31 Days of Horror #5

13. Dead Snow (2009) Zombies are bad and everything, but surely you would agree that NAZI zombies are, like, super-bad! SUch is the premise of this dull Norwegian thriller, in which the standard group of young people are camping out in a cabin where nobody can find them and are attacked by monsters. In this case, these are cursed monsters who are revived when the kids find a box of treasure that the nazis had stolen from the locals during World War II. The idea has the potential of being fun, but nothing at all is done with it. The kids are without personalities, like chickens waiting to get slaughtered. And when the time comes for carnage, it is very messy, but very boring. Nothing about the attack scenes or the ones when everybody left fights back are creative or thrilling. They just happen in stereotypical slasher fashion, which isn't as fun as a nazi zombie movie deserves to be. (I hear that the sequel is an improvement, but I probably won't bother to find out.) C-

14. I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Made at the height of the sci-fi monster craze, but without any big stars or budget, this quirky little thriller was released as the second half of a double feature with 'The Blob,' forgotten for decades, then revived as a genuine cult classic. There's a lot of fun to be had here, including a lot of strange humor that you wouldn't normally find in these campy horror stories that want to be taken seriously. But since the plot is as ridiculous as these things usually are, aliens are taking over the men of Earth to mate with their women, the sense of the humor that the movie has helps make it entertaining, whereas the stone-faced route might have made it all too silly to swallow. Curiously, the approach of the film, in which we know much more than the freaked out heroine, does allow for some genuine suspense. The increasing paranoia of our main character builds to a satisfyingly calm and complete climax. No ill-advised sequels here! B