Moscow Zero? More like, this movie's a zero!

In this fake horror disaster, one of my all-time favorite heroes, Vincent Gallo, recruits a team to help him find his archaeologist friend who went missing while searching for an entrance into the underworld beneath a church in the city of Moscow. The other big star in the movie is Val Kilmer, he plays the man who is sorta the boss of the underground, you have to get his okay to go through the haunted caverns where Gallo's team is headed.

With the plot summary done, let's get to bashing this awful movie. Wow... This was real, real dumb. Let me remind you that the film is called Moscow Zero. That is the ultimate bad movie title.

I don't understand what made Val Kilmer take part in this movie, his role was so small and pointless. His Russian accent was awful too. What really made me feel ashamed though was Vincent Gallo. It's not that he gave an awful performance, it's that the movie was not redeemable in the least. Here's the guy that gave me Buffalo '66. Now, granted, his other movies never do live up to that one, but this one in particular belonged on a 3-movies-in-1 DVD in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart.

It was clearly trying to be artsy at parts. I hated the colors of the movie. Another thing I always pick up when I watch these straight-to-shelves movies is that they always recycle shots. Like, they seriously just reuse some of the same footage and play it over and over again.

I was certainly confused by the ending of this movie. It may have been easy to get, but I just didn't care enough to give that movie any more thought. It doesn't deserve thought, let alone viewing. I have nothing more to say about the movie. Don't see it.

Back With A B-Movie

Carnival of Souls is the story of some broad with big crazy eyes who, after an automobile accident, suffers visions of some terrifying, ghoulish looking guy. It has its campy moments, but in the end, it only makes this Twilight Zone-esque movie a real cult-horror classic.

At the very beginning I was almost mad at myself for putting this movie in. The audio was pretty horrible, and overall it just looked like it was gonna be a real piece of garbage. You get past that though. Luckily, it's actually pretty good for being made in 1962 and with no budget. It's definitely of the likes of Roger Corman's movies, it's a B-movie. But Goddamn, I have a place in my heart reserved for B-movies.

The movie could easily be bashed, but honestly it's really creepy. There's a lot of unease to the picture. As far as acting goes the movie doesn't excel anything more than what you would expect for the time and genre, but it's good enough. The main character, Mary Henry, is always either highly stressed and anxious, or completely subdued. That, for some reason, builds up the eeriness.

Now, let's talk villain. Mary continuously sees this water-soaked man with dark rings around his eyes coming after her. He's freaky. Really, he's what makes it more than just a stupid movie. There's a shot in the movie where you see him underwater and then he opens his eyes, and it made me think about how many times that shot has been copied. Even in Peter Jackson's Return of the King. So, it did have some good ideas. Also, the carnival/pavilion where Mary always sees the creepy dude was captured in a frightening and eye-catching way, especially when she sees all the dead people dancing there!

Another thing I took away from the movie was its soundtrack. There's nothing more stereotypical than putting the sounds of a pipe organ on a horror soundtrack, but who are we kidding, the pipe organ is a scary sound. I found it to be agreeable with the subject.

The camera work was better than my expectations... for the most part. Besides the anti-climactic very end, I enjoyed my first viewing of Carnival of Souls. It's a good one to watch as a double-feature, teamed up with another B-movie of the time. If you really love movies you can cherish it for what it is, but if you're just interested in having a movie to make jokes at with friends, well, it can be good for that too.