It is Christmas Eve and Angela (Rachel Nichols), a young and beautiful business woman working in Manhattan, NY, is ready to head to her family's house for the holidays She soon realizes that her car isn't working. She asks the parking attendant, Thomas (Wes Bentley), for some help. Unfortunately, nothing seems to be going her way. She is trapped inside the parking garage with and by Thomas who has a sick obsession with her. His violent, psychotic behavior terrifies her, and this Christmas Eve becomes a fight to escape with her life.
P2 is slow building and nail-biting, suspenseful, horror/ thriller. This sometimes overlooked movie really ranks among the best of the Christmas horror movies. Though simple in its structure and nature, it succeed thanks to tense directing and excellent acting.
Co-writer and director Franck Khalfoun slowly but surely builds on the tension. The movie increasingly keeps you on the edge, as it builds to the exciting and rousing climax. The use of the holiday of Christmas is great because it adds to making her ordeal of being trapped by him alone very real and believable. This is upped by choosing the parking garage as the setting of the film, which can be by their very nature desolate and creepy. That being said, we New Yorkers will wonder why she drives to work and not takes public transportation. In fact, this movie reaffirms my desire to never drive to the city!.
While, there is not a huge body count, it is very violent and bloody. The first kill in particular is gruesome and realistic looking, thank to the excellent make-up FX. The movie's gruesome violence helps to raise the stakes and me it more shocking and white-knuckle experience.
Besides the nerve-shredding directing and excellent setting, the other true highlight is the acting. For the most part, the movie is a two person movie. And, you need excellent acting for this to truly work. Thank goodness then that both Wes Bentley and Rachel Nichols deliver this in droves. Bently is terrifying and creepy as fuck. On the drop of the dime he can realistically go from sweet to dangerously angry and threatening. But, even when he is being "nice" there remains an air of total creepiness. It's my favorite role of his.
Just like the role of Angela is my favorite of Rachel Nichols. In fact, she is one of my favorite final girls ever. Nichols plays her so believably and strongly that we cheer her on. She is vulnerable with the right amount of toughness; a good person caught in nightmarish situation. Of course, Nichols is absolutely gorgeous. I recently added the to this site's Horror Crushes, as she is most certainly a horror crush of anyone who sees this movie. And, let's call a spade a spade, she has some of the greatest cleavage that you will ever see in a horror flick. Both Nichols and Bentley pay so well of each other and have a great protagonist/ antagonist relationship that really drives the movie to the stratosphere.
P2 is a Christmas holiday season viewing tradition of mine for good reason. I've loved this movie since I first saw it as a blind buy when it first hit DVD. Suspenseful, violent, and with two superlative leads; it's a movie that deserves to be seated next to other holiday fear classics. If you have never seen it, you need to change that right fuckin now! And, if you have watched this nerve-shredder, watch it again. You need to make P2 part of your holiday viewing traditions as well. In all P2 holds an excellent level of holiday fear and tension.
At the 2016 edition of Exxxotica NJ we got to talk to beautiful porn and fetish performer and horror actress Nadia White. Nadia and I have been Facebook friends, for what seems forever, and I am extremely glad that we finally met in person. She is a complete and utter sweetheart and a natural in front of the camera. This all amounts to her being an absolute pleasure to interview as her bubbly and fun personality clearly shown through our talk. We got to talk porn, bondage, horror movies, including her role in the recent Don't Fuck in the Woods and more. You can see the full interview in the video below.
Title: The Best of Sex and Violence Director: Ken Dixon Writer: Frank Ray Perilli Cast: John Carradine, Laura Jane Leary, Angela Aames, Davis Carradine, Keith Carradine, Year: 1982 Min: 76 DVD Released by: Full Moon
This early 80s compilation from producer Charles Band has horror legend John Carradine host a bunch of exploitation trailers. The movies featured all have sex, violence, or both, of course!
John Carradine makes for a likable and funny host. The dialogue written for him by Frank (Mansion of the Doomed) Ray Perilli is witty and funny. It is also, much like the movies featured here, decidedly not very PC, which is perfectly fine by me. There is a tongue and cheek quality here that makes it all very fun. One wonders what Carradine was thinking hosting this admit ably sleazy collection of clips, especially considering he didn't seem very fond of being linked to horror (see the interview on the extra features of The House of Seven Corpses for proof). This probably just amounted to a paycheck for him and that's all.
The movies included in here run the gamut of biker, blaxplotation, softcore, sex comedies, action, women in chains, and horror movies. They include such titles as: I Spit on Your Grave, Alice in Wonderland, Tanya's Island (which, by the way, tells the of the love triangle between a hot chick played by the late, great Prince protege Vanity, a dude, and a large, hairy ape beast...), The Boogeyman, The Disco Godfather, Emaunelle Around the World, Bury Me an Angel, Terminal Island, and more.
The cover features a young Brinke Stevens, who would go on to become a legendary scream queen. While, the cover image promises that Night of the Living Dead is here; it ain't. Maybe it got it confused with The Twilight People (below)?
Band seemingly found a very old, shitty VHS tape and just transferred that to DVD, as the quality here is godawful. There is NO remastering whatsoever. In fact, I used to own some VHS tapes that looked better than this. The sound is barely adequate and even that might be a case of me being too nice. The only extras are a Charles Band Grindhouse Intro and a Grindhouse Featurette, all of which can be found in any of the other Full Moon Grindhouse Collection releases.
Still, despite the shit quality, this is fun and enjoyable. It's a blast to see Carradine present such sleaziod flicks and deliver fun one-liners. The cameo at the end by his sons, David and Keith (left), add to the pricelessness of it all. If you are a fellow fan of sleazy B-movies and trailer collections, and can find this cheap, get it!
Movie: 3 out of 4 Picture: 1 Sound: 1.5 Extras: .5
With Godzilla Resurgence coming next month to the US for a very limited theatrical run, I thought it would be fun to review a couple of movies from the series. Here is my first one:
Godzilla appears with glowing rashes and attacks. It turns out that he is having a nuclear meltdown, and if he blows up the Earth will die with him. A way to stop our reptilian hero from going nuclear must be found. And, speaking of found, at the same time G-Force is searching for the younger Godzilla creature, Junior. Who unlike the ridiculous Minilla actually looks like a young Godzilla creature. Meanwhile, the Oxygen Destroyer from Gojira, that killed the first Godzilla, has mutated some prehistoric crustaceans into nasty monsters. Eventually, they combine into one giant monster called Destroyah, bent on killing and, well, destroying everything it's path, including our soon to go ka-boom, Godzilla.
Advertised, at the time, as featuring the death of Godzilla, Godzilla Vs. Destroyah is one of the most emotional in the series, as well as one of it's finest. Most of FX are top-notch, with some solid creature costume work and miniatures. The actual Destroyah monster is massive and one of the series most righteously evil and intimidating looking monsters. He comes off as a legitimate threat to the Big-G, and you feel like this fucker could seriously hurt or even kill him. And, that is no small (pun not intended) feat. The smaller Destroyah creatures are a little more fake looking, but aren't enough to distract from the movie, itself.
Admit ably, the scene involving those monsters lifts A LOT from Aliens. I would like to think this is meant to be an homage and not a blatant rip-off. Regardless, that and other action scenes are very rousing and exciting. The extended climatic battle between the monsters is especially awesome. It's one of the most violent in the series with spraying and dripping blood, both of the green and yellow colored variety.
The acting is good, and thankfully the humans story here isn't that bad. The characters are fine as is, and while none of them are particularly memorable, it's not like movie suddenly sucks when the monsters aren't onscreen. Besides, the two girls searching for Junior help to add a good amount of human heart to it all.
Exciting, kick ass, and with some good amount of heart Godzilla Vs. Destroyah is a great entry in the long running franchise (the 22nd to be precise!). It stands heads and shoulders above many others in the Big-G's film career and was a great way to end this part of the series, as one was not made again till five later with Godzilla 2000. Sony released a blu-ray of it, packaged with Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus just a few years ago. The disc looks damn good and has great sound that will make the bass on your sound system rock. This gives you yet another reason to watch this awesome monster mash.
