Moose And The Movies

Bud Abbott And Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein, 1948, directed by Charles Barton, 3.5 stars. Bud Abbott And Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein was a surprise box-office hit in 1948. It was a movie the two stars did not want to do. Most everyone involved hated working with them. But not much else was happening at the time for anybody, so they all had to suck it up and just do it. Abbott and Costello were at a career crossroads. They had just lost their long-running radio show, they were in a nasty personal feud with each other, and both were struggling with health issues. Universal's megahit monster series had petered out, reduced to lame sequels and crossovers during the World War II years. And the studio was struggling to stay afloat through a succession of desperate mergers and acquisitions. Universal-International, as it was known in 1947, got hold of a script titled The Brain Of Frankenstein that featured several of the studio's iconic monsters. The plot had Dracula seeking a si...

Hell House LLC, 2016, directed by Stephen Cognetti, Prime Video, 3.5 stars. Hell House LLC is a top-notch found-footage film from 2016.  This was a Video On Demand release from writer and director Stephen Cognetti , making his feature-film debut. It was successful enough that Cognetti has been able to make a career of turning out Hell House LLC movies. His fifth one, subtitled Lineage , landed in August 2025. In Hell House LLC, a young entrepreneur and his staff go to work converting an abandoned hotel into a haunted-house attraction for the Halloween season. The plot is framed as a documentary crew's investigation five years later into an unexplained "malfunction" on opening night that killed 15 people. The story is told through video shot by the crew while setting up the attraction -- as well as clips from TV news coverage of opening night and an interview with the crew's only survivor. Let me interject here: We all know there are two kinds of movie fans, right? ...

  Haunt, 2019, directed by Scott Beck and Brian Woods, Prime Video, 3.5 stars. A group of college friends leaving a Halloween party make their way to a haunted-house attraction in a remote area. They're greeted at the entrance by a guy in a creepy clown outfit who has them sign liability waivers and lock up their cell phones before they can go in. Of course, we know that's a flashing red beacon of danger. But our heroes pay it no mind. They're just here for some chills and thrills to cap off their evening. You know what's coming. Our heroes get a couple of jump scares early before they get lost in a maze, and the operators of the haunted house start messing with them. The fun and games that aren't so fun and playful get increasingly chilling and violent. Haunt has the potential to be just another of a gazillion claustrophobic psycho-slasher movies out there. But it does stand well above the crowd with some truly tense, white-knuckle moments and enough surprises to k...

The Substance, 2024, directed by Coralie Fargeat, Mubi blu-ray (2025), 4.5 stars. I spent the first half of this movie nearly hyperventilating, covering my eyes and gasping for breath, trying to decide if I was loving it or hating it. I spent the last half nearly hyperventilating, squirming and cursing out loud at the screen, completely overtaken by this brilliant piece of filmmaking. Part of what was going on is that I am not, never have been, a fan of body horror. That stuff always gives me the heebie-jeebies. I have never been able to rewatch The Fly, the David Cronenberg masterpiece. Don't even talk to me about stuff like Saw and The Human Centipede. I have no interest. Hell, I remember freaking out for a few seconds in every episode back when I binge-watched Nip/Tuck. But The Substance I was kind of forced into. I got caught up in the buzz last fall about Demi Moore winning all those awards and about how this little horror film was making noises about Oscar nominations. I jump...

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, 2012, directed by Timur Bekmambetov, 20th Century Fox blu-ray (2012), 3 stars. I'm thinking the historical accuracy might be a little iffy ... I was surprised to learn that this Tim Burton-produced gothic-horror flick was not an original concept but was adapted from a 2010 novel. It's an interesting concept, a sort of fantasy-action biopic mashup. The ruse is that Abe, at about 8 years old, witnessed his mother being killed by a vampiric plantation owner and grew up vowing to get revenge. He trains as a young law student in the vocation of vampire hunting and becomes fairly proficient. He eventually gets himself elected president with a mandate to put down the confederacy of slave-owning vampires rising up in the South. It's a slow-burner of a story that explodes with some spectacular, stylish CGI action sequences. I found the tale interesting enough and the set pieces glorious enough to stay entertained, though the movie did have its dead s...

Back To The Future Part III, 1990, directed by Robert Zemeckis, Universal Studios 4K blu-ray (Back To The Future: The Ultimate Trilogy box set, 2020), 3.5 stars. Two out of three, in the end, ain't bad, I suppose. As disappointed as I was with Part II, I really was pleasantly surprised with Part III. I was dreading watching this but decided to soldier on and be done with it. And I wound have having a blast with it. We got a little too much fat in the first and last 10 minutes of Part III -- mostly having to do with revisiting and doing some cleanup with Part II. But with the 100 minutes or so in the middle, Part III was a fantastic homage to the great Western movies of the past -- with some big nods to Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of the 1960s. Marty McFly adopts the Clint Eastwood alias, dons The Man With No Name's trademark hat and poncho. And the showdown in the street between Marty and Buford Tannen was straight out of A Fistful Of Dollars, as telegraphed on a TV scre...