Are cool monsters enough to make a movie worth a watch?

Posted on December 2, 2025 by Daniel

That is the question I asked myself as I checked out three horror flicks featuring deformed and grotesque humanoid beings.

THE PRICE WE PAY (2022)

The one thing this cliché movie has going for it is that the absolutely ludicrous final fight between the main characters and the “monster” is super gory and violent.

Stephen Dorff and two other dudes rob a business and force a young woman who witnessed the crime to be their getaway driver. The clever little wrench thrown into their plan is that her car sucks. It breaks down, so they walk to a nearby farm to crash for the night.

Somehow, the film fails to deliver any sense of suspense, tension, or build-up as the group settles in and explores the property, but eventually they get knocked out and strapped down to operating tables by a crazy dude and a huge, deformed woman for organ harvesting. That’s it. That’s pretty much the whole movie.

There’s some nasty mutilation during surgery without anesthesia, and the main girl becomes the hero, but first, Dorff gets cut open, gets stapled back together by the main girl, and then has a fight with the deformed woman while wearing a diaper.

It’s so bad, and it just gets even more laughable as the main girl takes on the deformed woman. However, the final fight is deliciously gnarly.

BLOODY EYES (2025)

I had cheesy horror hopes when this film opened in a neon lit lab with scientists injecting something into a dude wearing a sack over his head.

My hopes were crushed for a majority of the film, with the exception of one of the main cops being a cutie.

The script somehow manages to have a group of cops knee-deep in solving a crime that they talk about in circles for the whole movie without ever giving the audience any details as to what case they’re cracking wide open. I’ve never seen anything like this before.

Their secretive investigation quickly leads them to the underground lab, where they spend a majority of the movie walking around with flashlights in search of something. What exactly that is I don’t know, but it ends up having something to do with lab samples, the most obvious aspect of the plot.

42 minutes in the cute cop finally spots the sack head guy from the beginning, sans sack and showing off his deformed face while he’s eating someone. Awesome.

64 minutes in someone else finally gets attacked. Within only about 20 minutes left, most of the remaining characters face off against the monster all at once. The “action” is entirely low energy, with almost every scene involving the monster presented in slow motion with the audio levels turned down low and muffled. What the hell? I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a monster movie loaded with guys waving guns sabotage itself this badly.

NEVER BLINK (2025)

If Flatliners had a great creature and sloppy storytelling, it would be Never Blink. The film needed to streamline its scientific angle, simplify the experimentation elements, and trim down the runtime by about 20 minutes.

The title does fit, and there are fun moments when the camera view seals up to darkness like closing eyelids, but for a movie not called Bloody Eyes, this one actually has a lot of bloody eyes, unlike Bloody Eyes.

The general premise is a goodie. A professor at a medical school presents his students with the notion that blinking makes up to 48 minutes of our day during which we’re not actually seeing anything, so what if there’s something there in those “blind” minutes? Eek!

Of course there is something there for the sake of this movie, and the students begin to see it materializing and coming for them in the non-blinking world. That is the problem, however. It’s never quite clear exactly how this other dimension is being triggered. The students aren’t experimenting on themselves, so why are they all having encounters with this creature? Is just one of the affected patients they are working with bringing it into reality? Is it the experimental drug they are using? No idea, but the only thing to remember is…never blink!

The characters definitely give off a nostalgic, early 2000s horror movie vibe, and there are attempts at character building, but none of the traits have any impact on the movie. One guy is selling drugs from the lab. Doesn’t matter. Another guy states that he is gay, Black, and has visions. Doesn’t matter. The main girl is having nightmares. Why? Not explained.

We never really get any answers to anything. There are occasional sightings of the creature that is preying on them, and it’s fricking awesome. The horror visuals only get better in the final act when the surviving students decide to meet the monster on its own plane of existence. The horror action gets creepy and gory, plus we get a hot guy shirtless along with an odd number of closeups of his crotch. That and the final freaky fight, which has a 90s techno battle throwback feel to it, are definitely the horror highlights here.

Well, not exactly. In the opening bloody dream sequence, the main girl squishes a mutilated body’s intestine underfoot, and I blurted out, “If you think about it, it’s kind of like stepping in poo”, which gave my hubby a giggle. That was the highlight for him.

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Six degrees of holiday horror?

Posted on December 1, 2025 by Daniel

My latest marathon covers several holidays, some more than others. Let’s find out if they all make my holiday horror page.

THE VICTORVILLE MASSACRE (2011)

At last, I found a horror movie that takes place on Labor Day weekend. In this case, a group of friends uses the holiday weekend to party at a house in a small town.

This is a really likable group of friends, which is rare in slashers these days. I actually enjoyed their banter as they took their road trip, soaked in a hot tub, and played Truth or Dare. Not surprisingly, two girls make out during the game.

Even the kills are sleek and violent, and the killer wears a hooded robe and a mask, providing a cool presence. The slashing even begins strong, with a couple going off to have sex….

Unfortunately, the film gets a little messy as it tries to create a backstory and killer motivation through distracting flashbacks that start to infiltrate right when the slasher pacing finally picks up. Not to mention, the “twist” reveal of the killer isn’t very surprising, because it’s made obvious right from the start which character has a conflict that might push them to murder.

SLAY RIDE (2024)

Olivia Dunkley directs, cowrote, and stars in this flick, which borrows familiar 80s slasher themes but ends up being more of a holiday home invasion horror flick.

The score is awesome, making Christmas music sound sinister, which sets the tone. As does some great initial outdoor footage of snowy houses decorated for the season. However, after that, it visually shifts into what is clearly a low budget endeavor.

Newspaper clips during the intro credits reveal that a little boy witnessed his dad kill his mom on Christmas when he was a child. That boy was locked up in a mental institution years ago. Uh-oh.

You guessed it. He escapes on Christmas and comes home. After an initial kill in a random house, he shows up in the back seat of the main woman, who is on her way home to see her son and husband. A rather hilarious fight breaks out between the psycho Santa and the woman as she continues to drive, and she literally kicks him out of her car.

Leo from Charmed makes a brief appearance as a detective, and he gives the main woman and her family some police protection outside their home in a squad car. If you don’t know how that’s going to work out for the cops, you need to watch more horror movies.

Thing is, there’s a very low body count, and most of the movie ends up being about this very animated and kooky, talkative, psycho Santa keeping the family tied up in their house. I was really underwhelmed by the unfolding of events in this fairly generic flick.

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST CHRISTMAS (2025)

Obviously, this has nothing to do with the famous franchise, and obviously it follows the same exact basic plot, but you know what’s not so obvious? Why do people who accidentally killed someone a year ago, or ten years ago, or even twenty years ago still continue to go to a reunion with all guilty participants invited when dozens of movies have made it clear what the outcome of such reunions is?

The film introduces us to a killer Santa in a black mask…in the main girl’s fricking nightmare sequence! Does that mean our main girl has psychic powers? No, so it’s kind of ridiculous.

She does get a note inviting her to regroup with her friends a year after a prank gone wrong.

The house they gather at has Christmas lights, but don’t expect a wintery vibe. There’s no snow, and the trees are all green. Blah. Also, after the first dead friend is discovered, the group spends a lot of time just sitting there talking about how they can’t just sit there and do nothing.

The movie is only an hour and 8 minutes long, there are a few fun Santa kills and good body reveals, but there are no scares or suspense, although the final girl’s dumb decision to “hide” under a pool table is perhaps the best bad scene ever. There’s even a little lesbian element to the plot eventually. Bottom line is cool Santa, cool kills, but not much else.

HEADLESS: A SLEEPY HOLLOW STORY (2022)

This delightful occult comedy was originally a webseries, but the individual episodes have been linked together as a movie on Tubi. It’s a fun and unique, modern twist on the classic Washington Irving story, manages to include Irving’s other famous character Rip Van Winkle in the mix, and even indulges in some meta horror moments.

The writers/directors star in the film as three of the leads, but everyone in the cast puts their all into it, making for a great production. The guy playing Brom Bones especially shines as a comedic actor.

A banjo player/singer serves as the Greek chorus, carrying us through the story with his musical narrative, which sets the whimsical tone of the show.

Ichabod Crane comes to work as a teacher, rents a room, and ends up with the Headless Horseman as his roommate! In a fun take on the story, Ichabod, Brom Bones (cleverly cast as a gym teacher), and a goth witch who works at an occult shop band together to try to find the Headless Horseman’s head.

It turns into a mystery of witchcraft and the supernatural as their hunt becomes an investigation of the sinister history of the town of Sleepy Hollow. The hook of the show is that the witch is able to use sorcery to give the Headless Horseman temporary heads…of dead people. Teehee. Each time she does, the Headless Horseman takes on the persona of the deceased, making for some funny situations.

The show moves at a good pace, but there are a few unnecessary side stories that throw the plot off track once in a while and simply aren’t funny enough to warrant their inclusion.

The last episode makes for a great finale, with plenty of surprises, as well as appearances by two supernatural show alum: Tom Lenk, who played Andrew on Buffy, and Felicia Day, who played Charlie on Supernatural. Awesome.

If I have one complaint, it’s that the show absolutely should have taken place entirely at Halloween time and indulged in fall foliage and holiday decor. There’s a…um…nod to the Headless Horseman’s pumpkin head, and only one scene referencing Halloween, with some Halloween decor splashed on a wall in the backdrop. That’s all we get. Halloween is never celebrated at all.

ZOMBIES: CHRISTMAS APOCALYPSE (2024)

This one won’t be getting a spot on the holiday horror page, because it’s actually just a previously released, non-Christmas horror movie called Zombies that has been expanded by 30 minutes with a side story focusing on one of the original film’s minor characters.

This added side story does take place at Christmas time, and it simply bookends the original Zombies movie. This guy proposes to his woman in a bar, and as they’re leaving, they are attacked by zombies. He fights back, which lands him in jail, where the original Zombies begins, with this guy’s cellmate being the main character of that movie, which I cover here.

After the original movie ends, we circle back to the guy from the beginning. He’s free from prison and walking out in the snow as Christmas music plays, to further justify renaming this as a Christmas zombie movie. His newly added story arc with his fiancée from the beginning gets some closure. Taken on its own without a whole separate movie dropped in the middle of it, it’s actually a fun little zombie short. It’s definitely odd that a whole movie about another guy concludes with this, but props to the filmmaker for extracting a minor role from his original movie and creating a complete, unrelated story in the same universe.

BAD BUNNY (2025)

After opening with a big hillbilly bear with great tits banging his bunny rabbit, this movie becomes a surprisingly serious backwoods creature feature slasher.

A woman comes to live in a house in the woods after the death of her man and is soon being terrorized by what is obviously the human/hybrid offspring of the banged bunny from the beginning. The movie doesn’t need to get into the details, because everyone knows that when you fuck a bunny, it gives birth to a bunny man.

The bunny man looks freaky fantastic and makes nasty noises, and he gets to kill an assortment of random characters throughout the course of the film. Plus, the kills are nice and vicious with some complementary, chaotic camerawork. The part that I didn’t like was that the bunny man also gets the main girl’s dog. WTF? The dog’s part in the film is so irrelevant that they didn’t even need to include it just to kill it.

Most of the movie has the main girl just trying to evade and escape the bunny man as he chases her, and it simply starts to get repetitive. Even so, the final fight to the death is fricking brutal, and the final girl’s emotional breakdown at the end is pretty heartbreaking for an indie slasher. And you simply have to love the final frame.

As is usually the case, this is not an Easter horror film, but what better time to watch a killer bunny movie than on Easter weekend? Therefore, it’s going on the holiday horror page.

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Three from 1973

Posted on November 25, 2025 by Daniel

It’s always hard to wrap my head around the fact that movies like these were coming out at the same time as game changers like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Exorcist. And yet I keep watching them when I come across them, mainly because they star familiar faces. So did any of these give me even a hint of a scare?

ARNOLD (1973)

I added this one to my movie collection to ensure I had every horror movie in which Roddy McDowall stars only to find he barely makes it past the halfway mark.

This quirky gothic horror comedy is loaded with famous faces, including Stella Stevens as a new bride who makes her entrance to a lively song about her fiancé. The catch? The man she’s marrying is dead. And in a coffin. And his will says she must spend every minute of her life with him by her side if she wants to collect his inheritance.

At the reading of the will, the family learns that the deceased left a secret stash of money hidden somewhere in the house.

And then, people begin to die gruesome deaths. As in all these whodunit murder mystery mansion movies, there’s backstabbing, jealousy, revenge, scandalous affairs, someone spying through a hole in the eyes of a portrait, and a bumbling detective on the case.

Along with the silliness, there are some macabre moments, spooky nightmare sequence, and Jamie Farr in black face as a Middle Eastern servant. WTF?

Highlights for me included a cat playing with a severed foot, and a decapitation by guillotine that is perhaps the funniest moment in the movie once it’s discovered, but overall, this isn’t one I’d find myself revisiting…even though I now own it.

THE HOUSE OF SEVEN CORPSES (1973)

This flick starts strong by using echoing sound effects that were so prevalent in early 1970s horror movies to give them a trippy vibe. Plus, the opener is a montage of people being murdered in a mansion.

Then we get to the dull part, which is most of the movie. A film crew is making a movie in that mansion. The deaths that took place in the mansion are merely mentioned, and we never get any substantial discovery of what actually happened at the location in the past. WTF? A little deep diving would have given the characters something to do.

Instead, we watch one sequence after another of the crew filming scenes for their horror movie, which look like they’re from a better movie than the one we’re watching. We also get John Carradine in a minor role as the caretaker, and there’s a mutilated cat moment that’s shockingly gruesome for the time at which this was released.

It’s not until one hour in that they decide to use a black magic book they find in the mansion for a scene in their movie. The book is actually The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which isn’t even a black magic book, but a religious text, so what the hell?

Anyway, without explanation beyond the reading of the book, a few dead bodies rise from a graveyard that’s conveniently located right outside the mansion, so we have to assume that messing with the book is what triggered the zombies. These are gnarly looking corpses, and it’s pretty creepy as they roam around in the shadows, but even the horror fun fails to bring anything cohesive to the plot. You really only turn to this one if you’re a fan of horror flicks of this era and have seen most of the others.

TERROR IN THE WAX MUSEUM (1973)

This period piece set in the late 1800s comes from the same director as Arnold and features much of the same cast because they were filmed simultaneously. Thing is, while this film flirts with the idea of being a horror film, when it comes down to it, it’s really a mystery.

John Carradine owns a wax museum, and the film opens with him and his deformed assistant dumping a pretty woman into the wax to make a new display piece for the museum. Like the array of “wax museum” films that came before and after it, you would think that would be the whole horror plot and that the deformed assistant would be a killer.

Nope. Carradine is killed, and those that want to get their hands on his business come to stay in the museum. Does that mean sinister, devious plots to take each other out and people being killed left and right? Nope. Even the deformed dude is a sympathetic character and not actually a monster.

There’s a detective investigating Carradine’s death, and there are plenty of delusions and nightmares of the famous murderers from the macabre museum displays coming to life, but that’s about it. This movie is super boring.

As you’d expect, there’s a final fight around Carradine’s all but forgotten wax vat, and a killer is at last unmasked, but it’s incredibly anticlimactic. No matter how much you love the wax museum horror movie concept, this is a bottom of the barrel option.

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When my streaming slasher selections go wrong

Posted on November 19, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a variety of different types of slashers, each of them with (sometimes oddly) erotic elements, but that didn’t make my latest triple feature any better. Let’s find out what went wrong.

SPIN THE BOTTLE (2024)

A teen supernatural slasher that runs over 2 hours long. WHY? There is no excuse for this.

In the 1970s, a group of friends is hanging out at one girl’s house, and they decide to play spin the bottle…in the basement…which turns out to be an occult lair…with a pentagram on the floor…which they sit around to play the game…with a bottle the girl warns is her father’s prized possession…

In modern times, we meet our main teen guy, who is going on ahead to the house he will be moving into with his mother, played by Ali Larter. Right here is one of those moments when the film could have been edited down. Their situation is established in a conversation before he leaves, and then we get another conversation between them when he arrives at the house, which adds absolutely nothing new of value.

He quickly makes a group of friends at school and invites them to the house. The kids know of the house’s history, so naturally they decide they should play spin the bottle in the basement…with the same bottle. On a side note, I don’t understand this recent trend of filming movies in the super long and narrow 2:35:1 aspect ratio. Perfect opportunities to capture the bottle sitting in the middle of the full pentagram are hampered by the squished height of the picture size.

In a typical moment of catering to a straight, male audience, while playing, two guys laugh off the idea of kissing when the bottle signals that they are supposed to, but when it’s two girls, they don’t hesitate in going for it and getting into it. Yawn.

Anyway, the kids release a ghost of the girl who lived in the house in the 1970s, and she begins terrorizing them, and very occasionally killing them. Justin Long appears as the sheriff who investigates the mounting deaths.

Once again, there’s a repetitive segment, this time at a funeral for one of the kids, which simply needed to get to the point but takes way too long to do so, with scenes both at the grave and in the church. We really didn’t need to attend the entire funeral of a dead character in a slasher movie.

Finally, the remaining kids decide to delve into the backstory of the house. They talk to a reverend and learn they must get the demon back in the bottle. It’s only briefly in the final act that the movie gets to the point—all the kids in the house together being hunted by the ghost girl, who sucks their souls out through their mouths. If only the film had been 30 minutes shorter and this section about 20 minutes longer, this could have been an okay teen supernatural slasher.

I HEART WILLIE (2025)

It’s another killer Mickey Mouse movie, and it begins with some homoerotic torture porn. Yay!

Then we meet a small group of goth kids that likes to go to macabre locations. They head to the infamous lair of the famous “Steamboat Willie” character, who one of the girls loves.

They spend a lot of time roaming around the property in the dark, both inside and out, with some of them going off to have sex. This is 43 minutes in and when things finally pick up. Our shirtless Mickey begins hunting, abducting, and absolutely torturing everyone in his lair.

The big surprise is when we discover just how much the main girl really loves Steamboat Willie, but even that is not enough to save this poorly paced slasher. At least it’s gritty and grisly.

KARMA (2025)

The only thing that kept me watching this one was one hot guy who spends most of the time shirtless.

Otherwise, it’s a dialogue-heavy bore.

Four years ago, a group of friends accidentally killed a girl during a prank gone wrong. Now they start getting “I know what you did” type notes. But first, there’s a bunch of banter between them that feels unscripted, pointless, and just an excuse for them to all call each other the n word repeatedly for nearly 25 minutes.

It’s 50 minutes before we get the first major kill, and it’s a 2fer. The killer wears a robe and mask, but don’t expect any suspense, chases, or death scenes. The best part of the few kills we do get is the reaction by a white guy as he’s dying.

65 minutes in there’s an anticlimactic reveal of the killer, who has everyone tied up on a stage and just tortures and kills them for the remainder of the film…after talking for like 20 minutes. Yawn.

Would you believe the movie ends with a maniacal laugh outburst?

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A three-ring circus of crazed clowns

Posted on November 18, 2025 by Daniel

I’m always up for a scary clown movie, but was this just a run-of-the-mill triple feature? Let’s find out.

THE CURSE OF THE CLOWN MOTEL (2023)

Some well-known names somehow made it into this mess of a movie that never decides if it wants to be about a vengeful Native American entity or creepy clowns. One thing is for sure – it’s definitely a clown show.

In the Old West saloon opener, hottie Randy Couture scores a brief role as a cowboy who gets killed by a magical Native American man, whose face paint I presume is supposed to resemble that of a clown. Randy’s last words are something to the effect of “You haven’t seen the last of me”. Yet…we never see Randy again.

In modern times, Tobin Bell owns a clown-themed motel in the desert. Don’t ask me why anyone would come to a clown motel in the middle of nowhere, but a group of business people does.

Also present is a young Native American woman who wants to reclaim the sacred land of her people from Tobin, who has been exploiting it by…running a clown motel business on it?

Meanwhile, Richard Grieco is moping around, and I think he’s supposed to be another Native American working with the main girl’s grandmother to unleash that magical Native American man from the beginning. I don’t know why Grieco is even in the movie, and I don’t think he does either.

At one point it appears that a life size clown in the gift shop (?) is alive, but there’s no payoff to that moment, so the whole clown aspect is basically dropped. The Native American man is brought back somehow, kills a few of the guests, shoots electric magic from his mouth, and lurks inside mirrors and paintings on walls. It’s never clear who he’s mad at or trying to get revenge on, because he just kills random guests.

The first of the few major kills comes at about an hour in, and while the death scenes are nice and gory, there aren’t enough of them, and the nastiest part of one of them is blocked by…get this…CGI fricking blood on the camera lens. What? Despite that, it’s still the best scene in the movie.

I won’t even try to explain the main girl’s final battle with the Native American man, because, well, I can’t explain it.

VAMPIRE CLOWN (2025)

Hunky Tyhr Trubiak of Tempus Tormentum is the lead here, and he could charm the pants off me. He carries the quirky tone of Vampire Clown perfectly with his humorous himbo performance. The desolate country town setting also adds to the overall weird vibe, and the film felt to me like a throwback to 1960s horror in which residents of a little town are taken over by the unknown.

In this case, the unknown is a vampire clown. Tyrh, a man who is questioning his worthiness, learns his neighbors are being found dead in their homes.

He begins to suspect something strange is going on, especially when locals start appearing during the day in surgical masks while behaving all distant and comatose. It’s quite creepy, and the eerie feel is only hindered by the whimsical tone whenever the actual vampire clown comes around.

Tyrh rides around on his bicycle trying to figure out what’s happening to his town, which benefits his little guy as hero persona as he uncovers the truth. Eventually, he and his girlfriend have to team up with her ex to stop the vampires once and for all, which is when the movie really hits its dry comedy stride.

It’s small in scope and low in budget, but it’s filled with heart, and I enjoyed the heck out of it.

DO YOU SEE ME? (2017)

The question should be, do you want to see Do You See Me?? I was so drawn in by the establishing minutes of this clown movie. The opener is a gruesomely atmospheric “skin mask” kill, and then we learn it’s right before Halloween, which lands this one on the holiday horror page. Yay!

We meet our main girl, recently divorced and bickering with her incredibly cute husband over ownership of their home.

She also has tension with her mother during phone conversations, has a sister with strong opinions about what she’s doing wrong in her life, and is regularly bothered by a dude at the gym who can’t take the hint that she’s not interested in him. Was the goal here to create a list of suspects who might have it out for the main girl? Not sure.

The possibility of attending Halloween parties hovers in the background, but that’s about as far as Halloween gets. There’s one trip to a store for some costume shopping, but there’s absolutely no Halloween atmosphere here—no pumpkins, no decor, no fall leaves. Bummer.

Anyway, our main girl keeps spotting a clown lurking around wherever she goes, and those sightings are often accompanied by her receiving a simple text message: Do you see me?

There’s such an intriguing and suspenseful feel to the film…at first. However, pretty soon it just keeps making promises it doesn’t keep. It becomes repetitive, and you begin to wonder if the clown is all in the main girl’s imagination. He doesn’t target anyone else. He doesn’t kill anyone. He never actually chases the main girl. Yawn.

And then, in the final moments, there are suddenly several clowns outside her house terrorizing her. Why introduce a bunch of clowns at the last second? Even with the addition of more threats, the movie doesn’t movie into terrifying territory, and the conclusion is a letdown, with no explanation for anything that happened, no Halloween party, and the clown seemingly moving on to harass someone else. It seems that films inspired by those real sightings of creepy clowns that were talked about on the news several years ago are becoming a bit of a trend.

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Killer canines, infected teachers, and an alien spouse

Posted on November 17, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a trio of Asian horror flicks without the usual supernatural style, which is my fave. Let’s so how these other subgenres worked out for me.

PROJECT SILENCE (2023)

The Mist meets Cujo on a bridge? Project Silence is repetitive and lacks intensity and suspense, with CGI dogs so bad they just kill any sense of realism.

We meet a variety of characters that are all inevitably headed for that bridge. A heavy fog leads to a massive car pile-up that also blocks off any exit from the bridge.

Then a military truck that was carrying laboratory dogs is found busted open. Pretty soon, the dogs are attacking people left and right, and their runs and leaps look less realistic than a modern video game. It just totally took me out of the movie, and I became bored fast.

There’s a cool helicopter crash scene, a plan is eventually hatched to lure the dogs off the bridge, and the bridge does collapse, so there’s all that to look forward to.

Even the motivation of the leader of the dog pack is pretty good, and it has to do with her love for her puppies, but by that point I was so dissatisfied with the special effects that I felt no sympathy for her and blurted out, “How sad. They killed all her CGI puppies.”

ZOMBIE SCHOOL (2014)

This infection movie is not listed as a comedy on IMDb, but it totally feels like a comedy due to the dubbing, and it seems pretty intentional, so I’m not sure what the intended tone was. Either way, it works as a comedy, because both the hubby and I were laughing throughout.

It especially needs to be a comedy on account of there being no likable characters. A group of troubled kids is sent to a school on an isolated island, and the teachers are basically bad kids that grew up to become teachers of bad kids. We’re talking like major physical abuse scenes.

Speaking of abuse, be warned that when the backstory of how people are becoming zombies comes out, it involves a flashback scene that looks like real footage of pigs being buried alive in a pit. I’d suggest either fast-forwarding through it or just looking away while listening to the dialogue for the explanation.

Basically, as kids and teachers are fighting nonstop, the principal’s dog is attacked by an infected pig. The principal goes out to get revenge on the killer pig, gets bit, turns into a zombie, and then infects the rest of the school staff.

This rampant spread doesn’t happen until 45 minutes into the movie. But the last half hour or so brings on the hyper zombie action, with fast zombies, power tools, and a dose of gore as the kids fight back against the infected.

It’s all pretty typical, except for one thing—at the last minute, there seems to be the presentation of a way to calm the infected! There could have been a whole new angle to the usual infected plot line if they had made this revelation an integral part of the plot earlier on.

NIGHT OF THE UNDEAD (2020)

Pixelated penis! This is the second time in about a month that I’ve watched a horror movie on Prime in which a scene with penis is blurred out! In this case, it’s two scenes! Double the dick opportunity totally denied! What is going on? I have no idea in either case if this is the way these films presented the penis or if Prime is censoring content.

At least we get to see the rest of the bod…

We are immediately cock-blocked for the first time in the opener before we meet a newlywed straight couple. For a sci-fi comedy that ends up running a little too long, the plot pacing is ironically fast. Within the first twenty minutes, the wife becomes convinced her husband is cheating, she goes to a private detective, he uncovers the husband’s philandering ways, and he drops a conspiracy bomb—he thinks her husband is an alien.

That leaves her to contend with the explosive suggestion for the bulk of the movie. Not to mention the gang of secret alien men that knows she’s uncovering their alien plot and therefore must be destroyed!

With the help of her female friends and the detective, she plots to kill her alien husband, which turns into an absolute comedy of errors, complete with seemingly dead people coming back to life. However, this is not in any way a zombie film, despite the English translation of the title. I have no idea if it’s the correct translation.

Night of the Undead is indeed comedic, with plenty of humorous scenarios, and it turns into an across town chase as the alien men hunt down the women, but despite the thrilling pursuit, the film somehow feels slow. If there had been a way to just trim about 15 minutes off the 105-minute runtime, it would have been a total blast. As is, it’s only like two-thirds a blast, and there’s no actual alien reveal scene in the end other than some red eye action.

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A werewolf, a giant snake, and alien offspring

Posted on November 13, 2025 by Daniel

This was one of the better horror comedy triple features I made the hubby sit through, with only one slightly weak link in the bunch. Let’s get right into them.

THE BEAST OF WALTON ST. (2023)

It all begins on a cold and dreary night at Christmastime in a dark alley. You can actually feel the chill as a homeless man hears noises coming from a nearby dumpster. He makes the mistake of going to investigate, and in a flash of quick cuts and edits, he is mauled in a bloody werewolf attack.

The Beast of Walton St. sets up a somber, isolating setting in a rough part of town during the holiday season, landing this one on the holiday horror page. There are barely any characters, and the focus is on a couple of homeless lesbians living in a garage they call home, complete with Christmas lights.

Thing is, the energy is as downtrodden as the two main girls. It’s so lowkey that it makes the pretty damn good werewolf encounters all the more exciting. However, the two girls are the only ones who keep encountering it, because they really are alone in their little homeless world.

After an initial encounter with the practical costume effects beast, which is always presented either from afar, in dark shadows, or through fleeting glimpses, the girls decide to hunt the beast down and save the targeted homeless population in the town. After all, there’s nothing lesbians detest more than a hairy beast invading their turf.

Despite the great wintery, desolate atmosphere and cool monster moments, the movie is very slow. The girls are cute together, and there’s some dry humor (highlighted by frequent focus on their female body parts), but there’s a lot of dialogue, and the performances come across as almost uninterested and bored. Think of how Max spoke in 2 Broke Girls and you’ll get what I’m talking about, especially since one of the girls sounds just like Kat Dennings. Look away from the screen and you will swear it’s her.

The gore is good and nasty, the attack scenes are intense, there’s a shocking turn of events near the end, and the final battle is a goody, but it’s still a rather flat viewing experience overall. And just note that the bloody situations that occur are repeatedly likened to getting AIDS, which is an oddly phobic sort of analogy to keep making.

SNAKE CREEK (2025)

Indie director Charlie Steeds rarely disappoints for me, and he usually makes campy, quirky flicks I can watch with the hubby because they have a touch of a SyFy original throwback to them.

Snake Creek was another good popcorn movie for us. Steeds knows how to have fun with his flicks and gets straight to the point. In this one, a group of four guys heads to the woods for a canoeing trip.

First, they stop at a convenience store, where the old clerk warns them of all the dangers on the river. Soon after, they are on the water and being attacked by one of the most charismatic, practical effects giant snake I’ve ever seen.

This snake is a total character with its own hissing personality. It feels like an old school puppet design, and every time its face pops up on screen, it gave us a giggle. It also has a taste for dick. Now that’s something I can sink my fangs into.

There’s snake POV, chases, attacks, funny battles, and a group of dudes that barely have an ounce of annoying, toxic masculinity in them as is usually the case with these kinds of movies.

They really are a bunch of chill dudes, so you totally root for them as they fend off the snake, try to escape the woods after their canoe floats away, and eventually have to also contend with a trio of psychotic hillbillies. This one is a total party movie.

SNATCHERS (2019)

Alien meets Mean Girls? That’s what you get here, with a little skankified American Pie humor thrown in for good measure.

Our main girl Sara is killing time with her bitchy female friends after her boyfriend dumped her because she wouldn’t have sex with him. In true insecure teen girl fashion, she doesn’t want to lose him, so she lets him bang her…

A few days later she wakes up to find herself like 9 months pregnant! That fertilized egg is just waiting to explode from her vaj, and she gets to the gynecologist just in time for it to shoot out of her. Let the horror insanity begin!

Sara somehow gives birth to a sort of “head hugger” that latches on to the skulls of hosts and tries to track mommy down after she and her friend make a fast getaway from the gory afterbirth situation she left behind.

They soon realize there’s another baby head hugger inside her just waiting to pop. Their effort to abort the second alien offspring leads them to various locations, and everywhere she goes, the head hugger follows, wreaking humorous havoc!

It’s another total party movie to watch with friends, so make sure to have a huge bowl of popcorn and a load of cherry cola on hand. The script is spot on, the comedy is gold, the icky gore is a blast, and the performances are top notch for an indie. The movie comes from a trio of filmmakers (co-directing and co-writing credits), and I really hope they make more magic together. I immediately ordered Snatchers on Blu-ray after I finished streaming it.

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BOUGHT ON BLU and 4K: two sequels and a Hammer film

Posted on November 9, 2025 by Daniel

It’s all about being a completist with my latest purchases, which include a sequel to an 80s slasher, a sequel to a 70s slasher, and a Hammer film with Christopher Lee in the cast.

MUTILATOR 2 (2023)

When I was a young teen, The Mutilator had one of the most disturbing VHS box covers in the video store. However, like most horror movies back then, the title and poster art weren’t exactly as traumatizing…except for one particular scene in this otherwise generic slasher from the 80s.

Forty years later, the director decided to make a sequel without going for the same tone at all. This one is meta, it’s humorous, and it’s shot with a clear, clean visual style rather than a grungy throwback to the look of 80s horror.

The plot is basic. A film crew is making a sequel to the movie. Members of the original cast have been invited for a reunion. And eventually, people begin getting murdered. Eventually.

The movie only runs 82 minutes long, but a majority of it simply features playful performances by cast members new and old. There’s not much in the way of a plot. It’s more like a series of vignettes of characters participating in humorous banter. It’s kind of like watching a skit on Laugh-In.

There’s one murder early on, and it is super gory with practical effects. Indy horror king Damian Maffei shows up as a detective on the case, but no one seems all that affected by the murder. Everyone just goes back to their comedy shtick.

However, 54 minutes in, the film goes into full slasher mode, with one super gory kill after another, mostly on a beach at night. The last half hour totally makes it worth the wait and earns this one the title of Mutilator more than the first film did. It even gives a nod to the heinous scene of a woman having her va- jay-jay hooked in the original, only this time, it’s a dude getting hooked so far up the ass it comes out his mouth. Personally, I just call that great sex.

There’s also a lesbian character, plus Art the Clown drops by for a quick cameo, but the final scene is weird, anticlimactic, and not much of an unmasking.

SILENT NIGHT BLOODY NIGHT 3: DESCENT (2025)

Someone needs to stop the madness of making messy, low budget sequels to the original 1972 film, but I imagine maybe it’s public domain at this point, so these sorts of things can’t be stopped.

It doesn’t even matter that this is a sequel to part 2. Different directors, different writers, different actress playing the same lead character.

After a few opening kills in a bar, including the murder of a nurse from an asylum, we are bombarded throughout the movie by segments of news reports and influencer types going on and on about the events of the movie. The film also ends with twenty damn minutes of these clips. Needless to say, there’s no reason to sit through them. Or through the movie itself, for that matter.

The main girl character from the previous movie wakes from a coma inside an asylum filled with sociopaths and psychopaths. That’s about the extent of the plot. Everyone is killing everyone else, Lloyd Kaufman is awful as always as the psychotic director of the asylum, someone in a creepy Santa costume arrives with an axe and takes care of killing business, and there’s eventually a cult thrown into the mix.

There’s no substance here, it’s all sloppy and cheap looking, and there are no scares or suspense. It definitely feels like Christmas time, though, so this one lands on the holiday horror page. And yet, as much as I’m putting this one on blast, not only did my unemployed, broke ass buy the regular Blu-ray, I also bought the 3-D version that requires red and blue glasses, not included. Not to mention, both discs are BDRs, not pressed discs.

THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH (1959)

 

Despite the 4k release of this disc including an “uncensored” version with a very slightly more graphic scene involving fire at the end, this is a low-key horror film. The odd thing is that the uncensored cut isn’t totally uncensored, because the other cut, called the “nude” cut, has a pair of boobs that are covered up in the uncensored cut.

This is sort of a Jekyll & Hyde situation. The main doctor has been around for a long time, because every ten years he undergoes a gland implant that keeps him looking youthful. As time for his transplant comes around, the surgeon that perfected the operation is late showing up, so the doctor is taking a temporary green potion that holds off the aging process…an aging process that also makes him monstrous. The potion also has a second duty; it glows green to provide eerie horror lighting.

Naturally, the doctor keeps falling behind for his scheduled potion-drinking, which leads to him murdering a few people, which then leads to a detective poking around in search of those now missing people.

In hopes of having someone else perform the surgery, the doctor attempts to enlist a very dapper looking Christopher Lee to handle the job. That’s pretty much it. It’s a straightforward plot with no real suspense or scares and a low kill count.

The doctor is at his most hideous when time runs out for him in the final scene, and that’s not even very hideous.

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Not my best selection of flicks to watch for Halloween

Posted on November 2, 2025 by Daniel

Good thing there were dependable classics to watch in between watching these three new films on Halloween weekend, because they were mostly duds. Let’s find out why.

DR. GIFT (2025)

I have been waiting for this one to be released for a while due to Danielle Harris being in it. I kind of wish she hadn’t been in it…

There are some great visual moments of horror in this film, but perhaps the director would have been better off saving them for a video for an indie goth band or something, because they are kind of out of place here. This is simply a mess of a horror “comedy” that loses its way early on, with such an inept script (if there even was a completely developed one), that I gave up trying to figure out what was going on. Be warned that the audio is muffled and hard to hear, which doesn’t help matters.

The opener takes place in 1918. Cops bust into an insane asylum and discover that Dr. Gift has been experimenting on patients. There are some enticing horror visuals here, but the scene is shot in black and white and looks like home video quality. An aged film filter would have masked that a bit and captured the spirit of the tone better.

In the modern day, two brothers are opening a bed & breakfast in the old asylum. At first, I thought they were a gay couple, and it feels like such a cop-out that they weren’t. I mean…it’s a bed and fricking breakfast, and one of the brothers is virtually portrayed as gay.

Anyway, there are moments of humor as an assembly line of guests come to stay at the B&B, but way too much of it falls flat. We get a mysterious couple, a group of mediums looking to do a séance, a team of redneck ghost hunters that look like escaped convicts, a girl band led by Danielle, a biker gang, and a couple of inspectors, not to mention the pair of chefs that works in the kitchen. There are too many damn characters, so no one gets enough screen time, and no one feels significant. There’s also no plot. They all just get little vignettes of goofy behavior and banter.

Eventually (55 minutes in), Danielle becomes possessed by Dr. Gift, commits one murder, and is then gone and replaced by the doctor himself. There also seems to be a cult, there are a few apparitions, and there’s some sort of demon girl. It’s just a bunch of chaos with no rhyme or reason.

Thing is, the moments of horror feel like they were inserted from a much better, authentically scary and disturbing horror movie. There were opportunities to go two ways here, humor or pure horror, but instead we get them both, and they aren’t blended together as in a good horror comedy, so the two tones just completely clash. I was feeling little blips of the humor, but not enough, but I was really feeling the gruesome, practical effects, kills, and horror imagery. Not to mention, if it was a fake penis used in this scene, that’s one realistic looking fake penis. It’s also, like…a really pretty fake penis.

GLAMPING (2025)

For a movie that uses loads of thumping club music as its soundtrack, you’d think this one would be more exciting. Unfortunately, you also know that when a movie opens with a major kill scene that isn’t going to occur until much later in the plot’s timeline, there’s a good chance nothing is going to happen for a long time. 59 minutes in this case. Sigh.

We meet an aspiring influencer. Suddenly everything begins to go great for her. That is until one of the products she promoted harms a follower that tries it. Then her career crashes.

After way too much exploration of her career trajectory, she joins her friends for a trip to a cabin in the woods. On the way, they see stick figure dolls hanging from a tree. They find another one in the cabin. Therefore, they decide to stay. Naturally.

There’s relationship drama and infighting until finally the lights go out, and a masked figure appears and badly harms one of them. They all manage to get away, but as their friend lies bleeding, they…start fighting about relationships again.

There are only four characters, so death scenes are few. There’s a gay subplot, but it wasn’t the one I expected. My gaydar was way off on this one….as was that of the six other people I watched this movie with.

The twist basically just puts a little twist on the most obvious twist you could have expected, but that ends up making it a pretty weak twist. This wasn’t one of the better Tubi originals.

KILL ME AGAIN (2025)

If Happy Death Day was really boring and featured the killer repeating the day instead of the main girl, it would be this movie.

A killer enters a diner, spends a little time there, and then kills someone. And then he starts doing the same thing over and over again.

The film tries to inject humor into the situation to make it a little more interesting each time, but it doesn’t try hard enough. It takes way too long for the recurring sequence to become more playful and more like a slasher. The killer seriously uses a gun to kill victims half the time. Yawn.

Eventually, the killer gets bored, so he begins having fun mixing things up each time he returns, but it’s not until 52 minutes in that he ups the body count in a big way. That’s the best part of this 108-minute movie. That and the use of Air Supply’s “Here I Am” for one scene (but only once).

The big reveal moment at the end is clever, so it’s a shame it wasn’t attached to a more thrilling version of this movie.

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Chucky’s latest competition? It’s three creepy doll movies

Posted on October 29, 2025 by Daniel

I never get tired of deadly dolls, so I added three more to my watchlists for a triple feature. Let’s see how that worked out for me.

ROB1N (2025)

A killer robot doll with a number in the name of his spelling. Has to be a M3GAN rip-off, right? Not really, beyond those little details. This is a much more atmospheric little killer doll flick.

It opens with a massacre at some kid’s birthday party.

Next, we meet a young, engaged straight couple. He suggests they go visit his estranged uncle. That works out well, because the uncle lives in a big house and apparently had a car accident a while back that wiped most of his memory. He doesn’t even remember any conflict with the nephew so invites them to stay.

It does turnout, however, that the uncle has built a robot likeness of his deceased son. And don’t you know, ROB1N is one jealous doll. He viciously kills anyone that gets between him and his maker.

Here’s the thing, though. While the doll and his blinking, glowing eyes are definitely creepy, I guess budget constraints forced the filmmakers not to animate ROB1N at all in full view. You mostly see him standing there staring blankly, then his eyes blink, then we see a weapon making contact with a victim.

Somehow, it actually works to some extent and delivers plenty of blood, but as a result of the lack of movement and the fact that ROB1N doesn’t speak, he really has no personality. His inability to ever be seen walking also makes for a pretty awkward final chase scene…

Despite that, this one has a clever twist that, along with the good kills and stylish filming, made this a satisfying killer doll movie for me.

MORGAN: KILLER DOLL (2025)

 

It’s a lesbian killer doll movie! Yay! More like a lesbian obsession killer doll movie.

Michael Pare is the father of Astrid, a very nice teen girl who walks with a cane but somehow hangs with a very snotty and douchey clique of friends.

Astrid reconnects with her childhood friend Darcy, who is weird, has an abusive father, is in therapy…and is ready to admit she has always been in love with Astrid.

For Astrid’s birthday, Darcy gives her a big, creepy doll. Astrid’s friends, who despise Darcy, find a love letter in the box, so they make Darcy well aware that she’s a freak and doesn’t stand a chance with Astrid.

And then the killing begins. Here’s the really crappy part. The Darcy doll has plenty of shitty people to kill, but her first victim is Astrid’s Black maid. It’s literally the only scene the woman is in. She comes to clean the house and gets viciously stabbed. WTF?

The Darcy doll is freaky because she fricking appears human-sized whenever she attacks people. Eek!

The death scenes are great, with spooky setup shots of the doll and violent, bloody kills, which is a plus, because this is a pretty generic slasher otherwise.

There’s a very satisfying twist in the final act, but the denouement goes on way too long with a lot of excessive talk, which seriously slows down the pacing at the last minute. I’d also like to know why the inside of Astrid’s house is lit in neon horror colors like something you would see in my Dan cave.

THE RULE OF JENNY PEN (2024)

This is a different kind of doll movie, because the doll is actually attached to John Lithgow’s arm like a puppet, and he uses it to terrorize fellow patients at a rest home, often forcing them to “lick her asshole”. WTF?

This is just a nasty, mean-spirited, “elevated” horror movie that also stars Geoffrey Rush as the protagonist who is most targeted by Lithgow and the only one who stands up to him.

Cruel torture includes pouring piss on patients, yanking out a catheter, a spit fight, pushing elderly people down, sending them off into the woods by themselves, and even sexual assault.

It’s one big metaphor for the possible horrors of living in an old folks home (isolation, abandonment, neglect, abuse), and while it does have a doll with glowing eyes and there are some symbolic scenes of the doll being gigantic, this is more a horrific movie than a horror movie. I wasn’t feeling it at all. I’ll stick to the trashy, low budget killer doll slashers, thank you very much.

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