Of mice and Cinderella

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

THE MOUSE TRAP (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

CINDERELLA’S REVENGE (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CINDERELLA’S CURSE (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Sound Check - The Songs Stuck in My Head, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

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

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

ALL HALLOWS’ EVE: INFERNO (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CURSED (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

MONSTER MASH (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

CHRISTMAS HORROR ROUND-UP 2024

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

DOWN THE CHIMNEY WITH A SHOTGUN (2022)

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

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

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

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

CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS (2024)

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

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

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

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

SILENT BITE (2024)

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

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

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

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

A VERY FLATTENED CHRISTMAS (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

HE SEES YOU WHEN YOU’RE SLEEPING (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘TWAS THE NIGHT (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

There’s something queer in the scare

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

TIME CUT (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLICKBAIT: UNFOLLOWED (2024)

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

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

Peach—the queer lead character (yay!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE EXORCISM OF SAINT PATRICK (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on There’s something queer in the scare

A trio of Lovecraft inspired features

I can’t say that any of these films is a true adaptation of Lovecraft’s fiction, but they are all trippy and weird. Does that mean they’re good? Let’s find out.

HP LOVECRAFT’S WITCH HOUSE (2021)

Based on the same story as the Masters of Horror episode Dreams in the Witch House, this low budget indie film features a female protagonist rather than a male protagonist. It’s pretty cosmic horror, to the point of feeling like a fever dream in the final act. There’s a lot going on considering it all leads to a fairly basic outcome.

A college student trying to escape an abusive relationship takes refuge in the attic rental room of a house. She befriends the landlady’s niece, which eventually leads to a lesbian hookup. Not that it adds much to the story.

In the meantime, the main girl is researching the occult and other dimensions. Conveniently, there’s a plank that comes up in her floor and appears to lead to another world.

Theres a very 80s vibe, with plenty of colorful horror lighting and atmosphere in both her nightmares and in the other dimension. There’s also talk of a witch and missing kids. However, the bulk of the movie is abstract, and all the eerie, occult moments are visually dark and muddled, so you have to fill in the gaps with your imagination.

A satanic sexual orgy dance ritual scene around a fire is the highlight of the film.

NECRONOMICON (2023)

75 minutes is too long for this sloppy film that postures itself as a Lovecraft film but ends up focusing almost exclusively on infamous occultist Aleister Crowley, all while having more of a Clive Barker, cosmic sexual theme. You’d think that would make it interesting.

The opening scene, which runs over ten minutes long, isn’t even necessary. It looks like a modern-day video game as some dude in a car chase with police narrates in a voiceover, talking all about the Necronomicon, the Devil, and Lovecraft.

Then the focus shifts to Crowley. A dude is assigned to get stories about him for a graphic novel. He spends a lot of time researching The Book of the Dead, Satanism, the occult, and Crowley, there are sexual themes, including a skanky sex scene (at least there’s that), and then he eventually discovers he’s a puppet in a cult’s scheme to resurrect the beast. Don’t expect to see any beast.

And one last thing. I really started to question my horror knowledge, because I’m pretty sure characters in this movie were pronouncing it NecroMonicon, not NecroNomicon, leaving me to wonder if I’d been mispronouncing and misspelling the name of the book for decades. And dammit, now every time I see the word, I hear NecroMonicon in my head, so forgive me in advance if I spell it that way in the future.

HP LOVECRAFT’S MONSTER PORTAL (2022)

You’d think this movie is horrible based on IMDb reviews, but quite honestly, it’s the easiest to comprehend of this trio, so it was the one I liked the most.

No time is wasted in presenting us with the giant monster that is the focus of the film. Not sure if it’s supposed to be Cthulhu, but it’s awesome in all its CGI glory as it accepts a sacrifice from a cult.

Next, a young woman comes to her recently deceased father’s house with her friends to settle his affairs. They immediately discover there are dead bunnies around the property, but the housekeeper says it was the work of the cats…even though there aren’t any cats. Uh-oh.

A much more sterile version of Lovecraft style that could easily have been a SyFy original, this one gives us friends hanging out, partying in the pool, and slowly discovering there’s something ominous going on around the house.

Most importantly, the daughter discovers her father was delving into some otherworldly stuff. Eventually we get a cult, the return of the monster, and even a ritual rape scene drenched in fog and red lighting, which, to me, made for a fairly satisfying final act.

Posted in Everyday I Read the Book: Literary Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on A trio of Lovecraft inspired features

The undead, demons, and delusions

The latest mish-mosh of films from my streaming watchlists had its moments, but only one truly satisfied me.

DON’T TURN OUT THE LIGHTS (2024)

This is a pretty good if familiar setup that suffers from a few issues. First, the 110-minute runtime kills the pacing. 20 minutes less would have made all the difference. But even worse, the seemingly supernatural threat is never revealed.

A group of young people heads for a music festival in an RV. They get into a fight with rednecks during a pit stop, and considering about half of the kids are Black, I wasn’t buying that they would ever be dumb enough to drive through redneck territory. They even repeat the same damn mistake by going into a redneck bar to ask for directions. Sigh.

Eventually, their RV gets stuck in the middle of nowhere at night, and the horror begins. And by that I mean an endless cycle of one character leaving the RV, getting dragged away by some unseen force, and then the survivors in the RV sitting around trying to hash out what could possibly be going on.

Whatever it is, it’s causing them to have delusions, which leads to them seeing one another as a threat. You’ve seen it all before, only done quicker. And with a better title that makes more sense with the film. Don’t Turn Out the Lights feels like some very lazy creativity in this case.

BEYOND THE CHAMBER OF TERROR (2021)

I should have taken it as a warning sign when one of the first words spoken in this movie was macabre…and the actor pronounced it as mu-kah-bruh. Yet, I forged ahead.

The general plot—I think—is about a mob family that has a secret location where they dispose of bodies. Another sign…the hubby and I both thought their mu-kah-bruh hideout was supposed to be a haunted attraction at first.

They abduct one of their vigilante workers because he went rogue. Beyond that, I had no idea what was going on. I’m getting exhausted from watching all these indie horror movies lately that have nonsensical scripts.

What positives are there? It’s a horror comedy and there are some very minor funny lines. There’s a load of ooey gooey, practical effect head explosions. And there are some creepy creatures. I just don’t know if they’re zombies, possessed humans, or a mix of both.

I also don’t know why there are monsters, because the movie does little to explain it all. And I don’t know why the filmmakers didn’t focus more on monster chaos rather than loads of unnecessary conversation between characters.

THE EXORCISTS (2023)

The Exorcist meets Night of the Demons, and it makes for simple, silly, midnight movie possession fun. Doug Bradley of Pinhead fame as one of the priests is purely stunt casting—it could have been anyone in the role, and his presence adds nothing special to the plot of people running around a mortuary possessing each other with the touch of a hand.

So this small “exorcism” team comes to a mortuary to deal with a stubbornly possessed girl that is being held there. We get plenty of the usual girl with demon eyes strapped down to a bed, and the exorcism team sitting around talking about whether or not it’s really a possession case, but the real fun begins when a group of kids sneaks into the mortuary because one of them wants to prove that the dead can be brought back to life. The two plots barely collide, which is odd…and interesting.

Cue the infection spreading, with Deadite types creeping through the mortuary possessing everyone. Totally my kind of demonic thrills, with some unintentionally funny moments and even some plot twists. The only gripe I have is that the production is a little too “clean”, so it lacks the gritty atmosphere and hardcore horror elements of movies like Evil Dead and Demons. Even so, this one is available on DVD, and I’m totally going to add it to my collection.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The undead, demons, and delusions

TUBI TERRORS: masked killer time

We all love masked killer movies…when they’re good. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite feeling this trio from my Tubi watchlist. Let’s find out why.

TRUTH OR DOUBLE DARE (2018)

This film runs only 62 minutes long, and all I can say is what a relief. And no, it’s not a sequel to any of the Truth or Dare movies out there already.

For the first twenty minutes or so we meet a bunch of high school kids that look like they are 30, and none of their interactions help make any of them memorable or likable. Although, there are some unforgettable man bods.

Finally, it’s ten years later, and they all get invited to a reunion party. In between more dialogue, there are some completely disjointed death scenes. Characters are killed by someone in a mask and hoodie, yet we never learn who the victims were or why no one questions their disappearance. There’s even a quick scene in which a woman comes across a gutted body and then we never hear another thing about it.

29 minutes into the movie, a woman singing “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” gets chased and stabbed by the masked killer in the woods as the people at the party start talking about playing truth or double dare. In familiar fashion, a mysterious voice on a tape machine warns them they must play the game or die.

Dirty secrets come out, they all turn against each other, and people die. The most exciting part is that one guy admits to his girlfriend that her father performed oral on him.

The old school, Scream-esque killer reveal and motivation monologue at the end is as generic as it gets. This is a bland, lifeless film with no thrills.

BEHAVE (2024)

This film is 79 minutes long, and I kid you not when I tell you every kill happens within a 1-minute span in the last five minutes. I don’t even really need to say more, but if you’re curious, here’s what you get.

In the opener, we see a girl encounter a masked figure after leaving her class. We don’t see any kill.

The other kids in class go to a mansion to relax and are taught etiquette by an influencer. There’s lots of talk and a creepy caretaker who is clearly a red herring. The biggest “scare” we get is a jiggling bedroom doorknob at night.

There’s a brief partying montage 50 minutes in.

53 minutes in the killer appears behind someone.

64 minutes in one girl has a nightmare about the killer, but at least another guy gets a formaldehyde cloth over the face a few seconds later while sleeping.

69 minutes in the killer chases everyone—basically from one room to another, and kills them all.

PREY FOR THE BRIDE (2024)

I’ll say one thing for this movie. It starts strong, with a young woman trying to fight back when someone in a cool wolf mask invades her home.

Next, a group of girls contemplates a bachelorette party after the tragedy concerning their friend. Of course they use the old “she’d want us to party” argument.

A bachelorette party at an isolated home with a wolf masked killer? Sounds awesome. There is a brutal kill early on, as well as some killer POV, and even a male stripper montage, but this turns into more of a home invasion flick combined with a typical concept of the group being forced to reveal their dark secrets, leading to them turning on each other (sort of like Truth or Double Dare). It’s really not very exciting at all.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on TUBI TERRORS: masked killer time

A trio of witch flicks

I love me a good witch flick, especially over the long holiday weekend…but did I get any witchy satisfaction from this triple feature? Let’s find out.

BEEZEL (2024)

I was psyched to see Beezel, especially since it’s Halloween season. I’ll say right off the bat that the witch herself doesn’t disappoint…what little of her we see.

The film is almost like a horror anthology. Its works as a series of vignettes about a family whose home has a witch in the basement. Each new generation must make sure to “feed her” in order to keep their cherished home. Eek!

Each short tale jumps to a different decade and features a story of someone encountering the witch. There are some great, frightening moments in most segments, but the film begins to rely way too much on dream sequences to deliver cheap scares instead of letting the witch materialize more in the reality of each situation. So frustrating.

On top of that, the final segment is way too long, the main female character is so damn annoying, and there’s little in the way of a climax. I mean, who can climax when this happens?

With Beezel being as freaky as she is and making terrifying appearances in the dream sequences, it’s a shame that she wasn’t exploited to full effect.

This film easily could have delivered the goods in the final act like Barbarian did, but it is disappointingly underwhelming instead.

HEIR OF THE WITCH (2023)

Victoria U Bell writes, directs, and stars in this atmospheric witch movie that, unfortunately, relies way too much on visions and nightmares to deliver its creepiest moments.

Our main character is a seamstress struggling to fit in with a circle of snooty upper class women. Instead, she makes matters worse by having a love affair with the husband of one of the women.

Meanwhile, she’s caring for her ailing grandmother while learning more about a family witch curse she’s trying to fend off, but the curse seems determined to ruin her.

There are some great witchy moments here, as well as some disturbing and gory moments, leading to the darkest plot line of the film—a witch’s attempt to steal a baby…that’s still in the womb. Eek!

WITCH (2024)

Maybe if you liked the period piece The Witch you’ll like Witch. I’m not sure, because I couldn’t stay focused on either of them enough to tell if they’re similar.

The basic plot is that a woman is accused of witchcraft (by a freaky looking girl who claims the woman is her mother), so the woman and her husband have to hunt down the actual witch.

Don’t expect any witch thrills. This is all talk and very little action, and you won’t find much in the way of horror except for one scene of a young woman walking around carrying two heads—which is spoiled on the poster art. Staring at the poster art is more exciting than sitting through the movie.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on A trio of witch flicks

A throwback to old school survival horror with Tormented Souls

Tormented Souls is a satisfying nod to classic, turn-of-the-millennium survival horror games. The setting is a big old mansion that will bring memories of earlier Resident Evil locations flooding back, but the hideous monsters are totally inspired by the creeps in Silent Hill.

The game mechanics are mostly the same as both of those classics, complete with fixed camera angles that make it impossible to see what horror you’ve just walked into when entering a room (argh!), and even an option to switch to tank controls for the true authentic feel. I opted for the more modern option of moving in the direction you press the thumb stick, which does cause some infuriating moments where you find yourself spinning in circle basically because the fixed camera angle changes and direction in which you’re moving doesn’t.

There’s an inventory system where you gather weapons, ammo, health, files, and items, with the ability to combine, use, or equip them while the action on screen freezes. Yay! However, for a game so clearly created by people who know classic survival horror, it’s quite bizarre that they crafted a tedious, multi-step process to using items. There’s a point-and-click element instead of automatically using the required item (perhaps a nod to the original PS1 Clock Tower?). For instance, if you need to use a wrench to open a door, you have to click on the door, then click “use” on the wrench in inventory, which then gives you the ability to move the wrench over to the door, where you then have to click on the highlighted spot to get the wrench to work.

Files are handled the same way. When you pick up a file, it gets added to your pamphlet of files. Instead of the text simply popping up on screen so you can read the file you just picked up, you have to click on the file on screen from your pamphlet in the inventory to read it. Sigh.

There are no item boxes in which to store things you pick up, but the game doesn’t seem to have a limited inventory—or at least you never find yourself with too many items to fit in your inventory. That’s partially because there aren’t many weapons or bullet types. In fact, there are only TWO—a nail gun and a shotgun. You want to save the shotgun for bigger boss battles and harder enemies. You’ll mostly use the nail gun, and in order to conserve the nails, you need to figure out how many nails each type of monster takes before it temporarily falls down, at which point you can finish it off with your crowbar, the only melee weapon you have.

Another item you carry with you is a lighter. This is where things get tricky. You mostly have to keep the lighter equipped, because when you walk through dark halls, the screen goes dark and wonky and you’re susceptible to enemies. In order to fight those enemies, you have to lure them into a better-lit area OR find candelabras nearby that can be lit with your lighter to brighten the battle space, after which you must switch to your weapon to start fighting. Also, to reload you can press a button, but to save time and not have to watch the slow reload animation, which leaves you vulnerable to attack, you can freeze the game by going into inventory and combining ammo with your weapon for an automatic reload.

And of course, most importantly there’s the save feature. We get old school save slots! Wahoo! You use a reel-to-reel tape on tape machines in save rooms. Unfortunately, each tape only gives you one save (remember the three saves the ink ribbons in Resident Evil gave you?), so you have to use them sparingly. This is challenging, because there were times when I didn’t find another tape until I’d been playing for at least an hour…and there were times when I’d die after doing a load of stuff and then had to do it all over again by loading the previous save. Sigh.

The map is the other challenge here. First of all, you’ll find maps on walls in the mansion, but you can’t take them. Instead, the map you can pick up is somewhere nearby on a shelf or a table. Why??? Next, when you press the button to bring up the map, it is never a straightforward view that fills the screen. Instead, the map is tilted and crooked in the center of the screen in the visual form of an actual paper map you’re carrying, so you have to use the thumb stick to rotate and adjust it for readability. Every. Time. Ridiculous. The map is also set up so each of the mansion floor is on a different tab on the file, but every time you go back in it begins on the top tab again instead of just bringing you to the map corresponding with the floor you are on. Argh! The room you’re in is highlighted on the map, but there’s no little arrow designating where exactly you are in the room. WTF? Trying to find the right direction and door to go through at any given time is fricking tedious as a result.

As with classic survival horror games, there’s a lot of backtracking to collect items to progress, plus classic puzzles that are usually solvable by reading files you’ve gathered. The good news is that enemies don’t respawn after you kill them, which you definitely should, because they are fast and take your health down a lot when they hit you, and health is scarce, so you don’t want to have to run by them numerous times. Even so, it’s highly recommended that you use a walkthrough so you aren’t running in circles trying to figure out what to do next or where to go next.

The most shocking thing about this game is that at the beginning, your character, a female, wakes up in a tub with a tube shoved down her throat and her tittays hanging out! Survival horror sure has progressed!

In the late stage of the game you finally get a convenient upgrade…you swap out your lighter for a flashlight that attaches to your shirt and is on at all times. This means you will no longer enter any dark spaces, and you can fight enemies without having to light candles to keep a room lit. What a relief.

Eventually you encounter a floating ghost. Like Nemesis in Resident Evil 3, it chases you throughout the rest of the game. However, it is invulnerable and cannot be even temporarily taken down, so you must run from it. Odd thing is, when you come upon it, if you simply turn right back around and leave the room you just entered, when you go back in a second later, it’s gone. You’ll be doing this a lot in the tail end of the game, when it begins to appear more often.

As you near your escape from the mansion (and the game), you’ll suddenly find yourself short on ammo, health, and save tapes, and the only one that becomes more plentiful is the save tape. The game gets really tough as you solve puzzles while digging your way deeper underground in tighter locations with harder enemies. Why??? It got to a point where I didn’t think I was going to be able to complete the game, especially with the sudden introduction of another new enemy. Not to mention, you eventually have to fight four of this baddie at once in order to get your hands on a key item you need to progress further. I was so out of bullets at this point, but luckily a few items were tucked away in the area to pick up. The new enemy is slow, and by running around until the foursome began walking in a line formation, I was able to shoot more than one at a time to conserve bullets. Learned that using a walkthrough, which proved to be invaluable at the very end.

By the time I reached the final boss, I thought for sure I wasn’t going to be able to finish. The game does not hook you up for a battle as some games do when they leave plenty of ammo and health along the way as you near the conclusion. Only a few items up for grabs in the actual boss arena allowed me to make it through. But here’s the trick. The giant boss is relatively easy. All you have to do is avoid the blood he spits at you from his position in the center of a series of staircases. What you need to do is shot him six times with the nail gun…the shotgun doesn’t have enough range. Nailing him six times, opens up these little Audrey II type plants that have wrapped around three different mechanisms you need to access to loosen bolts that will eventually drop a giant drill on the boss. Once you open them, you have to run up to one of the plants (you should always locate one first and then shoot the boss from nearby so you can get right back to it), shoot the plant (one shotgun bullet does the trick), then press a button on a mechanism three times at just the right, carefully timed moment to push a rod through a trio of discs with slots in them that spin by in order for you to line them up. If you screw up, you have to do the whole process over, so it’s really crucial to be accurate with guns and button pressing if you are super low on ammo.

There are also a few different endings, and you can save before the final section in order to reload the save and go for a different ending each time, so you’ll want to read a walkthrough to learn how to get each ending. The biggest disappointment was that the game doesn’t give you any bonus items on the next play through once you’ve completed it. An infinite rocket launcher would have been nice….

Posted in The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror, What I'm Doing With My Joystick | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on A throwback to old school survival horror with Tormented Souls

HALLOWEEN HORROR ROUND-UP 2024

As far as I can tell after months of Halloween horror movie hunting, these should be the last four flicks out there that celebrate the season for this year and get added to the complete holiday horror movies page, so let’s get right into them.

THE TOWN WITHOUT HALLOWEEN (2024)


The director of Kill, Granny, Kill! and Red River goes for more of an 80s kids’ horror movie with a very indie feel.

The autumn and Halloween vibes are perfect, and this is like a throwback to Ghoulies for sure, with little, goofy puppet creatures, but it also feels very low budget. The acting is somewhat stilted at times, however, there’s something very endearing about the cast of kids.

The plot has a lot going on. There are hooded dudes doing satanic rituals to take over the world. The little creatures appear. Adults that want to cancel Halloween are turned into zombies at the town hall meeting (with cheesy makeup and blue foam spilling from their mouths).

The kids decide they have to save Halloween, which is always a fun concept, but the film falls short in the excitement arena, which is weird considering there are hooded cult members, little creatures, and zombies at its disposal!

There are a few memorable “scary” scenes, but overall, not much happens, and the finale is quite anti-climactic…although I’m pretty sure there was a nod to Ernest Scared Stupid at the end, which is just awesome.

HAUNTED ULSTER LIVE (2023)

This 78-minute, ghost-hunting Halloween mockumentary is virtually a remake of the infamous British film Ghostwatch…and just as disappointing.

It takes place on Halloween 1998. A radio personality and television network are doing a joint, live event at a supposedly haunted house. The DJ is broadcasting from the attic, the hosts are downstairs talking to the family that live there and outside speaking with spectators and neighbors, some of them in costume.

There’s a lot of talk, they look at pictures of supposed ghosts, a psychic is brought in, a legend of Black-Foot Jack is discussed, and the medium communicates with some sort of spirit through the little girl that lives there.

The movie finally ends with some moaning in the attic, but don’t expect to see anything horrific as the film crew flees the house. Yawn.

CARVED (2024)

You can’t go wrong with a Halloween horror movie about a pumpkin carving contest gone wrong when a pumpkin comes to life and starts killing people with tentacle vines. There have been several anthologies featuring killer pumpkins, and even Scooby Doo took on live pumpkins in one of his Halloween specials.

The film unnecessarily opens with the aftermath of the pumpkin carving contest before jumping back to show us how we got there, but these days a “shocker” moment is kind of obligatory to grab an audience’s attention.

Next we meet all the major players in a small town as they prepare for the big context. There’s a reporter in town covering the event, and it’s none other than the dude who played Mr. Crocket!

Also on hand is DJ Qualls, who gets to play gay in this one, with a Black partner, which lands this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

As soon as the carving contest starts, the nonstop horror action is triggered as a gnarly pumpkin comes to life and begins popping human heads off left and right with its tentacle vines. Awesome.

The cast is likable, there’s some good humor, there’s suspense, there’s gore…it’s a Halloween blast. And wouldn’t you know it all eventually leads to a pumpkin patch. The cast may be comprised mostly of kids, but this ain’t the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

Although it’s a Hulu exclusive now, I sure hope this one gets a physical release, because I’d love to add it to my Halloween horror movie collection.

HALLOWEEN MASSACRE (2024)

The 65-minute running time is perfect for this film, which has so much going for it except for the fact that those involved in making it clearly have no idea how to write a script. If you read the detailed synopsis of the film on imdb, you’ll discover that you can barely discern the plot being described in the movie, which is predominantly a montage of a killer clown doing his thing at Halloween time.

Honestly, if I hadn’t read the synopsis first, I would not have been able to pick out a plot. I guess it doesn’t matter much, because the filmmakers at least knew what they were doing when it comes to creating a Halloween horror movie vibe. In fact, this one has a fantastic grindhouse feel to it, and really reminded me of the gritty, violent style and tone of Rob Zombie’s Halloween. Adding to the atmosphere is a good throwback to 80s horror movie synth scores.

Essentially, a clown is somehow luring all these random people to his rundown house that looks like a trailer home, complete with laundry hanging on a line out front. There’s also a “main girl” out for revenge against this clown, but it’s a good thing she’s not in the movie too much, because her overacting is really distracting.

What you’re left with is a series of vicious and torturous kills, and no one is spared, including a kid and a pregnant woman. This ominous clown revels in making people’s lives miserable, and the pregnant victim is one great scream queen.

The film works in terms of delivering on the brutal horror, but there are a few weaknesses, including a totally pointless part where they keep jumping back to a guy taking a shit while singing “Old McDonald”. It added absolutely nothing to the movie.

The final battle between the over-the-top main girl didn’t do anything for me aside from making me giggle when the clown simply slaps her across the face. That was quite satisfying.

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on HALLOWEEN HORROR ROUND-UP 2024