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The Reluctant Austinite with a look at the Current Release of Schumacher's BLOOD CREEK!
Hey folks, Harry here with a review from the Travis County refugee, The Reluctant Austinite... A guy that should live in Austin, wants to live in Austin, has friends that want him to live in Austin... yet inexplicably resists the melodious chants beckoning him here to Austin. This wonderful man is so atune to the world that this weekend he knew there was a new Joel Schumacher horror film called BLOOD CREEK that was being released this weekend. How quiet is this movie being released? Go on... Search YOUTUBE for Blood Creek Trailer. Try to find it. In fact, try this one. Go to IMDB and search for Blood Creek. It doesn't come up. You'll need to look up Joel Schumacher and you'll need to click on a movie called Town Creek. 82 people in the country have rated it an 8.3. And you'll begin to understand just how dumped this movie has been. And when Quint, today in Austin, went to see this film - he bought a ticket priced $1.50... Seriously. That's opening weekend. Now... I'm not real sure who Joel Schumacher shat into's open gaping mouth... but Lionsgate really and truly cares not two cents for BLOOD CREEK or Joel Schumacher. This is just utterly bizarre. No trailers, posters... hell, there's not even an official website. Really! Well, here's The Reluctant Austinite with the review... Surprise? He compares it to Lucio Fulci's HOUSE BY THE CEMETARY. Ya know... Joel doesn't deserve a movie to die like this. He's a quality filmmaker that has shat out some turds, but man... sometimes he's made movies that are among my favorites. Check and see if this film is in your neighborhood, your city. This film doesn't deserve this...
Hey Guys,
The Reluctant Austinite here with a look at the Nazi occult horror film, "Blood Creek" (formerly "Town Creek" and "Creek"), dumped by Lionsgate films into second run theaters in only a handful small towns across America, apparently to fulfill a theatrical release contract.
When scanning the local showtimes for local theaters this weekend in Louisville, KY, I came across the tantalizingly titled "Blood Creek" showing at the oldest operating theater in the city. The Village 8 survived the attack of the multiplexes by showing second run Hollywood features and the occasional arthouse hit. I had never even heard of this film before. There are apparently no trailers available to see. No posters. No promotion whatsoever.
Cool.
This reminded me of my early college days at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, KY. We had a theater there that would show ANYTHING. It might as well have been a grindhouse in the South. Direct-to-Video crap played right alongside Hollywood blockbusters. You never knew what you were going to get; Sometimes you'd get Stan Winston's "Pumpkinhead". Sometimes you'd get Andrew Stevens and George Kennedy in "The Terror Within."
Generally speaking, unless you attend a test screening of a film, you don't get to see anything these days that you don't already pretty much know everything about, so I was like a kid on Christmas morning as "Blood Creek" starting flickering across the tattered screen this afternoon. I was hoping for a set of Micronaughts and not a lump of coal.
All I knew is that this was a horror film involving Nazi occultism directed by Joel Schumacher. Now, with Schumacher, you never know if you're getting "The Lost Boys"/"Flatliners" Schumacher or the "Batman and Robin" Schumacher. The guy brings new meaning to the term "hit-or-miss", but thankfully this time it was more of the former.
The story begins with a black-and-white flashback to the 1930s in the southern United States (apparently desolate, barren Bucharest, Romania doubling for West Virginia), as a farming family receives a letter informing them that they will be monetarily compensated for housing a Nazi scientist looking for a quiet place to conduct experiments. His primary interest is in an occult runestone found in the ground beneath the barn. Needing the money, they welcome him into their home and the Hell begins.
Jump to the present. Things get a bit confusing. Young Evan Marshall (Henry Cavill) has remained at home caring for his ailing father while his brother (Dominic Purcell) ran off and joined the Iraq War. Purcell apparently came home from Iraq only to disappear weeks later on a hiking/fishing trip and hasn't been seen in two years. One night during his sleep, Evan is awakened by a scraggly, Rob Zombie-looking Purcell who has escaped captivity and demands his brother ask no questions, but instead load up as many guns as possible and follow him on a mission of revenge.
This leads them to the fore-mentioned farm house, now covered in blood-painted occult symbols, and a family that hasn't aged in 70 years. It also leads them to Nazi occult practitioner, Richard Wirth, played by Michael Fassbender of "Inglorious Basterds."
This is where the grim fun finally begins, and if you've bothered sticking with this story up until this point you'll be rewarded with some grindhouse fun. Nazis have turned up everywhere over the last couple of years as the villains of choice ("Inglorious Basterds," "Valkyrie," "Dead Snow," etc.), and here Fassbender plays this particularly nasty Nazi as sort of a zombie version of the Red Skull from Captain America comic books. He's one creepy S.O.B. Using his occult powers, Wirth is able to bring back to life any victims he leaves in his wake to use as undead soldiers. This includes dogs--and horses. The best scene in the movie involves an assault on the house by a black zombie horse. Blasted by shotgun shells and missing lots of flesh, this creepy black horse continues to attack.
All of this leads to a grisly, bloody climax and the hint of a sequel that we'll never see. Apparently, there are eight other Nazi zombies hiding on farms across the heartland, waiting for the right time to bring the Third Reich back to power.
Parts of this film reminded me of Lucio Fulci's "House by the Cemetery," with the evil, zombie Nazi scientist, Dr. Freudstein, living in the basement. Perhaps that was an influence on the original screenplay. In any case, it delivered the type of exploitative horror that plays perfectly in old, decrepit movie houses and second run theaters, so if this is playing in your backyard in your own small town, I recommend you give it a chance. It's worlds better than "Halloween 2" and "The Final Destination," and you'll be one of the only geeks in the world to have seen it in a theater!
And that's what being a movie geek is all about.
If you can use this, I am the Reluctant Austinite. Always there. Rarely visible. Never forgotten.
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was one of the better parts of Basterds. Nazi horror is all the rage. Dead Snow and now this. I'll have to search this one out.
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The official/temporary website has the film listed under a third title, "Creek".
http://www.goldcirclefilms.com/movies/movie_creek.html -
on the Nazi uniforms
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on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEtK_m6mEa0 -
It's playing here in Little Rock at the $.50 theater. Now I have something to do on my Sunday.
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Nothing better than the unexpected!
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Dammit. We suffer through crap like The Final Destination and Halloween II and Megan's Body... but one film that actually sounds interesting gets dumped?! Where's the justice. At least Lionsgate look serious about Kick-Ass, otherwise I'd be pissed.
Living in New Zealand, I somehow doubt I'll get a shot at seeing this in 2009. Sounds awesome though. Consider me a Schumacher apologist. Lost Boys, Phone Booth, Tigerland, hell even A Time To Kill wasn't too bad. Obviously this ignores the fact that he trashed the Batmobile, but he got a few things right with the bat series: kept the original Alfred, cast Silverstone as Batgirl, introduced Clooney as an A-list actor etc. -
One of the few times i feel justified in coming to this site. I must see this!
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Thanks for the heads up. Looked it up and its playing at the Cinemark in Round Rock, TX. Kind of excited to see it now.
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it will earn it's place in horror history over time just like h3 did. People were put off by it not feeling like any halloween before it, other people remembered the failure the original remake was and that kept them away. H2 is the best horror in the cinema's right now and it's being ignored unjustly. It will go cult just liek the big labowski did. Just you wait and see.
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ThePilgrim. I'm not one of the mindless Zombie haters(not at all) but I didn't like H2. Mostly i thought it was tame. The kills were really nothing special. The white horse thing and the ending I liked but nothing else really did it for me. Loomis' role (I know what he was doing with it)I thought was cynical. I had high hopes. Maybe that was the problem.
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did they not do something very similer to midnight meat train which was a decent horror film (in my eyes)
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The Oregonian reports that Nike co-founder Phil Knight's Portland movie studio Laika laid off 63 people in its computer animation department on Friday after deciding to focus exclusively on stop-motion features.
The studio's first film, the stop-motion pic Coraline, earned $120.2 million at the worldwide box office.
Laika had originally planned to develop both stop-motion and computer-animated films, but will now only use computer animation on a limited basis, to augment stop-motion.
The layoff reduces Laika's work force from 243 to 180. In December, the company laid off 65 after scrapping a computer-generated feature called Jack and Ben's Animated Adventure.
Coraline director Henry Selick continues to develop new features for the studio as Laika's supervising director. The studio is in the final stages of choosing its next project and plans to announce its selection in the next several weeks. -
Good call. I thought that I sensed a kind of deja vu when I read this article. Man, if you get on the wrong side of Lionsgate they will fuck you up... and I think I read of at least one more movie of theirs that received similar treatment.
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And people were happy this studio got Kick Ass?
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HAHA! the Big L has a milion quotable lines. Incredible characters. Awesome direction/script. FUCK h2...i tried, but it sucked.
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Where are the dvd picks Harry???
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I also live in Louisville and decided to hop over to Village 8's website to look up showtimes. Here's how their description reads:
"A couple of friends are heading up to Blood Creek to camp before the place gets demolished, only to find out that the place has been cursed. Stupid as they are, they decide to perform the ritual which is said to bring back the ghosts that surround this place. Naturally, the spirits are awoken and start to take out their rage on the poor, drunk teens."
Sounds more like the limp horror films we've been getting of late. I wonder if someone at Village 8 was having a wee bit of fun. That and the fact that they probably didn't get any sort of press sheet on this thing since it appears to have been dropped off the radar. -
Great premise. I'm in the NYC area & can't see to find a theater showing it or EVEN find a mention of it on Netflix. Here's a bit of footage (dailies) posted on youtube that give you a bit of a taste of the premise, there might be some spoilers in there, so tread lightly...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dll660r1WQI -
Good eyes, Ravi Davi. I saw that synopis on Village 8's website too. Whoever wrote that HAS NEVER SEEN A FRAME OF THIS FILM! It has absolutely NOTHING to do with anything you'll see if you buy a ticket. There are NO TEEN characters in this film! (Except one, and technically she's around 87 years old) There is NO DRINKING! NO VENGEFUL SPIRITS! Poor Schumacher. He's even getting screwed on the local level by some kid who decided to make up his own synopsis for a film he knows nothing about. Shame.
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At least Clooney had the fortitude, after that film, to say it was shit, and give people their money back.
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The Chronicle's synopsis and cast listings for The Creek are for a 2007 film of the same name! Shameful. I am intrigued. The footage on youtube looks fantastic.
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...will it even get a dvd release?
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In what it tries to be. And in what it is it is better than Batman Begins. It completely works as a campy Batman film. Also, Batman Forever is pretty kickass.
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Had my business partner call and tell me it was showing at the Village 8...His words were..."hey man Lionsgate is doing the same thing they did to Midnignt Meat Train"..so we HAD to see it and its WELL worth checking out..
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I've never seen one. They can't possibly make enough cash from BO to keep themselves running. Do they just charge the normal $20 for soda and popcorn that the megaplexes do?
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Yeah right. Not even his two or three watchable films are free of unintentional comedy and big chunks of cheese. This is not what I call quality.
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The way movie releases work is on a sliding scale: The longer the film is in circulation, the more money the exhibitor keeps and the less money they pay to the distributor.
So when a film like "Whiteout" opens, the theater keeps maybe $1 out of every $10. By the time it hits the second run screens it flips over, and the theater gets to keep 90% or so of the revenues. Or so I've been told. -
I used to work as a projectionist at a dollar theater and the owner once told me that the theater was basically just a fancy place to sell expensive popcorn and soda. As a result, they were hypervigilant about making sure people didn't bring backpacks or snacks into the theater because that would directly cut into their profits.
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I stopped going so much after I had some young urban youths take their shirts off(?)and talk through everything but the action scenes in Blade II. Luckily I had already seen it. These places are a mixed blessing at best.
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For some reason, people who frequent dollar theaters figure that they can do whatever they want there since they didn't pay full ticket price. Either that or the theaters attract a lower class of people who can't afford to pay 10 bucks for a movie. I saw a lot of weird shit working at that dollar theater.
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shitty movie after shitty movie, nobody should care about him. Someone just give him a decent retire.
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...And it was great. I wish more of them were out there these day, even as $2 or $3 theaters in these economic times. Best of all, it was a renovated multiplex with several screens, so you had plenty of second run choices or, from time to time, they'd bring in the oddball foreign kung fun movie or whatever just to fill the screens. But the place was in the 'burbs, whoever ran it kept it clean, and the concessions were normal priced (so, yes, that's how they picked up a good chunk of money). But it was like an undiscovered treasure since the people checking it out were usually small in size, mostly elderly people who were obviously living on a budget. But I remember a friend and I seeing things like PHANTOM MENACE and other major summer hits in October just to get out of the house for a simple buck. In fact, the theater did such a good job of obtaining recent prints, that at one point I simply stopped paying full price for first run and would just wait for them to get a film a short while later, since the time lapse really wasn't that bad. Hey, you can't go wrong for a buck!
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I'll have to track this down on DVD, I guess. I remember reading about it as it went into production and thinking back then that it could be a fun, doofy movie. From the review, it sounds like that's the way it turned out, so it should be worth a quick rental at least.As for Schumacher and his BAT movies, I always think it's interesting how people bag on them so much. I would agree that BATMAN AND ROBIN was waaaaay too campy, which was a shame since the actual actors cast in the film could have been great. And Warners certainly spent enough making it LOOK good. Plus, I always thought Clooney would make a great Bruce Wayne/Batman, so I was sorry to see his one shot at the role go to waste. At the same time, I had a friend who once noted that BATMAN AND ROBIN is a fun DVD to watch...if you turn the language selection to French (or anything but English) and you just insert your own dialogue as it plays along. As for BATMAN FOREVER, I always find it odd that so many people bag on it now considering that back when it opened (and I remember being there opening night) everyone was RAVING about it. Everyone loved Kilmer in the role, people liked that it wasn't as dark as Burton's second outing, and it was a big box office hit that many said struck just the right tone for the franchise.
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H2 a misunderstood cult film? Batman and Robin a successful film? Sorry guys, but I just can't believe that anyone has such shitty taste in films, and the coherent sentences rule out stroke and retardation. So you must be plants.
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yes!!!
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Plan 9 is a terrific bad movie. I could watch that movie a million times and thoroughly enjoy it's badness.
I can honestly say that I'll never enjoy Batman & Robin. I remember being a big-time Batman apologist in 1997, because I was a dumb 13 year old. I saw it twice in theaters, and despite knowing how bad it was, I defended it. Then, in early October, I received the VHS tape as a birthday present. I watched the first 5 minutes of that tape, and turned it off. I've never reopened the box. Watching the movie makes me physically ill. -
Dead Snow was okay, the second half got really really good. I REALLY need to see H@, but Diablo Cody actually did a great great job with Jennifers Body, give it a chance please. check out Sick Picks Reviews @ http://sickpicks.blogspot.com/
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nope. i'm not going there
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Freakishly oversized neck?
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This was on the schedule for months as CREEK. It's one of the three horror movies Lionsgate totally dumped in the wake of Joe Drake's takeover. The others were Clive Barker's THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN (like BLOOD CREEK, dumped into bargain theaters) and JT Petty's THE BURROWERS. Both were solid and creepy. The script (then called TOWN CREEK) by Dave Kajanich -- who wrote THE INVASION -- is really unnerving and effective. I'd like to see it, but like every other horror project that isn't a sequel, a remake or something gimmicky, it's been treated like the proverbial redheaded stepchild. Sigh.
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Sep 21, 2009 6:49:09 AM CDT
'Midnight Meat Train' & 'The Burrowers' were awesome
by christian_bale_trashed_my_lights
Such a shame they didn't get the treatment that they deserved. Much better than 90% of the so-called 'horror' movies which hit the big screen.Yeah, I'm pointing at YOU 'The Final Destination'.
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Just try it again. You'll love it. It's corny, but in a good way.
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The one in my hometown used to be bad ass until the lowest of the low of society began dropping there children off there.At one point,near the end of it's run,you could only go during the day ,like before four or five and only on week days. I can remember driving by one saturday night and seeing police everywhere carting out the worst examples of humans I'd every seen in my lifetime to jail. Damn shame man. I watched so many entertaining movies there, spent half my senior year of highschool in that place. Fucking animals in society ruin everything. Just found out this is playing in at a dollar theater thirty minutes away. They even serve beer there. If I make the drive and it sucks you owe me Austinite.
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...it's JOEL fucking SHITMAKER. He's lucky he can even still make a living in film, let alone that anything he releases gets the "normal" treatment.Count your blessings, gaybo.
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If it had had a big release I probably would've skipped it....but this $1 admission fee has me very intrigued. And for those Joel hating peeps...you are probably too young to understand the importance of some of his movies. They meant a whole lot to us who are now in our 30's or 40's. Lost Boys / St Elmo's Fire / Flatliners / Falling Down...He's a freaking genius sometimes but as it was well pointed out....he's done some terrible duds too !I haven't seen Tigerland but I hear it's incredible...Anyways...I'm looking forward to seeing this...
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I hope this film finds its fans. It works the on visceral level quite well, while also being somewhat creative in the story department. I, for one, would like to see a return to more supernatural horror films and a step away from the torture porn genre of late. I saw the film again today with a friend, and now he's a fan of it. Louisville kids, tell 'em AICN sent ya!
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Three Words: Batman and Robin
Forget Lost Boys...the man made Batman and Robin. He's a franchise-killer. And even the Lost Boys had that greased up musclebound sax player. Right, he's in the flick because he can sing and play sax. Not because Schumacher wants to Mach his Schu. -
Nice Try. We've all see it. It's complete crap.
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"Now... I'm not real sure who Joel Schumacher shat into's open gaping mouth... "
Good god, Harry. -
Sep 26, 2009 5:37:15 PM CDT
Someone at Lionsgate reeeeallly hated "Batman & Robin"
by mrmysteryguest
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JUST WONDERIN.
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"FACT. Batman and Robin is a A COMPLETE SUCCESS. In what it tries to be. And in what it is it is better than Batman Begins." Gauging your own writing aptitude, I have no doubt that you wrote the BATMAN/ROBIN script.
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