ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

pointyfilippa The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Paul Andrews Cemetery Gates is set in Los Angeles where two dumb environmentalists named Alex (Stephen Van Dorn) & Ben (Greg McDonald) break into a top secret research laboratory where they find a large crate with some sort of animal inside that they feel compelled to release into the wild rather than let it be experimented on. Unfortunately the animal inside the crate turns out to be a seven foot tall mutated Tasmanian Devil named Precious that likes to kill & eat people & now it's loose in a national park. Student amateur filmmaker Hunter Belmont (Peter Stickles) & some of his buddies drive out to an old cemetery where he intends to shoot some of his low budget zombie horror film 'The Cemetery Gates' but the filmmakers soon find themselves under attack from the mutated creature...Directed by Roy Knyrim this is a fairly decent if unspectacular 'Creature Feature' with slightly more gore than one might expect, if nothing else it's probably better than the majority of the 'Creature Feature' turds that the Sci-Fi Channel show at least. The film is maybe best described as a creature feature mixed with a little teen slasher as the first hour or so of Cemetery Gates consists of various teens being introduced & then killed off by the creature, every excuse is here from people needing to pee to cars breaking down to same random woman on a push bike who all get introduced then killed off within minutes. The main character's are a bit dull except fro blonde bimbo August who gets a few amusing lines, looks good & gets her breasts out a couple of times. The story behind the mutated Tasmanian Devil is poor with vague explanations about trying to reproduce it's immune system or something like that & if I was an animal activist I think I would actually take a look inside the crate to see what was making those loud roaring noises before trying to release it into the wild, you know what I mean? To be fair to Cemtery Gates it never tries to be anything other than a fun 'Creature Feature' with a fast pace & plenty of gory kills but it's nothing new, it's predictable & does get repetitive. It's watchable enough thanks to a fair amount of blood & some nudity but I will have probably forgotten all about it by the end of the week.The highlight of Cemtery gates has to be the blood & gore set-pieces with ripped out spines, torn off limbs, mutilated bodies, decapitations, bit throats, squashed heads, people bitten in half & lots of spurting blood. The creature itself looks poor as it's obviously just some guy in a suit, it's eyes & mouth never move & you can tell it's just a static face mask. There's some very poor physics going on at the end as various people fall down holes & then manage to climb back out again, these scenes don't really work & when the climax in the dark tunnels come & the filmmakers actually try to generate tension it falls apart with bad effects & annoying character's who make stupid decisions, the film works much batter as an out & out splatter gore 'Creature Feature'.With a supposed budget of close to a million Cemtery gates looks alright for a low budget horror, it's professionally made at least even if it does look a little made for telly-ish. Special make-up effects guys Greg Nicotero & Howard Berger makes cameos while a balding & fat Reggie Bannister of Phantasm (1979) & sequels 'fame' turns up here sporting a ridiculous pony tail.Cemetery Gates is a decent enough 'Creature Feature' that spends most of it's time killing off insignificant character's in gory ways & there's nothing wrong with that I say but it does get repetitive & a poor looking creature doesn't help credibility. Not too bad but not that great either, watchable if nothing else.

FilmFatale Strange little movie that's half pretty good mutant sci-fi horror and half stupid spoofy horror-comedy. Which is too bad, because it could have been pretty good if it had played it straight.Concerns Precious, a Tasmanian Devil that had been a pet and is then de-evolved by the lead character's scientist father. Precious is liberated by an animal rights group and then goes on a killing spree in a cemetery. Where, coincidentally, its now grown friend is shooting a horror movie. The humor is gross - all potty fun with one stoner character who is always going to the bathroom and three other unlikeable members of the crew making dumb sex jokes. But the science part is actually pretty interesting and could (and SHOULD) have stood alone without the crass attempts at humor.For genre fans, Reggie Bannister appears as the scientist and FX gurus Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger play two hippie victims. Overall, this is more frustrating for what it could have been than what it actually ends up being.

theNomad Firstly I guess most people expected a zombie film with a title like Cemetery Gates, its not this is a fun retro slice of b-movie cheese. About a Tasmanian Devil. Basically its a blood and boobs, gore ridden mutant creature feature with enough throwaway dialogue to please the MST3K style so bad its good fans.I mean sure this won't be in many top 10 Horror films of 2006/07 list/polls. But I bet out of the films that do take up those top 10 places, few are going to be as much fun as this one is.Reggie Bannister is a bona fide cult hero period, for that alone horror/cult genre fans need to dig this out at some point or other.Its been a pretty good 12 months for creature features. I gave this an above average 6/10.

lordzedd-3 Okay, where to begin. I liked the design of the mutant Tazmanian Devil and Reggie Bannister of the Phantasm movies does a great job as the Doctor. But there seemed to be a cheap feeling through the whole movie. Here's one dumb question, why wasn't "Prescious" in a cage when transporting her? Why was she allowed to run around loose in the back of a truck? Problem two, Prescious never blinked and one of the eyes could blink and lastly with the problems, the crooks seemed tacked on. Like they were afraid they were going to run out of bodies before the end of the movie. Being a horror writer I know how that feels. But instead of throwing more bodies in the meat grinder, perhaps they could have refined the story and characters more. But it does have it redeeming qualities and I think it's a fair movie considering the budget was a mere $ 930,000 to begin with. 5 STARS.