Raptor's Watching Ants

King of the Antz is really one of those movies that will appeal to certain people but will just not sit well with others. It tells a story of Sean Crawley (Chris McKenna) who’s life and career are going nowhere. When he is introduced to Ray Matthews (Daniel Daldwin) who convinces him to murder an accountant who has some information on his dirty business dealings for a sum of Fifteen thousand dollars his life spirals in a direction that he cannot control until he gives in to it. Ray reneges on his promises to pay and when Sean protest beats/tortures the crap out of him. He eventually escapes and seeks brutal revenge on ray and his pals. On a side story he falls for Susan Gatley the wife of the accountant played by the sexy Kari Wuhrer but things don’t go to well there either.

So what I took from this film was two things. A) if you want something you sometimes have to eliminate the obstacles in your way B) in the end it doesn’t really matter as we are all just ants to be exterminated. Yes, pretty bleak. I guess that was the point of it really. Sean kills the accounts and manages to form a relation ship with his wife briefly before she finds out it was him and it all falls apart which ties to the first rule. He then seeks revenge on Ray and an even to the pleading of some of the kinder accomplices kills them explaining to the poor suckers that they are just ants and all their protests mean nothing.

I couldn’t decided if I liked or disliked Seans anti hero. While played well he really was a self serving and morally unhinged ass and considering the brutal murder he executed at the begging didn’t truly give you to much sympathy for his plight although the ending does give some sort of satisfaction. The director Stuart Gordon is a bit of cult figure in the Horror movie industry having directed From Beyond and Dagon. In this he kind of looks at the bleakness of humanity and how fragile, short lived and futile it can all be.

 

For me, I thought hey yes it’s bleak but I could see where he was coming from, while I didn’t quite agree and the characters weren’t everything I hoped for they did bring home the message. We are all just ants.

Raptors Hellraising Experience

Today I have two Hellraiser movies for you. Hellraiser: Deader and Hellraiser: Hell World so lets continue on with my special thought on part 7 and 8 of this blood soaked series.

Oh crap, another splinter

Hellraiser: Deader revolves around a journalist who investigates a cult called the Deaders when a video tape is sent to her office showing a girl being killed then resurrected. The journalist, played by Kari Wuhrer who I last remember being in Sliders and still pretty hot, eventually tracks down the Deaders amidst warnings from Pinhead that they are raising an army and are a threat to him. Honestly, what kind of a threat are a bunch of resurrected wannabes to a demonic S&M hook throwing leather fetishist. The movie set a moody atmosphere but in the end the pay off was a little drab. Also the Cenobites hardly appeared at all. You got Pinhead making a warning or two early on then they appear at the end to clean things up as usual and that’s it…I mean sure the nudity was there in the film but there wasn’t anything to surprising in this one. The acting was solid enough and there is a little killing here and there but it’s a pale comparison to some of it’s predecessors. I gave it 6/10.

Hellraiser: Hell World, I have a bit of a gripe with this one. All I can say is this wasn’t a Hellraiser movie. This was some slasher movies with Hellraiser themes tacked on to it. You could have easily removed all the Hellraiser elements from it and would have still had roughly the same movie. Basically the story revolves around a group of 20somethings who played an online game called Hell World and one of them died. 2 years later they are then invited a Hellraiser party by the host played by Lance Henriksen. I wont give it away too much but it’s pretty obvious that Lance knows the kid and he takes out the gang in let’s say by the use of fear. There is also some nudity in this one, it can’t be all bad and the actors while mostly attractive enough could have been anyone really. They also do dumb things like at one point one of the girls is trying to get the attention of a cop outside a window but the cops can’t see her. Try breaking the window maybe? You have a whole room full of crap to do it with. What about sticking your hand in some cracks in the floor boards? Yeah that always turns out to be a good idea. Anyway, this would have all been ok but my stickler is that it’s NOT a Hellraiser movie. I don’t care what wrapping paper you used. I give this one 5/10.