Night Of The Demons
Blu-ray | DVD
Directed by Adam Gierasch
Starring Edward Furlong, Shannon Elizabeth, Monica Keena, John F. Beach, Diora Baird, Michael Copon
Entertainment One
Release date: October 19, 2010

While today’s horror filmmakers are either curbing the curse words for PG-13 teen-friendly flicks or increasing the realism for torture porn, Adam Gierasch brings us a fun, but spooky tale perfect for Halloween with his remake Night Of The Demons. This remake invokes the spirit of its predecessor — the 1988 Kevin Tenney film of the same name — by employing lots of blood and gore created mostly through practical effects. The two tales are similar in that party-goers unwittingly unleash a horde of demons on Halloween night, but the original film takes place in a mortuary where a séance releases the demons. Gierasch’s version brings the Halloween party to modern-day New Orleans to a mansion with a mysterious past.

It’s Halloween night and Angela Feld (Shannon Elizabeth) is planning the biggest party in town at the Broussard Mansion, a long-unoccupied New Orleans manse whose previous occupants went missing 85 years prior on the same night its owner, Evangeline Broussard, killed herself by hanging. In an effort to make some cash, Angela lures the paying party-goers to the mansion using its spooky history as bait.

My Best Friend’s Girl
Unrated Edition
Directed by Howard Deutch
Starring Dane Cook, Kate Hudson, Jason Biggs, Alec Baldwin, Diora Baird
Lionsgate Home Entertainment
Release Date: January 13, 2009

I’m going to get something off my chest that I’ve been holding onto for quite awhile: I don’t hate Dane Cook. Not totally, anyway. In the past I have found the humor in his not so subtle brand of comedy. It’s stupid, juvenile, and gets old after awhile (especially when every idiot in the country tries to quote him incessantly), but I’ve had a laugh. That being said, his movies are garbage. Mr. Brooks and Dan in Real Life were good in their own right even with his inclusion, but they worked because he was left on the sideline — which is a nice way of saying he didn’t ruin them. The problem with the movies he has headlined is that his stand up doesn’t translate to the screen at all. So even if you like his routine, the movies suck. And if you don’t, they really suck. There is an argument in that thought about him being one dimensional and unfunny and his movies being proof of that, but I don’t have the strength to discuss it. Partly because I’m not trying to defend him and partly because it doesn’t matter. The point is, as easy a target as it would be to jump on the I-wouldn’t-piss-on-Dane-Cook-if-he-were-on-fire bandwagon, any problems My Best Friend’s Girl has actually aren’t his fault. Not totally, anyway.

Tank Turner (Cook) provides a service. When guys have somehow screwed up their relationships, he is the guy they hire to date their exes. His service is that he takes these unsuspecting girls on dates and is purposely such an asshole that they are left with no choice than to run back into the arms of their former boyfriends. Call it making them look good by default. It’s a pretty good little racket and the dates make for some of the funnier moments in the movie.