through midnight sleepwalks. With the help of a lonely, wheelchair-bound entomologist (genre stalwart Donald Pleasence, who inflects his sonorous tenor with a gentle Scottish burr) she turns telekinetic detective, which only draws her closer to the killer's lair. The densely plotted story becomes muddled at times (this is the busiest film in Argento's oeuvre) but the lyrical cinematography and gorgeous nocturnal imagery--dreamy sleepwalks, nightmarish murders, hideous horrors that emerge in the dark of night--take on a poetic elegance not seen in his previous work, providing the tale with a kind of dream logic. This is a slasher film reborn as an exquisitely grim fantasy: Jennifer in Argentoland. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews:

Great release!.......2007-03-03

INFERNO-I liked this just as much if not more then "Susperia".I love Dario's supernatural stuff like this and "Susperia".The story isn't really as hard to follow as everybody says you just have to pay attention(like all his movies).The special effects are awesome and I love the classic Dario Argento lighting thats in EVERY scene and its obviously a cue he took from Mario Bava.Speaking of Mario Bava,he did some of the effects scenes for this movie and they came out great!If you like susperia tou should like this.
PHENOMENA-Probably one of Dario's goriest with a hand being stabbed,a classic Dario shot of a head breaking through glass and a decapitation all in the first ten minutes.The acting is great,the score is amazing,the plot is strange and ranks up there as one of my favorites.

very original.......2006-08-13

This is a very interesting and original horror. A very talented Jennifer Connelly has a very strange gift of communicating with insects and is the outcast of a girl's school where even the teachers are cruel to her and think she is mental. There is a killer on the loose and via telepathic communication with the insects is able to track down the killer, or will she be the next victim?

one of his best.......2006-06-24

when i watch a dario argento film, i am not looking for spielberg-esque actors or scenarios and whatnot, but more of a dreamy, creepy, and artistic atmosphere...not to mention, the fact that dario never shows killers' faces until the very end of his films..this to me, is the very essence of a horror/mystery film.....if i am seeing a killer's face the whole time, then where is mystery and suspense??...and did i mention the good soundtrack? wow, dario sure has his essentials covered!

yes, this movie is messed up, but that is EXACTLY why i like it...and all of dario argento's films.

people will also run their mouths on Argento's films being "boring" as i have heard many times before...if you have the attention span of a chipmunk, you may want to stick with your stupid, hollywood, cliche mission impossible type films..this movie isn't meant for cinema pops..."gasp" you actually have to PAY ATTENTION!!"gasp".....just give this film a chance if you get an oppurtunity to watch it...i mean, i personally would recommend Suspiria and Inferno to Argento newcomers, but this one would suffice too.

shame it is out of print...i mean, im sure you could find a different version much cheaper, but you will be missing out on some fantastic speacial features.....not to mention, they may be edited.

PHENOMENAL FILM.......2006-04-09

"Phenomena" is my personal favourite Argento film. It has practically all the elements that form other movies of Italian maestro: boarding school for girls, mysterious murderer, dreamy atmosphere, beautiful music (although I thought the soundtrack could do easily without Iron Maiden and Motorhead), hidden rooms and passages in the houses, some unexpected and unthinkable plot lines, like Jennifer Connely's character being able to communicate with insects...
It's difficult, maybe even impossible to explain the beauty of Argento's pictures. I think whether you see it or not. It's like whether you love fantasy genre or not. "Phenomena" is extremely picturesque, enchanting and dark if you get into Argento's work. If you don't I guess you wouldn't be reading this. So if you enjoyed his other films like "Opera", "Inferno" or "Suspiria" you'll get a lot of pleasure watching this one.
Now a few words about editions: there are about 15 different releases of different countries, and Anchor Bay one is rather good - it has commentaries and some extra features. But my pick is German 2-disc limited edition by "Dragon entertainment". It has loads of extras and some additional dialog sequences missing in AB release. This edition is rather hard to find nowdays. But if you're a die-hard fan you might have your ways...

PHENOMENA (110 Minute Version).......2006-01-09

Jennifer Connelly stars as a girl who attends a creepy boarding school for girls in Switzerland, where several girls have been slaughtered by a killer. She soon realizes she has the ability to telepathically communicate with insects and uses this power to track down the killer. Laced with unusual touches that make the film seem dream-like, Dario Argento creates yet another spectacular masterpiece. The acting is impressive (although the dubbing inevitably leads to some cheesiness in some scenes), the music score is one of the best horror movie scores ever, and the film is stylish and downright scary. For those interested in the gore, there are some devilishly creative death sequences which are sure to please. Possibly even better than SUSPIRIA.

Average customer rating:

So bad it's funny... okay, no, it's just bad
On second thought, don't get thee to a nunnery
Delicious movie disaster
A surprisingly captivating horror movie
NUNSENSICAL

The Nun
Starring: Alistair Freeland , Ludovic Tattevin , Paulina Gálvez , Manu Fullola , and Anita Briem
Director: Luis de la Madrid
Manufacturer: Lions Gate
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Satanic
Tamara
Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis
House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim
The Dark (2005)

ASIN: B000EHQ7Z6
Release Date: 2006-04-25

Description

While at boarding school, a group of girls suffered under the torment of a cruel and sadistic nun until the day they could no longer bear the abuse… and the nun was mysteriously never seen again. Years later, brutal and unexplained murders begin killing the members one by one. Feeling the familiar and evil presence of the nun from years ago, the surviving women regroup in an attempt to save their lives and lay the nun to rest one final time.

Customer Reviews:

So bad it's funny... okay, no, it's just bad.......2007-02-10

Don't ask me why I watched this, I have absolutely no idea. It somehow ended up in my Netflix queue (I suspect monkeys) and I decided to give it a try. I ended up using fast-forward for much of the movie simply to get to the end. Even then, I wasted about thirty minutes watching this clunker. Of course it is derivative, but the problem is that it's not even good at what it copies.

Two things immediately jumped out at me when I watched it: the indeterminate accents, and the amateurish directing.

It was only when I went to the "making of" featurette that I got answers to these puzzles. First of all, the movie was shot in Spain with mostly spanish actors speaking English, or at least attempting it. The accents are all over the map. Sometimes an actor will have a perfect American accent, and then in the next scene he/she will slip. One actor was British, adding to the confusion. The lead actress was the most confusing, because when her accent slipped she didn't sound Spanish, or British. Turns out she's from Iceland! And all of this makes sense when you realize that the director doesn't speak English. So when his actors spoke differently from scene to scene, he couldn't tell. He spoke to some actors directly and others through an interpreter, but he never knew what the heck they were saying. What a dumb way to make a movie.

The other puzzle was answered when someone explained that this was the director's first movie. It shows. The scenes are very poorly framed. He has borrowed ideas from a dozen other movies, but never competently. The whole thing looks silly and cheesy. It doesn't even have much in the way of laughs. And I'm reminded of a slightly profane comment by director Rob Cohen repeating a comment made by someone at a screening of his movie The Skulls--if you have two hot young people kissing in a movie and you don't show the goods, you're just wasting time, so cut the scene. "The Nun" is a pretty tame horror movie in that regard, if you know what I mean...

On second thought, don't get thee to a nunnery.......2006-07-23

The Nun (or La Monja) seemed to have all kinds of potential. I mean, who doesn't want to see a movie about a nun who returns from the grave to kill the girls she hated so much when she was their teacher? Here, the Nun can only manifest in water, which even gives the film an odd little angle to call its own. Throw in some pretty good special effects and an effectively creepy atmosphere, and you start asking yourself why this film was denied a theatrical release. Then you watch the film, and the reason eventually becomes clear - The Nun is cursed with a relatively poor script and a really lame ending. I found this particularly disappointing because I had truly admired the scripts of Jaume Balaguero in Darkness and The Nameless.

The story really starts eighteen years in the past, where we watch Sister Ursula give her class of female students a tough lesson on the wages of sin. She's particularly unhappy with Mary, Cristy, Susana, Zoe, and Eulalia because they just aren't living up to the standards of the saints they supposedly share their names with. Back in the present, we are treated to a well-paced, atmospheric scene culminating in the death of Mary - the special effects of the water-borne Nun are really quite impressive here. Having witnessed the culmination of her mother's death, young Eva (Anita Briem) soon finds herself in the middle of an unbelievable mystery. In short order, after an old classmate of her mother's is similarly murdered, and she finds evidence that her mother was planning a trip back to Spain to visit her other boarding school friends, Eva insists on taking the trip herself and finding out why and how her mother truly died. Accompanied by her best friend Julia (Beven Blanco) and Julia's annoying boyfriend Joel (Alistair Freeland) - and picking up a seminary student named Gabriel (Manu Fullola) along the way - the group eventually find themselves at the long-abandoned site of the old boarding school. It is here, in the company of the two former school girls yet to die, that the script begins deviating south every so often.

While the CGI effects aren't always perfectly believable, the Nun's every appearance makes for a highlight of the film. She's pretty evil-looking when she wants to be, and she knows what she's doing when it comes to killing former Catholic school girls. The bodies don't always end up in one piece, and most of the death shots are framed quite well. Unfortunately, rather than just sit back and enjoy the ghost nun's handiwork, we're compelled to learn what really happened at the boarding school eighteen years ago as the characters slowly begin putting all of the pieces together. Prepare yourselves for several remarkable leaps of logic and an ending that is simply not tenable based on everything that has come before. You may also want to prepare yourself to hit rewind every so often - this is basically a Spanish production, and even though the characters all speak English, I sometimes struggled to understand the dialogue of several actresses' strong Spanish accents.

With its impressive cinematography, suitably dark atmosphere, and handful of satisfying deaths, I think The Nun is certainly worth watching. I was actually prepared to give the film four stars - despite its sizable plot holes - until the ending rolled around. It's never pretty when a decent film commits cinematic suicide - especially when it is we, the audience, who are forced to swallow the bitter pill of a poisonous conclusion.

Delicious movie disaster.......2006-06-30

I had a hard time deciding whether i should rate this film with one or five stars. the bottom line is that this is not a bad film, it's an absolute disaster of a film. BUT, this is so bad it's good. I saw this at the movies last night hoping for a little scare, and instead I had a good hearty laugh from beginning to end.

if you are older than 13 years old, and if you have more than 5 working brain cells, THE NUN will be as scary, believable or logical as an episode of "Scooby Doo".

The idea is not bad: Spirit of dead nun seeks revenge on former boarding school girls, giving them the brutal deaths women saints suffered.

The production values are strong: the sets look fantastic, music and mood are great. Most of the acting is even passable. However, this movie has more holes than a slice of swiss cheese: This is a Spanish production in spoken English, and the language-culture inconsistencies are very distracting. Some of the special effects are cool, but most of them are annoyingly amateurish, and the scares are all just like someone screaming "boo" as they jump from behind the door.

The script is its worst flaw. Besides the predictable plot, this movie has some of the silliest, campiest dialogue ever written and the situations ae shockingly laughable. Example:

ZOE: "I have no intention of dying burned in an oven!!!"
(moments later)
ZOE: "I am going to the kitchen"

Yes, this was a terrible movie. But we had so much fun watching it I feel this movie deserves a life as a midnight movie, or slumber party entertainment.

A surprisingly captivating horror movie.......2006-06-27

Nun is chilling film, with deliciously devilish special effects, a fast script, and well executed acting. In it, Eve, an innocent eighteen year old that just graduated high school comes home from a party to find her mother's throat cut, and she sees a nun at the scene of the crime. Of course no one believes her, until the funeral, when she meets a mysterious woman that knew her mother years ago. So begins a frightening tale of judgment, murder, and revenge.

The special effects were well done and engaging. Since the nun can only appear in water, and only appears to certain people, some of the images are quite interesting. The plot moves extremely fast. So many people are murdered it feels brutal, and leaves you wondering just who will be left at the end of the movie. The ending is surprising and leaves you with that `nice twist' feeling.

Over all, Nun is a slick horror movie that's far better than many that have made it to the big screen in the past few years (Fog, Cursed, and Darkness, for instance). So if you're looking for a fun and stylish horror movie, then check out Nun. You won't be disappointed.

Highest recommendations.

NUNSENSICAL.......2006-06-25

The trailer for this movie is probably better than the whole film. Stuffed with oodles of atmosphere and some unique and spooky effects, the movie fails due to its frenzied plot, mediocre acting and a soundtrack that often overshadows the dialogue. Some of the accents also make it difficult to understand. The movie's twist ending is also rather forced, and it negates the basic plot of the film. Lions Gate needs to be more selective in the films it finances.

DVD:

DVD

Hallelujah, I'm A Bum! (REGION 1) (NTSC)

DVD: Ben Hur

Die Nibelungen