quridley This is an impressive amateur effort from the directing to the writing to the acting to the production. It feels like a good college theater troupe pooled their money to prove their chops because its so much sharper than the usual indie horror comedy. Its even historic in its premise as this is the first self-referential/meta slasher film. It will surprise you how much it predicts (or inspires) both "Scream" and "Cabin in the Woods".TNOT is dated in some of its jokes and fashion but its a charming and high spirited film that has aged very well and deserves a lot of credit for being so ahead of its time and making the most of its small budget.

Horror Banana-nanza Horror comedy has been done to death. When Wes Craven made "Scream" and it was promptly parodied by "Scary Movie", horror comedy effectively parodied itself. But long before any of these films ate their own crap and crapped out their eaten crap, (yes, it is that disgusting) a young filmmaker created what is essentially the best kind of these movies.Rolfe Kanefsky's "There's Nothing Out There" takes every convention; slashers, aliens, monsters ; and puts them all together with a main character sure he's seen so many horror movies that everything is obvious to him. The character Mike reminds me of me. He sees a broken down car on the way to a vacation house in the woods, far away from everyone, and warns his friends they need to turn around. Ignoring him, they arrive at the house where he remarks, "Name a horror film, any horror film".Shortly after, some teens in a van show up and jump into a nearby pond. When they ask Mike,"Isn't this the cabin by the lake?" he answers, "No. This is the house by the pond." So they leave.There is a monster-alien thing running around, and it kills one of the kids late at night after leaving ooze on the frying pans inside. Mike dresses in sports gear with a bat and goes to kill it, but accidentally interrupts his friend having sex and is locked in the basement for the night.The rest of the movie is pretty predictable, but that's the point. There's a lot of fourth wall breaking, as one of the characters actually uses the boom mic to swing out of the way of the creature, and Mike actually looks at the audience when asked, "So you're saying we're in a movie?" This is the top of the horror comedies. It's unfortunate that a lot of novices to the horror genre won't get a lot of the jokes, but the humor is specially formulated specifically for that crowd. So if you love horror, but think you've seen everything, this movie is perfect for you._______________ For all the Horror Banana's reviews, visit http://morozov924.hubpages.com/

Woodyanders A genuine rarity, this one: a truly good, funny, even smart and respectful send-up of low-rent tacky'n'terrible cheesy backwoods-set teens-in-peril fright films that effectively pokes fun at assorted clichéd'n'contrived horror movie conventions without ever becoming the least bit cutesy or condescending towards its Grade B schlock picture subject matter. Writer/director Rolfe Kanefsky's droll, low-key, properly straight-faced and restrained style never devolves into the overly broad or excessive, instead nicely maintaining a dryly deadpan and ingratiatingly affectionate tone throughout.The slyly generic plot concerns three libidinous high school student couples and token fear flick fanatic Mike (winningly played by Craig Peck, who's really goofy, but thankfully none too annoying) vacationing in a remote wilderness area. Said secluded forest proves to be the stalking grounds for a slimy, toothy, grody little lethal alien frog monster that sees the guys as yummy meals and the gals as ideal mates to reproduce its species with. Mike's comprehensive knowledge on and keen understanding of bromidic horror film banalities, which is initially a source of irritation to the other disbelieving chowder-head collegians, winds up saving the day, much to geeky Mike's own surprise and the viewer's slack-jawed astonishment.A very amusing, enjoyable and mercifully uninsulting spoof (unlike the atrocious "Scream" stinkers, this film never seems either archly ironic or smugly patronizing in its pointed satiric potshots at corny stock characters and tried'n'true standard situations), blessed with witty dialog (Mike has the feature's single most sidesplitting line, tersely commenting after seeing one victim's face melt: "Now, that's disgusting"), personable acting from a cast of deliberately overage thesps who try unsuccessfully to palm themselves off as teenagers (one dude even has thinning hair!), nifty on-target parodies of such groan-inducingly familiar trash horror film ingredients as gratuitous nudity ("It's skinny-dipping time!"), the ever-absurd false cat scare, an especially uproarious swipe at the making hot, passionate love in front of a roaring fire sequence (the guy's zipper gets stuck!), glaring blatant continuity errors, and a hilarious technical gaffe involving a conspicuously visible boom microphone dipping into the frame, crisp, sprightly cinematography by Ed Hershberger, an endearingly cruddy extraterrestrial beast, a rollicking bang-up score by Christopher Thomas, and some gut-busting joke-ridden ending credits, "There's Nothing Out There" overall sizes up as a brisk, frequently riotous, and highly pleasing low-budget (it only cost $350,000 in total) tongue-in-cheek horror film genre lampoon.The first-rate deluxe Special Edition DVD by Image Entertainment offers a fairly grainy, but generally solid and up to par widescreen presentation loaded with a wonderful wealth of awesomely abundant extras which include the theatrical trailer, a still and poster gallery, funky animated menus complete with songs and music from the picture, screen tests, bloopers and rehearsals (the bloopers in particular are an absolute hoot), pre-production footage and storyboards, animation test footage and work print outtakes, and, most savory of all, a very funny, entertaining and informative commentary provided by Kanefsky along with various cast and crew members.

ontheblvd This is a fun little spoof of the crappy 80's style horror flicks we grew up with... the twist (the same kinda hook that Scream used about five years later) is that the hero is a guy who's seen so many of said crappy horror flicks that he realizes that he might actually be IN a crappy horror flick, then uses it to his advantage.The best news tho is that the new DVD edition of "There's Nothing.." not only has a MUCH better transfer than the earlier video release (and is letterboxed), but also a bunch of fun extras and commentary. The movie is a hoot, and the extras make it even more worthwhile.Sometimes it's fun to kick back with a b-movie that knows it's a b-movie and has fun with that. Low budget and cheesy, but far more fun than most of the Hollywood horror flicks released in the past decade.*** = movie ***** = DVD Enjoy!