Customer Reviews

Cemetery Gates

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

You know, with a title like Cemetery Gates (2006), you'd think you'd be getting some sort of dead coming to life and devouring everyone's flesh type feature, but that's not the case here...instead what we have is a genetically altered beastie on the loose devouring everyone's flesh type feature. Haven't seen that before, in any of the hundreds of direct to video releases I've endured over the years...in case you can't tell, I'm being facetious, which is a hoity toity way of calling someone a smart#ss. Directed by Roy Knyrim, whose primary film experience seems to consist mainly of make-up effects on movies like The Toxic Avenger, Part II (1989), Auntie Lee's Meat Pies (1993), and Amityville: Dollhouse (1996), the movie features Reggie Bannister (Phantasm, Phantasm II) and Peter Stickles (Shortbus, Hell on Earth). Also appearing is Aime `Hungry Like A' Wolf (Archangel), Nicole DuPort (Southern Gothic), Kristin Novak (Malibu Spring Break, Going Down), and so on...

The story begins as we see two overly zealous eco-wanks breaking into a scientific research facility. After a little spray paint on the walls, they decide to remove a large, wooden crate from the facility, a crate housing some kind of beast, the intent being on their releasing the creature back into the wilderness. Given this is a horror film, it seems obvious this is a bad idea, but even if this wasn't a horror movie, it still seems to me a huge mistake to mess about with experimental lab animals as you never know what the hell they're infected with, or how easily communicable whatever they may have is to anyone who comes into contact with said animals...and let's say you release said creature back into the wild. What if whatever the creature is carrying infects, and subsequently kills off, the rest of the animal population? Anyway, turns out the creature is a Tasmanian Devil, one that's been `embiggened' by a scientist named Belmont (Bannister) for reasons revealed later on in the film. All right, as you can imagine, the beast, which is about the size of a bear, escapes, and starts making short work of whomever is around, which is good as most of the characters we meet are odious cretins (particularly the two aging hippies downing peyote in search for their animal spirit guides...die, hippie, die!). The voracious and murderous beast eventually finds a nesting spot in some nearby mines, which happen to run under a cemetery, the same cemetery Belmont's son Hunter (Stickles) and his idiot stoner friends are shooting an amateur zombie movie. As Belmont and his pragmatic (yet highly visually stimulating) boss Dr. Christine Kollar (Wolf) set out to find and capture the creature, Hunter and company, along with a whole slew of unwashed, redneck, hillbilly, slack-jawed, obnoxious, deep-fried, mullet sporting, Camero driving, PBR-in-a-can swilling local trailer park yokels soon discover there's more than the spirits of the dead to be scared of in (and beneath) Southern Cross Cemetery...

For an independent, low budget horror feature Cemetery Gates wasn't half bad...I'm unsure the exact location of where the story took place, but wherever it was sure didn't lack for an adequate supply of aggravating a-holes, which was the one thing that annoyed me more than anything else, the sheer number of imbecilic characters running around...sure, it allowed for a decent body count, but still, it was obvious there really wasn't much of a story, so the filmmakers decided to load the script down with a lot of unnecessary crapola. The core story was highly predictable (especially the end) and the acting wasn't all that hot, so what exactly did this film have going for it? The main thing for me was the seemingly complete lack of computer generated effects. The monster was essentially a giant puppet, and a decent looking one at that, sort of a hideous, slavering spawn of the Snuffalufagus from the Sesame Street show. Also, the filmmakers didn't hold back on the blood, whether throwing it around, or having spurt spectacularly, it's here, there, and everywhere, as the beast sure did love to rend limbs from bodies and free innards from torsos. Another thing I felt while watching the film was a sense of not taking things to seriously. There was quite a bit of humor within the script (the name of the beast is `Precious'), and overall, it felt like the people involved in making this movie probably had a lot of fun doing so, and that went a long way for me. The production values are so-so, as it appears most of the money was spent on creature effects (the headstones all looked pretty phony), but it was money well spent as that's about all most would really care about going into a movie like this...you're not coming here for top notch performances, which is good, because there aren't any. One actress was gracious enough to pop her top for extended periods of time, that person being Ms. Novak. I wouldn't have minded some similar action from Ms. Wolf, who certainly has it going on in my opinion. Yeah, it's a piggish sentiment, I know, but when you watch movies like this, you have to take your enjoyment where you can find it, and if you're a hetero guy, you get your jollies seeing hot, nekkid women, among other things. As far as the flow of the film, it's kind of uneven giving the large amount of victims running around, but things become more focused in the last fifteen minutes or so as those who are left confront the creature. I would have liked to have seen Reggie Bannister have more screen time than he did, and it wouldn't have hurt the film at all given he was probably the most experienced performer in the cast, but whatever...all in all this wasn't a great film, but decent enough, and I did feel there was some kind of effort present, which counts for a lot with me.

The picture quality, presented in non-anamorphic widescreen, looks sharp and clean, and the audio, available in both Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, comes through very well. As far as extra features, included are three featurettes titled The making of Cemetery Gates, Monsters and Mayhem Special Effects, and Running with the Devil: The Real Special Effects, along with a trailer for this film and another for a movie called Boo (2005).

Cookieman108

Give it credit for: an unusual monster (a Tasmanian Devil, no less!); a hilarious sequence where a peyote-stoned hiker sees the monster as a purple cartoon character being serenaded by singing birds; and the dumbest blonde bimbo in recent cinematic history.
Other than that, you have a pretty standard creature flick with lots and lots of gore, horrible acting, and really bad special effects. But it's not the worst seen.
The tasmanian devil has been what else genetically altered and goes on a killing spree in the local cemetery. PHANTASM's Reggie Bannister is the mad scientist responsible and the rest of the actors? are unfamiliar monster food. Pretty bloody.

If you go into Cemetery Gates expecting something spectacular, you're going to be disappointed. As for tension or frights - not so much either. This movie is campy and it has a light heart. With that light heart comes juvenile sex humor (gagging on a lolipop, and all the boys cheer), bizarre creature FX (it's a giant puppet, and a nasty looking one at that, but it still manages to be awkwardly cute when it runs), and copious amounts of blood. I think that's where the budget went - making sure that as much blood and guts sprayed every available surface of this film.

Honestly, it's enjoyable for what it is, without being too heavy. There's no intellectual investment required with this film. But it's a good, old-fashioned blood n' guts creature romp that gives you tons of characters to hate before they're nastily disposed of.

If you have my quirky sense of humor, the movie is worth watching for the scenes of "Precious" 'scratching' her victims - she does what looks like a Mutant Tasmanian Devil Shuffle on the victim's chest while blood jets from . . . somewhere. Just not where Precious is scratching. It's that kind of movie!

Recommended for fans of cheesy horror, creature flicks, and 80s gore-humor.

The movie had a nice combination of horror, humor, nudity, campy lines, stereo-typed blonde, bad special effects, and an overdose of fake blood. The movie was campy at times which made it enjoyable. The blonde with the lollipop was over the top. I expected the ending to me more of a "Daniel in the lion's den," but it didn't happen. I also expect to see at least one Taz t-shirt, but that would have put the movie over budget as Karo syrup by the gallon isn't cheap. The movie is not rated. Contains: blood, guts, nudity, sexual situation, gore and language. One of the better B horror movies, but falls short of being a classic.

Being a huge fan of movies featuring genetic mutation gone bad, I had to have a movie whose description said:"Giant mutated Tasmanian Devil is stolen from a lab by two eco-activists and escapes near an old cemetery where a group of unsuspecting college students are making a zombie film." Was this flick made for me or what?

Have you ever seen Sesame Street and if so, do you remember the beast Snuffeupagus? Large, hairy, gentle creature who wandered about aimlessly? Now imagine him dyed black wearing a plastic toothy mask and you have the monster from CEMETERY GATES. We even get to see him (you'll please excuse me here) take a dump. This is cinematic history being made here, folks. Need we mention at some point college students do arrive to be slaughtered? Of course not. We also have a couple of social rejects, the dad of one of the students (not to mention maker of the evil Mr. Snuffy. No, I refuse to call him "Precious" which is his name in the movie), his financial partner, and various expendables. As the story begins a couple of animal activists decide to raid a lab and wind up loading Mr. Snuffy's huge metal looking container onto their truck. How? They don't tell us that. On the way to the park where they're going to let it loose the truck goes over bumps and the container begins rolling back and forth in the truck eventually smashing the wooden door. Yes. Apparently a wooden door on this all metal container that had a (surprise!) metal door in the lab. How did this happen? They don't tell us that, either. One of the idiots begins the task of freeing Mr. Snuffy and gets snuffed in a fairly bloody way. Idiot #2 doesn't hear the screaming even though he is standing about 10 feet away. I#2 goes to the back, meets Mr. Snuffy, and also gets snuffed.

Enter college students. Enter dad. Enter a bicylist whose front wheel gets mysteriously mangled while she is walking down the road. Enter social rejects. At no time in this movie does AN ACTUAL ACTOR enter. There are none here. Not one single person in this entire movie can act with the exception of Mr. Snuffy whose Academy Award performance was sadly overlooked that year.

There are no surprises in this thing if you don't count the lack of actors, no viable special effects, no original storyline, or excess amounts of blood. Oh wait, I'm wrong. They actually charged me money for this movie. I'm not only surprised, I'm shocked! Who would'a thought anybody could make money on a stinker like this? Avoid being shocked -- save your money on something semi-decent.

What if the Scifi channel made one of their weekly monster movies with a hard "R" rating and then released it on DVD with extra footage in an unrated edition? You'd have Cemetery Gates. F-bombs, blood, boobs, and plenty of cheesy monster goodness.

If you love old monster movies, and enjoy the type of films on MST3K, then you'll love this movie! Like a 1970's film, with plenty of blood, hairy monster and gratuitous boobs, it's a riot!

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

Yet again, another horror film where the killer monster,etc. is too horrible to look at because of the makeup and costume(s). Needless to say, there are minimal laughs throughout the movie because of the casting director and the poorly written script. One of the more stupefied lines during the movie: "Precious, NO!" "Precious, I'm so sorry.... you're free girl." I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS DVD ACTUALLY HAD A NUMBER OF SPECIAL FEATURES. THAT DOESN'T IMPRESS ME AT ALL!