NateWatchesCoolMovies Dark Reel is severely damaged goods no matter how you look at it. It sucks because there's some good ideas trying their best to flourish beneath a mountain of sludge, but nothing of any value can breech the surface of this purely shitty B movie with scant traces of a decent outing. It starts off with a black and white prologue that looks like the only part of the film that wasn't shot with an etch-a-sketch. Scarlett, a young aspiring actress, is lured into a dark abandoned set warehouse under the pretence of an audition, and brutally murdered. Fast forward about six decades, where a young groupie (Edward Furlong, looking like a sack of poo warmed over) wins a walk on role in a sickeningly trashy B movie monstrosity, starring a legendary scream queen (Tiffany Shepis, also a legendary scream queen in real life). It's not long before so,done with ties to the murder in the prologue starts skulking around the set after hours and hacking people to pieces in ways that are as tasteless as they are cheap looking. The film has one redeeming quality, if you are a fan: Lance Henriksen. He plays Connor Pritchett, schlock movie producer and general whacko. Lance seriously plays the part like he has no idea what the script is, making up verbal diarrhea on the fly, undergoing titanic mood swings and displaying the coherency of someone with serious issues. It's fun to watch him crash and burn, and even in the most awful poop material like this, he still shines, as bats@$t crazy as he is. There's also a cop played by Tony Todd who acts just as unstable as Lance, and Todd rides the wave of his awfully written dialogue and poor direction like a sheepish pro. This is literally one of the worst movies I've ever seen, and the funny thing is that it didn't have to be. The premise itself is great, and even on the couch change budget it was stuck with, they could have at least tried. But no, they threw in the bloody towel and instead of a gem or even an admirable failure we get this monumental piece of festering garbage instead. I had to keep myself occupied in any scenes without Henriksen by hitting half speed fast forward so the characters sound like chipmunks. It says a lot about a flick when you have to do that. Avoid at any cost.

drdeathforpresident The first scene of the film grabs your attention; a man with no name who looks like a throw back from the 40's enters a bar and makes small talk with a damsel in distress. He worms his way into her heart and into his warehouse where he is directing her into her grave. The rest of the film is forced especially the acting except for the actor, Jeffrey Vincent Parise, who adds some life to this dead dud. Edward Furlong looks like he has been on a bender and needs to take a time out. Their is too much talking and not enough killing. I mean, come on, this is a horror film not a soap opera! Honestly, there is nothing to recall about this film. I did use the fast forward button a lot. Don't waste your time and effort.

david spates (davidspates) If you are really looking for that classic horror slash comedy movie that you grew up watching with a group of friends in the theaters, this may be one of those movies. It's about time someone made a movie like this, it brought back some good memories. I was expecting cheesy acting, bad editing, and choppy sound but none of those things ever happened. I have to admit that originally I had no desire to watch "Dark Reel". The only reason that I even watched the movie was because my wife was pregnant and for some reason she had to watch it because of the title. To my surprise it was actually very good. No matter how hard I tried not to like it I still got sucked in. Now I'm looking for director Josh Eisenstadt's next movie.

capkronos Sometime in the 1950s, struggling actress Scarlett May (Alexandra Holden) meets a talent scout from Spotlight National Films, who asks her if she'd like to do a screen test for their studio. She's lured to a warehouse and ends up starring in a snuff film instead, getting strangled and then dismembered before the cameras. 53 years later, Spotlight National is still an operating studio, churning out B-movie titles such as "Gnome Killer," "Nightmare Slasher" and "Snakes on a Crane." Horror fanboy Adam Waltz (Edward Furlong - looking a bit rough and pudgy here), who has just followed his bitchy débutante ex-girlfriend all the way from Virginia to Los Angeles, wins a one-line walk-on roll in the studio's latest effort "The Pirate Wench," where he quickly becomes affiliated with the (mostly self-absorbed) cast of crew. Soon after, a masked killer starts bumping people off who are in some way affiliated with the studio. Who is doing it? Why are they doing it? And how is this connected to the 1950s slaying? This list of possible suspects and red herrings is about a mile long, but thankfully the majority of actors they cast do a pretty good job and are fun to watch. Lance Henriksen gives a typically strong showing as troubled studio head honcho Connor Pritchett, who equates the murder of a starlet with free publicity. Tiffany Shepis gives a very appealing performance as friendly horror movie queen Cassie Blue, and even somehow manages to have some decent romantic chemistry with her co-star. Tony Todd is fine as an intrusive detective (but unfortunately gets much of this film's worst dialogue), as are Emmanuel Xuereb as the studio's head of creative development and Jeffrey Vincent Parise as an arrogant and pretentious director. There's also veteran character actor Tracey Walter as an obnoxious tabloid journalist, Rena Riffel as Todd's partner, Whitby ("The Dream Child") Hertford, Mercedes McNab (from the TV shows "Angel" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") and some other familiar faces. Unfortunately, attempts at making some of these side characters quirky and original come off as obvious and embarrassing much of the time, such as a secretary who annoyingly mimics everything her boss says, a foul-mouthed sound man who screams all of his dialogue and a lead actor who has bad breath because of his obsessive onion eating.The flaws certainly don't stop there. Toward the end (huge spoiler here so skip to the next paragraph if you don't wanna hear this) the film becomes sloppy and the revelation of the killer's identity is basically a huge cheat. While the 1950s killer is pretty obvious early on, the current killer (predictably the son of Scarlett May) is played by an actor who looks like he's about 35, yet is playing a character who is 53 or 54 years old. The scenes parodying low-budget horror/exploitation film-making aren't clever or funny enough to really add anything of value to this film. Another aspect that I didn't think really worked is how the ghost of Scarlett returns to try to help Furlong's character uncover the killer. Her image superimposed over the Pirate film footage looked hokey and wasn't even really necessary.So while this is a highly flawed film (particularly in regards to the screenplay and grating comedy elements), it still managed to keep my interest for the most part thanks to some nice directorial touches, a pretty good Badalamenti-inspired music score and a decent cast. Also good are the cinematography and the killer's mask/disguise. Though there is a little blood/gore (mainly at the end) and nudity, there probably won't be nearly enough of either to please exploitation movie fans. The opening sequence, which was shot in black-and-white, is stylish and very well done, is the best scene in the entire movie, and there's generally enough good here to make me want to see what else director Josh Eisenstadt may have up his sleeve.