A double feature of killer bunny Easter slashers!

It’s two more killer bunny flicks to add to the complete holiday horror page. There’s even a drag queen in each movie, landing them both on the does the gay guy die? page as well. But are these two movies a basket full of fun?

EASTER EVIL (2024)

Be warned, this is a loooooow budget film intentionally filmed with a 1970s campy trash quality…while looking like it takes place in the 1960s.

A hooker named bunny and her erotic dancer friend Trinity (played by a drag queen) hang out in a hotel room for a majority of this 72-minute film. Their dialogue about their jobs, aspirations, and men fail to bring any humor, so it’s not entertaining at all. Bunny does have one dream about a guy in a bunny costume to break up the monotony.

Eventually the girls go out to get Easter eggs. While they’re gone, a pervy room service guy comes into the room and is killed by the bunny man.

The girls return for some more filler—exercise, dance, and pillow fight montages. Eventually they discover the bunny man is in their room and some fighting ensues.

No body count, no comedy, no scares…not even the kind of crass material you might expect from a movie about a hooker and a drag queen erotic dancer in a sleazy hotel. The simple premise just begs for over-the-top absurdity, but we don’t even get that.

EASTER BLOODY EASTER (2024)

This big killer bunny has little red-eyed minion bunnies and is trying to take out a town full of churchgoers. Yay!

Our leading lady and director of the film is Diane Foster, who was the star of The Orphan Killer and its sequel. As the town prepares for its big Easterpalooza celebration, her husband goes missing and people start turning up dead.

One redneck who seems like a conspiracy theorist is actually right…it’s the work of supernatural entity Jackalope, first conjured by a woman decades before when she merely wanted her kids to experience a visit from the Easter bunny.

As the main girl and her friends put the pieces together and try to hunt down the bunny, Easterpalooza goes on. The big dance starts with a Bunny Hop montage led by the town’s gay boy dressed in Playboy bunny drag. In fact, this little redneck town is shockingly colorful and diverse…

The rest of the segment at the dance slows the otherwise fast-paced film down for a while, as do some dream sequences the main girl has. The film didn’t need to be 103 minutes long. But things pick up when an Easter egg hunt turns into a massacre! The big bunny looks awesomely evil, and his minions are good for a chuckle (they give off Critters vibes).

All the main characters end up battling bunnies in the woods in the final act, but then the film drags on for a bit too long after it, with nothing really happening. Not sure what they were trying to accomplish with the few final drawn out scenes. Even so, this is mostly a good one to watch if you’re doing a killer bunny movie marathon on Easter weekend.

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TUBI TERRORS with a side of laughs?

This trio of indies vacillated between trying to be funny but not delivering, and trying not to be funny but making me laugh.

MURDERCISE (2023)

The first few minutes of a Murdercise bombard us with 80s neon, spandex, leg warmers, a synth score, and an aerobics class.

A few minutes later, a woman is killed in her home before we get to the focus of the plot…the making of an exercise video with a bunch of slutty babes and one uptight girl, our leading lady.

Murdercise is intentionally cheesy in its effort to give off an 80s female exploitation slasher vibe, but it doesn’t quite hit with its attempts at humor. The highlight is one bimbo with huge boobs. She absolutely steals the show when she throws a tantrum because horror bear Drew Marvick (sporting Daisy Dukes and a crop top) won’t look at or touch her tits. The rest of the movie really needed to live up to this level of silly comedy.

As for the slashing, it’s not your usual format. The goody-goody girl, becoming more and more furious at how sexualized the video shoot is, starts to kill off all the skanky girls. Unfortunately, there aren’t many kills, they aren’t designed to be scary, and only one delivers on some good gore, with practical effects!

However, the film has a side story—there have already been a series of murders around town, and the cops are on the beat. When they show up at the studio, shit suddenly gets wild, with the girls working together to take down the other killer. Practical gore effects abound, and a chainsaw even gets in on the action. We even get an appearance by adult film royalty Ginger Lynn, plus some phobic jabs at the masculinity and heterosexuality of the cops, bringing old warm and fuzzy feelings of being a gay teen in the 80s flooding back.

But seriously, the final act rox, and I just wish the whole film had delivered this kind of midnight movie horror vibe.

SUMMERHOUSE SLAUGHTER (2023)

This cheerleader camp slasher film runs only an hour long yet still fails to fully develop the presence of its killer. Basically, “furry” slashers are all the rage these days, so this killer jumps on the bandwagon and puts on a panda suit. It has absolutely nothing to do with a mascot costume, which would make sense. And brace yourself…this is touted as a sequel to the 1988 classic Cheerleader Camp. Sigh.

The film sets us up for the perfect campy/sleazy slasher plot—after a sprinkler acid accident takes out a whole cheerleading team (it’s rather funny watching them all drop at once), a new team comes to cheerleading camp, and soon someone in a panda suit is killing them off. We even get the original young Jason Voorhees Ari Lehman as a pervy caretaker.

And yet, the pervy caretaker is barely in the movie and his red herring role isn’t exploited to give us peeps at showering cheerleaders or topless pillow fights. There’s also a young shirtless pretty boy on-site who makes a bizarre yet enticing entrance…and is then never seen again. WTF?

No nudity, no sexploitation, and as with many low budget indie films, it’s hard to tell if the movie is trying to be funny and mostly failing…or if the few scenes that give you a laugh were even meant to.

There are kills, and some of them are satisfying for a low budget film. For instance, there’s a nice killer POV moment leading up to an eye gouging scene, and a death by plunger scene in a tight shot in a tub with no score to fill  the sound void is actually effective. But the kills stop rather quickly when the girls realize a killer is out there. And then…the movie comes to a screeching halt as the girls just sit around trying to figure out what they should do to survive. The pacing is also hurt by totally pointless interruptions by a horror hostess. Sigh.

The final girl gets a chase scene, but as is always the case, setting a horror scene to metal music kills any sense of tension or atmosphere. But the final fight with the panda gave me a chuckle. However, like I said above, I don’t know if that was the intent.

SLAUGHTER BEACH (2022)

I know what movie you watched last summer…and then used as inspiration to make an indie killer fisherman comedy duo movie.

The problem with the movie? The comedy duo. It was refreshing to see the two leads were a Black guy and an Asian dude, but somewhere along the line something went wrong. This pair has no charisma, there’s no chemistry between them, there’s no comedic talent on display. There’s not even any funny material for them to work with.

The real star here is the fisherman. He’s not hidden from view—we see his face right from the start. He also delivers one-liners like some sort of late 80s/early 90s slasher killer as he slices and dices up victims on the boardwalk.

Which leads to the other star of the film: the death scenes. This is all bloody, violent fun with practical effects. The fisherman even goes on a rampage during a murder montage at one point…set to rock music. Sigh. But I can overlook the choice of rock music because the kills…rock.

It’s unfortunate that our two main guys, a couple of jobless friends who decide they are going to protect the boardwalk from the killer and solve the case, play such an insignificant role in bolstering the fun of this movie.

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TUBI TERRORS: who or what is killing queers?

Vampires, an infamous serial killer, and a masked psycho—it’s a trio of movies for the homo horror movies page!

SLAY (2024)

Slay could easily have been titled In Drag Til Dawn. This queer vampire flick is somewhat of a love letter to From Dusk Til Dawn, even referencing the film in its meta banter. I was expecting a cheesy, low budget, campy drag queen movie that looked like it was shot on video, but this is a genuine vampire flick despite budget constraints. For instance, there’s some CGI blood during gun fights, and even a scene poking fun at how the film couldn’t afford to show us all the action—very clever, but not even an apology that’s needed, because it’s clear a load of talent and creativity went into this one. I’ve yet to see a Tubi original come to physical media, but I hope Slay does so I can add it to my gay horror collection.

Before I even begin discussing the movie, I have to confess that I only know it stars several RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants because the friends we watched it with watch the show…Ink Master and Top Chef are more my and the hubby’s speed. I don’t know where the queens in this cast placed in Ru’s competition, but they all do a great job in this movie.

They arrive at a bar full of rednecks/hillbillies in the middle of nowhere. Turns out there was a mix up in the booking, but the owner lets them perform anyway. They aren’t welcomed at first…and neither are the vampires that show up. Awesome.

A freaky master vampire’s first bite starts a chain reaction of bar patrons turning vamp. Now it’s up to the queens and rednecks to band together to fight off the fangs.

This is such a great flick to watch with a group on movie night. The vampire action is a blast, and the cast is absolutely lovable. And of course there’s a mild message of acceptance and tolerance, intertwined with the idea of becoming a vampire.

The look of those who become vampires is good enough to distinguish them from the mortals (although their red eyes are CGI), but the vampire who absolutely delivers as far as performances go is this dude.

He plays a vampire like nobody’s business, and he gets an intense scene in a vent. Eek!

I will say that at 98 minutes long, the film—um—drags a bit in the middle, but once it picks back up for the final act, it’s party time. I was also impressed that the filmmakers were able to secure the rights for the drag queens to perform to Cardi B’s “WAP”.

As for the comedy, I felt that it was the straight cis characters that got most of the funny lines. I can’t believe I have to give more credit to hillbillies than homos in a queer horror movie, but unfortunately, the queens are predominantly relegated to the usual tired, cliché drag queen humor. I can’t even count the amount of times the sexual innuendo of “suck” is used for jokes in which queens are referencing the vampires. This has long been the type of humor associated with and expected from drag queens, but it is just way too obvious and simple for my taste—it’s the kind of shtick that has been used to pander to drag show audiences, mostly straight, for decades.

GACY: SERIAL KILLER NEXT DOOR (2024)

Like Fright Night and Disturbia, this is a movie about a teenage boy who realizes there’s a monster living next door. In this case, it’s John Wayne Gacy.

There was no need to use Gacy as the threat next door in this derivative film, because it easily could have just been about a teen boy who realizes his neighbor is a gay serial killer. Sadly, Gacy’s name is a money maker, plus, using a notorious real life gay serial killer as the subject helps avoid backlash from making a movie about a fictional gay serial killer who picks up and kills tricks.

That is what might disappoint those who are tantalized by the graphic details of killers such as Gacy. This film does not exploit the truth at all. The most we see is Gacy handcuffing, chocking, and stabbing victims, and even that is pretty tame. There is no suggestion of the horrific sexual assaults he committed on his victims.

While this is a predictable flick, what is notable is that it speaks to the idea that young people are never believed. The main kid is afraid to tell any adults what he witnessed through his bedroom window, and when he tells his parents, they make him out to look like the problem. Also highlighted is the idea that we refuse to accept the horror that can be perpetrated by the upstanding neighbor next door. Gacy is a beloved member of the community, dresses as Pogo the clown at kids’ parties, and even works for the Democratic Party…because, you know, democrats are never criminals!

The film could have been so much more than it is if it had written the lead teenage boy as gay or questioning—there’s so much that could have been explored about the fears and conflicts about coming out when you realize the boy-loving man next door is a monster. I’d say the most exciting parts of this fictional horror movie based on reality include the main kid sneaking into Gacy’s crawlspace to take photos of the dead bodies and Gacy making his way into the kid’s house to abduct him…while he’s showering. Eek!

REUNION FROM HELL 2 (2022)

A gay slasher gets a gay Christmas slasher sequel. Yay!

I have to admit, I didn’t find the first film compelling enough to warrant a sequel, and the main character Riley, played by the writer/director of both movies, comes across as totally unlikable and self-centered in the second film.

This time around, Riley gathers a new set of friends together (since the first ones are all dead) to go to a cabin in the woods for Christmas. He’s trying to avoid an aggressive reporter, played by Elm Street 2‘s Mark Patton.

This could be considered a “reunion” movie, because when they arrive at the cabin they are greeted by Riley’s mother (Lisa Wilcox of Elm Street 4 and 5), who has a trio of surprises—Riley’s uncle, the hot sheriff from the first film, and Riley’s ex-boyfriend are all there to celebrate Christmas.

While this is a bit more polished than the first film, there are still awkward filler scenes of the friends just sitting around and talking, adding nothing to the progression of the story. Editing some of those sequences out would have streamlined the movie and helped with pacing. The main focus beyond all the white noise is that Riley is still traumatized by the events of the first film, has cool, gory nightmares, and is also dealing with tension between his ex and the new guy he has been dating.

Mark Patton lurks around trying to get some dirt for his story, there’s a gay sex scene, and there’s one death scene involving deep throating a little fake Christmas tree.

The killer mask is pretty cool, but the body count is low. Basically the whole cast finds out at once that there’s a killer on the loose, and they all band together to fight to the death. For me, the highlight of all the chaos that ensues is a character getting hysterical and then being slapped.

Over all, this feels exactly like what it is—a rough, low budget indie slasher sequel. The gay storyline is perhaps the main reason you might want to give it a try since we don’t get a lot of gay slashers, with the added bonus of it being a Christmas flick that lands it on the holiday horror page.

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STREAM QUEEN: creepy creatures!

There were definitely cool monsters in my latest triple feature, but they pretty much all deserved to be in better movies than the ones we get.

SKY MONSTER (2023)

This 75-minute creature feature doesn’t even reach early 2000s SyFy original levels. It is loaded with terrible effects, absurd plot points, awful dialogue, and actors who seem to want to come across as American but keep forgetting to stifle their British accents.

A dude puts his daughter and her friends on a private plane for her birthday. It’s just them, the captain, and the “hot” flight attendant.

I guess he’s cute, but when you try to hype a dude up by making a point of drawing attention to his non-existent butt when he bends over, it immediately knocks him down a bunch of rungs on the hot ladder for me.

Also of note is that there’s a party montage set to a contemporary song about dancing that reminds you just how horrible “dance” music is these days…this shit is like 20 beats per minute. It’s no wonder the hot dude has no ass—there’s no good music to dance to anymore to build up the buns.

Anyway, the plane flies over the Bermuda Triangle, and this huge CGI octopus creature ends up wrapping itself around a toy plane. Then overlaid tentacle footage starts infiltrating the plane.

It’s a frightening concept in theory, but the execution ruins it. The movie just gets worse and cheaper looking as it progresses, with ridiculous plot holes (for instance, the girls open the door and stand right in the doorway without getting sucked out of the plane), and rescue efforts are absolutely laughable. If you reeeeaaaalllllly miss bad SyFy films, save this one for a rainy Sunday.

THE HUSBAND (2023)

Not sure if this low budget indie started off as a short, but it feels like a short film that was expanded into a full-length feature and should have stayed a short. You will spend a majority of this movie thinking this was miscategorized as a horror movie on IMDb.

It is over an hour of low energy, verbally and emotionally abusive relationship drama between a woman and her husband. We get endless demonstrations of how he controls her, she has scenes interacting with friends who urge her to get out of the relationship, and…that’s it. It’s quite honestly insulting how much it hits you over the head with a check list of abuse warning signs.

When she at last goes to a psychic who gets spooked and kicks her out, it finally feels like this might become a horror movie.

66 minutes in, the husband has his thug friends abduct her and take her into the woods. There’s absolutely no explanation why, but a demon woman with long fingernails and a giant, toothy smile lives in a cave there and comes to help her—by killing the guys off swiftly in the course of about five minutes with really bad CGI effects. And that’s the end.

It’s a shame, because there are some eerie sequences with the demon woman, and there’s also a moment when she asks the main woman to be her husband.

It implies that there was the possibility of a great backstory for this demon woman, and the creators simply failed to realize it or just didn’t want to go for it.

THE BREACH (2022)

This one starts off promising…with a cute sheriff delving into the mystery of a gory, mutilated body floating to shore in a canoe.

He assembles a small team to investigate the home of a missing scientist on the other side of the water. Inside they find some Lovecraftian trouble brewing, including a keyhole-shaped door to the edge of reality in the attic.

If only this film had as much sleaze and blood as the Lovecraft adaptations of the late 80s (I’ve even seen it compared to From Beyond on IMDb).

We get a lot of talk and not much action. One of the guys steps into the portal and when he comes out he slowly begins to mutate. Meanwhile, the scientist’s wife, played by the mother from the TV show The Strain, shows up to add her two cents to a plot that never quite makes sense.

I’d say it’s worth watching The Breach for the hot sheriff briefly shirtless and the fricking awesome deformed beings that begin to swarm the house at the end.

The final act is definitely a treat, even if we’re left with a load of unanswered questions. But who really needs answers when there are cool monsters?

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Tales From The Crypt!

It was the very end of the 80s when the horror anthology series Tales From The Crypt premiered on HBO and the Crypt Keeper quickly established himself as a horror icon. Episodes of greed, deceit, and lust leading to gruesome and often campy outcomes were a joy to watch…for a while. Then the show began to run out of steam, and in its last few seasons the creators seemed to forget they were making a horror show. So I’ve rewatched all my DVDs of all seven seasons to make a list of my favorite episodes.

SEASON 1

And All Through The House

The first two episodes premiered on the same night, but the second episode, from massively successful director Robert Zemeckis, was the winner for me…even though it aired in June and it’s a Christmas episode. It’s a remake of the classic killer Santa tale from the original 1972 Tales From The Crypt movie, and Dr. Giggles plays the freaky Santa!

Notable is that for the first episode, the Crypt Keeper was very subdued. He didn’t find his maniacal cackle until this second episode.

Only Sin Deep

Lea Thompson is a vain prostitute who doesn’t believe she’s actually selling her beauty to a shop owner for a large sum of money…until the wrinkles start to appear.

Lover Come Hack to Me

Directed by Tom Holland, this one stars Amanda Plummer as an heiress who just got married to a gold-digging man. On the way to their honeymoon hotel, they are forced off the road by a storm and end up in an abandoned house, and the groom soon finds out there’s a price to pay when marrying for money. This one gets nice and macabre, just the way these tales should be.

Collection Completed

I’m just listing this one as somewhat of a warning to those with pets. After he’s forced into retirement, a man married to Mrs. Roper has to contend with all the pets she’s accumulated over the years while he was at work. It gets very dark…

SEASON 2

Dead Right

Demi Moore is told by a medium that she will marry a man who will inherit a lot of money and then die. I won’t give anything away, but this is how you write a twisted anthology short.

The Switch

Arnold Schwarzenegger directs this episode and makes a cameo with the Crypt Keeper! It’s a tale of an old rich man who resorts to extremes to become a hunk to win the affection of a younger woman. How could it possibly backfire? With a twist, of course.

‘Til Death

While on vacation, a gold-digging dude has a voodoo priestess make a love potion for him to score a rich a woman. He had no idea how strong it would be and how long it would last. My favorite episodes are always the ones involving walking corpses.

Three’s a Crowd

This one delivers a classic horror tale twist. A man who is convinced his woman is cheating on him goes mad with jealousy and rage. It all seems to drag out, but it’s worth it for the zinger ending.

The Thing From the Grave

This one comes from the director of The Monster Squad and Night of the Creeps. Teri Hatcher is a model with an abusive agent boyfriend, who makes it a habit of killing off men he thinks are having an affair with her. It’s another corpse back from the grave story. Wahoo!

For Cryin’ Out Loud

A rock promoter is stealing charity money and soon starts to hear his own conscience, voiced by the late Sam Kinison. This is a body horror gross out episode involving ear canals. Eek! Iggy Pop appears as himself and Katey Sagal appears as a sleazy leather rocker chick in a minor role.

Four-Sided Triangle

Patricia Arquette plays a young woman who works at a couple’s farm and is preyed upon by the man of the house. At the same time, she begins a romance…with a creepy scarecrow! This one is so sleazy violent.

The Ventriloquist’s Dummy

The director of The Omen brings us a tale of Don Rickles as a ventriloquist who gets visited by a fan who idolizes him, played by Bobcat Goldthwait. Bobcat discovers the horrific reason why Don is such a success while he’s a failure. This is how you do an episode.

Judy, You’re Not Yourself Today

Carol Kane plays a woman whose body gets switched with that of a witch. Some nasty witch action at the end.

Fitting Punishment

This is as crypt as it gets. A funeral director who disrespects the bodies he tends to gets classic horror payback in the end.

Korman’s Kalamity

From the director of Jack’s Back, this one stars Harry Anderson of Night Court in a tale of a Tales from the Crypt illustrator who can bring the monsters in the comic book to life. This one is creature camptastic and also stars Cynthia Gibb of Fame and Jack’s Back.

Lower Berth

The show gets so meta for a second episode in a row. This is a tale of how the fricking Crypt Keeper was born in a side show!

Television Terror

At the end of the 80s, a talk show host named Morton Downey Jr. suddenly came on the scene with a short-lived, Saturday night show that was crude, scandalous, and exploitative, and we ate it up.

In this episode he plays a media host planning to tour a haunted house for shock ratings, but his terror becomes the entertainment.

The Secret

Strong final episode for a season, this one is about an orphan boy who is adopted, after which things enter classic monster movie territory.

SEASON 3

Carrion Death

Kyle MacLachlan is a serial killer on the run who ends up handcuffed to a dead cop. Instead of just breaking off the hand (he’s a serial killer, after all), he decides to continue his escape dragging the corpse with him…which attracts a relentless vulture. The payoff is grisly good.

Dead Wait

In this tale directed by Tobe Hooper, a thief wants to steal a precious black pearl. He gets a job on the plantation where it is located and begins making some really bad decisions that lead to freaky voodoo shit and some nasty situations. Vanity and Whoopi Goldberg co-star, which totally gave me good retro vibes, and Whoopi gets a great one-on-one with the Crypt Keeper at the end. Classic.

The Reluctant Vampire

Malcolm McDowell plays a vampire who works at a blood bank so he can spare mortals from dying to satisfy his thirst. Unfortunately, he’s causing a shortage at the blood bank, which could mean a bunch of employees getting laid off. On top of that, there’s a vampire hunter coming for him. This campy tale also stars George Wendt of Cheers and horror icon Michael Berryman and has a delicious twist ending.

Undertaking Palor

This one captures the spirit of 80s Spielberg flicks, especially thanks to the fact that Ke Huy Quan plays one of four boys that sneak into a funeral home and stumble upon a plot to kill people to bring more business to the mortician.

Mournin’ Mess

Directed by the creator of Dr. Giggles, this one stars the subway ghost from Ghost as a homeless man believe to be a serial killer. He offers to reveal the identity of the real killer to Steven Weber, who plays an out of work reporter trying to advocate for the homeless. Weber then gets drawn into a gothic horror nightmare.

Split Second

The director of Razorback brings us a tale of violent jealousy and infidelity starring the killer from Shocker. He owns a lumber camp and married a young bartender…who grows and screws around with one of his pretty boy employees. This has a classic, dark and gruesome twist.

Spoiled

Julie from V – The Mini Series is a bored housewife who lives vicariously through a soap opera because her doctor husband is never home. When the cable guy comes over to hook her up, meta references to cable television start flowing, including the Crypt Keeper popping up on HBO. Anthony LaPaglia plays the cable guy, and he is hunky hot, so they start banging. That’s it. That’s why this one is included on my list of faves. Not very horror, but it does have a campy conclusion though.

SEASON 4

None But the Lonely Heart

Tom Hanks directs, and Treat Williams plays a hunk (no surprise) who marries rich old ladies then kills them for the money. As always, I love when corpses get revenge on bad boys, and these corpses are gnarly!

On a Deadman’s Chest

William Friedkin of The Exorcist fame directs a body horror tale of a rock band called…Exorcist! A groupie turns the leader of the band on to a tattoo artist that gives him a design that seems to have a life of its own.

Beauty Rest

This one comes from the director of Elm Street 3, so it’s no surprise Jennifer Rubin makes an appearance. Mimi Rogers plays an aging woman desperate for a chance to shine, so she enters a beauty contest through nefarious means. This has one twisted and macabre conclusion.

What’s Cookin’

Not the most original plot—a failing restaurant starts doing gangbusters after serving human flesh as steak—but this one has a big cast, including Christopher Reeve, Bess Armstrong, Judd Nelson, and Meat Loaf.

The New Arrival

This one comes from the director of The Changeling, and has a great cast, including David Warner, Zelda Rubenstein, Twiggy, and Robert Patrick. A radio psychologist decides to go to the home of a caller with a troubled child for publicity. Soon he and his team are being terrorized and killed by the “child”. This one is 80s horror movie level good.

Maniac at Large

From the director of Prophecy, this goodie takes place in a library. It stars Blythe Danner, Adam Ant, and Clarence Williams III, and there’s a killer on the loose. The episode is very atmospheric, with the shadowy library making for a perfect setting and creepy characters give it a great whodunit feel. It also has a satisfying conclusion.

Strung Love

The director of Hellraiser: Bloodline delivers the goods in this mailer puppet episode with a twist. Stars Zach Galligan of Gremlins.

Werewolf Concerto

This one has the distinction of being co-written by Rita Mae Brown, who wrote Slumber Party Massacre, and has a cast of familiar faces. It’s a classic story in the tradition of The Beast Must Die and Howling V, with a group of people trapped in one place and discovering that one of them is a werewolf.

Curiosity Killed

Starring Margot Kidder, this story of old people who find the fountain of youth is slow going, but the payoff twist at the end rules, especially if you’re a dog lover!

SEASON 5

Death of Some Salesmen

The director of Bordello of Blood starts season 5 strong. Lily Munster makes an appearance during the opener in this tale of a sleazy door-to-door salesman who rings the wrong doorbell. Ed Begley, Jr. stars, as does Tim Curry in multiple roles, reason enough not to miss this episode that turns sleazy and gender-bending as a result.

Forever Ambergis

Roger Daltrey and Steve Buscemi star in this super gory and icky story of two photographers, an infectious disease, and the girl who comes between them.

Food For Thought

The director of Idle Hands brings us a circus side-show story, always a haunting theme for horror. Ernie Hudson plays a psychic and therefore knows his assistant/servant starts cheating on him with the hot fire eater who also cares for the circus gorilla. There are enough dangers in that one sentence to give you a sense of where this tale of revenge is going…

People Who Live in Brass Hearses

The director of the 1984 classic Razorback keeps this gory season going with an episode about a convict (played by Bill Paxton) and his brother (played by Brad Dourif) trying to get revenge on the ice cream man that got him thrown in jail. The big fight between them gets grisly good.

House of Horror

Kevin Dillon, Brian Krause, Wil Wheaton, Jason London, Courtney Gains…it’s a fraternity pledge story with boys in undies serving as slaves to other guys who then take them to a haunted house where a massacre took place years before. Yay! This is classic scary house goodness.

Creep Course

In this episode, which originally aired at the end of 1993, Anthony Michael Hall’s acting career finally landed him a role as a college student instead of a high school nerd. He happens to target a girl geek to help him pass a class, but both he and his teacher have plans for the virginal girl, and it involves a horny mummy.

Came the Dawn

This is how you start an episode—an axe murder in a bathroom. Then a rich dude driving in the rain at night picks up a woman stranded on the road…none other than Brooke Shields. He offers to take her to his cabin in the woods. It’s a stormy night, she seems crazy, he seems crazy…and another woman shows up. It’s a classic twist that never goes out of style in the horror genre.

Half-Way Horrible

The owner of a successful chemical company did some shady business in a rain forest, which helped him create a chemical that prevents things from rotting…at least it’s supposed to….

SEASON 6

This is where the show began taking a turn for the worse. The episodes move farther away from horror, which is not surprising since everything about the early to mid-90s horror scene was severely lacking. So many duds here, and in some cases the Crypt Keeper intro outshines the episode it bookends.

Only Skin Deep

The director of the House on Haunted Hill remake brings us a Halloween episode! It opens perfectly with the song “Change” by BigElf at a costume party. A violent dude goes to his ex-wife’s costume party and hooks up with a woman in a mask. You just know this can’t be good, and this episode totally delivers on the horror. Plus we get hot Peter Onorati bod.

The Pit

This is a non-horror episode, but what’s of note is that although the episode isn’t about Christmas, the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro center around Christmas and are clearly a promo for his Christmas album, for he sings his version of “Deck the Halls” a little.

The Assassin

Another non-horror episode but notable for one reason—William Sadler of Bill & Ted reprises his role as the Grim Reaper in the opening with the Crypt Keeper.

Stained in Horror

D.B. Sweeney is a murderer on the run who ends up hiding in a house with an old lady. She tells him she can become hot and sexy if he meets her in the middle of the stairway due to a curse placed on her years before. The twist at the end of this episode leaves an impression.

Surprise Party

This one comes from the director of The Car. A man kills his father to inherit a farmhouse. When he gets there, a party is in full swing. The son is about to find out his father has somehow managed to inadvertently get revenge from beyond the grave.

Doctor of Horror

At this point I’m just happy to have an episode involving dead bodies. Country singer Travis Tritt and Hank Azaria play two security guards at a morgue who buy into a crazy doctor’s scheme to cut open corpses to steal their souls. The finale is dead corpse perfection.

Comes the Dawn

Susan Tyrrell and Michael Ironside? Wahoo! Two ex-military men go into the Alaskan woods to do some unorthodox hunting. They make a gruesome discovery involving a classic night creature threat.

SEASON 7

The big deal about the final season of the series is that production moved to England, and many feel it absolutely ruined the series. This season definitely takes the prize for most often not feeling like a horror anthology show at all. Still, I tried my best to pick some highlights.

Fatal Caper

This episode is notable for several reasons. First, Bob Hoskins directs and stars in it. It also stars the late Natasha Richardson. There’s a séance and resurrection element, and there’s a trans element.

Last Respects

This episode is silly and a bit crass, but it takes place in a curiosity shop, features three sisters wishing on a monkey’s paw, and has a classic return from the dead moment like earlier Crypt episodes.

Cold War

Ewan McGregor and Bubble from Ab Fab steal the show as a violent criminal couple, making this campy episode align perfectly with the era of movies like Natural Born Killers and Kalifornia. There’s a good old monstrous twist at the end. Ironically, the very next episode also stars an Ab Fab cast member—Saffy!

About Face

This one gets credit for being one of the few horror tales of the season. A priest learns he fathered twin girls when they show up at his door as grown women. He takes them in, but one of them is deformed and horror ensues.

Confession

Women are being decapitated around town, and suspicion falls on a scuzzy horror screenwriter, played by Eddie Izzard. The best part is that there’s a twist with a collection of severed heads. Yay!

Ear Today…Gone Tomorrow

When a safe cracker gets mixed up with a mobster’s wife, he ends up becoming a bit of an animal experiment. This has a nice and bizarre ending.

Perhaps it should have been the final episode instead of the penultimate episode, because the show just completely threw in the towel for its finale…a goofy animated episode based on The Three Little Pigs! Ugh! It’s unbearable to watch and a disastrous way to send off a once great anthology series.

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TUBI TERRORS: stream and slash

Ah. There’s nothing like a triple feature of slashers. But are any of these three worth a watch? Let’s find out.

MIDNIGHT SCREENING (2021)

This 69-minute film is super low budget, but I can’t help but have a soft spot for horror films that take place in a movie theater.

The premise is simple—there are 5 employees at the theater at closing time. One of them got his hands on an old film reel and wants to do a private screening of it. As they clean up, talk about potential new hires, and watch the movie, someone begins killing them off.

There are two major problems with this movie. First, the movie they are screening, which promises to hold some mystery, plays no part in the plot that unfolds. Second, all but one kill happen off screen! It’s a shame, because that one “graphic” kill is so quick, absurd, and funny that it encapsulates how the whole movie (and death scenes) should have played out.

The other downside is that there weren’t enough employees. If there had been like three more employees for a higher body count, along with onscreen kills, the pacing would have been better, and this truly would have been a fun little midnight movie.

The killer motivation sucks, but the zinger ending is perfect, and feels more like it could have been the final scene of a Tales from the Crypt episode.

DON’T LOOK AWAY (2023)

This is a fun little supernatural slasher that combines elements of Smile and The Ring.

A young woman gets into a car accident with the driver of a truck that was delivering a cursed mannequin, causing the curse to start pursuing her and her friends.

Wherever they go, the mannequin will suddenly appear nearby, and once you see it then look away, it disappears. Sounds like a plan to me, but unfortunately, if you don’t keep your eye on the mannequin, someone dies!

There is some genuinely spooky atmosphere, there’s no shortage of mannequin moments, there are a few entertaining kills, and there’s a very satisfying twist in the final act that sets this one apart from other stalk and destroy supernatural spectre flicks.

BLISS OF EVIL (2022)

I was loving the setup for this Australian slasher, but the film simply doesn’t live up to its promise.

We have a rock band heading into a studio in 1997. They’re still reeling from the death of one of their crew. The new guy they got to replace him is kind of creepy.

When they get ready to practice their song “Bliss of Evil”, the sound engineer starts to have a panic attack. It’s safe to assume they are about to unleash some supernatural killer.

NOPE. Instead, we get a totally bland dude in a hoodie as the killer. Yawn. He literally has to paint a blood mask onto his face so he’ll seem somewhat menacing.

There are hints of the kinds of classic slasher tropes we live for, but there are barely any kills, no chase scenes, no scares or suspense, and the band spends most of the time locked in one room trying to figure out how they’re going to get away.

The only somewhat interesting part is a flashback revealing what the deal was with their dead crew member.

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Sequelitis time! Humpty Dumpty, a bad nun, and Terror Toons

I’ve covered all the previous installments of these three franchises, so it’s time to play catch-up with the latest sequels.

TERROR TOONS 4 (2022)

 

This installment of the Terror Toons series sucked me right back into the warped visuals and abstract ideas that series creator Joe Castro brings to his films. You either eat up his approach to crafting horror weirdness or you don’t.

The fourth movie breaks from the original story to give us an anthology film, with Castro handling direction on only one tale and effects on all tales to ensure the chaotic horror presentation continues. For instance, the opening scene is just a smorgasbord of bee attacks set to classical music to prep you for his crazed style. Then come the stories:

Dr. Carnage: Origins

What do we have here? It’s a prequel focusing on the major evil cartoon villain of the series. A therapist having nightmares about the Terror Toons thinks she’s taking on a new case of a troubled child, but instead walks right into a mad scientist’s nightmarish lab lair.

Castro blends his bizarre, campy computer generated effects with his gruesome practical effects to deliver a totally fabulous freak show, with Linnea Quigley even getting in on the action. However, a giant rat definitely steals the show, and the ending is reminiscent of a classic episode of The Twilight Zone.

Personal Demons

Brinke Stevens plays an out of work actress and recovered junkie who inherits a mansion from her aunt that is supposedly haunted.

She is soon on what seems like an acid trip as she is terrorized by horrific renditions of her personal demons—in Joe Castro’s whacky green screen exploitation style.

The Heads of Mr. Switch

It’s a Halloween tale that begins with a very sexual frat prank scene. The boys whip out a blowup doll to play with. She inexplicably becomes real so that they can lose their virginity to her.

However, we all know what happens when you have sex in a horror movie. There are naked pretty boys galore and loads of icky, crass sexual situations in this fantastic fever dream holiday slasher.

The Clucking

This is a very short, twisted game show tale in which the evil Terror Toons doctor makes a really gross appearance. It’s also a sort of wrap-up conclusion to the first story.

BAD NUN 3 (2023)

I said I’d come back for more after the second film, so here I am. Smartly, this third installment is short and to the point, running about 70 minutes long.

The nun is ringing doorbells again and waiting for gullible victims to answer. The opening kill scene immediately tipped me off that something was different this time—the nun has a black cloth over her face and goes old school slasher with a knife.

Turns out the first victim was in sober group therapy. A few of her fellow therapy members become curious about her murder and how it relates to the nun killings in the previous movies, which leads to some flashback scenes.

The main girl ends up going on holiday to a vacation home, and soon the nun is terrorizing other in the vicinity. The highlight is when the nun goes to slit the main girl’s throat from behind and she blocks it…by putting her hand in the way. Gruesome!

This movie definitely feels like a cash grab, especially considering that when all is said and done, this is sort of like the Friday the 13th Part 5 of Bad Nun movies, but once again, I’d totally come back for another installment.

THE MADNESS OF HUMPTY DUMPTY (2023)

Just like the Bad Nun series, Humpty Dumpty is losing steam with this third installment. It’s only about 70 minutes long, and there’s barely any body count.

Our main girl is the daughter of the schizo woman from the last movie, and she inherits her mother’s house. She and her boyfriend head there, meet some curious neighbors, and then she begins seeing and hearing things.

Most of the “scary” parts are hallucinations the main girl is having. Is she going mad like her mother?

There are a few violent kills at least, but you can tell pretty early on that this one isn’t actually going to be about the Humpty Dumpty doll. Yep, another bait and switch movie—but it’s even more than that as we get several twists before all is said and done. It was alright, but I miss the freakiness the actual Humpty Dumpty doll delivered.

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Jack and Jill went up a hill with an urge to kill

I can’t resist watching all these low budget slasher franchises that keep coming out of the UK indie horror scene these days. The Jack and Jill movies even feature several of the same actors from the other franchises I’ve covered.

THE LEGEND OF JACK AND JILL (2021)

In the opening scene, young Jack and Jill literally go up a hill while running away from a man chasing them and their mother.

15 years later, a group of friends goes camping in the woods to mourn the death of their friend. There’s relationship drama as always in these friend group slashers, but the highlight here is that the cute main guy is gay and totally hot for the other, hunky guy in the group, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

There’s a bit too much sappy grieving dialogue, but generally the pacing is carried along by one friend after another going off into the woods and getting killed by Jack and Jill, who are now adults, feral, and looking kind of like zombies. However, this isn’t exactly a suspenseful slasher, and most of the death scenes are cutaway kills with little gore.

The survivors end up taking on Jack and Jill in their lair, with the promise of a sequel….

JACK AND JILL: THE HILLS OF HELL (2022)

This one opens with friends experiencing car trouble on the way to a concert. This establishing scene is more atmospheric and suspenseful than anything that happened in the first movie.

But alas, despite being from a different director, the rest of this film doesn’t feel much different than what we got in the first movie. Most noticeable is that a different actress plays Jill, and the horror makeup on both her and Jack is not good. It looks cheap. Also, there’s no hunk and no homo. Bummer.

We get a flashback to the first movie when the friends were discussing the legend of Jack, Jill, and their mother—details that play a crucial role by the end of this movie.

In this film, a search party goes camping in the woods to look for the missing daughter of one of the women. Soon, Jack and Jill are picking off more victims. Jill has a better grip on the English language, the kills are once again flat with no gore, and there are no chase scenes, which is disappointing after the strong opening scene.

In the end, the mother of the missing girl ends up in Jack and Jill’s lair and tries to reason with them. There’s an attempt here to build sympathy for Jack and Jill. It makes sense and is kind of sad, but it’s also a bit hokey.

JACK AND JILL 3 (2023)

Another new Jill, same Jack, different director again, but continuity remains pretty consistent.

This one starts out with clips of kills from the first two movies then moves into an odd lesbian sex scene between a teacher and her female student before Jack and Jill make their initial appearance.

It’s supposed to be 10 years later, and a live stream crew is looking to explore the legend, so they go to where the murders took place in the past.

Once again there’s some backstory as the cast of the show chats. There are some ego issues and more lesbian drama, but other than that, this one is slow until an hour in, at which point it starts to feel like an old school slasher, with a bunch of girls running and screaming through a house as the killers infiltrate, killing some and abducting others. Notable is that Jack finally finds his voice and does some talking.

Unfortunately, the whole Jack and Jill thing is getting repetitive, but I imagine that’s not going to stop them from making another sequel.

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Followers found me some found footage to watch

I recently posted on social media asking what everyone’s favorite found footage films are—I offered up Exists, Hell House LLC, Quarantine, The Pyramid, and The Monster Project as mine. Several responses consisted of titles I’d never heard of, so I hunted down the ones available on streaming, making for a 4 found footage flick marathon.

HORROR IN THE HIGH DESERT (2021)

As far as building an unsettling backstory goes, Horror in the High Desert does a fantastic job. However, depending on your appreciation of slow burns, you might lose patience with the mockumentary style of this one.

A majority of the film is presented in the form of interviews with friends, family, a reporter, and a detective trying to unravel the mystery behind an outdoorsman’s disappearance in Nevada. It all paints a picture of the character and his reasons for going into the wild.

We learn about his love of the outdoors, his popular vlog, and the online bullying he endured after his first trek out into the wild…which led him to go back out into the desert to prove to his viewers what he claimed to have seen the first time was real. There’s even a very specific detail in the interviews revealing that our main character was gay, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

The unfolding of events was intriguing enough to keep me interested, but the final 19 minutes, when we at last see footage of what the main guy experienced, could split the opinion of found footage lovers. The premise of the footage feels to me like it was inspired by the final scene of Quarantine, when the ghoul in the attic room of the apartment could hear but not see in the dark.

In the final footage of this film, our main guy goes back to a cabin he found during his first visit, and there he hears a super creepy voice talking and calling out. The camerawork is frustrating, dragging us into Blair Witch territory with him constantly pointing it at the ground. There are also too many cuts, and they are illogical. Every time he sees the ghoul that is sort of circling his position in the woods, he cuts the camera off! It naturally adds suspense because we expect a jump scare each time he turns it back on, but the night vision of the camera is supposedly the only thing allowing him to see the danger pursuing him, so turning it off makes no sense.

Quite honestly, the final freeze frame (indicative of found footage films) is not shocking or scary at all, and in the end it seems impossible that this decrepit thing that was chasing him would be capable of doing some of the things it supposedly did, such as moving his truck and planting his backpack in a different location. Even so, this one definitely delivered on the creep factor.

HORROR IN THE HIGH DESERT 2: MINERVA (2023)

Rather than focusing on the story of the first film—such as having a bunch of new vloggers show up to try to find out what happened to the guy from the first movie—the sequel focuses on a year later and suggests that the ghoul the first guy disturbed in the wilderness has now started to venture out into the desolate, desert town nearby.

To create a sense of the ghoul terrorizing the town, there are interviews with locals who experienced near encounters, including a couple that owns a farm and a man renting a house in an isolated area.

There are also two separate, main stories presented. First is the inexplicable disappearance of a college student from her locked trailer home. The other is the story of a young woman who disappeared after her car broke down on a desert road at night.

The two tales are creepy, but there are so many instances in which it doesn’t make sense that there would be a camera on hand to film. Most notable is what seems to be footage shot by the ghoul! It’s perhaps the creepiest footage in the whole movie, but it’s giving the ghoul even more human capabilities than it had in the first movie. It seems this sequel is really trying to expand on the mythos of this creep while delivering a body count, yet offers no explanations once again in order to leave us with the promise of a third installment.

Most surprising is the big encounter moment at the end. It focuses on a search party member who definitely gets into a Quarantine situation. He’s trapped in a mining building with the ghoul but doesn’t even notice it, because for some reason the camera he is carrying is picking up footage with night vision, yet he’s not seeing any of it.

He spends the whole scene groping around in the dark, never realizing the ghoul is lurking nearby. As spooky as the scene is, it’s shockingly anti-climactic considering the kind of money shot we expect at the end of found footage films.

THE CONSPIRACY (2012)

This is the kind of movie that reminds me of the most crucial thing you have to ask yourself before watching most found footage films….is it worth sitting through all the bullshit for over an hour just to get to some chills and thrills in the last fifteen minutes? Problem is you don’t know until you actually do it.

The Conspiracy is so not my thing. I have way too much anxiety about the state of the world right now to sit through an hour of having New World Order conspiracies laid out for me by two mock filmmakers doing a film on issues that are even more relevant now than they were when the film was made over a decade ago.

Our pair interviews a popular conspiracy theorist, who then disappears. So they begin digging deeper into the dude’s conspiracy about a secret organization of rich white men in hopes of finding out what became of him.

Would you believe the filmmakers eventually end up in the woods to witness some sort of cult ritual dealing with the indoctrination of young white men in masks?

The scariest part of this mostly non-horror found footage film is the idea of suddenly finding you really have dug yourself too far into a conspiracy better left alone. It’s chilling for a few moments at the very end while also being a very typical found footage horror sequence.

THE OUTWATERS (2022)

As a writer, my ultimate goal is to make my gay horror novels as comprehensible as possible (I think I mostly succeed), so it’s hard for me to sit through a movie—a 110-minute found footage movie no less—to find that someone decided to write and film an absolutely incoherent story.

Is it a metaphor for religion? Is it an acid trip film? Is it the tale of one man going mad and killing all his friends? Are there really hideous creatures? I have no idea.

So how is the plot presented? A bunch of memory cards are found with footage of a group of friends heading into the desert to camp (yep, another desert found footage film).

The first part of the film is like all these artsy, bohemian stoners just getting high on life. Lots of singing and posing for the camera. Then they go to the desert and do lots of exploring during the day. It’s all very sensory—almost like you’re listening to one of those white noise apps in order to relax and sleep easy.

At night in their tent they are haunted by what sounds like fireworks. Then everything goes dark, everyone runs and screams, and we’re left alone in the desert for 50 more minutes with the whimpering cameraman.

Footage jumps from day to night. There’s lots of blood. Night footage consists of a tiny circle of light in the center of the screen, usually capturing something red, so we have no idea what we’re witnessing. Each time the cameraman stumbles upon one of his friends in terrible shape, the footage just cuts to daytime again and he’s alone, no friends in sight.

He also witnesses flashing dots of light in the dark. He encounters squealing eels that come out of holes in rock formations. I got the impression he encountered a big, snorting creature at one point, but all we see is a red circle in the beam of his flashlight, so I can’t be sure what it was. He is targeted by a friend with an axe. And each time…the footage just cuts to him alone again. And he can’t seem to remember who he is. He just hides at night, runs around the desert during the day, and even films upside down at times.

Perhaps it’s a last ditch effort by the creators to make it all make sense, but he finds a “restricted area” sign that explains nothing while letting us know he should never have come there.


It’s exactly what you think it is…

The final gory, brutal, and disturbing moments would have packed so much more of a punch if we hadn’t grown so numb to the spastic stimulation we sat through for nearly 2 hours before it.

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SHUDDER AND SHRIEK: there’s something supernatural in the air

Demons, possession, ghost girls—this trio of flicks from my Shudder watchlist definitely deliver on the ghoulish tormentors, but are they worth a watch beyond the horror eye candy?

ELEVATOR GAME (2023)

If you’re looking for yet another film in the revival of ghost girl type of moves from the early 2000s, look no further than Elevator Game.

But be warned. This one is sloooooooow until the satisfying popcorn movie kills finally kick in at about the 45-minute mark.

So there’s an online challenge in which you ride an elevator to different floors in a certain order to release “the 5th floor woman”.

A group of recent high school graduates have a video channel on which they debunk urban legends. Thus begins the first forty-five boring minutes.

When they finally do the challenge, nothing happens until they all split up. This unleashes the elevator ghost, whose first kill takes place…in a stairwell.

There are really some fun and bloody kills, but they are all this movie has going for it and provide the only brief hints of suspense. Characters are flat, story is flat. The back story of the ghost is okay, though, and was giving me Fatal Frame video game vibes.

The silliest part of the film is when the ghost girl suddenly decides to chomp on a victim’s neck like a zombie.

SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET (2024)

I won’t even spend much time on this one. Somehow Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. star, and we get Sally Kirkland and Udo Kier as different psychic mediums, but the movie looks cheap and is mostly incoherent.

Howard’s wife starts getting scary vibes around her young daughter, leading to a movie plagued by choppy flashing edits of sinister visions. The girl has cancer. Howard loses his job. His buddy Cuba gets out of jail.

The wife has nightmares of a killer scarecrow and of some other creepy demon (the two highlights of the movie and what I guess are the “skeltons” in the mom’s closet). The wife consults a priest. She then consults Kirkland.

There are sightings of a ghost girl in white. The family eventually consults Udo Kier.

He is sinister and drags them into dark magic. It ends up as a ritual involving burying a book. The killer scarecrow appears in real life and chases them around. I understood none of it.

BLOOD FLOWER (2023)

 

This Malaysian film will be a satisfying ride for those who love flicks with contorting possessed girls, gory ghost movies, and demonic entity films.

It even has a main character with a personal internal struggle going on, as well as a non-gender conforming best friend character.

Our main teen boy is the member of a family of exorcists who is afraid to tap into his own supernatural powers, which could help with the exorcisms. His timidity in using those powers leads to tragedy, causing guilt that follows him as there’s a possession outbreak in his apartment building.

The movie is a bit all over the place, so the main kid and his friends accidentally open a portal that unleashes a cool demon when they unlock a door they weren’t supposed to touch in a greenhouse with weird exotic plants. Yeah, there’s a lot going on here.

The boy also has the power to see dead people so that adds a little more chaos. We have ghosts, the demon, and the people in his apartment building getting possessed. It’s a lot to juggle, but it definitely delivers plenty of blood, gore, and freaky visuals. I had fun with this one—but beware the baby eating scene and other fetal abuses.

And finally, I’ll just add that the father’s friend is hot…

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