Search - Cemetery Gates on DVD

K. K. (GAMER)
Reviewed on 9/21/2022...

Not your regular kind of Hack and slash movie!

1 of 1 member(s) found this review helpful.

Jefferson N. from BLAIRSVILLE, GA
Reviewed on 9/22/2012...

Alright...Be forewarned...If you're not a horror movie fan, don't watch this! It's gory, cliche'd and in horrible taste. Now, if you're a horror movie fan and you're still with me, WATCH THIS! Go ahead, don't be scared...If you love B-Movies...Especially 80's horror flicks, you're in for a treat.

The premise of this movie is that a scientist (played by Reggie Bannister of Phantasm fame) has been experimenting with Tasmanian Devils...trying to find a way to retro-engineer their healing factor so that it could be used to help humans fight disease. The only problem is that he devolves the beast, named Precious, and she becomes a prehistoric marsupial monster! The beast kills his wife and he becomes an emotional cripple. Years later, on his son's 21st birthday, some animal rights activists free Precious and try to turn her loose in the forest. She turns loose on them and promptly kills the hell out of them. Thus begins a hair-raising, side-splitting, chunks-blowing adventure...especially when the Proffessor's kid and his friends go into the cemetery by the woods to make a movie.

Ok, this is a cliche'd plot...and it knows it. The movie takes every cliche' it can find and brings them into this crazy film. I was pleasantly surprised with this one becsuse, frankly, I just assumed it to be another 2000's boring cute-teens-getting-butchered movie. Which, yes, is pretty much the same formula as the 80's variety, but it's just been played out so much it's old. The makers of this film realized this and just turned the whole genre on it's head...and made it fun again. It starts out like a Z-movie...cheap-looking, slow-paced, struggling...then before you can turn it off kicks into high gear. Amazingly, the f/x, which start out kind of crappy, get more and more advanced as the film goes along. By the middle, you're blown away by how good they are. The actors are not bad, for the most part. Reggie Bannister seems like he's just phoning it in at the start, but by the time the action is going, he's back in form. It's almost like the director intentionally made it a little lackluster at the beginning just as an inside joke for the people that stick around. Either that, or the actors really were phoning it in having to do wrap-up shots after the movie had already ended. Or they were just finding their chemistry in the establishing shots. At any rate, this is great fun! Think Troma with a budget (sorry, Lloyd, I really do love your movies!)

And some of the greatest fun is with the characters...Think Roger Corman 60's flicks with a waaay bigger budget! They're cliche'd, dumb, and sleazy...and make great cannon fodder! There's the teenage idiots, the potheads, the drunks, rednecks, hippies...You name it, they get wasted. In more and more gory ways. This Tasmanian Devil really can't get enough killing! And yes, there's gratuitous nudity...and it's not bad! They at least made the right decision in getting a handful of pretty, sexy actresses (accent on ACT-ress...they really can act) rather than a ton of so-so babes who can't act worth a damn.

And I can't forget the real star of the show...Precious, the Tasmanian Devil. The creature f/x are really good...and the gore top-notch. And there's a lot of it. The creators must have been horror fans...or really know what their potential fans wanted...beacause they don't hold back on the violence.

So, if you love horror films...especially mid-late 80's flicks...and/or Troma movies, come on inside the Cemetery Gates! Precious is waiting...and she's hungry!

1 of 1 member(s) found this review helpful.

Bustle in your Hedgerow? I'd be alarmed now.

Dark Mechanicus JSG | Fortified Bunker, USSA | 08/21/2007

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Consider this a warning beacon.

Imagine yourself aboard the Nostromo, the big humongo spooky ore-freighter from the first Alien movie. The crew of the Nostromo---Dallas, Ripley, the union guys who keep ragging about the 'bonus situation, the cat---get a distress beacon to a hunk of blasted rock in deep space with an atmosphere of howling battery acid. Cheery place.

They go visit & get all touristy---you know, bring back trinkets, drink the water---and come back with a real nasty stomach Bug that even Pepto-Bismol couldn't get rid of.

Now: if they had a warning beacon, they would have stayed away. They would have lived. So this is my WARNING BEACON: stay away. Live. Raise children. I saw this movie. My brain melted down & suffered heat death & got all runny & wilted like a pancake in Death Valley, so *yours* doesn't have to.

Be warned: this movie will destroy brain cells. If you ignore my warning, & watch this flick, you will actually feel yourself getting stupider (a word that, while not grammatically correct, does indeed apply to "Cemetery Gates").

OK: Take a good look at the cover of "Cemetery Gates". Pretty cool, huh? Big, hulking, shadowy thing with red eyes lurking outside the gothic gateway to an old Victorian necropolis. Again, take a good look: that's the only time you're going to see that scene anywhere near this flick, or anything else that's even remotely cool.

Basically, "Cemetery Gates" is about what happens when a film crew shooting a horror flick in a cemetery run into a giant mutant Tasmanian Devil. I've always wondered how an encounter like that would work out, and this flick provides the answer.

Suffice it to say that the Tasmanian Devil, who looks like a rotting Snuffleupagus, isn't there to discuss the fine points of bilateral diplomacy. Blood flows. Cheap special effects flow. Booze, if you're lucky, flows. Film crew takes a bunch of dirt knaps. The 7th Trumpet of the Apocalypse is Blown from making a flick this consummately [EXPLETIVE], & Hell is unleashed upon the Earth.

Bummer.

If I've made this flick seem interesting, or even mildly watchable, then consider this: I'd rather see outtakes Abe Vigoda doing nude break-dancing than watch this thing again.

The acting is non-existent: the entire cast of characters acts with about half the collective IQ of a brain damaged lemur. Reggie Bannister, who has done more tours of duty in horror flicks than Frank Castle did in Vietnam, proves he would be willing to sell his grandma into white slavery if they paid him.

That said, this flick does merit 2 stars, because in the final analysis it has three things going for it:

1) the mutant Tasmanian Devil. Imagine what would happen if Snuffleupagus were bitten by a zombie, and you've got it. Its hairy, retarded, scrofulous backside has that same molted reddish-flanged carpet texture the Snuffleupagus had. Really took me back.

2) The filmmakers spend a lot of their time capturing the Tasmanian Devil not only savaging its prey, but then expelling it in a steaming dump, followed by other characters commenting to the effect that something smells bad. For a simpleton like me, every time this happens it's just like dwarf tossing: never ceases to amuse.

3) The Killer Snuffleupagus has this singular battle tactic it keeps using over & over (don't mess with success!): it charges you, knocks you down, gets on your chest, and (I jest thee not) starts scratching frantically. Yes, yes!: it scratches you to death. Like a nasty, furry, unhappy cat with a bad case of mange. Or a killer zombified Snuffleupagus.

And then it poops you out, once it has had its intestinal way with you. And someone complains about the smell.

Better title for this flick: "Snuffy".

Better idea than watching this movie: Death.

JSG"