No idea who or what the cave monsters are, but they’re like a human/bat hybrid of some kind. They are blind, slimy, make terrible noises, crawl up and down the walls of the caves, have razor sharp teeth, and feast on human flesh. So, when the girls run into them, all bloody hell breaks loose. They start dying off one by one in a frantic attempt to find a way out. It’s really not a pretty sight (except to gore hounds like you and me!) when one of those bastards sinks its teeth into a lady’s jugular or disembowels her and feeds on her innards. The girls stand a better chance when they discover that the monster’s respond to sound, so they try to stop screaming, but in the end they all pretty much get it, despite the fact that they turn into killing machines themselves in the name of survival.

I need to go into a bit of an aside here because there’s a sub-plot that needs an explanation, but I won’t bog you down with too many details. This is also going to be a spoiler, so tread carefully. One of the girls, Sarah, had lost her husband and daughter in a car accident the year before, and so this cave trip was a way to get her back into the swing of things. Her friend Juno, however, was sleeping with her husband. Sarah doesn’t know this, but their friend Beth does. Anyway, Juno knows that Beth knows, so when Beth is attacked in the caves (and also struck down, accidentally, by Juno), she is left there by Juno, on purpose, to die. Sarah stumbles upon the dying Beth later who tells her that Juno was sleeping with her husband and had left her there to die. So, naturally, Sarah and Juno are the only two left standing at the end of the movie, and as the monsters descend on them, Sarah puts some sort of pick axe through Juno’s knee and leaves her for the monsters to feast on. Sarah, bloody and tired, finally escapes the caves.

The Descent: Part Two takes place two days later. This movie, more than anything, is frustrating as hell. It’s filled with stupid decisions and horror movie nonsense and will likely leave you feeling angry when it’s over. Okay, so there’s a search party out for the missing girls, only the search party is looking in the wrong caves. Then Sarah shows up in the hospital but can’t remember a damn thing about the last two days. The sheriff is all suspicious-like because she’s the only survivor and had blood all over her clothes, and the blood-type matched that of her friend Juno. Oh, hey, what about all the other blood that would’ve got on her clothes, like Beth’s blood and some of those monsters’ blood? No? Okay then. Then someone discovers an abandoned mine whose shaft leads to the unmapped caves in question where The Descent took place. The sheriff, who doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about Sarah’s amnesia or obvious post-traumatic stress symptoms, forces her back down into the caves in order to find her missing friends. Are you kidding me? You can’t do that! But do it he does. In fact, even the sheriff himself, along with one of his deputies (plus three actual professional cave divers) go down there too, because one thing this movie needs in order for it to work is a bunch of amateurs down in the caves.

If I can say one good thing about this movie, it’s that, unlike the first part, it didn’t take an hour to get to the carnage. Not long after this new group goes down do the monsters start attacking. Sarah’s memory is quickly awakened and she runs for her life. The rest are left to fend for themselves against an unfamiliar foe, hungrier than ever. All of the professionals die first, of course, leaving only Sarah, the sheriff, and the deputy. Sarah teams up with the deputy, making sure she does her best to remain quiet, while trying to find her way out of the caves once more. There are plenty of attacks, but Sarah’s been through it all before and now kills with revenge and hate on her side. Then there’s the sheriff, adept at performing one idiotic stunt after another (like firing his gun, which caused an avalanche), and just as he’s about to get his just desserts, here comes Juno to save the day.

Oh, sorry about spoiling that for you. But it’s so stupid, yeah? When we last saw Juno, she had a pick axe through her leg and was being attack by a handful of monsters. So she should be dead, but here she is, relatively clean, I might add, with a bit of a limp. How did she manage to survive? Who knows. That is obviously not important. Then Sarah and the deputy show up, and Juno hasn’t forgotten what Sarah did to her. So they fight. But then they make up because, let’s face it, Juno did sleep with her husband, so the pick axe thing seems like a reasonable response. They agree to work together to survive and escape, but the bright-minded sheriff puts a kink in that plan by handcuffing himself and Sarah together. Really, idiot? You still think she killed Juno when monsters are attacking you and Juno is alive? Also, how easy do you think it’ll be to move around in the caves when you’re handcuffed to someone? Come on! Well, he finds out pretty quickly how stupid a move that was when he falls and the girls decide to chop his arm off in order to save themselves. Good-bye, numb nuts.

It all winds up with some sort of female show of solidarity, with Juno dying while fighting to save Sarah and the deputy, and then Sarah sacrificing herself so the deputy can escape. I have to say, the concept is a pretty interesting one, playing on the whole claustrophobic thing, and the monsters were dope. There’s a lot more blood in the second one, but the first one had a better atmosphere. In fact, if part one took a quicker route to the action like part two did, it would’ve been all right. I’d like to think that part two would’ve worked better if they cut out all the shit that just went against common sense, but then there wouldn’t be much of a movie left. Also, the way this one ended, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a part three on the way.

Check out the trailers for The Descent and The Descent: Part Two!

It was George Romero’s 70th birthday on Wednesday, so the wife and I celebrated by watching Night of the Living Dead. The original 1968 version, of course. It’s strange how on his birthday we’re the ones who get such a nice present. Anyway, I really love watching old horror movies because, more than anything, they’re good for a laugh. We’re so used to trillion dollar budgets and CGI this and green-screen that nowadays that when we come across something archaic and raw like a movie from the 60s, it seems comical in comparison. And most times it is, but that’s really not the case with Night of the Living Dead.

It’s amazing what superb lighting, clever camera angles, and chocolate syrup can do. I’ll compare Night of the Living Dead to The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (since it’s freshest in my mind), where the latter was shot as though it was a theater performance on film. Everything was stationary and static. The actors moved as if on a stage. Romero’s classic, however, just six years later, shows remarkable visionary achievements. There’s real chills created in the shots alone. Throw some zombies into the mix and it’s one hell of a movie, even if it is 42 years old. It also stands as the benchmark in zombie movie mania (even though the word zombie is never mentioned once in the movie). It is the one. Everything we know and understand about the undead is established in Night of the Living Dead; their penchant for human flesh, how to kill them, the downside of being bitten by one, the confusion and fighting amongst the people trying to avoid being eaten, etc. But I think I’m telling you stuff you already know.

For those that don’t know, here’s how it all started. Siblings Barbara and Johnny are visiting their father’s grave when a zombie attacks them. Barbara escapes, but Johnny isn’t so lucky. Barbara takes shelter at a nearby house whose owner has perished, likely eaten by a zombie. Then this dude, Ben, shows up (he’s also trying to avoid being eaten) and together they board up the house and hope for the best. Actually, Ben does most of the boarding up; Barbara spends the rest of the movie in a catatonic state. Then two dudes pop out of the basement. They had also taken shelter in the house and had been hiding in the basement with their women (and a sick child) until the madness was over. Well, the madness is only escalating. They turn on the TV and the radio to learn about the mass murders sweeping the land at the hands of the undead, or ghouls, likely due to some radioactive contaminants from an exploded space probe.

So the people in the house argue over how to proceed and finally they decide that some of them will try for a bone dry car, fill it up at the house’s gas pump, and then grab everyone else and make a break for it. It was a good plan in theory, but it didn’t quite work out, and now the zombies have made their way into the house and the sick girl in the basement wants in on the flesh-eating action. The only one left by sun-up is Ben, but when the local authorities make their zombie-killing rounds, they shoot Ben because they think he’s a zombie. Oops.

There you have it, the grandfather of all zombie movies, and while it has a few are-you-kidding-moments, it’s nowhere near the kind of chuckle-fest most of these old horror movies are prone to be. No, Night of the Living Dead is a masterful, original, apocalyptic triumph concerning the reanimation of the recently dead. Fuck yeah.

So you know what you’re going to do now, right? Yeah, you’re going to watch Night of the Living Dead right here!