TUBI TERRORS: masked killers!

Posted on December 20, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a trio of slashers flicks, and I had a major favorite. Let’s find out which one.

BAD CONNECTION (2023)


This is the kind of simple stalker/slasher fun I needed in my life right now. Bad Connection is a blast, with a nonstop chase, a sinister masked killer, a determined main girl, and plenty of blood and violence.

After a douchebag customer ruins her phone, a waitress is gifted a new one by her sexy boyfriend. Actually, it’s not a new one…it’s used and hot off the street because they’re broke.

The main girl discovers a video on the phone of a woman being murdered. Within minutes, a masked killer starts relentlessly pursuing her through a seedy side of town for the remainder of the film. Awesome.

There are plenty of victims to hack up along the way, great suspense scenes, an appearance by scream queen Tiffany Shepis, and Perez Hilton in a minor role as a gay doctor (landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page).

The only real miss in this film is the silly final frame scene. It’s just so derivative and pointless.

KILLER INFLUENCE (2024)

Yet another slasher that relies on the lowest common denominator of current trends…influencers gathering together in a house to get hacked up. I just want a movie where someone kills every influencer through some sort of computer program so we can be done with this era of societal obsession already.

It’s almost an hour before the killer actually kills someone. Until then, a group of multiple female influencers and one male influencer deal with relationships (mostly the main lesbian one), body image issues, and the pressure of being successful by creating the shallow-assed content that people crave these days.

We do get one sex scene with plenty of tits (because it’s a lesbian sex scene), and the group sits in a room full of candles and tells some scary stories. The weird thing is, the girl hosting the party promises it’s going to be the scariest night of their lives, but there’s no pay-off to that promise. I mean, were ghost stories the most creative thing an influencer could think of to entertain and scare viewers? It feels like a whole crucial part of this party is just completely missing.

The real theme here is that influencers have to be really careful of revealing their location because stalkers exist. Yep, that’s it. The masked killer shows up, and in the final act kills a bunch of them, has a body count party, and then chases and fights the final girl. There’s no killer reveal, and no specific motivation.

If you must watch, I’d suggest just hopping over to the fifty-minute mark and starting from there…or a little earlier if you like lesbian sex.

GO AWAY (2024)

I was so excited when this one started at a family Christmas party. But alas, only the opener takes place at Christmas, so this isn’t a holiday horror flick. However, the first sequence has some great low budget charm, with masked home invaders tying up victims and forcing them to decide who dies. It’s a backstabbing hoot, so to speak.

The main focus of the film is a guy going with his girlfriend’s family. Tuesday Knight plays the mom, and Felissa Rose plays the loud-mouthed aunt, providing plenty of mean-spirited humor.

There’s family drama and infighting for a while, discussion of a bunch of murders years before, and a hot bear shirtless in a sex scene.

42 minutes in, there’s a very cool intro to the home invasion. There are knocks on numerous doors all at once. Eek!

Masked invaders bust in, and the killing begins immediately. All I’m going to say is that my three favorite people in the movie all die first. WTF?

After that, the killers release the rest of the victims and force them into a cat and mouse game, promising that if they can get away, they live. The tone of the film shifts, with none of the over-the-top tone presented earlier.

The gore is really good, but there’s not much in the way of suspense or tension, and the low budget look and feel doesn’t allow for much atmosphere. However, despite it being an underwhelming home invasion flick, there are several twists that keep things interesting.

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Backwoods horrorthon

Posted on December 18, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a foursome of fright flicks in the forest, with masked killers, unmasked killers, vampires, and Bigfeet. Let’s get right into them.

WOLF MOUNTAIN (2022)

This is a really uneven slasher. A young man is struggling with suppressed memories of what happened to his parents, so his therapist (played by Tobin Bell) recommends that he return to the spot where they fell off a cliff.

He, his brother, and their friends head into the wilderness. One friend happens to be played by Matt Rife. You’ll be shocked to know he plays a douchebag. His versatility as an actor is amazing.

Meanwhile, Danny Trejo and some other dude are a couple of criminals traipsing through the woods. Trejo is also the first murdered.

The main group has a run-in with some park rangers, including one who is supposed to be some sort of comic relief, but his shtick, while funny, is totally not in keeping with the tone of the rest of the movie.

It takes a while for the kills to kick in, but once they do, they are about the only upside to this weak flick. The cast spends lots of time walking around the woods, we only see the killer’s mask fleetingly, and despite falling off a cliff during the final confrontation with the main guy, the killer (who is a mere mortal) somehow comes back for another sequence at the end…completely unscathed.

ANOTHER CABIN IN THE WOODS MOVIE (2024)

Based on the title, you’d think this was going to be an over-the-top slasher comedy spoof. That isn’t the case. Virtually the only comedy and spoofing here is that if you pay attention, there is often a television or a radio on in the background, and the dialogue or song lyrics are literally telling you exactly what cliché is about to occur in the movie.

Unfortunately, the slasher aspect of the film isn’t all that thrilling either, despite good production values and some bloody kills. Predictably, a group of friends goes to a cabin in the woods, this time for a newlywed celebration.

They meet the weird old caretaker (of course) and actually invite him to party with them. Another apparent joke has his voice going from normal to demonic every time he speaks, and no one seems to notice. Don’t expect it to hold any significance, because it doesn’t.

Instead, the movie plays out with the usual tropes. There’s infighting, couples have sex (yay!), they split up, people begin to disappear, etc. We never see the killer, and there’s no mask.

Once we find out who the killer is during the final battle, there’s a twist that requires basically the whole movie to be recapped in flashbacks for it to make sense. Eh.

VAMPIRE LAKE (2024)

I can’t believe this film comes from the director of Midnight Screening, which had some standout moments for a low budget slasher. Vampire Lake is just void of anything engaging.

A couple of women and teenage girls are having a girl weekend at a cabin in the woods. They mention a legend about summoning a vampire by the lake. After lots of talk, one of the teenage girls finally heads down to the lake alone and does the ritual.

40 minutes in, the vampire appears to her. No atmosphere here since his appearances are always in the daytime. Not to mention, he’s not all that menacing. The characters spend the rest of the film running around the woods. The most blood you see is dripping from the vampire’s mouth and occasional on a victim’s neck.

Despite the film being flat with no onscreen horror to speak of, the ending twist is clever. I only wish it had been attached to a better movie.

FEET OF DEATH (2024)

If this Bigfoot film had been about 80 minutes long instead of 105 minutes long, I probably would have enjoyed it more. Not even several bearded rednecks in uniform helped kill the time. I prefer my bearded rednecks in uniform when they’re all action, no talk, but it’s the opposite here.

It opens strong with a young woman finding a missing influencer dead in the woods. Then a park ranger grieving from the loss of his woman has to get himself together to investigate with the local sheriff.

Seems there have been numerous cases of people getting attacked or going missing in the woods, and legend has it that Bigfoot is the culprit.

Do not expect any major Bigfoot thrills. This is basically a mystery movie, with the lead characters investigating the murder by speaking to various “experts”, including an animal behavior expert, a coroner, etc.

The final act is where all the fun happens. There are several twists, and while they are goodies, I’ve actually seen them in other Bigfoot movies, so it’s nothing new. There’s some very brief Bigfoot action, but the plot takes a final turn that is so not a happy ending, and I just love that kind of thing. This movie simply needed more Bigfoot attacks and less talk.

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DIRECT TO STREAMING: three more from Louisa Warren

Posted on December 11, 2024 by Daniel

It was time to catch up on some of the latest releases from prolific indie horror director Louisa Warren, and I found these three on streaming services, so let’s check them out.

RETURN OF PUNCH AND JUDY (2023)

This is not a sequel and goes by both the “Return of” title and simply “Punch and Judy”. Either way, it’s one of Warren’s more throwaway films, and the Mr. Bill vibe I was getting from the manual movements of the puppets gave me a giggle.

The plot is really simple. A grandmother tries to bury a box of evil puppets but falls ill in the process. She’s dragged back home and dumped in bed so the family can throw a birthday party for her adult granddaughter. They also bring the box of puppets back home without telling grandma.

The granddaughter’s friends show up. The puppets come to life and start lurking around the house killing guests by stabbing them and chewing on them. The sound of the chewing is so cartoonish it made me chuckle every time.

It’s sort of like the Puppet Master movies with no budget puppets, but I feel like the film should have just leaned into the campy possibilities instead of taking itself seriously. It also should have delivered gorier, unique deaths. The only standout (aside from the old blow dryer in the tub trick) is one victim having her eye gouged out.

Unless you’re a completist of Louisa Warren’s output (not sure if I’m the only one), you could probably just skip this one.

OUIJA CASTLE (2024)

Having just covered Warren’s flick Cinderella’s Curse, I’m kind of surprised she made such a similar movie in the same year. However, I think Ouija Castle is an even juicier, meaner-spirited, gorier flick that creates its own unique, hybrid fairy tale instead of specifically adapting a classic.

This scary storybook tale has the usual—a handsome prince, an evil witch/queen, a femme fatale princess character, and even a big ball.

The prince of a royal family is in love with a princess, but the evil matriarch of another family intends to get control of his kingdom by having him marry her daughter instead.

So, this witchy woman and her daughter lure the princess into their home and poison her. She falls into a deep sleep, and then the prince keeps her perfectly preserved in bed, hoping for her to revive…considering she’s pregnant!

What unfolds is a kingdom of evil fuckers doing awful, vile, and violent things to each other. But the real horror occurs when the princess awakens and is mutilated by the evil queen and her daughter in hopes that the prince will never desire her in such a horrid state.

So, the princess summons a faceless, demon fairy godmother figure using a Ouija board (the reason for the terrible title).

The demon fairy godmother gives her a mask to hide her hideousness and sends her off to a ball to get her revenge on all those that have wronged her. It really is an oddly cookie cutter version of Cinderella’s Curse, but both movies rock with practical gore effects, and they make for a great, grisly fairy tale horror double feature.

LEGEND OF LIZARD MAN (2023)

I love me a campy, rubber monster suit creature feature throwback to horror flicks of the 80s, and this one is cheesetastic with one major flaw—it’s nearly 2 hours long for no good reason.

The film opens with a family’s car breaking down on a deserted road at night. We get neon colored monster POV from the woods, along with hilarious POV from inside the monster’s mouth, complete with cheaply drawn teeth outlines.

We are then bombarded by excessive clips of news reporters, podcasters, and everyday folk talking about the legend of the lizard man, just one of numerous segments that are unnecessarily long.

Next, we meet a group heading to the swamps to investigate the legend. A pitstop at a convenience store is the next overlong segment, with the kids talking to a store clerk who is cashing in on the infamy of the legend. They also have a run-in with a redneck, as is required in every movie in which city kids head into the woods.

Another long segment involves the group around a campfire and their encounter with a supposed park ranger named Ed Gein. Seriously. However, he has no disembodied vaginas to offer—just another long monologue that drags down the pacing.

56 minutes in, the kids start getting attacked by monster mouth POV, but there is one highlight featuring a classic monster silhouette outside a tent. This scene also delivers an actual monster attack finally.

After several more kills, the group of kids encounters a survivalist in the woods who has been hunting for the monster for years…which leads to another excessive monologue. Argh.

There’s a final fight with the creature, and if I’m not mistaken, for some reason its fleeting rubber suit appearances shift to a fleeting CGI appearance suddenly. I would have taken even more CGI monster if it meant replacing the pace-killing dialogue with horror action sequences.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: it happened in 1971

Posted on December 10, 2024 by Daniel

This is an influential but forgotten trio of flicks I bought on Blu-ray that ironically all came from 1971, and one of them has some homoerotic content, landing it on the does the gay guy die? page.

FRIGHT (1971)


I imagine this overlooked film was some of the inspiration for movies like Black Christmas, Halloween, When a Stranger Calls, and Trick or Treats. I’d never seen it before picking up the new 4k release, and I’m glad I did, mostly because of how obviously influential it was.

It opens in dark, misty woods at night as a pretty young woman walks to a babysitting job in the middle of nowhere. She’s just asking for it. Get a damn taxi or something!

Once at the house, she does some conversing with the couple before they leave. They give each other shifty-eyed looks, and the wife gets uncomfortable when the husband references ghosts.

No, it’s not a ghost movie. Not literally.

Once the babysitter is alone, we soon see someone lurking outside.

The babysitter’s boyfriend visits…at least I think he is her boyfriend. She’s a dick to him because he keeps trying to scare her, but he learns his lesson soon enough.

This isn’t really a stalker film or slasher. It’s more of a home invasion film. There are several atmospheric moments of the babysitter being spooked by sights and sounds, and in between we keep getting scenes of the couple out to dinner, which are included as an avenue to eventually reveal to us who the stalker is.

The final segment of the movie focuses on the babysitter being terrorized by the stalker. There’s no mask or anything, but he doesn’t need one because he’s creepy as is. There’s even a really effective, understated assault scene that completely drops any audio cues. Quite unnerving.

I didn’t love the final few minutes much. We’re taken out of the “alone with a psycho” setup as police arrive for a standoff. A rather disappointing finale, although it does have a dark tone.

I DRINK YOUR BLOOD (1971)

Two years before Romero’s The Crazies and six years before Cronenberg’s Rabid, this infected movie was slapped with an X rating. Don’t get too excited…it’s pretty tame considering some of the things we’ve seen in the 6 decades since.

Thankfully, the jazzy 70s score that ruins the early part of the film is replaced by that more trippy, early 70s horror music sound later on, but that doesn’t help make the film scary. It’s fairly bland.

The basic premise is that violent hippies invade a nearly deserted town, rape a young woman, are then tricked into eating pies injected with rabid dog blood by the raped girl’s young brother, and then become even more violent!

There’s lots of dismemberment and that tomato soup color “red” blood that was used in movies of this era, and the infected hippies foam at the mouth, but there’s no biting or cannibalism. Which begs the question…how do they start spreading the infection? I’m guessing it’s when a group of construction workers rapes one of the infected hippy women (not shown, but implied).

Horror queen Lynn Lowry has a bit part as one of the infected, but that was the only familiar face here. Other than that, the only thrilling part is when the infected hippies invade the bakery where the pies were made. It’s also the funniest, because they also “knock down” an entire wall that appears to be made of some sort of flimsy cardboard material. My favorite infected hippie is one that laughs maniacally while swinging a machete and a decapitated head. He could have been the lone killer in a much freakier movie.

For a slightly darker and more satisfying ending, you’re better off watching the slightly longer “director’s cut” instead of the “original X-rated theatrical cut” on the Blu-ray.

BLUE SEXTET (1971)

Included on the same Blu-ray release as I Drink Your Blood because it’s from the same director, this bizarre film plays out mostly like a whodunit, as a group of friends gathers together to talk about their recently deceased friend and ponder how he died.

A sexploitation flick at heart, it continuously flashes back to events leading up to the death of the friend, including one wonderfully perverse orgy scene of varying sexualities hooking up, with two hot dudes even wrestling in their undies.

However, there’s one nightmarish segment, which is why I’m covering this film.  It’s supposed to be footage shot by the deceased, who fancied himself a filmmaker, and it features this deformed ghoul in a hooded robe doing some sort of cult ritual with a naked woman tied down.

He bites on her nipples until she bleeds, and we get that warped, psychotropic visual and audio vibe that’s so indicative of early 1970s horror, drenched in red light. I wish the whole movie had been built around this haunting moment.

In the end, the movie leaves us guessing as to what happened. Was it a drug-induced accident, a suicide, murder, or was this group of people actually dabbling in the occult? The sudden upbeat, celebratory ending is so jolting and bizarre.

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Of females and frights

Posted on December 6, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a trio of flicks about girls getting into scary situations, but I wasn’t fully satisfied with any of these. Let’s find out why.

LET’S SCARE JULIE (2019)

We’ve scared Jessica to death, now it’s time to scare Julie! I have to say, I really liked a lot of what this film had to offer. In fact, there’s only one aspect that limits its ability to deliver any scares—it’s one of those movies that is mostly shot in one take, which means the camera must stick to a set location instead of following different characters as they split up.

There’s a group of girls having a little party in one girl’s bedroom. I really liked the group of girls here. Their interactions feel very natural and genuine. The girl who lives in the house tells a creepy story of the neighbor woman, whose father disappeared under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind nothing but a photo that was taken of him from behind. This isn’t a found footage film (although it has the same vibe due to the single take approach), but that final photo detail is reminiscent of the “standing in the corner” plot point of the Blair Witch legend.

Anyway, the girls decide to scare the mysterious woman next door. One by one, they head over to the house…and never come back. We’re left with a growing urgency to know what’s happening over there, wherein lies the problem. We don’t get to go with any of them, which leads to a majority of the film focusing on the reactions of the girls who haven’t ventured over to the neighbor’s house yet. On the one hand, that adds to the suspense, but on the other hand, it becomes repetitive.

However, things do eventually narrow down to one final girl, so it is then that we get to follow her to the house for some creepy moments accompanied by orchestral stingers to up the scare factor. The final frame, however, definitely gives big time found footage vibes, with us never actually seeing what the fate of the girls has been all along, a mystery amplified by a simple off-screen scream. Sigh.

Of note is that, whether intentional or not, the movie most definitely makes a statement about girls having their fathers in their lives.

THE CURSE OF THE NECKLACE (2024)

This one mashes up several familiar subgenres of horror, which is about the only reason it brings something “new” to the table. It’s essentially a tween horror flick, because despite a serious storyline, it’s just the usual cheap ghost scares we’ve been subjected to since The Conjuring series became popular.

A woman is trying to raise her two daughters as a single mom. The husband, played by Henry Thomas, is attempting to stay in their lives, but the mother doesn’t want to have much to do with him because of his issues. However, he is a cop, and he comes over for dinner one night and gives the younger daughter a necklace…that he secretly stole from a crime scene. Uh-oh.

Yep. The necklace is cursed. By a little boy. The girls begin getting terrorized by him and a few other entities.

Soon, the mother is digging into the origins of the necklace. There’s a detective, a psychic medium, and just when you think there will be a ghost busting conclusion, the script is flipped and this turns into a possession film for the final act…at just about the point where it started to run too long and bore me, so the rerouting definitely saved it a little, because at least we’re fed some new horror action.

You’ve most likely seen it all before, and there’s a goofy zinger scare scene after the credits that isn’t worth waiting for. It didn’t need to be after the credits because it’s pointless beyond a goal of making twelve-year-old girls at sleepovers squeal.

BLOODY TRIP: THE EQUINOX KILLER (2024)

I seriously have no idea what I just watched with this one. On the bright side, it’s a badly dubbed Italian movie, so I was getting retro 80s Euro horror flashbacks.

Three girls go to an isolated house for a bachelorette party. Conveniently, one of them is into horror, is working on a movie, and tells a story of an equinox curse involving offering sacrifices to a demon to stop the dead from rising.

Just as they finish discussing the tale, someone in a mask shows up at the door. Did they summon him by indulging in the legend? Not sure.

Either way, this quickly becomes reminiscent of The Strangers, as the masked person lurks around outside and the girls try to stay barricaded inside. Even so, one of their male friends manages to arrive and make it inside the house safely.

Then there’s a wacky twist, more baddies arrive, and the main characters try to just stay alive. There’s running around and lots of fighting with a variety of weapons that can do some major damage, but there’s just nothing conclusive happening here…right up to the ending, which says “to be continued.” Ugh. And based on a listing on IMDb, I’m thinking the next movie is going to be a zombie film. Yes, of course I’ll watch it…while I ponder how the masked killer knew the names of all the kids so he could assign each one a personalized candle…

 

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Of men and monsters

Posted on December 5, 2024 by Daniel

In this trio, handsome leading men face off against various horror threats, and I actually enjoyed all three of them. The movies, I mean. Okay, the men as well.

THE BEAST WITHIN (2024)

This is a more sophisticated, story-driven approach to the werewolf genre…and yet my adolescent appetite still found it engaging.

The opener sells us on the horror, with a woman being attacked by a werewolf under a red moon, complete with some graphic munching. However, it’s almost like a false start, because this film is in no way packed with gory werewolf attack action.

The focus is solely on a father, mother, and daughter living in a house in the woods. The young girl is having nightmares and beginning to recognize that the mother (played by Ashley Cummings of NOS4A2) and father (hottie Kit Harington of Game of Thrones) sneak out of the house at night, load a pig into their truck, and drive off into the woods. So…she follows them.

The young girl now has to come to terms with what she witnesses. Her mom chains her dad up in a structure in the woods and leaves him there until morning. He transforms. He devours the pig. Eek! He’s also naked. Yum.

The family dynamic unfolds slowly, and the grandfather even gets in on the drama, but eventually it leads to an exciting and suspenseful final act, with the family caught up in a cat and mouse game with the werewolf in their house. This was an engrossing, understated werewolf flick.

THE SEEDING (2023)

This slow burn deep dives into folk horror, exploring themes of fertility, motherhood, fatherhood, gender roles, gender norms, and suppressed sexuality. It’s an odd film that doesn’t try to make total sense, but it definitely delivers on the “out there” vibes.

A photographer hiking in the middle of a seeming desert right out of The Hills Have Eyes encounters a young boy who runs off before the man can help him. However, the boy does manage to steer him towards a cabin down in a cavern.

The man ends up descending a rope ladder into the cavern, where he meets a woman living alone in the cabin. She lets him stay the night, and when they wake up the next morning, the ladder is gone and there’s no way back up the rock walls surrounding the area. There also happens to be a band of creepy, feral boys up on the cliff, looking down on them and taunting them. One is even dressed in drag.

And yet the woman seems to just accept it for what it is, making for a whole lot of conflict for the main man. He wants to get out of the cavern. He feels compelled to protect the woman. He even tries to be a paternal figure to one of the boys up on the cliff.

All the horror comes from the psychotic boys, from the way they look to the vile things they do…like one of them whipping out his dick and pissing over the cliff to drench the man.

Despite all the weirdness that unfolds, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll know what is going on, but the film does what folk horror needs to do; it indulges in themes of bizarre sacrificial rituals and the darker side of procreation. Despite this not exactly being my kind of horror subgenre, I was definitely entertained.

APOCALYPSE Z (2024)

It’s a Spanish zombie flick about a man and his beloved cat navigating the country after an infection breaks out, turning people into cannibalistic crazies.

Is there anything new here? Not much. It’s the usual—leading man on a mission to get to a safe location after quarantine and mandatory evacuation makes plenty of friends and enemies along the way. In this case, the hero uses a harpoon gun as his weapon of choice.

These frantic zombies sort of squeal like pigs, and they’re pretty terrifying when they’re chasing and chowing down in hordes. Eek! The film is a little too long and slow in spots due to the 2-hour runtime, but the fight and flight sequences make up for it, because they are fantastic.

An intense chase that starts on motorcycle and ends on foot and a makeshift mobile cage scene are two of the highlights, and some of the characters the main man teams up with along the way to a helicopter getaway are kick ass, so despite this being yet another formulaic zombie film, it’s a goodie for those who just can’t get enough of this subgenre. Not to mention, you will definitely be most concerned about the cat surviving through the whole movie.

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Of mice and Cinderella

Posted on December 2, 2024 by Daniel

Here we go—three more horror flicks spawned from the world of children’s entertainment. One of them is a Mickey Mouse slasher, and the other two are both horror takes on Cinderella!

THE MOUSE TRAP (2024)

I seriously can’t wrap my head around what this movie was trying to accomplish. All they had to do was make a simple slasher with someone dressed as Mickey Mouse, but instead they tried to complicate matters…and succeeded completely in that aspect.

I feared I wasn’t in for the best time when the movie opened with a Star Wars style, scrolling intro that is supposed to be funny but quickly becomes an overkill message about how Disney did not condone this film at all.

We then begin at the end, with one of the characters in a prison cell being interrogated. In other words, we know she survives, but it’s not quite clear how she’s calmly sitting there talking when we see during her recounting of events that her Achilles’ heel was cut during a Mickey attack.

She’s one of a group of friends at an arcade that planned to party that night. With no explanation (ever), someone in a Mickey Mouse mask begins lurking around. This killer can also teleport (never explained). A majority of the kills are cutaway scenes until we finally see some onscreen deaths near the end. And the whole teleporting element doesn’t allow for the main characters to ever actually conquer the killer.

The very last kill and funny line that follows it are the best part of the movie and come right before it ends abruptly with no logical conclusion. It also ends with a good now wave song by dd Toby Leaman, which I’ll totally be playing on my Future Flashbacks show…the only good to come out of watching this movie.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. No matter how big of a slasher fan you are, you are going to be pissed if you watch this film.

CINDERELLA’S REVENGE (2024)

This isn’t a scary film, but it’s definitely a darker take on the already dark Cinderella tale, with the satisfaction of also being a sweet revenge flick.

It opens strong, with the wicked stepmother having Cinderella’s father beheaded by two men in masks. She then immediately makes Cinderella her slave.

There’s some cruel treatment of Cinderella by her stepsisters, and then the prince’s big ball is announced. The fairy godmother appears to Cinderella and is played with devilish delight by Natasha Henstridge of Species fame.

This is the first sign of the campy undertone of the film, with the fairy godmother summoning famous designers to give Cinderella a makeover and then sending her off to the ball in a Tesla.

The tale continues to play out as we know it…until the stepmother insists one her daughters cut off her own toe in hopes of making the glass slipper fit. Yikes!

And then comes the revenge. The fairy godmother returns, gives Cinderella one of the masks used when her father was beheaded, and sends her off to slaughter those that have wronged her.

The only downside is that there aren’t all that many people to kill, but the deaths are nice and violent. Plus, there’s an unexpected sex scene with the prince at the end. Awesome.

CINDERELLA’S CURSE (2024)

I cover many of director Louisa Warren’s indie horror flicks, but this is perhaps her masterpiece. I thought Cinderella’s Revenge was vicious…until I watched this one right after.

The opening scene is pretty much irrelevant to the rest of the movie, but it sets the gory tone, and I guess you could say it presents the backstory of the fairy godmother, or in this case, god monster. She is one evil demon.

From there, the film goes right into a BJ scene. Now that is my kind of retelling of Cinderella.

We then meet Cinderella and her absolutely sadistic stepmother and stepsisters. They resort to whips, hooks, and mutilation. It’s awesome.

The prince comes and ogles and objectifies the women before inviting them to his ball. The fairy god monster visits Cinderella, and she is then sent off to the ball as well.

And holy shit does it get cruel. Turns out there’s an elaborate plan to humiliate and torture Cinderella. However, that doesn’t last long, for Cinderella has been granted some powers and turns this ball into Carrie’s night at the prom.

She even gets help from Hellraiser looking leather demons, as well as the heel of her glass slipper as she hunts down and shreds everyone. This is how you make a classic into an absolutely killer flick. Delicious blasphemy.

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TUBI TERRORS: a horror anthology, fairy tale terror, and a classic monster reunion

Posted on November 25, 2024 by Daniel

I found something to appreciate about each of these three flicks from my Tubi watchlist, but I was always left wanting more. Let’s take a look.

ALL HALLOWS’ EVE: INFERNO (2024)

This pseudo-sequel to the All Hallows’ Eve horror anthology franchise makes only one reference to the holiday…on a car radio right before the car crashes at the beginning of the wraparound. None of the stories take place on Halloween, so this one doesn’t even live up to its title.

The wraparound is perhaps the scariest part. It’s from the POV of the person in the car crash, who is whisked away to a hospital from hell, like something out of Silent Hill. Very creepy and trippy.

1st tale – a guy is terrorized by a tentacled creature in his nightmares, so dream researchers decide to use an experimental drug on him. The visuals are quite cool.

2nd tale – a deaf woman brings a kidnapped man out to the desert to get revenge. This one is bland and brief.

3rd tale – this is a good one for those longing for the days of Asian horror from the early 2000s. A young girl who refuses to participate in a ritual to ward off an Asian ghost girl becomes possessed by it.

4th tale – people are trapped in some sort of facility with a demon monster that reacts to sound. This one feels like it drops you into the middle of a story that has already begun, so you have no frame of reference for what is going on.

The monster designs rock and deliver on the horror, but overall, some of these stories barely feel like stories at all. 

CURSED (2024)

I’d describe this slow-paced but interesting film as Misery meets Drag Me To Hell with a dark fairy tale feel.

A dude wandering and desperate in the snowy woods is taken in by a woman in a cabin, who tends to his needs. When he commits a heinous act while she’s out, their relationship starts to unravel.

She begins to suspect he did something awful. He tries to hide it. They play a weird mind fuck game with each other. They also fuck around.

At the same time, he begins to have delusions and nightmares, and some of them are eerily witchy. It’s almost like he’s cursed…

There’s lots of talk and little horror until only 10 minutes remain. There’s a bizarre transformation and a fantastical, satisfying ending, but the pacing might not be for everyone.

MONSTER MASH (2024)

This was an almost delightful little homage to the classic movie monsters, but it is hurt by a script that just goes nowhere. It reminds me of a mashup of the Rankin/Bass classic Mad Monster Party and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, but it just takes forever to really get going.

Dr. Frankenstein is making plans to create a new, all-powerful, immortal monster to inhabit himself because he’s dying. Ironically, he kidnaps the daughter of Dracula, and all he really had to do was ask her to bite him and he could have been an all-powerful, immortal monster…

Instead, he needs certain ingredients from the classic monsters for his new creation. Conveniently, all the monsters descend on his castle—the Frankenstein monster is already his bitch.

Drac arrives looking for his daughter, and he definitely gets the best lighting.

And of course, The Mummy, The Wolfman, and The Invisible Man show up.

The monsters team up to find Drac’s daughter and eventually take on Dr. Frankenstein’s new monster in a sequence that comes across as a nod to Godzilla vs. Rodan.

Unfortunately, the majority of the film is preparation for the final battle with all talk and no action. It’s only in the last 20 minutes that the campy, old school tone finally shines through, with the monsters taking on a stop motion beast. If only the whole movie had carried this spirit, this would have been a blast. It also would have been great if the monsters broke into a “Monster Mash” dance to celebrate their victory at the end…

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CHRISTMAS HORROR ROUND-UP 2024

Posted on November 22, 2024 by Daniel

I’m doing Christmas early this year, so there might be more to discover, but for now I’ve found six for the season to add to the complete holiday horror page. Unfortunately, most of them were Prime rentals…and not many of them were worth the cost. Let’s take a look.

DOWN THE CHIMNEY WITH A SHOTGUN (2022)

In this 72-minute Christmas horror anthology, an escaped mental patient in a Santa suit abducts a woman and starts to tell her terror tales…sort of. Each story is introduced by a very enticing, narrated folklore presented with animated art stills.

Those intros are more compelling than the short films they accompany. Each one is set in the modern day and feels disjointed and confusing with no clear story arc. Most of the time I had no idea what was actually going on. I tried to identify plots, but it wasn’t easy. Not to mention, most of the stories didn’t feel very Christmasy, and a few even had Halloween visuals in them.

One segment is about a killer scarecrow. I believe a woman kills her abusive man while dressed as Santa, then drags him to a cornfield, where the scarecrow gets her. She also sees a burning jack-‘o-lantern, which leads into the next segment, with a dude roaming around property decorated for Halloween.

There are two segments featuring creepy little Santa or elf dolls, there’s a story of a cannibal butcher that eats naughty boys and girls, and finally, I think the wraparound mental patient faces off against Krampus in the end. It shouldn’t be this challenging to watch an indie Christmas horror anthology. At least there were some good horror visual and nasty effects.

CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS (2024)

Director Alice Maio Mackay has been bringing us plenty of trans horror flicks in the past few years, and Carnage for Christmas continues that trend. However, this 69-minute movie almost feels more like a pilot for a trans investigator TV show, with someone even referring to the main character as Nancy Drew and someone asking her to solve another case in the film’s final moment.

This flick uses great, practical effects that feel like something from a sleazy, gory, early 80s slasher, but overall, it unfolds much more like a murder mystery. I’m sure budget constraints may have resulted in the short runtime, but I would have loved it if the film had been a 90-minute feature with more of the great death and chase scenes.

Our main character is a trans woman with a true crime podcast. She tells an awesome urban legend of “The Toymaker”, his murderous actions, and how it’s possible to conjure him, but sadly, that lore doesn’t quite become the main focus of the slasher part.

Instead, she returns to her hometown and starts to investigate when a series of murders leads to her being one of the suspects. There are a lot of sleuthing scenes, with the kills sprinkled in here and there. The Santa is freaky looking as well, and the death scenes are grisly, but I did feel the vibe otherwise was more cozy mystery rather than tension-building horror. Like I said, I could definitely see this becoming a mystery series.

SILENT BITE (2024)

I was excited to see another Christmas flick starring horror daddy Simon Phillips of Once Upon a Time at Christmas and its sequel The Nights Before Christmas. Whereas he played a psycho in a Santa suit in those films, here he’s the leader of a group of thieves dressed in Santa suits and on the run after a botched robbery.

They take refuge in a hotel, which happens to be home to a horde of female vampires.

It’s a fun if not familiar premise (criminals discover something sinister lurks in their hideout), but this is a surprisingly low energy horror effort. There was so much opportunity here to have the female vamps go crazy on these guys to spawn more vamps, but nothing of the sort happens. And considering there are a bunch of sexy female vamps, I don’t understand why they passed on the opportunity for seduction and sex scenes!

When you’re going to make a film with a premise similar to that of Abigail, you really need to bring it, and this one doesn’t at all. There are no scares, no suspense, and little blood, making for a really bland Christmas horror experience. Hell, the first vamp attack doesn’t even occur until 52 minutes in.

A VERY FLATTENED CHRISTMAS (2024)

I don’t quite understand the origin of this movie. It’s a horror comedy that, based on the director’s filmography on IMDb, is actually a follow-up to a comedy series called Flattened (I assume a web series?), but I’m not sure if that was ever even released. Either way, this is a standalone movie, so it doesn’t matter. However, you do kind of get the sense that the characters may have been better introduced before, because there’s not much here allowing us to get to know them.

Also distracting is the audio track. It almost feels as if the dialogue was dubbed in later. The voices are so far up in the mix that it doesn’t actually seem like they’re coming from the actors on screen. Weird.

The unfolding of events is kind of chaotic, with scenes often feeling like they don’t have any relevance to anything else. Also, the comedic moments go from being just annoying to being quite clever, so the tone is very inconsistent.

The story is basically about a roadkill cleanup business (Hence the “flattened” in the title—tee hee) trying to celebrate the holidays while members of their team keep getting killed off by someone in a reindeer costume. One of the guys who used to work there becomes a suspect, and he’s presumably the main guy and must prove his innocence. However, that plot point doesn’t quite come together.

It’s a sloppy narrative, and what’s unfortunate is that there’s a hell of a good grindhouse Christmas slasher just waiting to break free from the nonsense. The kill scenes are atmospheric, creepy, bloody, and perfectly lit for a Christmas horror flick, and the rustic deer mask is very backwoods eerie. The horror elements just so deserved to be in a movie with a better script.

There are even seeds of a whole subplot about an underground lair of cannibal sex slaves, but that aspect is not fully explored or explained and also feels like it belonged in a different movie. Just a strange production all around.

HE SEES YOU WHEN YOU’RE SLEEPING (2024)

Charlie Steeds, one of my fave indie horror directors these days, brings us a satisfying throwback to 80s killer Santa movies.

It begins in familiar fashion. It’s 1963, and an escaped mental patient shows up at a house dressed and Santa and kills a kid’s parents, but the kid gets away.

Flash forward to 1980. The kid is now an adult, has let his extended family move into the house, and is going there for the holidays. What could go wrong?

Oddly, despite it being 1980, he seems to be driving there in The Pink Ladies’ car. It also looks like it is autumn, not late December.

Anyway, the house has that wood-walled, Black Christmas vibe (awesome), and the family is a bunch of backstabbers, headed by matriarch (and 80s scream queen) Caroline Williams. It would immediately seem that someone is plotting to make our main guy insane for an inheritance.

The killing starts, with people getting hacked up by a psycho Santa, our main guy thinks he’s losing it as he has flashbacks of seeing his parents killed, and the family is at each other’s throats (before they’re slit by the psycho Santa).

The pacing is perfect, the kills are just the right intensity for an 80s-style slasher, there’s a playful level of camp that gives off Clue vibes, plus a frantic final act, even if the killer reveal isn’t the most shocking you’ll ever see. This is definitely one of the winners for me this season.

‘TWAS THE NIGHT (2023)

I really like the polished look and feel of this anthology film, as well as the Christmas vibe, but the “stories” are lifeless with little meat to them, and also tell the same essential story over and over.

In the wraparound, a young woman takes three people hostage for reasons that aren’t made clear, then begins to tell them tales. In between each tale, she kills another captive.

1st tale – Santa’s little helper (basically Elf On The Shelf) breaks into a house and tells the kids they’ve been bad and must be punished. That’s it. That’s the story. No payoff whatsoever.

2nd tale – a young woman bows out of celebrating Christmas with her family, so a demonic Jack Frost dude appears and punishes her with an icicle.

3rd tale – a dude being held in the lair of a creep that looks like a demented Oogie Boogie from A Nightmare Before Christmas is told he must be punished for not celebrating Christmas.

In the end, all those who died in the stories and the wraparound are brought down to purgatory to meet Krampus.

I guess the positive aspect of this movie is that Krampus looks cool. The downside is that it’s not a scary film and feels like a Christian propaganda flick about people being punished and sent to hell simply for not wanting to participate in Christmas festivities.

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There’s something queer in the scare

Posted on November 18, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a trio of flicks featuring gay, lesbian, and queer characters in a variety of subgenres.

TIME CUT (2024)

Apparently, Time Cut first went into production like two years before Totally Killer even existed, but then the filmmaking process slowed. As a result, Totally Killer was released first and Time Cut feels like a rip-off. Don’t let that stop you from watching it, because it stands on its own in the time travel slasher subgenre.

For starters, it’s going to be trippy for some people to comprehend that it has been twenty years since the early 2000s. The film reminds us with pop culture references, mention of there being no social media or smart phones, and a soundtrack including hits by Fat Joe, Vanessa Carlton, Hilary Duff, Avril Lavigne, and Michelle Branch. And considering one of the main characters is a lesbian, most notable is the reminder of how far queer rights have come in the past twenty years, even though they are now most likely going to swiftly slide backwards.

Anyway, twenty years ago there was a rash of teen murders. Since then, the town has fallen on hard times (there’s really no explanation for that outcome) and our main girl happens to be the sister of one of the original victims…who was murdered before the main girl was even born.

That aspect is what makes this movie pretty poignant. When the main girl finds and triggers a time machine in the very location where her sister was murdered, she is transported back to just days before the murders took place.

She rather quickly befriends a kid who totally buys that she’s from the future, and soon after she meets her late sister, and it’s kind of sad. Not only that they never got the chance to know each other, but also how her sister’s death changed their parents by the time she was born.

The slasher part is highly focused on the main girl and her new friends trying to stop the murders from happening. There are chase scenes, suspense, and some brutal kills, plus a fresh twist as the group is hunted by and tries to thwart the masked, knife-wielding killer. However, the plot really will test your patience when it comes to swallowing how it incorporates the whole space-time continuum issue.

CLICKBAIT: UNFOLLOWED (2024)

A movie in which we are immediately introduced to a bunch of obnoxious influencers had me thinking I was going to hate it, but this shit turned out to be a blast. And the opening credits featuring super detailed, gory clips of a facelift let me know right away that it was also going to get ugly.

So these influencers are invited to a mansion for a sort of influencer version of Big Brother. We get:

Peach—the queer lead character (yay!)

An insecure, chubby girl with glasses
A hippy chick
A pretty boy

A douchebag dude
A stage mom and the tween son she’s trying to make famous

Best of all is the hostess of the show, who appears on a screen in the living room and looks like a Real Housewife of Mar-a-Lago. She is camptastic. Or should I say camplastic.

There are immediate tensions between cast members, and it only escalates once they discover what happens to them when they lose one of the online challenges in which they must participate as “guards” in masks watch over them…and dispose of them.

Amazingly, as the competitions and killings start, the characters become more likable and give pretty damn good, funny performances. Not to mention, our queer lead makes a great final gay boy, and also makes this film an honorary addition to the homo horror movies page.

Don’t expect anything frightening, because this is more like a Saw movie with a sense of humor.

THE EXORCISM OF SAINT PATRICK (2024)

In direct contrast to the happy, final gay in Clickbait: Unfollowed, this one is yet another in this new wave of queer trauma porn, and at a time like this when things are going to most likely get worse for queer folk in the U.S., this is so not what we need. Be warned that it can be a very triggering movie for those who had difficult upbringings. As I’ve said before, this is exactly why I write gay positive, sex positive, humorous homo horror in which gays are living their best lives and fighting monsters…not psychotic religious extremists.

The first fifty minutes feature a very intimate and cruel conversion therapy program between a teen boy and a priest, alone at a cabin in the woods. The performances are excellent, and this feels like a high-quality production, not a low budget indie.

The “exorcism” is not the usual possession concept—it’s at first about exorcising the homosexuality out of the teen, and later takes on a double meaning. It’s also a detailed and disturbing presentation of the mentally torturous conversion process. I don’t know if you’re going to want to sit through fifty minutes of that to get to the supernatural revenge part in the final act.

Sooooo…the kid eventually commits suicide because he can’t take it. The priest disposes of the body and plans to cover it up by telling the (equally despicable) parents that the kid ran away.

The dead body then appears to him as a glowing red mass, and the movie immediately and temporarily turns into a genuine horror film as the priest is haunted by the dead boy. This opens a Pandora’s box, and he is then visited by the ghosts of gay conversion therapy past, which becomes more of a soul-searching story culminating in a very unsatisfactory revenge killing. Sigh. I really feel like some of these queer trauma porn movies are perhaps a cathartic release for the creators with little thought about the audience.

My advice to filmmakers would be that if you’re going to make a movie about a tortured gay kid dying and then coming back from the dead for revenge, don’t make the part where he’s tortured run longer than the payback segment.

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