Michael Scrutchin

Michael Scrutchin

"Good... Bad... I'm the guy with the gun. --Ash (Bruce Campbell), Army of Darkness"

Agrees with the Tomatometer 71% of the time.

Biography:
Michael is a writer and film buff from Houston, Texas. In early 2000 he started Flipside Movie Emporium (www.flipsidemovies.com), a film website that covers current Hollywood films as well as the indies and B-movies that don't get any respect in mainstream media. A former member of the Online Film Critics Society (accepted in October 2001), he resigned in March 2004 for not keeping up with the society's required review quota (although he intends to return to the OFCS in the near future when he's back up to speed). He also writes screenplays and short stories, some of which are available at cinemascribe.com, his personal site.
Favorites:
  • The Apartment (Wilder, 1960)
  • The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler, 1946)
  • Bride of Frankenstein (Whale, 1935)
  • Brief Encounter (Lean, 1946)
  • Carnival of Souls (Harvey, 1962)
  • Carrie (De Palma, 1976)
  • City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)
  • Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)
  • Dawn of the Dead (Romero, 1978)
  • Dazed and Confused (Linklater, 1993)
  • Heavenly Creatures (Jackson, 1994)
  • The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941)
  • Magnolia (Anderson, 1999)
  • Manhattan (Allen, 1979)
  • My Life to Live (Godard, 1962)
  • Nashville (Altman, 1975)
  • Playtime (Tati, 1967)
  • Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)
  • Say Anything (Crowe, 1989)
  • The Shining (Kubrick, 1980)
  • A Simple Plan (Raimi, 1998)
  • Something Wild (Demme, 1986)
  • Stolen Kisses (Truffaut, 1968)
  • Sunrise (Murnau, 1927)
  • Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)
  • Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Lynch, 1992)
  • Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
  • Wes Craven's New Nightmare (Craven, 1994)
  • Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 1957)
  • Written on the Wind (Sirk, 1956)
  • Publications:
    Flipside Movie Emporium
    Total Reviews:
    166
    Total QuickRatings:
    2
    Location:
    Pearland, Texas

    Worst Reviewed Films

    Showing 1 - 50 of 166
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    Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
    D- —— House That Screamed (2000) " To say that it's shockingly incompetent on every conceivable level would be an understatement, but at least it seems like it's trying." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Apr 1, 2003
    D- —— Satan's School For Lust (2002) " Surprisingly dull lesbian sex scenes." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Jan 22, 2003
    D- —— Third Society () " There are a few moments of laugh-out-loud bad movie hilarity that almost make it worth it. Almost." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Apr 26, 2002
    D —— Vampira/Night Vamps (2003) " B-movie aficionados shouldn't bother, but those seeking bargain-basement titillation may find plenty to enjoy here. I didn't." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Jun 10, 2003
    D —— Maniacal () " At the very least this film may be a gorehound's wet dream with all the surprisingly well-executed exploding heads, neck-slashings, eye-gougings, and disembowelings. Much of it looks ridiculously fake, but Herschell Gordon Lewis would be proud." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Jan 20, 2003
    D —— Mari-Cookie and the Killer Tarantula in 8 Legs to Love You (2001) " Everything is bathed in red light -- groovy, huh?" — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Sep 20, 2002
    D —— I Spit On Your Corpse, I Piss On Your Grave (2002) " A soulless exercise in depravity made to cash in on the sleaze market." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Jun 27, 2002
    D —— Mummy Raider (2002) " For those of you looking for your softcore lesbian porn fix, I'd suggest looking elsewhere." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Jun 25, 2002
    D —— The Double-D Avenger (2001) " It's a bad movie and it's supposed to be, but it never reaches the point where it becomes so bad that it's good. It's just bad. Period." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Jan 2, 2002
    D+ —— Legend of the Mummy (Bram Stoker's The Mummy) (1998) " [A] plodding, lifeless bore -- a limp supernatural slasher that plays out against the backdrop of a stuffy drawing-room melodrama." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 31, 2004
    D+ —— Hell Asylum (2002) " The gore flows like wine, showering us with a nice supply of spilled innards, but the violence has very little impact." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Jun 25, 2002
    D+ 48% Me, Myself & Irene (2000) " Sure, toilet humor, dildo jokes, and gags about big boobs can be funny -- so why wasn't I laughing?" — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    D+ 17% Whatever It Takes (2000) " A dumb, derivative teen comedy." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    D+ 16% The Astronaut's Wife (1999) " It's eye candy that'll lure you right to sleep." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    D+ 40% Vampire's Seduction (1998) " Little more than a tease." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    C- 36% 21 (2008) " I probably should have given it a lower grade, but I really, really like watching Laurence Fishburne hurt people." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Mar 28, 2008
    C- —— The Undertow (2008) " For half of its 79-minute running time, The Undertow meanders without tension, and then it nosedives into ineffectual, over-the-top savagery." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted May 17, 2005
    C- 69% Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (2002) " Miller's tendency to tell more than show -- and even to tell when showing -- robs Personal Velocity of the intimacy it might have had, and suggests a writer so in love with her own prose that she can't let any of it go." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Dec 31, 2002
    C- —— Alien Agenda: Under the Skin () " This one has charm in a Mystery Science Theater kinda way, but it's not enough to let me recommend it." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted May 22, 2002
    C- 34% Resident Evil (2002) " A loud, annoying, and gloriously dumb action-horror movie that might have been a good popcorn flick if it were more fun." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Mar 24, 2002
    C- 33% Leprechaun in the Hood (2000) " Most of the acting is pretty poor, but Ice-T seems to be aware that this is nothing more than a lame B-movie and he has fun with it." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    C- 85% Chuck & Buck (2000) " It seems the filmmakers are shooting for that Todd Solondz brand of twisted dark humor, but here it just feels really, really wrong." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    C- 39% Black and White (2002) " A sprawling mess of a movie hampered by its own clueless ambition." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    C- —— Shivers (1999) " Even ambition can't save this one from its clichéd origins and long stretches of dull." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    C- —— Slaughterhouse (1999) " A run-of-the-mill bad '80s slasher movie." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    C 43% The Rules of Attraction (2002) " The most fascinating thing about The Rules of Attraction is how much noise it makes for a film with nothing much to say." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Apr 10, 2003
    C —— Meat Market (2001) " How can a film that pits two super-cool rebels, three lesbian vampires, and a masked Mexican wrestler against a world overrun by flesh-eating zombies feel so uninspired?" — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Dec 16, 2002
    C —— Deathbed (2002) " Dismisses serious, potentially affecting subject matter in favor of tired horror-movie conventions, cheap scares, and a climax that descends into wild, gory B-movie absurdity." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Nov 10, 2002
    C 58% Fade to Black (2004) " A darkly comic thriller with a good script and some kick-ass dialogue, but it's hampered by its budgetary limitations." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Jun 25, 2002
    C —— Scary Tales () " Admirable attempt at making a good old-fashioned comedic horror anthology, even if the results feel distinctly run-of-the-mill and lacking punch." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Mar 13, 2002
    C —— Alien Agenda: Endangered Species (1998) " Just wait till you see the computer-generated flying saucers. Ed Wood would have been proud." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    C 24% Loser (2000) " Perfectly watchable, sometimes sweet, but ultimately forgettable." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    C 47% The Perfect Storm (2000) " Only occasionally achieves the edge-of-your-seat queasiness that it tries to maintain throughout it's turbulent second half." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    C 69% Keeping the Faith (2000) " Mildly amusing most of the way through, but its laughs are few and far between." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    C 36% Scream 3 (2000) " Seems more like a straight-up parody of its predecessors than a true sequel." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    C 71% Bringing Out the Dead (1999) " When the credits start rolling after Bringing Out the Dead's final gloomy shot, it feels like Scorsese just ran out of film." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    C+ —— Creep (2004) " As pure exploitative slasher-movie trash, it serves its purpose." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Jun 18, 2005
    C+ —— Living Hell (2004) " Living Hell's fun sense of dread gets tripped up in an increasingly contrived plotline, numbing scenes of physical torture, and a last-act nosedive into absurdity." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 25, 2004
    C+ —— Truth or Dare?: A Critical Madness (1986) " For all its unbelievably bad acting, cheesy violence, and eye-popping inconsistencies, Truth or Dare is so bad it's actually pretty damned entertaining." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Jul 14, 2003
    C+ 40% Três Marias, As, (The Three Marias) (2002) " While there's a stirring sense of urgency and purpose that drives the first act, a plodding pace and stagnant character development do nothing to keep things engaging as it ambles toward its predictable conclusion." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted May 30, 2003
    C+ 17% House of 1000 Corpses (2003) " A campy tribute to gritty '70s horror and exploitation that struggles to find its own voice and occasionally uncovers it, but relies too heavily on echoes from the past." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Apr 14, 2003
    C+ —— Lord of the Strings (2003) " As dimwitted and juvenile as most of Seduction Cinema's other Hollywood movie parodies filled with girl-on-girl sex and rampant nudity. But it has enough goofy charm to keep it from the trash heap." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Mar 11, 2003
    C+ —— 531 () " This indie film's fusion of psychological drama and silly humor doesn't quite work, but at least it's an interesting failure." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Jun 26, 2002
    C+ —— Play-Mate of the Apes (2002) " There's many lengthy lesbian sex scenes peppering the lowbrow comedy antics. I shamefully admit I laughed more than I thought I would." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Jun 25, 2002
    C+ 40% The Tunnel () " It's like a weird dream -- the kind you just have to tell your best friend about after waking up, but then can't seem to remember much about an hour later." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Jun 25, 2002
    C+ —— Blood for the Muse () " Many of the actors in bit roles are pretty bad and render moments of an otherwise somber horror film laughable." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Jun 25, 2002
    C+ —— Witchouse 3: Demon Fire (2002) " Well-made forgettable fun and not much more." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Feb 20, 2002
    C+ —— Bone Yard (1991) " It turns into a gooey monster fest about halfway through and the creepy atmosphere it established in the beginning is lost, making way for that hilarious mutant poodle." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    C+ —— The Vault (2004) " The screenwriters follow the kids-trapped-in-a-big-scary-place formula to a tee." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    C+ —— Horrorvision (2001) " HorrorVision has enough energy and visual pizzazz to ensure that it's never boring -- though it's never quite engaging, either." — Flipside Movie Emporium
    Posted Oct 24, 2001
    Showing 1 - 50 of 166
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