DIGGING UP THE MARROW [2014]

Writer/director Adam Green lets his horror-hound flag fly high with the wildly entertaining mockumentary Digging Up The Marrow.
Green plays himself (amongst a gaggle of other B-movie cult-horror icons) as he shoots a documentary about a crazy man (Ray Wise) who's begged him to make a film about the discovery of an underground place where the monsters live.  Wise is the only actor not playing himself and as always, he looks like he's having a humdinger of a good time being a nutjob resulting in just as much fun for the audience to watch.  The film ends up being pretty spirited with Green's enthusiasm for the subject matter (and Nightbreed) but unfortunately the script could have used A LOT of fine-tuning so it doesn't wander over the same tracks over and over again.

2½ Oderus Urungus' out of 5

PSYCHO IV: THE BEGINNING [1990]

The idea of Mick Garris directing the fourth & final instalment in the Psycho series as a made-for-TV film sounds like it has disaster written all over it.
...and it pretty much is.
It might not be as bad as the third film but only because it takes a different approach to the series by flashbacking to Norman Bates as a little boy and his relationship with his batshit crazy mother.  The writing and directing are over-the-top in a pulp comic book sort of way that drains the film of any sort of tension whatsoever.  However Henry Thomas & Olivia Hussey as young Norman and Norma Bates are actually quite good with what little they had to work with.

1½ boy's best friends out of 5

Critters 2: The Main Course (1988)

It's been two years since the fuzzy little feckers went wild in Kansas. Life goes on for the survivors, but nothing is ever peaceful for long in B-Movie Land. The Critters are back for more and their numbers have increased.
It would've been a mistake to rehash the story of the first film with just a different family, so instead part two takes a new approach. It brings back Ug and Lee and a few of the townspeople from before and ups the comedy level, turning it from a straight cheesy sci-fi/horror into a pretty damn hilarious cheesy sci-fi/horror that's aware of its own absurd nature and plays up to it. It's without a doubt the most fun I've ever had watching a Mick Garris feature; he earned himself a silver star.

3 space porcupines out of 5

Sleepwalkers (1992)

Mick Garris must really like Stephen King. This was his first attempt at adapting one of King’s ideas (it was an original screenplay) into a feature and it’s as shitty as most of the subsequent attempts.
There's some successful comedy moments and some not so successful.
Alice Krige is good, and… no, that’s it really.

1½ kitty cats out of 5

Riding the Bullet (2004)

A twenty-one-year-old guy obsessed with death hitchhikes back to the town where he grew up. You can guess the rest from the cover art.
Mick Garris can’t decide if he wants to make a comedy, a trippy road movie or a straightforward horror and as a result there are too many different approaches that drag the viewer out of the story, causing the atmosphere that he seems capable of building to collapse in a fractured shambles. The biggest shock was that David Arquette was good. 0_o

2½ if you’re going to suicide just do it and quit being a little bitch out of 5

QUICKSILVER HIGHWAY [1997]

Camp director Mick Garris has a lot of fun adapting two lesser known short stories written by horror authors Stephen King and Clive Barker.  

The Chattery Teeth segment, based on King's Nightmares & Dreamscapes story looks like it was more fun making it than watching it.  While Clive Barker's Books Of Blood story The Body Politic is actually really entertaining not unlike one of Buffy The Vampire Slayer's campier episodes.  Matt Frewer gets top points for taking it that extra step to make it better than it really is, while Christopher Lloyd seems horrendously out of place in a silly wig. 

2 reigning hands out of 5

Stephen King's Bag of Bones (2011)

A writer is haunted by visions of his late wife and the mystery surrounding a lake house in this made-for-TV adaptation. Pierce Brosnan seems oddly out of place in this type of movie, but I warmed up to him by the second half. It's not terribly well-done, but it's okay. Yeah, that's the best you're going to get out of me. "It was okay."

2.5 Dark Scores out of 5