A foursome of “house” movies from 1989

Posted on October 15, 2024 by Daniel

Made for Italian television and originally called The Houses of Doom (which is what the Blu-ray boxed set is called), these films were apparently shelved until the 90s. I’d never seen them until now, after buying the new boxed set. The only thing connecting the movies together is that they all concern people coming to the wrong house at the wrong time, which provides us with standalone horror movies in various subgenres. Cool. So which ones were my faves?

THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS (1989)


Lucio Fulci directed the first “installment”, and while it has flashes of classic Fulci gore, it definitely feels more like a TV movie than a hardcore horror flick. It also has a generally common plot—a group of thugs intends to rob a house, ends up murdering someone, and then finds out that this is no ordinary house.

We know right from the start that things are really fucked up in this house. An old couple that collects clocks lives there, and their murderous ways are presented before the thugs even arrive.

Meanwhile, the thugs are a trio of two guys and a girl, and one of the guys is a real douche. We are subjected to him sticking a cat in a plastic bag and then having to listen to it suffer. The most horrific part of the movie.

Once they arrive at the mansion, they soon kill the couple, at which point all the clocks in the house begin going in reverse. Nothing is really explained, and there’s not much in the way of scares, even though some corpses do come back to life. Plus, with only three main characters, there’s little in the way of a body count.

There is, however, an interesting premise to this time-jumping movie…the reversal of time serves as a launching pad for sweet revenge for literally everyone wronged in the movie. Too bad the supporting plot isn’t better. It’s really hard to believe this movie comes from Fulci.

THE SWEET HOUSE OF HORRORS (1989)


The second film is another Fulci flick, and he more than makes up for the disaster of the first movie. This is pure 80s Euro horror wackiness, right down to irritating, obnoxiously dubbed children. The boy even has an infamous bowl cut, a staple for boys in 80s Euro horror.

This is basically an evil kid movie. In the opening scene, a couple comes home and is brutally murdered by an intruder in an old school ski mask. This scene is filled with classic, super gory mutilation that isn’t something you’d see in a TV movie even today.

The couple’s kids end up orphaned, so their aunt and uncle come to stay in the house with them. The aunt and uncle also plan to sell the house to make money. They bring in a realtor who is immediately harmed by a supernatural presence and then spends the rest of the movie walking around with crutches, which makes for several slapstick scenes. Only thing is, I’m not sure if that is intentional or not.

Aside from one freaky scene of the aunt coming upon hanging dolls and a big fly toy that seems to come to life, which is quite creepy, this whole movie feels more like a horror comedy.

The children talk to flames that dance in the air, poltergeist winds cause havoc, and a killer excavator terrorizes the family in the gardens. I was seriously laughing during this scene.

Eventually the ghosts of the parents begin communicating with the kids and enter a couple of rocks so the kids can always carry them around. I’m not even kidding. To top it all off, the film mostly relies on that cheesy, fast-paced synth score style music of the 80s Euro horror era. This is how you do it.

THE HOUSE OF WITCHCRAFT (1989)

The third film is directed by Umberto Lenzi, who brought us Ghosthouse, Nightmare Beach, and Black Demons, and quite honestly, I like it better than both of Fulci’s installments.

It’s a killer witch slasher! Awesome!

A dude is plagued by nightmares of going into a house where he encounters an old hag boiling his head in a pot of water. He’s also struggling with the fact that his wife is obsessed with the occult and witches, so their relationship is rocky.

She suggests they take some time away together at a house in the country to try to save their marriage. He should have just called it quits the moment they get into a car accident on the way there and she insists they flee the scene…and the dead bodies.

As in most Euro horror flicks of the 80s, there ends up being the usual cast of quirky and creepy characters at the house…which turns out to be the house from the main guy’s dreams!

I was quickly so satisfied by this one, as characters began getting hacked and slashed by the evil witch. Of course, there’s some mystery embedded in the plot to keep us guessing if any of the weirdos is part of this witchy murder spree.

The witch is awesome, the kills are awesome, the setting is atmospheric, and there’s even a black cat. However, in the end, I kind of guessed early on how this one was going to turn out, and any horror veteran probably will, too.

THE HOUSE OF LOST SOULS (1989)


Umberto Lenzi is back for the final installment, and I definitely prefer his movies over Fulci’s flicks. This one is pure 80s Euro horror nonsense.

A woman with psychic powers is part of a group of environmentally conscious college students. While out doing some fieldwork, they end up at a motel with no guests and no staff beyond the manager.

The psychic begins having visions of axe murders that involve decapitation. In the meantime, everyone else is having weird experiences of their own: chandeliers that drip blood, spiders, dead bodies hanging in freezers, etc.

Slowly but surely everyone starts getting killed off by very tangible ghosts, including a little boy, an angry woman, a Hare Krishna dude, and more.

There’s some fun gore, including a killer washing machine and a killer dumbwaiter, and as the survivors try to stay alive, they are eventually chased by the bevy of ghosts that come across more like zombies and were all victims of decapitation. The only way to stop them? Find the heads of the dead to free their souls. Awesome.

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Influencers on the chopping block

Posted on October 14, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a trio of flicks in which influencers gather together in an isolated house to party, only to be targeted by masked killers.

#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead (2024)


This simple, mean-spirited slasher comes from the director of The Collector movies. The cast of characters is despicable and the kills are brutal…in other words, sometimes murder is so satisfying.

A group of seven influencer friends rents an AirBnB to go to a music festival that was the site of unsolved murders several years before.

As this obnoxious, self-centered group begins to party, we get snippets of backstory about a friend they lost to an apparent suicide, played in a brief cameo by JoJo Siwa.

Slowly but surely, the friends begin disappearing, and each one is taken to be tortured and killed in a lair lit in dance club colors by a killer in a hoodie and an electronic mask that can display different images on the surface. Talk about rave to the grave.

The kills are brutal and gory, which is really what you have to run with here, and while I’m always up for death by dildo, it’s a very random weapon of choice in this particular film.

There’s not much in the way of scares or tension, although there are a few suspenseful moments that give us more than just the victims being captured and killed.

One of the most important elements to mention here is that there is a lesbian side story that at first seems to get buried rather quickly, but it does take on a much larger role late in the film as the group begins to learn the truth of why they are being targeted.

The final chaotic chase scene and battle to the death gets quite over-the-top with some funny moments as well, and there are plenty of twists that run straight through the end credits, so make sure to keep watching.

AMP HOUSE MASSACRE (2024)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A group of the biggest, most obnoxious internet stars gets trapped in a house with a masked killer. Yeah. It’s a sign of the times that we’ve been bombarded by influencer horror over the last few years.

The film begins with one member of this clique dying at one of their parties. In honor of his memory, the others decide to gather in a large house and initiate a new, up-and-coming influencer into their group to fill the void.

Soon, the killing begins. Would you believe the killer wears a hoodie and an electronic mask that changes images?

However, this film differs from AMFAD in that the killer begins taunting the group to get them to turn against each other. The tension it causes is the highlight here, because the death scenes are pretty tame.

The kills come fast in the last half hour, and of course there’s a few twists along the way as the truth unfolds as to how their first friend died and who is now seeking revenge.

FOLLOWERS (2024)


This is actually a sequel to a film called Follower, which I haven’t seen. You don’t actually have to, because the movie, which only ran a little over an hour long, is recapped in the first fifteen minutes of the sequel. The first one looks like a bland movie in which three influencers go camping in the wilderness, get terrorized by a guy in a mask…and then all get away at the end! Yawn.

In this movie, which is essentially an hour long without the recap, it’s more than a year later. One of the girls has decided to get back into her influencer career by exploiting what they went through.

She invites the other two girls and their boyfriends for a New Year’s Eve gathering in a mansion in the middle of nowhere. That lands this one on the holiday horror page, but don’t expect any signs or celebration of the holiday at all.

This is a pretty simple and straightforward home invasion film about internet fame and angry white male incels jealous of not being the center of society’s attention anymore. This cultish group of guys who fancy themselves to be wolves, wearing furry masks and even growling when they go hunting victims, decides to crash the party and kill off the influencers and their boyfriends.

The action that unfolds is totally typical, the weapon of choice is most often a gun (yawn), and the twist is predictable. But I’ll give the film credit for feeling like a high-quality production rather than a low budget indie.

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Slashing my way through seasonal horror for Halloween 2024

Posted on October 10, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a trio of new Halloween horror slashers to add to the complete holiday horror page, and it was a good marathon to set the tone for October.

NIGHT OF THE HARVEST (2023)


I’ll give this one credit—it’s a little different than your usual Halloween slasher. It definitely has an indie feel, and along with that comes some of the common pitfalls of indies, including the fact that it runs too long at 107 minutes.

However, I was happy to see the movie open with plenty of holiday décor as a dude comes to a girl’s house for a first date. I even appreciated the appearance of an ominous masked killer with an axe.

Next we meet our cast of friends planning to go to a cabin in the woods to celebrate Halloween. This is where things get weird. One girl is at the cabin setting up for the party, and there are some creepy shots of the killer watching her before attacking her. Unfortunately, the “choreography” of the kill feels amateurish.

Meanwhile, after plenty of scenes of the other kids discussing who they want to hook up with, they all end up…at a warehouse instead of the cabin! Huh?

This is where the big twist in the film plays out…way too early. There’s really no mystery left after the reveal, and we then just watch people getting hacked up before more people arrive to serve as more bodies for the brutality.

From there the movie starts to go in circles with very few characters walking around the empty warehouse, filling the excessive run time with little action. If it’s any consolation, there’s one more twist in the final act, but I definitely felt the Halloween vibe waning to nothing by the end.

Gotta confess, I blind bought this one on Blu-ray, but I wouldn’t have purchased it if I’d seen it first.

HAUNT SEASON (2024)


This would have been the better blind buy, but unfortunately, it’s not on disc yet. I love me a good haunted Halloween attraction slasher, and while this one does have some pacing issues early on, it brings refreshing twists and has a kick ass final act and smartly runs only 80 minutes long.

It begins with a major kill in a red-drenched room at the haunt, which leads to a vacancy on the haunt team.

A new girl comes in to fill the inexplicably open position, and she slowly gets to know all her fellow employees. It’s a pretty likable cast, and includes a pretty boy who enjoys walking around naked. Yum.

What’s established rather quickly is that the killer, having a whole haunted attraction at their disposal, wears a different horror mask for every kill. Awesome.

There are some violent and bloody kills, including one chase scene, in between the group hanging out and getting to know the new girl. The vibe of some of the early kills feels a little cheap because the sound effects are mixed down too much with an 80s style throbbing synth score filling the void, but the problem is remedied later on.

The big turn in the kills getting way cool is one involving a laser light effect. From then on there’s some really creative camerawork, and the kills start to rock. We’re also treated to a fun montage of the girls on the team getting into the Halloween spirit.

The movie really takes off when the killer’s identity is revealed…surprisingly early. You’d think the film would nose-dive after that, but it totally ramps up and turns into a haunted attraction massacre. Not to mention, two of the main girls shift into fantastic final girls you find yourself rooting for. I so want this one on disc.

CREEPING DEATH (2023)


Load your Halloween horror film with seasonal visuals and you’ve already got me halfway in your corner, and this indie does just that, starting with an awesome trick or treating opening kill. And it cuts right from that to a pumpkin patch! Perfect.

The rest of the film isn’t quite as perfect, but it does have a fun supernatural folklore legend as the basic premise. Director Matt Sampere is also the lead in the film, playing a son who is dealing with caring for his dying mother.

At the same time, something sinister is taking place in town. Pets have gone missing, houses are being vandalized, people have seemingly abandoned their houses, and occult symbols are being left on doors in what looks like blood.

Matt’s friends, who all look like they’re in their late 20s and way too old to be playing Halloween pranks, steal a bag from a crotchety old man’s steps on Halloween night and bring it back to Matt’s house to see what’s inside.

Little do they know it was an offering left there to keep an evil entity from coming out to kill on Halloween night.

In a throwback to all the supernatural specter movies of the early 2000s, the group has to figure out what they’ve unleashed and how to stop it, right down to the annoying aspect of the subgenre, which sees them running all over town instead of keeping the action set in one location.

The film is a little chaotic and rough around the edges, but the evil entity is pretty darn awesome, there’s some good gore, and there’s a devilish twist as to how they can kill the entity. I could definitely see adding this simple little indie slasher to my collection of Halloween horror movies for an annual watch.

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A cub vs. zombies and male strippers vs. a witch

Posted on October 8, 2024 by Daniel

It’s two horror comedies that aren’t specifically gay themed but will definitely appeal to gay guys. One is a horror musical, and the other revolves around male strippers!

ELDRITCH USA


It’s a zombie musical with a cute cub as the leading man!

Our main guy lives in the shadow of his successful reporter brother (he’s the brother’s cameraman), and has to sit on the sidelines as his brother gets all the accolades, steals any girl he likes, and even gets all the love from their parents.

The brothers end up doing a story on a sort of cult community that claims to have been successful in bringing the dead back to life. Uh-oh.

Things get into Pet Sematary territory when a freak accident leads to someone dying…and the realization that maybe the cult community can help bring the dead back to life. Before long, there’s a chain reaction of people needing to be resurrected as the first person brought back to life can’t control their zombie urges.

The cast is lovable, there’s charm and humor, and the songs are quite catchy, with repeating melodies carrying through the story as in traditional musicals. Highlights include the cub bear getting a slap on the booty from one of his male coworkers, the cub bear’s nerdy friend singing a whole meta song about what happens in horror movies when the dead come back to life, and of course a zombie horde musical number featuring a “Thriller”-esque dance number.

There’s only one thing missing from this horror musical—a big show-stopping finale! The final battle between our main characters and the horde of zombies is completely void of any music, singing, or dancing!

Eldritch USA hits Blu-ray and DVD on October 22, 2024, and comes to digital and on demand on November 5, 2024.
 
MEMBERS CLUB



Members Club is Magic Mike meets Practical Magic, and it’s a blast. I love me some movies with less than perfect stripper men as much as I love witch movies, so combine the two into a sexy horror comedy and you’ve got a full monty frightfest!

The film opens with an awesome scene of a perv getting his rocks off…and getting some body parts lobed off.

We then meet our struggling stripper foursome, known as The Wet Dreams. They land a gig at a club in the middle of nowhere, and before long they find themselves involuntarily taking part in a coven’s occult ritual to resurrect a man-hating witch out for revenge. Awesome!

This is just pure witchy fun as the guys try to get through the night with their lives…and manhood…intact.

The witch is gnarly, there’s sexual and gross out humor, gore, suspense, men stripping, a severed tongue running amok, and even a witch getting a lap dance. Totally my kind of movie. Plus, we get a couple of daddy bears doing stripteases.

Members Club will be available for digital download on October 21, 2024, and I hope it will eventually get a physical media release, because I would love to add it to my movie collection.

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Women vs. scary stuff

Posted on October 4, 2024 by Daniel

It turns out this trio of flicks I watched on Tubi all feature women in perilous horror situations. Shocker, I know. More shocking is that two out of the three really worked for me.

THE DEAD GIRL IN APARTMENT 03 (2022)


Short and to the point at 72 minutes long, this little indie really grabbed me with its ambience and atmosphere—isolating, dark, shadowy, and mostly contained to one apartment.

The main girl discovers her roommate dead in her bedroom. Adrienne King of Friday the 13th plays one of the detectives that comes to the scene to investigate the possibility of any foul play.

This becomes a tense slow burn as the main girl tries to go on with her life while attempting to piece together what could have happened to her roommate.

The only person she really has contact with while she’s alone in the apartment in which she found a dead body is her ex-boyfriend.

When her electricity goes out, the shit hits the fan and a terrifying presence comes out of the shadows.

Sound and (lack of) light are used to great effect for the final act, and there are some good occult aspects added to the ghostly storyline.

VIOLETT (2023)


If you’re looking for a visually arresting, intriguing, and unnerving elevated horror flick, this one is a good place to turn. I’m not the biggest fan of elevated horror, yet I found Violett totally engaging.

Kids have gone missing in a small town, and a sick and mentally troubled mother is concerned her daughter is going to be taken as well. Especially since the freaky neighbors stare at her when she goes out on the street. Is she paranoid, or is there something much more sinister going on?

She has macabre visions, delusions, and daydreams, and her relationship with her incredibly handsome husband is suffering.

However, she has a strong and protective relationship with her daughter, which deepens as the threat starts hitting closer to home.

This moody and atmospheric slow burn has an eerie vibe, the casting of mother and daughter is fantastic, and there are some unexpected twists, so I’d definitely recommend it for lovers of the elevated horror subgenre.

LAIR OF THE KILLER CLOWNS (2023)


Not even the 75-minute runtime could make this one any less unbearable to me.

We’re thrown right into a bizarre situation. A blonde bombshell seems to have some sort of psychic powers. She channels some clowns then begins searching for her missing, killer clown brother with the help of some other dude in the middle of a desert.

They explore sand and some ramshackle structures for 50 minutes, with no action and very little dialogue. Eventually they split up and she finds a few crazy clowns that are keeping her brother bound in some sort of killer clown purgatory (aka: a room in one of those ramshackle structures).

Finally, there’s a bunch of dialogue that doesn’t accomplish much of anything other than just taking us right to the closing credits.

I don’t know. Maybe this was supposed to be some sort of cathartic art piece so those who fear evil clowns could get to see them pay for what they’ve done, but personally, when I’m welcomed into a lair of killer clowns, I want the clowns to…you know…kill.

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Everything I know about The X-Files I learned from a survival horror video game

Posted on September 30, 2024 by Daniel

I have to admit, I never watched The X-Files when it aired in the 90s. Those were my prime clubbing years, I was going to college, and I was working two jobs, so I was out all the time. Therefore, the ways in which the game makes reference to episodes of the show were irrelevant to me, but it’s still a fun Resident Evil style survival horror game.

You get to play as either Scully or Mulder, and each character’s game is a bit different. With each character, you actually get to play a series of “episodes”, which is cool.

The game is loaded with zombies, and they are actually much creepier than RE zombies. They make noises, they move fast, they jump out of shadows, and they are quite aggressive. The fact that the game is very dark adds to the tense atmosphere. I cranked my television brightness up all the way and that shit was still dark.

As with RE games, you explore locations, find ammo, health, and new weapons, and locate notes and key items to help you open doors to new areas, all while a paranormal mystery unfolds.

The game has a self-contained inventory (you’ll never run out of space) and a save system—look for an X on a wall or computer to save—that can be used infinitely. Awesome.

The controls are mapped a bit oddly considering most survival horror games of the era tended to stick to a fairly universal schematic, so that takes some getting used to. You have a run button, and you can actually use a flashlight while shooting…with the pistol. Bigger, two-handed guns don’t offer that option, which sucks due to how ridiculously dark the game is. You also can’t run while using the flashlight, which makes no sense.
The graphics are typical of the PS2, and the main character models are excellent. As is common with games of the era, it’s very easy to get stuck on background objects (argh!), and while the game is more fluid because it doesn’t use tank controls, that is not advantageous considering it uses fixed camera angles like RE. Therefore, you can be running in one direction, and when the camera angle changes, your controller doesn’t accommodate the change and you’re suddenly running in the wrong direction unless you quickly adjust your push on the thumbstick. As a result, you will find yourself running in circles at times. Not to mention, this is one of those games that has scene change loads even when you’re running down the same street, so you can easily run into a load screen only to find when you are in the new location, you are now running right back in the direction from which you just came, kicking off another load screen to take you back where you just were.

As for the episodes, you actually play the same ones with both characters, but like Resident Evil 2, you experience the situation from two different perspectives and have some similar and some different experiences.


MULDER
Episode 1
Act 1

In the first episode, you start off exploring alone, but eventually Scully joins you and she does help shoot enemies, which is good since it takes loads of bullets to kill these fuckers. And it’s important to create space before shooting them, because the auto aim will fail to hit them when they’re too close.

The worst part of this episode is a protect sequence. Argh! You have to shoot loads of zombies coming into a fricking dark room so they don’t attack and kill Scully while she’s doing an autopsy. This part really sucked. If she dies, you die.

You get a map, but you are presented as a red dot instead of as an arrow on it, so you don’t know which direction you’re facing. Absurd! Also, locations aren’t written on the map until you visit them. What the hell? This is especially infuriating because of the horrible load screens. You’ll find yourself running in circles around streets and constantly being bombarded by load screens as a result of making wrong turns, which just manages to throw you off even more. It’s a vicious cycle.
There’s one major boss in this episode, and you fight him in tight quarters in a grocery store. The idea is to shoot him while avoiding his laser attacks until a knife symbol appears in the corner. You then have to equip the knife in your inventory, find a way to get behind the boss, and stab him in the back of the neck with it. Fun.

Soon after, you get to mines where you have to put on night vision goggles and quickly lead Scully safely through crumbling caves as zombies attack. It’s pretty straightforward, but you can’t let her get killed by zombies or falling rocks, and you can’t let her fall behind. You also have to make your way to two different ladders to climb. The second one leads you out, and there’s a save in the first building you enter right after.

After that you near the end of the episode. Now you have to get the power to a cable car while Scully protects you from an onslaught of zombies. You need to do this fast so she doesn’t die before they can even get to you, and you’ll have no idea what to do, so I’d highly suggest using a walkthrough. Once you’re on the cable car, you have to diffuse a bomb really fast. Again…walkthrough for the code.

The chapter ends, you save, and then…

Episode 1
Act 2

…you are thrust right outside with a demon dog attacking you…and your gun suddenly unequipped. WTF?

You soon explore a building where you encounter lots of zombies, including one that unleashes a black oil you have to run away from or it’s instant death!

A floating woman boss with laser fire is pretty easy the first time you fight her, but on the second encounter you have to fight three of her at the same time!

Right after that you fight another boss who has the three women with him, but you get a new weapon right before the battle, and you can take him down in seconds before he even conjures the women.


Episode 2
Act 1

This is simply exposition. You walk around FBI headquarters and talk to several people.

Episode 2
Act 2

What the hell? You’re in your apartment and Scully visits…but it’s not her! Shoot her and she turns into a baddie you just have to run away from for a cutscene…something you wouldn’t know without a walkthrough.

You end up in a trippy hallway maze with aliens attacking you. There’s a certain path you need to take to escape this section, and if you don’t use a walkthrough you’re an idiot, because a mere five-door path could take you forever if you keep choosing the wrong doors.

Next you fight a boss…and his secretary! WTF? The idea is to kill her first because she has a kick ass gun she drops that you can then use on him.

After a cutscene you have to immediately run away from Scully in cramped quarters with other people standing around to get to an elevator. She catches you, she kills you! Sigh.

You end up in a stunning cathedral, but sadly the darkness of this game makes it hard to see. The idea is to actually let the baddies you encounter kill you! How would you know this without a walkthrough???

Episode 3
Act 1

What the hell? It starts with a cut scene, then as soon as the credits end you are surrounded by bad guys. You have to get around them and run towards the screen to escape…and you have absolutely nothing in your inventory, so you can’t fight them.

Seconds later you enter a section where you are chased by wolves and have to find the right doors to enter to get away! You have to avoid them a few times, but eventually you have your gun to kill them, which is kind of sad because they yelp like dogs. You also need to conserve ammo, because this is a tough episode with bosses galore. And don’t feel too guilty about killing the wolves, because the first damn boss keeps resurrecting them while you fight him. Argh!

This episode ends with a few scenes in which you have to run to stay alive…just as it began.

Episode 3
Act 2

There’s a fishing expedition here to move forward with Scully, but once you get separated from her things get challenging.

You first have to chase a guy who is shooting at you. The goal is to stay far enough away to hit him every time he stops so he’ll continue running up a tower. If you get too close, he will riddle you with bullets and you will die.

Once you come back down from the tower, it’s a boss! He’s a tall scary guy in a robe who spits at you in a limited space…right near a save that you can’t use until he’s dead. Bastards.

Next you have to use night goggles again to get through winding tunnels filled with zombies. You also have to be really carefully here not to meet up with Scully until you’ve found the flamethrower and some other items, which is really tricky. Scully is in a corner room and looks like she’s waiting to be the next Blair Witch victim, so just avoid approaching her until you’ve gotten lost trying to find the flamethrower and gotten just as lost finding your way back to her.

Holy crap. The final Mulder boss comes in five forms with a spaceship as the hub in between forms. Each time you defeat one you are put back on the spaceship to gather some goodies and some breath…and to fight an alien or two. WTF? I simply don’t see completing this episode without the infinite health and ammo codes punched in. Oh. Did I mention this game has punch-in codes?

The first time the boss is just a man with some powers and is pretty easy.

The second time he has a zombie that he keeps resurrecting.

Third time he has two zombies he keeps resurrecting.

Fourth time is a bitch. Three zombie and the boss in the tight grocery store, and you wouldn’t know it if you didn’t read a walkthrough, but you also must retrieve the knife you stuck in the dead boss earlier while getting your ass beaten by the enemies.


The fifth and final time the boss is a big alien in the spaceship…with little aliens swarming you as well. The catch is you have to stay close to him and keep shooting him, otherwise he has the ability to fricking heal himself. Which means you need to stick to killing him and get your ass kicked by the other aliens while you do it. Which also means…use them fricking cheat codes. Once he falls to his knees you have to get behind him and stab him mercilessly with the knife until he dies. Now what would happen if you’d missed picking up that knife in the grocery store?


SCULLY
Episode 1
Act 1

Basically, Scully’s game covers a lot of the same ground as Mulder’s game, just showing you what she’s doing around town when she wasn’t with him. While you had a section in which you killed wolves in his game, you actually have to kill dogs in this one! I’m not even sure if they’re normal dogs or zombie dogs as in Resident Evil (it matters, because the rules are it’s okay to kill zombie dogs).

The first big challenge is the autopsy scene, in which you now have to quickly perform the autopsy while Mulder covers you. If you don’t do it fast enough, he dies and it’s game over. This section will drive you crazy, because you will have no idea what to do without a walkthrough, and even with a walkthrough, you can’t hesitate at all. Plus, in between trying to do the autopsy and give an antidote to Mulder, both of you will be getting attacked by zombies.


At the gas station there’s a fun zombie boss. The object is to raise a car on a lift, get him to crawl under it, then drop the car on him. You have to do this three times, but seriously, I just stood at the panel and simply kept pressing the button to raise it and then drop it again, and he never got a chance to get out from under it before I did it three times.

You eventually have another run-in with instant death oil chasing you, but you barely even notice it because it’s after a cutscene and shrouded by the dark. You’re in a little alcove, and if you instinctively run out of it, you run right into the approaching oil slick! The idea is to run to the back of the alcove and press x to climb and then x again to jump back down from a back exit. But you’re not done yet! You then have to run to a grate and use bolt cutters on it while the oil is still right behind you! Eek!

You have to repeat the annoying mineshaft night goggles sequence again, but Mulder seems to keep up with you better than you did with him in his game. However, the zombies seem more aggressive this time and really slow you down.

This act ends with a repeat of having to get a cable car up and running, with Mulder guarding you from zombies this time.

Episode 1
Act 2

The highlights of this part include fighting mental patient zombies and doing another autopsy and complicated chemical mixing. Eek! You make toxic bullets to kill a horde of zombies with, but there are only enough to use one bullet on each zombie. Eek! Of course the infinite ammo code can fix that fear fast.

You also get trapped in a radiation chamber in which you quickly have to use night vision goggles to find the code to a panel nearby…which you first have to open with a screwdriver. Yikes!

You end up having to fight the boss with the three women again, and this time you have to make sure Mulder doesn’t die while he’s helping you fight.


Episode 2
Act 1

I wish this was just as short and all exposition at FBI headquarters, but this time there’s one catch—you have to perform an autopsy, you end up poisoning yourself while doing so, and then you have to create an antidote quickly! Also known as…walkthrough.

Episode 2
Act 2

The majority of this act requires walking around a facility without a weapon. Pulling out your weapon equals instant death because the guards all over will know you’re not really on their team.

You have a guy accompanying you, and it’s mostly search and find missions. You do one autopsy, and at one point you have two guys with you and have to quickly help them run away from a couple of zombies and a burning monster…which you eventually have to fight. You get a shotgun right before this battle, but it’s in a tight space, and you first have to turn on sprinklers in the area to put out his fire before he’s vulnerable to your gun shots. He also breathes fire at you. Sigh.


Episode 3
Act 1

This is a simple search and fetch mission in an area you already explored with Mulder, and he’s with you part of the time.


Episode 3
Act 2

You’re in other areas you were already in with Mulder for the final part of the game, and there’s absolutely no new game play aspects here, right down to the bosses.


I don’t know why I played Mulder first, because his is the harder game, so I would suggest playing with Scully first. This allows you to familiarize yourself with the game more so you can take on the more difficult challenge of his game.

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Ghosts, gays, and a creep in the closet

Posted on September 27, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a gay slasher, a horror anthology, and a ghost story in my latest marathon. Let’s see if they were worth the watch.

TRILLBERRY MURDERS (2024)

Another one to add to the complete homo horror movies page, this stab at a gay slasher is a reminder to all indie filmmakers that they should not try to steer the whole ship—director, writer—without a collaborator who will at least be there to tell them that something (or everything) isn’t working. For starters…115 minutes long? No. Just no. You’ll see why in a moment.

Overall, this feels like a college film school production in which the creators didn’t really study horror movies enough to identify what makes them successful. I appreciate the attempt at a sexy, silly slasher, but none of it hits the mark. On top of that, any complexities in the plot are completely lost in endless montages and dialogue sequences.

Montages? For starters, the victim in the opening scene feels himself up on a couch, dances shirtless, showers, and jerks off (at least we get a gander of floppy dick through the glass). This onslaught of montages goes on for 12 minutes, ending with a brief suspense setup but nothing in the way of scares or even a jump scare.

There are numerous other montages, including sexual fantasy montages. There’s a houseboy dancing montage. A pot smoking montage. Another shower montage (with a quick shot of hairy butt. Yay!). A montage of students reading monologues in film class.

This is all strung together by scenes of dialogue, much of which consist of conversations between characters about social issues, which feels like an awkward attempt by the filmmaker to make a statement.

The main character narrates to the camera, which is meant to be funny and quirky, but the writing doesn’t meet the moment. The first thing he says is that exposition sucks but is necessary. His numerous stories about growing up with his friends add nothing to the plot and don’t do much for characterization. This is not a novel, it’s a film. It’s crucial to embed exposition in the script, not have a Greek chorus step forward and tell you everything.

Finally, there are the kills. After the opening scene, it’s not until 43 minutes in that we get a glimpse of the killer on the street. 65 minutes in we see the killer lurking in a basement. 73 minutes in we get the first kill. 85 minutes in we get a kill that is the highlight, because the victim’s reaction is hilarious. This gem of a moment is the kind of vibe the filmmaker should have been going for all along, and a second pair of eyes on the set and on the script could have identified this strength and told the filmmaker to do more of it. 100 minutes in there’s a shower kill, and the killer appears, unmasked, and gives a gay-hating monologue. According to the IMDb description, the killer is targeting twinks, but that never quite comes through in the script.

It was a struggle to get through this, but one thing for other filmmakers to note is that this filmmaker is one of few that does text conversations right—the text is very clear and easy to read on the screen.

YOU SHALL NOT SLEEP TONIGHT (2024)

This little indie is well-produced and seems inspired by anthologies like Creepshow, plus it has some thrilling horror visuals, but overall, the tales are underwhelming. In fact, the wraparound is my favorite part.

It’s a tale as old as bedtime—a young boy can’t sleep, believing there’s a monster in his closet. It doesn’t help that he reads a Tales from the Crypt type of magazine, which provides some of the stories. Other stories are supplied by his father, who comes to comfort him and help him overcome his fears…by telling him scary stories!

1st story – a little girl is terrorized by something in a cornfield.

2nd story – two fraud medium sisters get the old Oda Mae Brown treatment when a seance results in contact with a real ghost.

3rd story – a woman is trying to protect her father from the local authorities, who have an agenda of their own.
4th story – this tale of a mother sending her son on death row a pie for his final meal is not a horror story at all, but it does play into the fear a child has of not having their parent around to protect them, which is also the focus of the wraparound. In fact, if you pay attention, each story essentially explores themes of parents and their children facing the fear of loss.

5th story – this is a possession/exorcism quickie, but with a strange twist.

And finally, the wraparound has a twist of its own. But seriously, the creepiest aspects of the film are the terrors the boy experiences in his room.

GHOST PROJECT (2023)

This is a simple little ghost movie about three young paranormal investigators who score a pair of goggles that lets them see ghosts. One of the guys is gay, which lands this one on the does the gay guy die? page. What’s interesting is that he’s simply a main character that just happens to be gay—it’s only referenced once when he talks about his ex-boyfriend, and his orientation has no bearing on the story.

In the meantime, the straight main guy is dealing with the death of his girlfriend, so he has a vested interest in seeing ghosts. Just like every other aspect of this film, it doesn’t add much to the story. The trio also has a one-off session with a young woman to help her reconnect with her deceased mother.

The film is short and basic with little in the way of chills or thrills…or ghosts for that matter.

Once they get to the facility and begin poking around, this becomes a lot like Return to House on Haunted Hill. The main characters have some supernatural encounters, but the only way to see ghosts is through the goggles, and the ghosts are presented like holograms, sometimes doing that frantic head shake effect that was overused in early 2000s horror movies. If you’re feeling nostalgic for supernatural flicks of that era you might find this one enjoyable.

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Kicking off another holiday horror movie season

Posted on September 23, 2024 by Daniel

It’s four flicks for the holiday horror page, covering Halloween, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s Eve.

A HALLOWEEN FEAST (2024)


This is a dark comedy with horror queen Lynn Lowry as the psycho matriarch of a dysfunctional family (mostly due to her).

It starts 8 months before Halloween with exposition showing the mom’s descent into madness…beginning with her killing little animals. She also happens to be a dominatrix on the side.

Things quickly shift to two months before Halloween, and Lynn inflicts her insanity on the family. This is where you really need to suspend disbelief. She’s sent away for a short time, even though what she did was crazy as fuck, and when she returns home the family just goes on walking on eggshells around her.

Characters include a creepy grandmother (scariest part of the movie), a father mixed up with a mob, a goth girl who runs a magic shop (and who probably wishes she had been cast as Wednesday instead of Jenna Ortega), and some pretty normal offspring, but Lynn is really the focus of the film.

As her big Halloween feast nears, she goes all Serial Mom on anyone who tries to hurt her family, but she doesn’t stop there. The feast turns into a massacre as well. There’s sex, murder, and gore, but the macabre campiness does eventually turn sad and tragic.

For me, it’s two little girl trick or treaters that steal the show in the last few minutes of the movie.

HAYRIDE TO HELL (2022)

 

Although it’s a Halloween horror flick and not an anthology, the vibe, tone, and style of this one reminds me very much of the original Creepshow, right down to scene transitions. And it comes to us from Dan Lantz, director of the gay horror flick Into the Lion’s Den!

Bill Moseley is perfect as a farmer being hounded to sell part of his land. He runs a haunted Halloween attraction, and after things go horribly wrong one night, he decides he needs to get revenge on all those who are trying to wrong him, including the sheriff (played by Kane Hodder) and his deputy, who is a racist douche yet seems to be portrayed mostly as a cute and goofy kind of guy. Weird.

Moseley makes a deal to keep his land—if he can prove that his hayride is terrifying.

This isn’t set up to be a scary movie, so it’s basically just campy revenge kills as everyone on the hayride witnesses what they think are fake murders for a majority of the film. Of course we know where this is all leading…the people on the hayride will pay. My fave death scene features a huge drill.

AMITYVILLE TURKEY DAY (2024)


This one is a sequel to Amityville Thanksgiving. The therapist from the first movie is back, and this time he unleashes a talking killer turkey on the cast and crew of a movie.

I think they’re supposed to be filming in the Amityville house, but I’m not sure.

SRS Cinema is essentially the Troma of the 21st century, so this is just a cheap, silly horror flick that is also a rip-off of Thankskilling. The turkey drops one-liners, gets horny with women, and even does drag.

The best, trashiest aspect of this film is a murderous, bearish gimp chained up and wearing a turkey mask in the final act. This is the moment when you realize this movie would have been so much better if it had been all about the killer turkey mask gimp and not about a killer turkey at all.

SNOW FALLS (2023)

This is one of the first full-length films from horror cutie Colton Tran, who also stars in the film. Only problem is…it’s not much of a horror film at all.

A group of friends arrives at an isolated house in the woods to celebrate New Year’s Eve. They hit the hot tub, they FaceTime with Jon Bennett (a friend who can’t make it to the party), and then a winter storm hits.

The rest of the movie is sort of hard to believe. It seems there might be a Cabin Fever situation about to go on here. There’s a blackout, the heat stops working, and the group begins freezing…in an insulated house with a fireplace and plenty of clothes and blankets.

When they each experience hallucinations, they ponder whether they are suffering from hypothermia or if they’ve been infected by the snow. Don’t expect to learn which it is.


I usually like my buns warm, but I’ll make an exception in this case.

They each have pretty tame hallucinations (a snowman that looks like it comes to life like Jack Frost is the scariest one), and very slowly they are each pushed to dangerous acts.

The problem with a horror flick about everyone having hallucinations is that they’re having hallucinations. They don’t turn on each other, they don’t get infected. Simply nothing in the way of a hardcore horror plot. Bummer.

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DIRECT TO STREAMING: another trio from Bruce Wemple

Posted on September 16, 2024 by Daniel

I’ve covered director Bruce Wemple’s movies before, so it was time to catch up with his latest releases, and it turned out there are three of them I hadn’t yet seen, and they feature an assortment of creepers and monsters.

ISLAND ESCAPE (2023)


The basic premise of this movie is familiar—a team is sent to a research facility on a remote island as part of a rescue mission after communication is cut off with the scientists.

There’s a refreshing twist here. As the team begins to discover dead bodies while searching the island (with some nice, gnarly gore), they also encounter what are basically super-sized zombies, and eventually notice something distinct about them. These towering zombies look like pumped up versions of each member of the rescue team. Yikes!

There’s an element of sci-fi in this horror to offer a deeper story than just the usual “experiment gone wrong creates mutant humans” plot. It’s a cool if not slightly confusing premise, and the super-size zombies are awesome, but the film is oddly low energy despite all the zombie encounters. The most glaring issue is the absence of prominent sound effects (it’s notably hollow and lacking audio cues at times), and part of it is a lack of atmosphere and suspense despite plenty of action sequences.

There is, strangely enough, a sex scene in the last twenty minutes of the movie, not to mention a shirtless guy with a rockin’ bod.

FIRST CONTACT (2023)


This is a very brooding and moody take on the alien encounter genre, but rather than take a more common approach like movies such as Fire in the Sky or The Fourth Kind, this goes for more of a satisfying horror feel, with an evil entity element and a sort of possession angle. Having said that, it’s still a slow burn, but has a great, isolating vibe.

After their father’s “abduction” in the first scene, a brother and sister return to his home as reports of alien sightings are growing on the news. The sister is interested in continuing the work of her father, who was researching alien invasions, so she begins to watch his video tapes of his findings.

In the meantime, a straight couple the siblings know has an encounter on a deserted road at night, after which the male begins to have eerie episodes and then slowly starts morphing into something else. Which begs the question…why is his woman acting like it’s not a big deal for most of the movie?

As the siblings investigate, the morphing dude begins killing people. It’s mysterious and atmospheric, but don’t expect a thrill ride.

THE HANGMAN (2024)

The opener with two druggies in a cabin sets the scene for an awesome throwback to the supernatural slashers of the early 2000s. The Hangman is a great specter and does indeed lasso your head and hang you. Awesome.

However, this film fails to exploit it supernatural baddie, instead complicating matters with a whole lot of other stuff.

We meet a widowed Black man and his son, who make the horrible decision to go camping in the middle of white trash, redneck hell. After a curious conversation in which the son asks his father if he’s sleeping with a man (say what?), they go to sleep in their tents.

Next morning…the son is gone! The dad goes for help and is soon being chased by a cult of hillbillies. This is where the film just starts going off the rails. There’s plenty of action to keep the pace moving, but The Hangman gets totally lost in the shuffle…even though he’s an integral part of the shuffle.

Even the possibility of backwoods, racial terror is pushed to the side as the focus turns to, well, not focusing. The movie is all over the place, but at least the dad does finally face off against The Hangman in the end.

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TUBI TERRORS: ghosts and witches

Posted on September 12, 2024 by Daniel

Each of these films had its moments, but this was mostly an underwhelming marathon for me. Let’s find out why.

DEATH PH.D (2024)


Swisyzinna of The Ouija Experiment movies directs, writes, and appears in this Black themed indie horror flick. She plays a professor who assigns her students to spend the night in a haunted house.

There’s no reason for this film to run an hour and forty-seven minutes, because the excessive dialogue doesn’t add anything to the story and kills the pacing. It’s 30 minutes before the students even get to the haunted house.

Once they arrive, they are greeted by a sexy, bearded butler dude and then fill more time getting comfortable in the house.

There’s no slow burn here. Nothing happens until something finally happens big time, and it’s kind of hilarious—a couple freaks out when they encounter three ghost girls.

In fact, the reactions of all the characters to being terrorized by these ghosts are a hoot, and this becomes a fun, campy little supernatural flick finally.

In terms of quality, it often feels like the actors are simply going through a haunted attraction, and the ghostly girl makeup isn’t exactly professional level, but it gets the point across.

Eventually, a back story about slavery is introduced to add some interest to the otherwise simple plot. I really just wish the film had been edited down by at least 20 minutes.

HORROR IN THE FOREST (2023)


Nothing new to see here at all. This 80-minute found footage film sees a paranormal research team head to the woods where numerous people have disappeared.

They first interview locals about the missing people. They then explore the woods and run into a couple of people, including a redneck with a gun who wants them off his property, as well as a sobbing woman so distraught with grief that she continues to roam the woods looking for her lost daughter. Kind of haunting.

A hot ex-park ranger eventually hooks them up with a dude who believes a witch took his daughter and that he has the ability to summon the witch to get her back.

Soooooo…they head into the woods again to do a ritual. They also find stick formations hanging in a tree. Of all the clichés to fall back on. Sigh.

And just like Blair Witch, there’s no witch. There are a few roaming bloody people, but that is about it. I guess if you’re really looking for something found footage and familiar this fits the bill.

THE UNKIND (2021)

Starting in the past with an awesome scene of a witch terrifying and killing two little girls in their bedroom, this one gave me high hopes for a horror-packed witch movie. I love me some witch movies.

In the present day, a group of friends goes to stay at a mansion in Italy. I think the film was partially dubbed into English, so I was getting classic 80s Euro horror vibes. Yay!

The movie is overly long at 105 minutes, and we are bombarded by cheap scares, faux music stinger scares, and bogus nightmare sequences for a majority of the run time as the group explores the house. We also, on the other hand, get some sex scenes with the girl tits countered by some man pecs. Scrumptious.

Eventually the group finds an old book that leads them to underground tunnels, and the witch begins to take them out one by one.

The witch is cool and creepy, and the mansion is dark and shadowy, but it’s all cutaway kills! Bummer. And speaking of bummers, the finale is one as well. The movie didn’t quite live up to its potential, but I really liked the feel of it.

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