The Devil's Tomb Movie Review

Title: The Devil's Tomb

Format: DVD 

Year: 2009

Label: Lionsgate


Directed by Jason Connery and staring Cuba Gooding Jr. this is a pseudo religious horror movie with a familiar theme and a few familiar faces.


Like so many low budget movies of late, The Devil's Tomb secures a couple of big name stars to play small roles to boost it's marketability but this doesn't really help the production value in this case.

A group of elite soldiers are enlisted to penetrate an underground bunker where

a secret is hidden and evil is unleashed....so it's basically a cross between outpost and The Thing. Where Outpost excels with it's £200,000 budget, The Devil's Tomb fails with it's $10,000,000 budget.

Now I actually like Cuba Gooding Jr. He's a great actor when he puts the effort in and I like some of his recent efforts - he is becoming a kind of B-Movie legend, BUT this film does him no favors at all ( and he does the film no favors .) His expression hardly changes throughout the entire think. Ray Winston has a minute role which he manages to make ridiculous with his bizarre accent and although Ron Perlman's performance is ok, it is not enough to save us.

The rest of the cast a ok, by TV standards, but there are times when it feels like a cheap episode of star trek next gen.

All in all, the direction is ok, the story is predictable, the effects and makeup are good, the characters are poor and the acting is wooden ok.


UK Films Rating: 3/10
Release Rating: 7/10 - Good transfer, cast & crew interviews.
Did James like it? No

Death Run Movie Review

Title: Death Run
Format: DVDR
Year: 1987
Label: Unknown


A Trash movie from prolific zero budget movie director Michael J Murphy - this one is a cracker. A post apocalyptic romp filmed in the UK on a shoestring with terrible acting, awful action sequences and bad makeup. But it has a decent storyline and a lot of charm.

The acting is bad but it's no worse than alot of the acting in some of the Italian outings filmed on much bigger budgets.

The same goes for the makeup and sound. Bad by normal standards, but perfectly acceptable in this genre. I may be mistaken but it feels like the director intentionally set out to make a poor man's Bronx Worriors and ended up creating something not too far out of the ball park.

The story involves a couple being cryogenically frozen to survive the oncoming nuclear apocalypse. They awaken 25 years later and find themselves in a new world full of mutants and diseased gangs. This couple are introduced as the main characters, but they don't really have any presence and their acting is probably the poorest of all. But this is not a problem, there is plenty going on which detracts away from them. About halfway through we are introduces to another lead male character with more muscles and slightly better acting ability.

The bad guy is called Massiah - A bisexual english mutant Nazi. It kinda works. There are also plenty ( or a few ) scantily clad girls, lots of blood and some excellent cheesefest dialogue. The direction is good. Typical exploitation low angles. The only unforgivable element is the action / fight scenes. Everyone looks like they are afraid of hurting each other. 

I really like this one. For the budget and considering the acting ability and locations available, I think they did a pretty good job. The picture quality is fine ( shot on 16mm ) the music is quirky, the dialogue sounds like it was dubbed in a bathroom but again, not a problem. Really deserves a decent DVD release.

UK Films Rating: 6/10
Release Rating: N/A
Did James like it? Yes