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Reviews
Sleepstalker (1995)
The most underreviewed movie on IMDB.
Why is the ratings for this movie so low? I know plenty of other films worthy of being in the bottom 500. In saying this I am not blindly looking at this movies good sides and ignoring it's flaws, because quite frankly, it has not flaws I can speak of. I think one reason it is reviewed so low is that, for once, the stalker has a purpose to his actions. This alone makes him more intriguing than the standard double named stalkers (ala Freddy Krueger.) Also, he is a sad character with pathos on par with Frankenstein. This is refreshing to me because in my opinion the horror genre went down hill the moment Freddy opened his mouth. Humor and horror do not belong together.
A great slasher, up there with my other favorites Tourist Trap and Paperhouse. It has the ability to scare in the typical jolt way and in a more cerebral way that hasn't been attempted since the great moody 60's. A 9 out of 10. Ignore the rating it has been given.
House of Dreams (1963)
For lovers of horrifically low-budget mood pieces only (ala Carnival of Souls, Night Tide.)
Being the first to write on this film I suppose I should give a brief overview of what it is about. A man (played by director Berry) has a recurrent nightmare concerning a spooky house down the street. The nightmare is mostly slow moving artsy stuff with an organ score even more discordantly off key than Carnival of Souls. Anyways, in the dream he sees someone he knows and when he wakes he learns that the person he dreamt about has just died. His wife tries to convince him it is nothing but this same sequence of events happens again, ending with another dead.
I should stop there so not to spoil anything. The film is obscure to say the least. The plot was intriguing enough for me to sit through but anyone who found 2001 boring should definately stay away. This film personifies independent low budget filmmaking. Not much excitement in the traditional sense although worthy of being viewed for its pre-Eraserhead weirdness. I gave it a 5 for it's ambitions and there are some neat ideas (like having the credits written on the floors of the old house.) Still, if anyone who has lived next to a spooky house and wanted to make a no budget movie about it this film might serve as a good indication of what you'll come up with, a slow, dull home movie.