Gregg Gibbs Movies
- 2009
A haunted, hard-drinking criminal profiler tracks a masked serial killer intent on driving him insane in this gritty horror thriller featuring Kevin Pollak and Dwight Yoakam. When Russell Spivey was just a young boy, his mother committed suicide. Shortly thereafter, his father drank himself to death. Today, Russell battles alcoholism while getting into the minds of the sickest psychopaths around. But when the killer Russell is currently tracking decides to get personal, the determined investigator must confront his own demons in order to solve his most difficult case to date. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
The eccentric American icon Long Gone John continues to weather a myriad of labels and roles; Gregg Gibbs's reverential documentary The Treasures of Long Gone John examines multiple facets of John's life, with a tripartite emphasis. Gibbs first explores John's work as an indie music mogul and the founder of the seminal Sympathy for the Record Industry - the grassroots record label that beget such mainstream bands as The White Stripes, The Lazy Cowgirls, and (very briefly) Hole; to this end, the picture's soundtrack packs in recordings by several Sympathy-produced artists, including: Shag, Coup, The Pizz, Dave Pressler and The Poubelle Twins. The film's second touchstone explores John's hobby as a collector of pop culture memorabilia, ad nauseum -- amassing everything from Ed Wood's script for Plan 9 From Outer Space, to pill bottles of noted personalities, which he obtained by sorting through celebrity garbage cans. And finally, Gibbs explores John's accomplishments as progenitor of the "lowbrow art movement" - the school that, per its name, takes objects and creations deemed ugly or pedestrian by connoisseurs and reassigns them with exorbitant cultural value and worth, by virtue of their lack of it. In addition to standard visits with John and glimpses of his collections and creations, Gibbs also works in time-lapse and animated sequences. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
A real-life series of killings that held Los Angeles, CA, in the grip of fear during the late '70s provides the inspiration for this tense crime drama. Kenneth Bianchi (C. Thomas Howell) is a nebbishy security guard who lives with his mother in Rochester, NY, and dreams of becoming a police officer. After Bianchi's application to join the Rochester police is turned town, he takes his mother's advice and moves out to Glendale, CA, where she arranges for him to stay with his cousin, Angelo Buono (Nicholas Turturro), who works in auto repair. When he's unable to get a position with the Glendale Police Department, Bianchi steps outside the law and, claiming to have a degree in psychology and a license to practice, sets up shop as a counselor. While Bianchi never had much luck with women in Rochester, Buono gives him some advice and sets him up on a few dates; soon Bianchi has a string of girlfriends, though things become complicated when one of his steady girls, Claire Shelton (Allison Lange), becomes pregnant and moves in with him. As Bianchi becomes increasingly obsessed with sex, he and his cousin join forces to set up a prostitution ring, which quickly earns them the enmity of a group of career criminals. When Bianchi and Buono discover that they have been double crossed by one of the hookers in their stable, the two men rape and murder the woman in the back of a car; Bianchi discovers he enjoys the thrill of killing, and soon he and Buono begin committing a string of sexually tinged murders throughout the Los Angeles area, with the press soon dubbing the culprit "The Hillside Strangler." The Hillside Strangler was one of two identically titled films based on the same true story that were released in 2004; the other was directed by Chris Fisher and starred Clifton Collins Jr. and Tomas Arana as Bianchi and Buono. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- C. Thomas Howell, Nicholas Turturro, (more)
Taking his cue from such 1970s horror classics as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977), animated rocker Rob Zombie goes celluloid with the throwback shocker House of 1000 Corpses. Running low on gas as they travel the highways of America in search of the ultimate roadside attraction, a group of teens pull into Captain Spaulding's (Sid Haig) museum of oddities (which also offers fried chicken and gasoline) only to become obsessed with uncovering the mystery of a legendary local maniac known only as Dr. Satan. When an attractive and mysterious hitchhiker subsequently offers to give the thrill seekers a personal tour of Dr. Satan's old stabbing grounds, a breakdown forces them to take refuge with a group of menacing oddballs as a fearsome storm rages outside. As the evening progresses and the backwoods hosts' Halloween festivities become ever more threatening, the teens soon realize that the legend of Dr. Satan may hold a bit more contemporary weight than any of them had previously thought. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, (more)
