BOYS, BEARS & SCARES

It’s a perfect trio of horror anthologies to watch as a marathon. Each focuses on a DJ hosting a scary story call in show, and even the poster art for each movie has a similar vibe. Luckily for me, I actually unintentionally watched them in the perfect order—from the least impressive to the most satisfying.

NIGHT TALKERS (2024)

Horror icon Bill Moseley plays a late night radio show host in this anthology, and he opens the phone lines for callers to tell scary stories—but gets tired when they keep feeling stories that are simply movie and urban legend plots, so he demands original tales. As far as horror goes, callers probably would have been better off just recalling great horror movies, because these stories are bland and uninspired.

Before I get into the tales, I have to note that there are two aspects of the wraparound that seem like they were meant to deliver on something bigger at the conclusion, but instead, neither of them amounts to anything, so I’m not even sure why they were included. The first is a radio announcement about a missing man. The other is a package that comes in the mail for the radio host. Therefore, all the weight is placed on the three tales to terrify us. Unfortunately, they can’t carry it.

1st story – a guy with a great beard goes hunting in the woods and encounters this creepy mutant dude. I’m convinced this ghoul has appeared in another movie, I just can’t think of which one. Does he look familiar to anyone?

Either way, there’s simply no tension or suspense at all.

2nd story – it’s a familiar live streaming in a haunted house plot. The cast uses a Ouija board and the people begin to die. No atmosphere, no scares, no climax.

3rd story – a city planner gets enmeshed in investigating a murder when he discovers a body in the woods. Eventually he encounters a monster, which looks like an old school rubber mask creature, but we never really get a good look at it. This final tale is way longer than it needs to be and isn’t intriguing at all.

It feels like the whole budget of this movie was spent on having Bill Moseley in the wraparound.

NIGHTMARE RADIO: THE NIGHT STALKER (2023)

Oddly, this movie simply drops you right into a woman’s chaotic nightmare in her home, and there’s no telling what’s going in.

However, it has a very 1970s acid horror vibe and is freaky as hell. I think it’s supposed to be a story our radio host was telling.

Next, we meet the radio host, and she’s kinda punk, edgy, dark, and cool. She wants to hear real, wild stories from callers. In between each story, she gets obscene phone calls that sound right out of an 80s erotic thriller. Awesome.

The five stories have a much higher production value here, and I found them all pretty damn effective.

First story – this is about an unhappy photographer who finds herself drawn to foxes that keep appearing in her yard. The minimalistic approach to this tale really works, and if you appreciate movies where what you don’t see is the most frightening, you’ll really appreciate this one.

Second story – a guy in an apartment building is terrorized by a killer in a sack mask. It’s creepy and really straightforward. Kind of a cheap thrills tale, and I’m a sucker for cheap thrills.

Third story – this takes the familiar plot of people entering an abandoned, haunted mental hospital and compresses it into a short story that really delivers on the usual ghost scares. Very atmospheric.

Fourth story – two sisters driving at night pull into a rest stop and one of the sisters gets abducted. The second sister gives chase in her car. What she finds when she catches up to the kidnapper is horrific, but I can’t say I understood what I was seeing.

Fifth story – a family with a vineyard needs victims to add a special ingredient to add to their wine. I like the dark tone and vibe of this one, but it wasn’t all that exciting.

The film closes with the stalker, who has shown up at the radio station, having a standoff with the radio host, and it’s a refreshing change of pace from the usual outcome of stalker tales.

A NIGHT OF HORROR: NIGHTMARE RADIO (2019)

This one is so tightly produced and loaded with tales. Even the opener about a witch hunt, which again appears to be a story the DJ is already telling, is visually stylish, sets the tone, and draws you into the movie.

We meet the DJ, who, ironically, gives off a Bill Moseley in The Devil’s Rejects vibe. There are also two different radio commercials about Valentine’s Day during the course of the film, which is kind of odd, because the holiday is otherwise never capitalized on or mentioned by the DJ. Instead, he revels in the stories he tells while criticizing the stories callers try to tell.

1st tale – this period piece is so fricking eerie. It has a young girl assigned to making the corpse of a recently deceased child look real for the funeral, and the treatment of the body is freakishly graphic, detailed, and the sequence is super suspenseful. I was reminded of the creepy corpse woman from the classic anthology Black Sabbath.

2nd tale – this is a brief, disturbing tale about a “hair stylist” teaching a vain woman a lesson for choosing greed over using her power of beauty for good. Eek!

3rd tale – another disturbing tale, this one is about a criminal in prison slowly having parts of his body removed surgically before being forced to make appearances in front of classrooms to show young people what happens if you “misbehave”. Another eek!

4th tale – I could be reading it wrong, but this subtitled, Spanish tale appears to be a metaphor for how an unwanted pregnancy is a real horror and can rob a woman of fulfilling her dreams. Awesome.

5th tale – a girl with balloons is terrorized in her home by a freakish ghoul. Another eek-worthy tale.

6th tale – a man hunts a naked woman through the woods, but there’s a delicious and monstrous twist.

7th tale – this one is more about the scares than the story. Basically, a woman comes home and is terrorized by a ghost or demon girl.

In between stories, the DJ begins to get calls from a young child begging for help. He thinks they are prank calls, but the conclusion of the wraparound reveals what’s really going on. It’s always good to end a horror anthology with a wraparound that continues to deliver the horror.