Maciste_Brother

I finally watched FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE after years on must see movies. I love anthologies and this one is on of the more interesting ones. The wrap around story of the shop is excellent (and stolen by Stephen King). The idea of people trying to cheat the shop owner (Peter Cushing) is not really convincing as a reason for the horrific 'retribution'. The story with the haunted mirror is cool but the result is limited and plain, if a bit gruesome. The second story, with the man stealing a medal, is boring as hell and pointless. The third story has some ideas but the result, again, is flat. Nothing scary or earth shattering about it. The last story, of the door that leads to a different dimension or place, is the best of all the stories. It looks great and the idea could have easily been fleshed out into a full movie but again, the result is sorta pointless. The denouement happens too quickly.

The reaction of the characters, certainly Ian Ogilvy's character, is baffling throughout. I understand that they had to keep the story in one place and keep it moving since it's a short story but wow, if that happened to me I wouldn't be reacting casually like he did. The story needed more exploration to make the interesting aspects be as amazing as they could have been. It looks great though.

The director, Kevin Connor, is a veteran director and he knows his stuff but alas most of the movie ends up being much about nothing, even for an anthology movie.

ZOMBI 3 is a unrelated follow up to ZOMBI 2, also known simply as ZOMBI. That movie is a classic. 8 years or so later, director Lucio Fulci returned to the 'ZOMBI' universe with this opus. Unfortunately, Fulci left the production and other directors got involved (this is actually a pretty much standard thing in Italian moviemaking). Well, the final result is a complete mess. It's bad. The flying head from the fridge is beyond ridiculous. THere's non-stop mayhem which should be fun but instead you don't care over what's happening because it's such a mess. But there are some scenes that are surprisingly strong, including the one on the bridge. It sorta rocks (I guess Fulci was responsible for this scene). But overall, there's nothing scary or gruesome. The pregnant woman scene was probably meant to be shocking but it comes across as totally amateurish. The radio DJ character (reminiscent of Carpenter's THE FOG) is annoying and the surprise ending is stupid. Truly awful. ZOMBI 4, though no great masterpiece, is more watchable than this.

Another super sleazy Italian movie. Three jerks cause mayhem to the pasengers. Their violent actions cause a cascading set of violent drama. One man decides to fight back against the three horny psychos. The most original aspect of this is the train has a full time hooker! It's filled with sex scenes, with nudity from the few young women and also the men. Remove the sex scenes and the movie's runtime is below one hour. The problem with this movie is that the bad guys are so annoying you really want them dead. The movie becomes almost unwatchable because of them. They're not fun. Just jerks.

Hard to believe that this was directed by Ferdinando Baldi who used to direct movies based on the Bible in the 1960s.