It all happened in the last twenty minutes

Posted on February 7, 2025 by Daniel

There are all kinds of terrors in the latest triple feature from my streaming watchlist, but all three movies have one thing in common—nothing really happens until the final act. Let’s find out if it was worth watching the first few acts to get there….

DEEP FEAR (2022)

What kind of half-assed attempt at a horror movie is this? Virtually nothing substantial happens in its 80-minute runtime.

A group of friends decides to party in the Paris catacombs. After a whole lot of nothing happens to give us some character development, they encounter a bunch of skinheads. They get the better of the skinheads and take off. And that’s the last we see of the skinheads.

56 minutes in they find a room full of Nazi stuff and quickly discover something is down there with them. Next, we see what looks like a zombie dog for about ten seconds, and that’s the last we see of him.

70 minutes in we finally see that what’s living underground is a Nazi zombie. He quickly kills off most of the group and then the final girl attempts to make her way to the exit.

Why wouldn’t they have members of the group periodically getting killed off throughout the movie instead of all at once? Why wouldn’t they have the skinheads getting what they deserve by an actual Nazi to up the body count and for the pure joy of watching Nazis getting slaughtered? Why was everything, which wasn’t much of anything, saved for the last fifteen minutes?

ASHBURN WATERS (2019)

This 80-minute movie about kids, a cabin, and a creature does its best to deliver its simple, cliché horror story, and does a good job of giving us that retro vibe of flicks from the late 90s and early 2000s in the process. The biggest issue is the slow pacing. All the horror is jammed into the last twenty minutes or so.

After an opening kill sequence that keeps the threat a mystery, we meet a group of friends heading to party at a cabin in the woods. The big story here is the main guy still coping with his breakup only to find his ex-girlfriend is coming with her new man. Yawn. We don’t need these overdone conflicts. Just mutilate people, dammit!

There’s lots of partying montage material, and there’s a dude creeping around the woods that looks like he is maybe supposed to be Native American.

It’s not until 37 minutes in that the main guy gets knocked over by some sort of creature in the woods. The first dead friend is found 47 minutes in. A girl is dragged out of her tent in a shadow puppet format 55 minutes in.

Then the battle of the exes comes to fruition. Really? Now, just when the monster is kicking it into high gear?

The final act shows the full monster Monty, and it’s a pretty standard, glowing-eyes creature. It goes to battle with the main group of survivors, just like you’d expect. It’s all very much like something you would have seen on the SyFy network back in the day. Good for a rainy Sunday perhaps.

DAGR (2024)

If you love found footage flicks, I don’t think you can exactly go wrong watching this one. Like most found footage flicks, it drags until the final act, when the horror finally comes fast, furious, and in flurry of blurry visuals.

I’ll keep this short. Two girls trying to become YouTube sensations decide to pose as caterers at a photo shoot at an old mansion in order to do some looting.

After lots of time is spent introducing us to the two girls and the photo shoot crew, the two main girls finally start secretly exploring the mansion. They find an iPad that already has some video footage from the photo shoot on it.

Would you believe this becomes found footage within found footage? We watch the footage the girls found, which features the photo shoot crew going through some supernatural stuff, the most notable being a robed, cloaked figured terrorizing them.

That typical found footage movie eventually shifts to the found footage of the two main girls being terrorized by the cult-like figure right up until a chase scene through the woods.

It’s as cliché as found footage horror gets, with no explanation as to the origins of this cult figure and his cult rituals.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: another possessed girl, a sleazy remake, and a horror anthology

Posted on February 6, 2025 by Daniel

The three latest additions to my collection were blind buys—one was included with a 3-movie set that I bought for one of the other films, the second is a remake of an 80s trash classic so I felt obligated to own it, and the third is the latest installment of a popular franchise, which I needed to complete my collection.

DEMON WITCH CHILD (1975)

This product of The Exorcist boom, which comes from the director of the Blind Dead movies, has some original ideas, but they only manage to make it all the more goofy rather than good.

When a baby goes missing, the number one suspect is an old witch.

She’s taken into custody, and when she dies, her spirit possesses the daughter of the main detective. Like, we literally see her ghost leave her body, head over to the young girl’s bedroom, and climb into her body.

Although the possessed girl does levitate once and her whole upper body joins in on a head spin, she isn’t confined to her bedroom and doesn’t turn all demon. Instead, she physically morphs into a little version of the old witch and also speaks like her when she goes out at night to join her coven to sacrifice babies. Awesome.

The side story is about a dude who has just decided to give up women to become a priest and isn’t well equipped to perform an exorcism. That would explain the lame finale, which takes place in a field with no suspense or horror to speak of, simply the priest sticking a crucifix to her head then watching her die.

Of note is that this movie may be the only possession film to feature an appearance by David Cassidy, even if it’s only on a poster on a bedroom wall.

STREET TRASH (2024)

This is such an underwhelming remake of a 1980s schlockfest, despite trying really hard to be equally as schlocky.

The plot is simple. The rich have crushed the middle class, so the homeless population has skyrocketed. The man running the city comes up with a plot to kill them all with a fatal chemical. When a small group of homeless friends uncovers the plot, they decide to revolt.

The film gives us an early taste of what the chemical does to victims—total gutting, oozing, melting flesh, and vomiting in neon colors.

It also sets out to prove how revolting and tasteless it can be by offering us a scene of a cop getting his dick chopped off by a fence.

The highlight here would be the practical effects of the gory melting bodies, which is icky, gooey goodness. Other than that, the film fails to make us really connect with the main characters, the action is weak, and the humor didn’t really hit for me at all.

That’s not entirely true. There is one character that delivers plenty of good, crass lines. Unfortunately, it’s a little blue imaginary friend of one of the main characters. It’s both stupid and annoying yet gets all the best lines that could have and should have been spread around to real human characters, leaving the imaginary friend out completely while making the main characters likable and memorable.

There is also some homeless gay-for-pay humor, and the little blue imaginary friend begs his maker to fuck him up the ass in a tag scene after the closing credits—an afterthought that makes me think modern filmmakers don’t have what it takes to make the kind of trash they used to in the 1980s.

V/H/S BEYOND (2024)

This turned out to be one of my favorite installments of this popular series, and it mostly avoids the sloppy problem with the last film, where you couldn’t distinguish the separation between stories and wraparound half the time. There are still some convoluted moments here and there, mostly because the unnecessary wraparound jumps back and forth between interviews with alien experts and stories of those who believed they encountered aliens. It’s irrelevant to the segments and should have been simplified or mostly scrapped if you ask me.
The stories are more like insane horror situations than actual stories, and that’s just what I want from my V/H/S movies.

1st story – a law enforcement team busts into a mansion, and it immediately turns into infected chaos with an onslaught of deformed humans jumping out left and right. This one is basically like a condensed take on the movie Quarantine…with something totally bizarre and freaky up in that top floor room. Eek!

2nd story – this is another awesome slaughter fest. Paparazzi tailing a gorgeous pop star go to a video shoot. There’s mention of rumors of the pop star practicing witchcraft, so is it any surprise that the cast and crew of the video are soon being mutilated by some sort of mutant creature? Gory!

3rd story – more intense horror chaos and gore. A bunch of people go skydiving, but before they can jump from the plane, it is attacked and destroyed. They all come parachuting down into an orchard full of viciously violent aliens. Amazing.

4th story – a group making an undercover video to investigate a woman who has a dog business at home discover the really fucked up thing she is doing to bring people and pets together…

5th story – if this really weak story had been cut, as it should have, the film would have been about 90 minutes long, which would have been perfect and left the film on a high note. This segment feels completely out of place, because it lacks the same hardcore horror tone of the other four stories. This is a weirdly spacey, abstract, and visually distracting tale of a woman that has some sort of alien experience in a cave. It feels like an experimental art piece and just drags the whole final part of this previously adrenaline-filled flick down.

There is some brief horror pay-off in the wraparound to make up for the disappointing fifth story, but it is super brief and feels like an amends for including that fifth segment.

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Slashing at a cabin in the woods, on a college campus, and at an office Valentine’s party

Posted on January 30, 2025 by Daniel

If you love slashers, here’s a trio you might find satisfying.

THE BENCH (2024)

How dumb am I? When I read the brief description of this film on IMDb, I seriously thought it was about a bunch of kids at a cabin in the woods getting killed off by a psycho killer each time they went outside to sit on some sort of park bench (and yet I watched the movie anyway despite thinking that was the plot). The actual bench being referred to is a sort of workbench where the killer takes all his victims to torture and kill them.

As far as backwoods slashers go, if you’re itching for something familiar, this is it. Nothing new here. Kids head to a cabin in the woods. They party, they hookup, they talk about a legend of a crazed killer in the area. And then…they start getting dragged to the bench.

This is not a masked killer movie. This feral looking dude has long, stringy hair and a machete, plus a few more torturous weapons in his lair. The torture is more implied than shown, there are some chase scenes, and there’s a “twist” that was pretty obvious to me right from the start.

INITIATION (2020)

This is in no way a body count slasher, and it’s rather slow paced, but it has a post-Scream aesthetic—sleek production, brutal kills, and a lingering sense of mystery that keeps you watching.

It begins with a frat party, shirtless boys, drinking, and a questionable situation. Our main girl, who is very natural, no nonsense, and likable, finds her wasted brother and a sorority sister passed out drunk in a bedroom and immediately questions what might have occurred behind the closed door.

Both the drunk girl and the brother also start to wonder what happened in the bedroom…

And then the kills begin. However, the first one doesn’t hit until 30 minutes in. The second one a half hour after that! The killer wears a mask and hoodie and is absolutely vicious in execution, which includes a drill with huge screws. Eek!

Most notable is that this is a reversal of the usual slasher trope—the half-naked victims are all male. We even get a guy jerking off and being attacked by the killer with his bare butt out!

There are police investigation elements as well to fill the time between kills, and the focus is on very few characters, which helps to keep the plot distraction-free.

The final act is a long, suspenseful cat and mouse chase scene between the killer and several characters. There’s a surprise ending, and it’s not one of those twists you’d ever be able to guess. However, what’s interesting is that the film opts to remain fuzzy on what did or did not happen in that bedroom at the beginning of the movie.

MY BLOODY GALENTINE (2024)

This fun holiday slasher is loaded with diva and queer camp value, in part thanks to a gay character that plays an important role in the film right up until the end.

Like Initiation, it isn’t a body count flick, but the small number of kills are quite entertaining, plus the killer wears a white mask with red-lit orifices and a black, hooded robe.

Three girls who have recently been dumped aren’t in the mood for their company’s Valentine’s Day office party, and they each have fantasies about killing their boyfriend, complete with red horror/Valentine’s lighting. The best part of these campy daydream kills is that they double the number of kills!

Instead of admitting to thoughts of murder, the girls decide to get revenge on their exes using simple cruel pranks.

Naturally, the guys start getting murdered.

And that means very few real kills sprinkled throughout the film. If anything, the film could have been trimmed down to 90 minutes from 104 minutes to bring us closer to the big killer finale at the Valentine’s party that much sooner. Despite some pacing issues, the girls are great, the energy is high, and the film is a blast. It most definitely earns a spot on both the holiday horror page and the does the gay guy die? page.

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New millennium undead of Bruno Mattei

Posted on January 28, 2025 by Daniel

The director of 80s Euro horror like Hell of the Living Dead, Rats: Night of Terror, Scalps, Night Killer, and The Other Hell came back for more after the new millennium kicked in, and the results are totally nostalgic.

THE TOMB (2006)

This is sort of like a Euro horror take on The Mummy with Brendan Frasier, and I just love the 80s throwback feel of it combined with its early 2000s, direct-to-DVD look.

It opens with a Yul Brynner looking high priest in ancient times indulging in a ritual that will give him immortality. Unfortunately, there are a lot of details he didn’t iron out…including the pain. The high priestess performs an agonizing ritual that mummifies him.


The King & Eyes

In modern times, pretty archaeology students come to Mexico to study the Mayan culture. After an awesome, old school attack of their tour guide in a cemetery at night, complete with numerous ghouls for no logical reason, the students wake to find he hasn’t shown up, and they are guideless.

However, they are redirected to a healer to help them and immediately witness her performing an exorcism. Ah, Euro horror. Everything but the kitchen sink.

Next, they head into the jungle to check out a temple. One of the girls is having nightmares about the high priest. The group encounters various death traps on their journey. The mummy is resurrected and wreaks havoc magically, but never bothers to stray far from his coffin.

It’s the healer, who turns into a demon that looks pretty much just like Angela from Night of the Demons, that delivers all the cheesy horror fun. Whether intentional or not, it all reads like high horror camp.

ISLAND OF THE LIVING DEAD (2007)

This was Mattei’s return to the zombie genre after decades, and he goes right for the kind of nonsensical shlock that made his zombie flicks favorites of the early VHS era. There are also loads of homages to classic zombie flicks, from Night of the Living Dead right through to all the Euro horror zombie films of the 80s. Awesome.

It starts with voodoo rituals on an island and colonial people shooting those that come back from the dead. It’s not an essential part of the plot, but it makes for a good, cheesy zombie action opener.

In the modern day, a group of treasure hunters on a boat comes across an island that is not on the map. Their dialogue is terribly dubbed—love it—making the whole vibe very comical and hokey. If you didn’t devour Euro horror in the 80s, you might not be able to deal with this essential aspect of Mattei’s movies.

On the island, the group ends up in what underground caverns and catacombs. They find ancient books, a chapel, treasure, and all kinds of zombies. There also seem to be some sort of supernatural forces at play, but don’t try to distinguish any logical plot…even when a talking zombie tries to explain it.

Just watch it for the practical effects and zombie makeup, the direct-to-video look and feel, and the chaotic action.

ZOMBIES: THE BEGINNING (2007)


This sequel to Island of the Living Dead picks up right where the last movie left off, with the final girl being rescued while afloat on the ocean. While recovering in the hospital, she has nightmares about her previous experience, then goes through some spiritual healing.

Finally, she is enlisted to lead a military team to another island that is rumored to have experienced a zombie outbreak.

Once again, the dubbing is over-the-top awesome in an old school 80s Euro horror way, as is all the cheesy horror and action insanity that ensues.

At the facility, the team discovers gore, dead bodies, gnarly zombies in cages that look much more like demons than zombies, plus these freaky zombie children with big bug eyes and huge egg heads.

There’s a basic plot about a breeding factory for these nasty zombies, with women in bondage being forced to give birth to them by huge tubes attached to their bellies to just suck the babies right out of them. Eek! And…gross.

And finally, adding to the 80s horror weirdness, our main girl at last finds the root of this whole outbreak…a talking brain in a glass box. I’m not even kidding. So maybe those zombies in Return of the Living Dead movies weren’t looking to eat brains…they were praying to their god…

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When zombies rip out your insides and tug on your heartstrings

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Daniel

These two flicks are more than just gut-munching fun. In fact, flesh-eating takes a backseat to character-driven stories. So how did that work out for my short attention span? Let’s find out.

DIE ALONE (2024)

Don’t expect a Frank Grillo zombie/action movie with this one. The director of 13 Eerie and the Wolfcop movies makes what I think is an elevated infected winner. The hubby and I were blown away by this simple yet emotional and incredibly smart take on the zombie genre.

I can’t even give many details of the story, because it would spoil the plot. Basically, a young man and his girlfriend have an accident. When he awakens, he doesn’t remember anything beyond that moment. He runs into a woman, played by Carrie-Anne Moss, who takes him in and informs him of a plant-based infection that has taken over the world.

Don’t expect hordes of zombies. There is one amazing, super infected humanoid scene and then just a few more infected moments. This perfectly paced, 90-minute movie draws you in because of the mystery it creates surrounding what happened to the main guy’s girlfriend as he begins to have flashbacks of what led him to where he is now.

Although action and horror hottie Frank Grillo is featured on the poster art, he has only a very small role that doesn’t come in until the 65-minutes into the film, but at least we get a nice crotch shot.

Even if you think you’re burned out on zombie/infected movies, this one truly brings something new to the table.

OUTSIDE (2024)

This Asian zombie film runs 2 hours and 22 minutes long. Eek! That’s the scariest part. However, while the film is slow with just a handful of really intense zombie scenes (just like Die Alone), its goal is to deep dive into the troubles of a fractured family trying to survive after the outbreak.

This is a long, emotional, moody journey that borders on soap opera level drama at times, despite the limited number of characters. A father, mother, and their two sons try to escape the insanity by heading to the secluded home of the husband’s parents. This is when we get the first awesome and gory zombie scene. The best part of these gnarly zombies is that they still speak, but only one single word or phrase over and over. It is fricking creepy.

Zombie attacks are sprinkled throughout the film to help with the low energy, and they really do, because it’s intense energy, especially a scene that unfolds on a bridge. Eek!

The reason for the tension between husband and wife unfolds as the movie progresses. The father’s brother told them about a safe zone to travel to, but the father doesn’t exactly want to reunite with the brother because of a serious betrayal that has shattered the family. The father is trying so hard to keep his family together while his ego is absorbing all the hits, but those efforts eventually backfire big time, and his nuclear family unit begins to splinter.

On top of that, the husband still has to contend with his brother, who keeps resurfacing and trying to lead them to the safe space. Pretty much everyone snaps, and the shit really hits the fan as this family’s drama comes to a head…with zombies.

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TUBI TERRORS: a werewolf, zombies, and underground dwellers

Posted on January 24, 2025 by Daniel

This was a pretty satisfying triple feature for me, despite each of these movies having some flaws. The cool creeps and creatures alone gave me a little jolt of horror, and that’s all I really ask these days.

WE ARE ZOMBIES (2023)

This little indie zomcom has plenty of good elements, and it even offers what seems to be a unique premise, although it does inevitably turn in on itself and become a rather standard zombie plot.

We start in a time where non-flesh-eating zombies roam the streets just trying to survive in a world of discrimination and fighting for the same rights as everyone else.

However, this isn’t really much of a commentary on that familiar horror movie concept. Instead, the focus is on three “freelancer” mortals that tap into the clientele of a big corporation that allows families to “retire” their zombie family members.

These three job robbers soon discover that this evil company plans to experiment (inhumanely?) on zombies and is also out to destroy the trio for stealing from their zombie supply.

It’s an interesting premise, but what happens is that the evil company’s experiments turn the zombies into…flesh-eating zombies. Kind of full circle back to the usual plot of an evil corporation causing a zombie outbreak!

The main characters are quite good and handle the fun, raunchy comedy well, but unfortunately, there isn’t enough of it or enough zombie action for a majority of the movie. The script is kind of flat and really needed a bit more excitement during its entire runtime.

It is in the final act that this zombedy really, um, comes to life. The main trio has to battle a flesh-eating zombie horde in a club, complete with a freaky boss monster. The energy here is what the rest of the film is missing. The zombies look awesome, the action comes fast and furious, and there’s good, gory fun. If only the cast had this much material to work with throughout the whole movie, this would have been a winner. It’s worth a watch, I’d say, but not good enough for me to add to my movie collection.

THE PACK (2010)

As someone who chowed down on the nonsensical story arcs of many Euro horror flicks in the 80s, I had no problem with the skewed narrative of this odd French flick, which manages to shift subgenre lanes various times, leaving a massacre of plot holes in its wake—an issue that might not be for everyone.

It begins with a tough girl driving through the country, she picks up a dude hitchhiking. They stop at a restaurant. Biker baddies show up and almost rape…the hitchhiker dude! It’s not the only time the leader of the bikers demonstrates an attraction to men. Gotta love rednecks.

Things take off from there. The main girl is abducted and thrown in a cage by a good old backwoods family.

She and her cage mate are tortured in various ways. And then they are left as sacrifices for…

Humanoid creatures that crawl up from the ground! A few throwaway sentences offer an explanation for their existence, but when shit is this weird anyway, why even bother with any explanation?

Before long, everyone seems to be changing loyalties in order to survive. Eventually, the bikers, the hitchhiker, and the main girl end up trapped in a little ramshackle house as the cool creatures try to break their way in. There’s gore, action, and chase scenes leading to a dismal finale.

HARMONY FALLS (2022)

There’s a moody, low energy to this little indie werewolf flick, with a lingering camera vibe and a horror music cue that comes back constantly and gets annoying after a while. The film opens with a couple camping in the woods and getting attacked in their tent…all screams, no visuals.

Seems there has been a rash of mutilations in a small town, so the sheriff calls in a scientist dude for help figuring out who or what is responsible.

Aside from a few attacks here and there, in which you never see anything, this is a very slow film, focused mostly on the investigation by the two men. The weirdest thing is that they always seem to wait until it’s dark to go hunting for clues in the woods. Huh?

One of the highlights of this otherwise dialogue-heavy flick is a goofy redneck bar fight, including a shirtless dude with nunchucks. Is he the pancakes boy from Cabin Fever all grown up? Sure feels like it.

When the werewolf is finally revealed at the end, he looks pretty damn awesome for a low budget indie. Actually, as cool as the werewolf form is, the human’s appearance before turning into the werewolf is way freakier.

I kind of wish the movie had been about the human terrorizing locals in normal freaky form, which appeared to be a partial transformation phase.

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It came from the early 1990s

Posted on January 23, 2025 by Daniel

I needed a nostalgic trip back in time this past weekend, so I dug up three flicks from the days of cable movies and video rentals (those were the days), and it was a pretty satisfying marathon.

EVIL SPIRITS (1991)

This is peak Karen Black horror trash, and it is soooooo big on the VHS era nostalgia. Amplifying that vibe is the fact that the movie is only available on DVD from “Cheezy Flicks”, a no budget company that just uses old video tapes as their source material. There’s even a fricking freeze frame/blank screen/missing frame defect in the middle of the movie.

There’s no mystery here. Karen plays a woman running a boarding house in which she has her tenants sign over their government checks to her then kills them and continues collecting their checks.

The misfit inhabitants include horror king Michael Berryman as a pervy writer, a deaf dancer, an alcoholic dude suffering from PTSD, a newly arrived older couple that immediately suspects things are weird, and a psychic medium who senses something is off…which leads to a séance.

Meanwhile, Karen supposedly has an invalid husband living in seclusion upstairs, but considering he talks to her out loud from anywhere she is, it’s obvious this is a total Psycho knockoff…

The kills are fun and bloody, plus we get dark halls, thunder and lightning, a blackout, candlelight, and a feral man chained up in the basement. It’s an odd, low budget, crappy film that is so perfectly a product of its time that I can’t help but love it.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1991)

It feels like this remake was a studio’s plan to cash-in on the success of Misery by giving a classic film a modern update with the novel addition of actual sisters in the roles made famous by Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.

Lynn Redgrave plays the evil sister, and Vanessa Redgrave plays the wheelchair-bound sister. At the very beginning of the movie, despite the fact that Lynn looks ridiculously clownish and Vanessa looks beautiful, the sisters appear to have a very civil relationship.

That changes fast after two visits trigger Lynn’s resentment of her more successful actress sister (in the movie, not in real life). There’s Vanessa’s caring physical therapist, as well as horror queen Amy Steel, who plays a curious/bordering on pushy new neighbor who wants to meet Vanessa, the big star, but is turned away by Lynn. It feels like the plot had bigger plans for Amy’s character, but they were perhaps scrapped. She is very present for the first fifteen minutes or so of the movie but then completely disappears from the script after.

While Lynn looks clownish, she plays the role much more sinister and less campy than Bette did. Like Misery, this remake highlights the clinical, mental illness of the psycho sister. As soon as the first two visitors drop by, Lynn snaps and puts worms in Vanessa’s sandwich.

This seems to be the shocker moment to replace the rat scene. There is a rat scene later on, but it’s so cartoonish and Vanessa’s reaction to it is so indifferent that I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a fake rat.

Adding to the mix is John Glover as a video store clerk who wants to take advantage of the former fame of the sisters. He plays into Lynn’s ego, and she goes along with his plan to give her an act at a club. This is where things get really weird and grossly portrays gay men—in a remake of a movie incredibly popular with gay men. What the hell? Glover is painted as a predatory photographer who exploits under age boys, and he also messes with Lynn’s mind by dressing in drag to appear on stage with her as Vanessa without warning her he’s going to do it.

Compared to the original, Baby Jane’s creepy doll aspect is all but removed, but her treatment of her sister is more severe. There are also a few kills that are nicely updated to be more savage. There could have been one more if they had bothered to bring back Amy Steel to poke around out of concern for Vanessa’s whereabouts in the final act, which seems to be implied early on but is then completely dropped.

FULL ECLIPSE (1993)

This cheesy action werewolf flick is such a product of its time—an HBO movie that soon made its way to VHS rental, and it come from the director of both Waxwork movies, Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, Hellraiser III, and Warlock: The Armageddon. Awesome. Smack dab in the middle of my days working at the video store. If you lived through the 80s and 90s, you will recognize several pop culture phrases from the time sprinkled throughout the film.

Mario Van Peebles is a sexy cop. He has never looked as sexy as he does in this movie. He and his partner immediately get in an awesome shootout in a night club. The partner is shot, but then shows up back at work as good as new. This leads to another awesome action sequence complete with a car chase and the partner demonstrating some amazing agility.

Mario is soon invited to a group meeting by a detective therapist. Before long, a female member of the group is seducing Mario into joining their “pack”, which leads to a sex scene and a slight werewolf transformation. Oh, how I miss sex scenes in movies. Meanwhile, for whatever reason, the female werewolf makes a silly werecat snarl rather than growling like the male werewolves. So sexist (aka: so 90s).

Mario becomes part of their werewolf vigilante justice team, taking down criminals on the street, but there’s more to it, and their leader definitely has something up his sleeve. The movie does drag for a while, but in the final sequence we get a hokey, totally awesome werewolf transformation at last, plus a cool battle between Mario and the werewolf leader.

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TUBI TERRORS: masked killers…mostly

Posted on January 22, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a trio of flicks from my Tubi watchlist, so let’s get right into them.

THE NAUGHTY LIST OF MR. SCROOGE (2024)

This is another one for the holiday horror page! If you ate up all the direct-to-DVD movies that followed the slasher revival at the end of the 90s, you should find this basic holiday slasher enjoyable enough.

It opens with a fun kill, including a Christmas gift left on a doorstep, a chase through a house filled with holiday lights, and a killer dressed as evil Ebenezer.

Damn, Evil Ebenezer should have been the name of the movie.

Next, we get treated to a photo shoot involving two Santa hunks. Yay. One of the guys is the photographer’s boyfriend, and they’re heading to a 10-year college reunion at a mansion.

When the group gathers, there’s plenty of talking and drama as we learn that the main girl’s boyfriend committed suicide back in college while they were working on a production of A Christmas Carol. Is there any question that the killer’s motive has everything to do with that production?

Sure, it’s cheesy, but as a throwback to late 90s slashers, that’s how it should be. There are plenty of sleek kills, dark secrets revealed (mostly that basically every girl in the group was hot for the main girl’s boyfriend), holiday spirit, and chase scenes that culminate in a very long cat and mouse final act. It’s not super scary, but it’s definitely a good one to put on in the background each holiday season while you’re decking your halls.

DOWN BELOW (2024)

The writer and director of this film is also the star. Although he scored some familiar faces for cameos—Eric Roberts, Bai Ling, Doug Jones—this is a very low budget, surreal movie in washed out sepia tone that is more about horror imagery than any actual horror story. It’s also kind of hard to comprehend.

It’s a shame, because the opener is intriguing. It’s Christmas Day 1999, but don’t get your hopes up, because this is not a Christmas horror movie at all after this segment. Anyway, a preacher giving a sermon has his little bastard child assistant turn on gas while he dons a gas mask and kills all the parishioners. His eyes also turn demon black. Intriguing, indeed.

After that, the film moves to present day and focuses on a man registered as a sex offender who insists he was framed and believes he can prove it. He teams up with a prostitute who has visions of the past massacre. The detective who worked on the sex offender case is also going through some stuff of his own.

Was the main guy the child assistant from the beginning? Was he a victim of pedophilia himself? Is he possessed by the same demon as the preacher? It’s a mystery, and the film seems intent on guaranteeing its stays that way. There’s weird sexual stuff, visions of someone in a gas mask, and lots of talk to develop the main character somewhat, but there is very little in the way of actual plot or cohesion. The fricking gas mask person doesn’t even go around killing people. Bummer.



SCISSORS (2024)

Running just 64 minutes long, this clown killer slasher is one you watch simply for the creepy music, old school 80s horror lighting, vicious kills, and loads of boobs, many of them huge (if you’re into that sort of thing).

It’s pretty simple. Scissors the killer clown is caught…then escapes. A blonde woman is having nightmares about him. She and her friends appear to all be sex workers.

The girls show off their tits. Scissors comes around and stabs them.

The action moves to a hospital for the second half. I totally guessed what the twist would be at the end, and I’m assuming most horror veterans will.

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When most of the shows at the Theatre Macabre aren’t so macabre…

Posted on January 21, 2025 by Daniel

This short-lived TV series, hosted by Christopher Lee, is included in the first Eurocrypt of Christopher Lee Blu-ray boxed set, and unfortunately, few of these 24 tales live up to the name of the show. I’m not sure what compelled them to call this Theatre Macabre when it’s actually a mish-mosh of genres. The goal here instead seems to have been to make adaptations of stories by classic authors, whether or not they were macabre. So, I’ll just be pointing out the titles most befitting the name of the series.


“The Tortures of Hope”
After the first few episodes, this one offered signs of actually delivering something macabre. It’s more of a story about faith, science, and the vile hypocrisy of the church, but it is also reminiscent of the rash of historical witch-hunt exploitation flicks of the 1960s, only without all the writhing, moaning women. It takes place during the inquisition, when a doctor is to be burned at the stake for using dead bodies in order to learn how to heal the sick. Other than the doctor being sent into a dungeon lair and coming across some already deceased “sinners”, and the repulsive glee religious men experience from executing others, there’s not much horror.

“The Vampire”
This is by far one of my favorite scary episodes, loaded with atmosphere and creepy vibes. At a party, an older man tries to warn a younger man that another person present is a vampire. Soon, the young man discovers the truth in a classic, gothic erotic bedroom scene that is as good as traditional vampire visuals get, and there are some great twists.

“The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether”
This is one of the more nightmarish episodes that goes hard on the acid trip style of some early 70s horror. A man and woman head to an institution to learn of the new technique they are using to treat patients. After we’re treated to a parade of creepy patients, the man and woman discover you can check in, but you can’t check out.

“Tell-Tale Hearts”
This is a nightmarish take on Poe’s famous tale in which an attractive young man is haunted by the act he committed, but more frightening than the heart is an eye—with freaky close-ups. Another greatly presented horror story.

“Markheim”
A Christmas tale about a man who comes to an antique shop on Christmas, commits a horrible crime, and then finds himself encountering who he surmises is the Devil. And talk about a devilish twist!

“The Canterville Ghost”
This is actually a supernatural comedy. A group of skeptics comes to a haunted, gothic castle, where we see the ghost roaming around even though they don’t. Not sure what the thought process was behind the decision, but the ghost is painted Statue of Liberty green. There are cow webs, thunder and lightning, candelabras, blood puddles, skeletons, rattling chains, a moaning ghost—all the classics. The catch is that the guests are tormenting the ghost just by being unafraid of him. There’s even a twist.

“A Terribly Strange Bed”
Eek! It’s a bed that kind of gobbles people up! It is also reminiscent of the original dark ending of The Little Shop of Horrors.

“Resurrection of the Offland”
A man believes he can cure a man of a disease using a combination of science and magic, but only after he is dead for a year and brought back to life. This one has a nice, morbid ending.

“Boarded Window”
A man and woman are living in a cabin and she’s having paranoid delusions of being stalked by something outside, and her fears begin to affect the husband as well. This one has such a haunting vibe to it.

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A horror anthology, a supernatural slasher, and a home invasion flick

Posted on January 15, 2025 by Daniel

I take on three more I watched on Tubi that, despite being pretty basic and unoriginal, each delivered a few thrills…and one featured two gay leads!

WORST LAID PLANS (2022)

This 78-minute anthology is just 3 short films assembled together to make a full-length feature, with no wraparound. It consists of two tales that have cool monsters, and a third story that is too determined to deliver a deeper meaning to actually deliver any scares…or monsters. The good news is that all three stories have attractive leading men.

1st story – this one features a gay storyline, landing it on the does the gay guy die? page. A cute guy, who bears a striking resemblance to singer Robbie Williams (the man, not the CGI monkey) and is way too old to be on a trip with his parents…is on a trip with his parents. His dad is a right wing douche, his mother is determined for them to have fun together.

They go on some underground tunnel tour, and the tour guide is also gay, so there’s some nice flirtation. But then, because of an underdeveloped script, it seems as if the tour guide dude basically leads the tour group right into a death trap! WTF? Good news is that the “trap” is a giant killer catfish created old school style, not with CGI. Great monster, great gay characters, weak script.

2nd story – two friends on a road trip encounter a young girl who appears to be in distress at a diner. They end up at a hotel where the RV of the girl and her “father” shows up in the parking lot.

So, the sexy main guy sneaks onto the RV to see if the young girl is okay. This one delivers another cool monster pay-off, plus the simple kind of twist anthology stories need.

3rd story – this final tale is almost twice as long as the other two, and it’s mostly because it consists of too much unnecessary footage a guy takes while on a vacation with his woman.

The gist of the story is that he thinks someone is sneaking into their hotel room at night and filming them, a plot done before in other anthologies with tension and scares, which you don’t get here. This one appears to be more about a man coping with grieving the loss of his son by getting lost in his own footage. It’s dullsville.

HUNTING FOR THE HAG (2023)

This one covers familiar ground, but it’s fun ground, so I was happy to have something easy to watch with some cheap thrills…and with more witch than The Blair Witch Project ever delivered.

A combination of standard third person perspective and found footage, the movie focuses on a group of young women staying at a country house in hopes of catching the legendary “hag” of the woods on film.

We learn about the hag’s backstory during a fireside discussion, and then the friends decide to do a little incantation to conjure her.

This is where the movie takes a turn for a while, but it serves the purpose of delivering a higher body count. A group of scummy redneck hunters shows up, and before you know it, they’re terrorizing the girls. This is the perfect time for a hag to arrive and stand up for other women, but this hag don’t give a shit. She’ll cut a bitch just as soon as hack up a misogynist.

Just note that the hag doesn’t come out to play until 59 minutes into this 85-minute movie. Her look is perhaps just haunted attraction level of creepy, but it served its purpose, especially since we usually only get quick glimpses of her in a flashlight beam. There are also a couple of satisfying kills, my favorite being a head squish. However, the need to add typical found footage camera glitches during all the standout moments—like the head squish—is super frustrating.

SORRY, CHARLIE (2023)

Cutie Colon Tran directs this simple home invasion film that consists of basically two characters and one location.

The idea is that some evil dude is luring women out of their homes using the sound of a crying baby.

It starts on Halloween night as a girl getting drunk and watching Carnival of Souls takes the baby bait and is attacked by a guy with a mask and top hat who very much resembles The Black Phone guy.

I wish the movie had stuck to Halloween night, but instead it’s just an ordinary night from then on. The focus is on a crisis line phone operator trapped in her house and trying to protect herself from the man she believes is after her.

There’s a lot of talk with callers to develop her character, as well as the backstory of “The Gentleman”, as the stalker is known.

There are also plenty of moments of the stalker lurking outside and inside the house, which starts off suspenseful but quickly becomes repetitive since there’s only one character to terrify. It’s not until there are only 13 minutes left that the main/only girl finally takes him on, and based on the twist, this feels like it could have and probably should have been a short film in an anthology rather than a full-length feature.

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