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While 8 Films to Die For is a great concept, the only dying going on will be your will to live after watching all eight of these films.  The first year’s selection of films was a mixed bag of somewhat decent movies that were mostly worth watching.  The second batch isn’t quite a strong as most are forgettable and only one is worth owning.

The eight films selected span the depths of horror.  From monsters to the supernatural to inbred killers, there is a lot to choose from.  It’s just a shame they aren’t good choices.  These eight films make the first eight look like high art.  The worst of the first eight is better than the best of these films.  The quotes on the boxes are from Bloody-disgusting.com, Cinefantastique, and Film Threat.  It makes me doubt their credibility and wonder who got paid for that quote.

The films are listed in the order of quality from best to worst.

Frontier(s): This is the bonus 9th film that they “weren’t allowed to show in Horrorfest”.  I’m guessing it’s because they couldn’t get the rights squared away before hand.  It is hands down the best of the lot and when it comes out in theatres, you must go see it.  Fans of High Tension will appreciate this film the most.  It’s bloody, extremely violent and freakishly intense.  It has everything you could need in an ultra-violent film: Nazis, inbreeding, cannibalism and torture. 

A gang of four young thieves flee Paris during the violent aftermath of a political election.  Yasmine’s brother is mortally injured during the conflict.  She and Alex go to a hospital to drop off her brother, while the other two guys skip out of town.  Karl and Tom find an inn in the middle of nowhere and plan to hold up there until their friends can meet them.  They quickly insult the owners of the hotel and are hunted down and slaughtered.  When Yasmine and Alex arrive to meet their friends, they are taken and chained up for later use.  The rest of the film is jaw droppingly brutal.  Why the rest of the films couldn’t be of this caliber is a shame.

Rating:  4/5

Unearthed: The highlight of the treacle.  It’s a bit of a Feast knock off but still has fun moments.  A group of archeologists are attacked by an unknown monster during a dig in New Mexico.  That’s pretty much all you need to know because that’s all that happens.  Unearthed borrows from Feast, Alien and The Descent to create moments you’ve seen before.  That’s not say that everything is a rip-off, there are moments originality and the gore is done really well.  Unearthed does get a bit tedious at times but for a creature feature, it is fun.

All the 8 Films DVD’s have the Miss Horrorfest Contest on them.  Various goth girls parade around in skimpy outfits at various locations in an effort to become Miss Horrorfest, which is kind of being crowned Queen of Taco Bell.  It’s the only bonus feature for Unearthed, Lake Dead, Tooth and Nail, The Deaths of Ian Stone and Crazy Eights. 

Rating: 3.5/5

The Deaths of Ian Stone: This one split a lot of fans.  Either you enjoyed the gimmick or you didn’t.  I thought it was fun and at least a little inventive.  Ian Stone is murdered each day in a new way.  When he wakes up again, his life has completely changed.  One day he works in an office building, the next he’s a strung out junkie.  The only constant in his is life is Jenny.  She’s not always his girlfriend but she’s always there.  After a few deaths, he’s approached by a man that tells him what is happening to him and he has to remember.  Each time he comes back to life, the man finds him again and tells him a bit more of the puzzle, but with that knowledge comes quicker and quicker deaths. 

I enjoyed The Deaths of Ian Stone.  It had some nice twists and it was fun seeing how Ian would reincarnate.  The ending is a bit of a letdown as there are huge leaps of logic and storytelling in order to fit the entire plot in.  It would have benefited from a longer runtime at just 87 minutes, the concept is too large to fit into scope of the filmmakers.  This is a good one to watch once but a second viewing will largely depend on your first experience. 

Rating: 3/5

Mulberry St.: Bloody-disgusting.com calls this “A ‘Zombie’ film that breaks the mold.” There are two things wrong with that quote; first, it’s not a zombie film and second, it’s a bad cliché.  We all know that New York City has a bit of a rat problem.  The filthy vermin are everywhere.  When they turn out to carry a deadly virus that turns people into violent rat creatures, Manhattan is quarantined.  The subways are shut down and people are left to fend for themselves.  Casey is coming home after being released from the hospital.  She’s on the subway when they are shut down and finds herself on Mulberry St.  Casey finds a tenement building and takes shelter with the remaining occupants of the building. It’s a fight to the death until help can arrive.

At a brief 84 minute runtime, Mulberry St should have been a tensely paced survival film.  Instead, the filmmakers spend too much time setting up each character and what’s meant to be tension ends up being tedious as we wait for the rat people to attack.  Once they do, it’s a standard race through the city and the building to escape.  The filmmakers didn’t have much of a budget and they don’t try anything too fancy.  Director Jim Mickle doesn’t overshoot by trying to do tricky camera shots and special effects.  The rat people look really good.  The only problem with the special effects is the explosion.  It looks very fake and poorly done.  They should never have attempted it. 

Mulberry St has a good deal of extras. There are a couple of storyboards, a two deleted scenes, early director sketches, make up test, a few outtakes and a behind-the-scenes segment on the rats.  The bts featurette is quite interesting as you learn how they trained the rats.

Rating: 3/5

Borderland: This movie gets an unrated director’s cut release for some reason.  Since there is a only a minutes difference between the theatrical and the director’s cut, I imagine the only extra footage is more gore.  Inspired by a true story, Borderland is the tale of three gringo’s who go to a Mexican border town to meet some whores and drink lots of cheap booze. They are the typical American college student a-holes we’ve seen time and time again in films and you know their deaths will be violent.  No sooner do they get there then they piss off members of an ancient blood cult trying to find candidates for their human sacrifices.  When one of them goes missing the other two enlist the help of a strip club bartender and a spurned police officer to track him down.  Things go from bad to worse as the blood cult slowly picks them off.

I’m not sure how close to the true story Borderland is but there are text wrap-ups for the two main characters a little on the story that inspired the movie.  The film starts out well enough with two cops being captured and tortured by the blood cult but the time the ending credit roll, it’s little more than your standard shoot ‘em up action film.  Director Zev Berman drops the horror aspects in the last 30 minutes and makes the film a long chase sequence. 

In what should have been on each of the eight films, director/co-writer Berman, actor Brian Presley, cinematographer Scott Kevan and producer Lauren Moews provide a commentary track. “Inside Zev’s Head: A Filmmaker’s Diary” goes into the films origins and what the director things of his film. “Rituales de Sangre: The True Story Behind the Matamoros Cult Killings” goes into the real story that inspired film.  It’s a nice extra.

Rating: 3/5

Lake Dead: Three beautiful sisters discover upon a long-lost grandfather’s death that they inherited a quaint inn in the woods.  The sisters must decide I they want to keep the inn and or sell it off.  They plan a weekend getaway with their boyfriends to go check it out. Instead of staying on the property, they rent a Winnebago and camp out by the lake.  What they don’t know is an inbred family is running the inn and they don’t want to see it closed.  The matriarch of the family sends the two sons to take care of the interlopers.  Horror clichés abound as the cast it picked off one by one what appear to be the Geico cavemen. 

At this point it feels like redneck-inbred families have been done to death.  The large lumbering misshapen mutant character has become a horrible cliché and Lake Dead doesn’t miss a beat to exploit any convention.  The victims are a little smarter than average but that doesn’t mean they still don’t do really stupid things.  The acting is decent and the director does keep the film flowing.  It’s ashame he didn’t get a little more creative or work on building real tension.

Rating: 2.5/5

Tooth and Nail: It’s a post-apocalyptic world and only a handful of survivors remain.  One small group has found shelter in an abandoned hospital.  They want to restart society amongst their little commune.  A young girl shows up one day with tales of a cannibalistic gang that killed and ate her family.  The Rovers (because every roving band of cannibals needs a name) follow her and soon begin killing the motley group inside the hospital.

Rider Strong has the honor of being in two of these turds.  His second, and lesser entry, is another by the numbers survivor film.  Starring Rachel Miner, Vinnie Jones and Michael Madsen, Tooth and Nail has some “names” in the cast but does little with them.  Then again, any film starring Michael Madsen these days should be a big clue it’s going to suck.  Madsen doesn’t disappoint.  Of course the bad directing and shoddy script don’t help either. 

Rating: 2/5

Crazy Eights: The death of a childhood friend brings six people together.  Upon settling the estate, the six are given a map that they must follow to find a long forgotten time capsule.  When they open the time capsule, they discover toys, trinkets and the body of a little girl.  Of course this awakens the spirit of the dead girl and that can only be put to rest by the destruction of anything that connects the six people with the girl.  The more the six explore their collected past, the more they discover that things may not have happened like they remembered.

Crazy Eights has the highest profile cast.  Traci Lords, Dina Meyer, Garielle Anwar and Frank Whaley got the lion’s share of the budget.  The producers thought it would be better to have recognizable names instead of spending the money on gore effects.  Crazy Eights had the potential to be really good.  The basic story is handled well and with a better director, maybe it could have been something.  As it stands, the film is dull, predictable and lacking in gore.  I have no problem with a horror film being light on gore but if you’re cutting the gore then you have to add something in its place.  Director James K. Jones sets up the movie and the kill sequences like he’s going to go for the gore but cuts away.  It’s like watching a porn where the people start kissing then jumps to the next setup. 

Rating: 1.5/5

Nightmare Man: Last and certainly least is Nightmare Man.  This is certainly straight-to-video fodder that didn’t deserve to be part of the 8 Films selection.  It makes you wonder who picked the movies and if this made the cut, how bad were the films that got cut.  It does get minor points for being a little original but then it loses those points for ripping off Evil Dead. 

Ellen Morris believes that a mysterious mask she receives in the mail is possessed and an evil spirit is trying to take over her body.  Her husband thinks it would be a good idea to get out of town for a relaxing weekend in the woods.  Maybe relaxing weekend will help Ellen get over her irrational fears.  When the car runs out of gas in the middle of nowhere, Bill goes to get gas leaving Ellen alone with fears.  Soon she hears a noise in the woods and discovers it’s the demon coming to get her.  She runs blindly though the woods until she stumbles upon a house where four twenty-somethings are having a weekend getaway.  When the Nightmare Man does appear, he starts picking off the inhabitants one by one.  But is Ellen crazy or does the demon man really exist?

From the opening moment to the closing, Nightmare Man feels like it was shot on cheap video.  The performances are horrible and the directing flat and dull.  Nothing about this movie needs to be seen.  For some reason, it’s also filled with the most extra features.  There is a commentary with actor Tiffany Shepis, director Rolfe Kanefsky and producer Esther Goodstein, several extended scenes, a making of, a gag reel and a behind the scenes with Tiffany Shepis.  If you enjoy the movie, you’ll want to watch the extras.  Otherwise, it will be just prolonging the evil that is Nightmare Man.

Rating: 1/5

I really enjoy the concept of 8 Films to Die For.  It’s a shame the reality of the films is something less than desirable.  Hopefully, year three will bring more to the table than this year.  I would highly recommend renting all of these titles before buying them.  Each person’s tastes will vary as far as what their favorite will be but what is for certain, no one will like all of them.

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