Ed's Review Dot Com

Universal 1440 Entertainment,

Danny Trejo, Mickey Rourke, Anthony Michael Hall, Dina Meyer, Richard Dillane, Colin Mace, Emil Hostina, Ovidiu Niculescu

When Guerrero (Danny Trejo) arrives in the town they call Tombstone he decides he and his gang are going to take control. But the gang double crosses him and kills him. Guerrero ends up in hell where he’s faced by the devil (Mickey Rourke) who is rather excited to have him to torture for eternity. But Guerrero makes a deal with the devil that in exchange for his life, he will kill every one of the gang members and trade their souls for his own. With time running out, he has to avenge each one by his own hand or return to the devil.

This is a movie for Trejo fans. If you love Machete and you can’t wait until the third installment, then this is made for you. It’s a straight out western, no aliens or zombies running around, unless you count Guerrero coming back from the dead, so it’s not as gimmicky as many other westerns lately. It’s just bad ass versus bad ass in an all out gun battle royal. Mikey Rourke is a plus to the cast, and he makes a pretty decent devil, but it’s definitely all Trejo. There’s not much more to say, as it’s a decent movie, but certainly not great. It doesn’t have the star power that the Machete films do, and most mainstream audiences aren’t going to get this, but it’s made for the people who loved the spaghetti westerns of the 70’s. The Terrence Hill, Bud Spencer’s Trinity films, the Clint Eastwood westerns, and the Lee Van Cleef, Lee Marvin westerns of old. This is a newer breed, but in a similar vein, so it should be easy to tell before going in if this is the kind of movie that will appeal to you or not. If you’re the right kind, you’ll enjoy the adventure. Otherwise, stay away. It will be absurd to you.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Universal 1440 Entertainment,

Danielle Bisutti, Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Fiona Dourif, A Martinez, Maitland McConnell, Brennan Elliott

Nica (Fiona Dourif) has been in a wheelchair her whole life, but she has to rally the family together after her mother dies. But she has received a weird package containing a doll, Chucky (Brad Dourif) who is back for more mayhem and murder. Chucky is back, containing the soul of serial killer Charles Ray, in this continuation of the Child’s Play franchise.

This film goes back to the way Chucky used to be. The Child’s Play series suffered from the same malady that the James Bond franchise did. In the original Bond films, Sean Connery as Bond has some spy gadgets that were pretty cool, but what he did was pretty much escape using his brains and outwit the bad guys with his cunning cleverness. Roger Moore came in and James Bond became dependent on extremely high tech and unlikely gadgets, but turned into a smug one-liner chucking comedian, and was more of a smart ass than a clever gent. It took a while for Bond to come back as the clever distinguished gentleman that we loved, and not so much of a wise guy. Chucky suffered from the same thing. As the movies went along, they got sillier and sillier, and it went way more for comedy and much less for horror. If you go back to the original Child’s Play, Chucky was horrifying. He became more of a clown. It was as if the Scream series had morphed into Scary Movie. Well, this one is much slower, with much less comedy. No doubt about it that Chucky is still a wise ass, but he’s not going for comedy this time, and though it’s a lot slower developing, that helps to build the suspense, and when Chucky gets going, he’s his old self again. This was a good film that needed to get back to roots of what Child’s Play was about before it went to slapstick comedy. I think they accomplished that.

Now there are gangs of Chucky fans who have been with it through the whole long series. I have seen every one. But this was refreshing to go back so much closer to the original. They tied up a few loose ends here too, tying it back to the original. Mrs Chucky is even here too, in a cameo appearance. Suspenseful and dark without getting too deep and losing the fact that this is a doll after all, Curse of Chuck was what was needed for us to get back to our roots and remember why this doll gave us nightmares in the first place!

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog