Catching Up On Screeners : Savage & Closed For The Season

I've been getting oodles of screeners lately and i've found it nearly impossible to keep as on top of them and all the other weekly new releases as i'd like to be. Between the 9-5 job and life in general it's tough enough to blog on a consistent basis, and it's even tougher to watch and review the several movies a week that I always promise myself i'm gonna watch and review. Being that i've got the whole house to myself for a week while Jen's off in Georgia, i've decided to use some of that time to play catch up with the stack of screeners that have been building on my desk, with the intention of watching them and quickly banging out short reviews. First up, we've got two fairly new releases from MTI Home Video!



RELEASED SEPTEMBER 20TH ON DVD!

A blazing fire rips its way through Bear Valley National Park. As the firefighters try to contain it, the animals are being forced out of their habitat including a beast that was better left undiscovered.

Even if most of it is utter garbage, I still love me some Sasquatch horror and I remain ever hopeful that every new installment in that sub-genre I get my hands on is gonna be worth the watch. Unfortunately, it never seems to be and Savage is no exception. The film follows the generic Syfy creature feature formula and on that channel on a Saturday night is exactly where this one belongs. It's certainly not the worst film ever made, and in fact it's not even that awful, but I think it speaks volumes when I tell you that I was more entertained by my cats licking themselves in unison on the couch next to me than I was by anything I saw on the screen during the hour and a half I was forcing myself to stare at it. Savage is just plain boring, with far too much time spent on characters talking to each other and VERY little time actually spent on Sassy tearing mofo's up. In fact, you barely see any of him throughout the movie, and he looks more like a dude wearing a Halloween costume he got from Party City than anything else. While it's nice to see Last House '72's Martin Kove and Elm Street 4 & 5's Lisa Wilcox in there, as always, I can't think of any reason for one to sit through this one, as it's just another lackluster Bigfoot horror flick like so many before it. When I say the best thing about the entire movie is the stylized opening credits sequence that comes before the boredom, I truly mean it. Abominable remains the most fun Sasquatch horror movie i've seen to date, perhaps the only one I really even enjoyed.



RELEASED AUGUST 23RD ON DVD!

Trapped in a forgotten amusement park, a young girl finds herself terrorized by the living memories of the park. She must break free from the park's grasp before she becomes its next victim.

This one's been on my radar for a while now, due to the fact that it premiered at a Monster Mania convention I was at a couple years ago. It sounded really cool and I had full intentions of checking it out, but strong drink threw a wrench into that plan. Ended up getting drunk with friends instead of watching it, which has in retrospect proven to be just about the wisest decision i've ever made in my life. Closed For The Season is, in so many words, the worst horror movie i've attempted to watch this year. I say attempted because I wasn't actually able to sit through the entire 2 hours without riding the fast forward button after I admirably made it a good hour and 15 minutes in. I challenge you to make it further than that. The movie does have one thing going for it, which will unfortunately convince many people to spend the money to check it out, that being the fact that it was filmed at an actual abandoned amusement park in Ohio. I'm not sure what horror fan in their right mind wouldn't drop a few bucks to see a movie filmed at such a place, one that's billed as being an amusement park come to life to boot, but I implore you with every fiber of my being to avoid this one at all costs. It's a nightmarish piece of cinematic garbage that will do nothing but test your bad movie watching patience. It's as if the director found this awesome location and then decided to film a horror movie there, spending no time to actually write or think anything through and instead just fire up the camera and wing it once he got to the locale. The result is a full 2 hours of nonsensical bullshit, a messy collage of idiotic ideas that is completely and utterly unwatchable on every single level. It's not even so much a movie as it is a really boring drug trip.

Oh well, two duds. At least I was able to sit through one of them. And at least I didn't have to pay to see them!