Radio of Horror Podcast Network

When you look at a film like Shutter Island you know your in for an emotional roller costar of suspense and a good popcorn thriller. Shutter Island is based on the novel by Dennis Lehane. Now I have not read the novel and many people told me its one of those nail bitters you can’t put down.  The movie was a little like that. As it was slow-paced at times and other it moved quickly and made you not want to wait for the next scene. Martin Scorsese goes back to what he did in Cape Fear and gives us a great thriller. Maybe not as cut and dry as before, but a thriller no less.

 Leonardo Dicaprio plays Us Marshall Teddy. Him and his partner are on their way to an asylum to look for a missing patient. The asylum is run by a shrink played by Ben Kingsly. They go thru the history of the island and why the patient escaped. They learn the house of un-American activates funds the island, and this begins the paranoid decent into madness the island takes them. If u pay close attention to certain details you can tell whats coming in the end. This both disappointed me and made me enjoy the film even more.

This film should get a decent nod at the Oscars for Scorsese, big problem is it got hurt by being pushed back to Feb from a Oct release date. We will have to see what happens next year in 2011. Check the film out at the Leominster Ma Entertainment Cinema.

In 1941 Lon Chaney Jr gave us the greatest werewolf story ever with the Wolfman. It was silver screen horror brought to life the likes of which we had never seen before. Over the years we had other wolf films but none were as spooky and gothic as the original. Over the past 10 years we have had to suffer thru bad remakes of great horror movies that over acted the parts the actors were in or they were more about appeasing a teen audience that could not appreciate the original. At last we have one that holds up to its counterpart. The Vampire genre has been revied and reviled countless times. But it always seemed as the Werewolf always got the Silver bullet. Underworld and Twilight tried but lets face it those were more about Vampires than Werewolves.

 Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving star in this gothic horror thrill ride. It sets the films back in the late 19th century. Del Toro plays Larry Talbot but since it’s the 19th century he’s called his proper name Lawrence. His father played by Anthony Hopkins summons him home to help find his missing brother. His brother was wed Emily Blunt’s character.  Lawrence then finds out his brother was killed by a monster. While helping some gypsys his brother was friends with, he is bitten and will become a werewolf. Hugo Weaving, is the inspector on the case but he shows how useless he is right in the begining when it’s mentioned he worked on the Jack the Ripper fiasco a few years ago. Don’t count on him being much help! Interesting is that Hugo plays the good guy in this film, when most of his roles (Transformers, The Matrix) he plays an A-hole villain. The cast is top-notch and it shows with their performance thru the film. The director Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park 3) really put a lot of detail into the film with the Wolf Cane and ring that Talbot has in his possession, are the same from the film years go. The makeup is fantastic since the same team worked on Jon Landis American Werewolf in London.

With that being said the down side of the movie is the cgi. Why in 1980 during American Werewolf were they able to do a realistic transformation but here its cgi? Guy you won and Oscar for that, what happened?? The backgrounds as wonderful as they look are also cgi. This sometimes takes away from what this movie cn be sometimes. My only other hang up is s gothic as it looks it’s not as gothic as the 41 film. That was in B&W and it really helps it a lot. All in all this is a great Horror Movie. I can’t wait for the dvd. If you want to see the original it just got re-released on dvd and blue-ray.