azathothpwiggins THE STRANGENESS is about an abandoned mine, it's valuable contents, and the hideous whatsit that lives there. After an earthquake, and a pair of mysterious disappearances, a group of six surveyors / geologists and their guide head for the mine. For the snotty, greedy head of the team, gold is more attractive than science. Unsurprisingly, horror and death ensue. The story is straightforward, and plays like the second cousin of BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE. The characters are fairly familiar, 1980's monster fodder. The monster itself, apart from a few noises and glimpses, takes forever to show up! Until then, semi-drama, clunky "humor", and general ding-a-ling dialogue pad things out. About the creature: It's a stop-motion, H.P. Lovecraft-type nightmare, complete w/ squiggly tentacles and an oozing, vertical mouth! Is it worth the wait? Sort of. There's an awful lot of extra-thick cheeeze to wade through before we get a -brief- look at this thing. EXTRA POINTS FOR: Some of the gooey death scenes. Worth a watch...

merklekranz I'll give "The Strangeness" credit. For an ultra low budget, almost student film, at times it captures the total darkness cave experience pretty well. Sure it's dark, and at times headlamps moving in the blackness is all you see, but I would rather have that than some bogus source of light. The acting is not good. The dialog is not good. The first hour is boring and not good. Character development is not good, but at least you can tell the characters apart. Finally, the ending is a complete sell out, where believability flies out the window. So what is there to like about this film? For one thing, Terri Berland wearing a skin tight tank top and button busting jeans will hold your attention, and the stop motion, rarely seen monster, is so bizarre you will be anxiously awaiting your next brief glimpse. - MERK

udar55 A group of 7 gold prospectors head into a mine that was recently opened back up after an earthquake. Of course, they don't pay attention to local legend that something is down there and killing people. This low budget ($25,000) horror flick has a slight cult following and I'm not exactly sure why (unless it is because it is so obscure). I'll admit the last half hour is pretty entertaining, but the hour getting there is pure torture. Lots of walking and talking and our titular strangeness doesn't appear until 45 minutes in. Even in the extras co-writer Chris Huntley admits it commits the unforgivable sin of being boring. I would forgive them if they were strict amateurs, but this group graduated from USC so I would hope they know an exploitation film should be exploitive. Anyway, like I said, the last half hour is cool as three survivors battle the stop motion monster and there is a cool John Carpenter-like score. I wanted to see more of the monster, but it is literally on screen for 45 seconds.Even if the movie isn't the best, Code Red DVD has given this great attention. You have interviews and an audio commentary by director Melanie Anne Phillips, producer/actor Mark Sawicki and co-writer Huntley. The tales about how the film was made are pretty fascinating and inspiring (like a cave set being built in a backyard). Even more interesting are Sawicki and Huntley's USC student shorts, which are actually all better than the feature production. Huntley was a pretty talented artist and it is a shame he didn't go on to anything else. Sawicki has worked steadily in Hollywood as a visual effects and camera guy. The film's VHS is kind of legendary for how dark it was and I'm sure this is much better. However, you still get scenes where the only image are five helmet lights bouncing around in the blackness. Safe to say, the original MY BLOODY VALENTINE is still "horror film set in a mine" champ.

HEFILM There are nostalgic reasons to like this now, back in the good old days the mid 1980's when low budget still meant you shot the thing on film and went outside of your neighborhood to shoot it. But I saw this in the 80's before the nostalgia kicked in and it was fun and it holds up for the most part now, rewatching a well battered VHS. This is in the Lovecraft zone for sure and the story is good. The execution varies, it would be great to see a DVD release of this with some background info as this is an Indie production and therefore its origins would be interesting. A DVD might show the cave sets to be sets, but would probably also show the image more cleanly in good ways too. I think it's pretty well photographed,but in some instances video transfers just couldn't handle the contrast ratios like this. In one scene, for instance, a flash camera is used to light the way and each flash makes the whole video image jump and ruins a cool reveal shot of the creature.(A pretty nice DVD of this was released in August of 2009 and is well worth getting)The monster is creepy looking, even if you're not afraid of vaginas and part of it certainly does look like one. The DVD reveals two things that have to be mentioned in light of this. The director is now a women (though still married to his/her wife that he had kids with?!?) How much of a woman then is he/she? And the designer of the creature is now openly gay though at the time says he was not "out" yet. So think, or don't think, about this too deeply while watching the movie. They also show the puppet, battered but still looking very, well vaginal or as the designer says, it looks like a penis with a vagina on the end of it. Does all this make the monster sound scary enough for you?Performers vary but several of them engage your interest enough to care about their fate and one of them, who deserves to die, does indeed have a very good death scene. Yes 1980's film fans, the lead large-possibly-not-real-breasted actress, seemingly the only veteran actor of the bunch, wears a tight white semi tube top,and even tighter jeans, and yes they eventually get her wet. But the thing that it deserves credit for is you can always tell which character is which, which, if you pardon the repeated word, is more than THE DESCENT managed to do.The enjoyable John Carpenter rip off score is probably the most dated element and it actually dates it in a good way, the whole story with a cave monster gives it a old fashioned feel in a good way too. It's a good old fashioned monster story.Other films in this ballpark are of course the recent THE DESCENT, and WHAT WAITS BELOW, and THE BOOGENS, but this film is not exactly like any of those and though not as good as those in many ways still has its share of creepy moments amid a couple of "we didn't really shoot this action scene well enough for it to all make sense sequences." The mine setting is well enough done to build interest and it moves pretty well to the end. Bring on a DVD version someone. Some of the well done animation is by Ernest D Farino who has for many years worked at Industrial Light and Magic doing work on Star Wars films and several James Cameron title sequences.