What’s your sexual proclivity…a succubus or an incubus?

Posted on June 16, 2025 by Daniel

Whatever you’re into—be it a female ghost or a male ghost—you get hot naked men in this double feature, landing both on the stud stalking page. Awesome.

SUCCUBUS (2024)

This little indie horror is impressively effective, and it feels like it’s broken into two very distinct parts—a tension-building, slow burn first half, and then a trippy, horror and sex loaded fever dream in the second half. Scrumptious. However, it does tend to run a little long, especially the first part.

The main guy who recently separated from his wife considers online dating, and his sexy, macho friend tries to coach him.

The main guy also chats with his mother (played by Rosanna Arquette) and his estranged wife. All of it is presented through video chats, which does a great job of establishing how alone the main guy is in his house.

The isolation gets really creepy when he begins video chatting with a mysterious woman online. She has a hot body and is rather seductive, but she also won’t show her face on screen and doesn’t speak at first—only text chats. Chilling.

Slowly but surely, she begins to come out of her shell and claims to be scared and trapped, and she wants him to come see her. Eek!

In the meantime, Ron Perlman plays some sort of doctor who contacts the main guy and warns him to stay away from the mysterious woman.

It truly is an unnerving setup, and it eventually leads to some whacked shit. The main guy sort of teleports through the screen to hook up with the woman, and then the satanic shit hits the fan. It’s weird, it’s erotic, it’s icky, and it’s visually captivating.

In the final act, the film brings the concept of the succubus to the forefront at last, making for a pretty good and disturbing conclusion to this bizarre film. Let’s just say that things aren’t looking up for any of the penises in this movie.

INCUBUS: NEW BEGINNINGS (2025)

This one definitely feels like an indie, almost to the point of looking like a shot-on-video endeavor. The script is all over the place, seasoned actress Dee Wallace appearing in the last fifteen minutes sticks out like a sore thumb, and there are hokey special effects right out of the 80s. But…I was so into it.

A bunch of female friends goes to a lake house to party. They have a gay cook hosting their dinner party, a Chippendale piñata, and a stripper.

The woman who owns the place wants to have it blessed. The priest comes while the women are out canoeing, sees flies swarming around a crucifix, and demonstrates that he has seen The Amityville Horror by getting the fuck out.

Meanwhile, the women are plagued by nightmares and supernatural occurrences. There’s a hot naked dude entering their rooms. There’s an old zombie man with a huge tongue. There’s a scary doll. And there’s a freaky demon crawling on ceilings and shit.

In fact, there are so many creepy things happening that I had no idea what was happening. Either way, it was some tasty visual horror. Not to mention plenty of tasty male nudity.

There’s an outdoor scene between the hot nude incubus guy and what I guess is supposed to be a cop with a gun, and the footage is edited to make it seem like they are face-to-face, but their scenes are shot at totally different times of the day in totally different color lighting.

There’s even a stretch of footage that breaks up and pixelates terribly. You could argue it’s supposed to signify the demon’s evil powers in effect, but you know it was more likely an error in the filming.

The movie runs 73 minutes long, and Dee Wallace shows up as a demonologist at the 57-minute mark, bringing a hint of camp to her character. She easily conjures the demon (awesome), and even more easily exorcises it.

In the end, we see evidence that the incubus did indeed score quite a bit of mortal loving even though we never actually see him have sex with any of the women—in every case, it’s implied.

It’s definitely a different vibe than Succubus, but they both have awesome demons and naked men, so this was a pretty perfect double feature for me at a time when I really don’t want to think when escaping with a horror movie.

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From kid favorites to killers—more terror takes on the classics

Posted on June 13, 2025 by Daniel

This time around, it’s Captain Hook, Popeye, and the Disney princesses. Let’s get into my latest themed marathon.

HOOK (2025)

 

The villainous pirate from Peter Pan becomes a modern-day psycho killer in this play on the classic children’s story.

Would you believe Hook is a murderous drug pusher? He escapes his arrest and decides to target the grown daughter of Peter and Wendy, who are now married.

The daughter is having an all-girl birthday party at a secluded house, and there’s even all-girl sex action.

Hook scores himself a hook for his hand and goes on a murder spree. It’s as templated as a slasher gets and as ridiculous as a slasher adaptation of classic characters gets.

It also has good kills, some blood, screaming girls, a killer with a hook for a hand, and Hook pushing his magic pixie dust on victims. That’s about all I could ask for or expect, so I was entertained.

POPEYE’S REVENGE (2025)

This horror take on a classic cartoon character comes from William Stead, director of the gay vampire flick Children of the Night. However, there’s nothing gay about this one. Well…not literally.

It should come as no surprise that this is the most basic slasher formula, and is that ever really a bad thing? In fact, much of this movie ends up feeling like Friday the 13th…with Popeye.

We get an illustrated opening story about how Popeye, a deformed child, supposedly drowned in a lake years ago, but his body was never found.

Now, a group of friends comes to stay in the house Popeye lived in, which burned down and got rebuilt. The fricking house with a creepy past is a fraud!

The film is loaded with dark, foggy woods at night, kills are violent and bloody, and evil Popeye is pretty cool. He’s big and ominous and doesn’t look much like his silly arm muscles are fakes. His weapon of choice is an anchor, playing off his iconic arm tattoo.

Typical character hijinks ensue, mostly sex, which is a pleasant return to form for a slasher. Besides a couple of shirtless guys, there’s a scene in which Popeye cops a good feel of big girl tits in a hot tub, which makes sense. After all, Olive Oyl is a twig with no titties, so naturally he couldn’t resist finding out what some big ones feel like.

Definitely watch it for the kills. The ending gets a little weird as the final battle includes the backstory shifting away from Popeye a little!

FAIREST OF THEM ALL (2025)

This devious little flick takes the most famous “princesses” and pits them against each other in fights to the death, and it’s all presented with a dark edge—the way fairy tales were meant to be experienced.

The Mad Hatter abducts Ariel, Belle, Alice, Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty, killing any of the men that love them and get in the way while he’s at it.

That is because he wants to take one of the princesses as his bride. The catch is, the girls will determine which one of them it is. Her wedding gift? The gift of getting to live.

The girls go off for death matches while The Mad Hatter and the other ladies watch through some sort of supernatural lens that is hovering just out of sight over the table.

The opening abductions and kills of princes are actually more fun than the cat fights. Also, Sleeping Beauty comes across as a violent, alcoholic nut, so she’s a load of fun, and Ariel has a somewhat monstrous appearance, so she was another fave.

Eventually, the Mad Hatter gets in on the game, a decrepit fairy godmother intervenes, and any dead princesses come back like they are the Disney Undead to settle the score.

Silly flick, but the doses of camp and viciousness, along with the dark tone, make it entertaining.

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Off-season: Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day, and Christmas horror

Posted on June 11, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a trio of flicks for the holiday horror page, but only one really satisfied me. Let’s get into them.

HALLOWEEN CANDY (2025)

My assessment of this one might be a little off, because I’m just going through some crappy things in life right now, and I really needed a simple horror flick that indulges in the Halloween vibe. This indie anthology does just that, with the wraparound and all the stories celebrating the season.

Hell, the movie even begins with a Halloween candy animated credits sequence with spooky music and thunder sound effects, so I was totally hooked from the start.

In between answering the door for trick or treaters, our main character in the wraparound is a newly divorced writer who finds inspiration for new stories on Halloween night…

1st story – the greedy owner of a haunted attraction falls victim to his own business.

2nd story – this is an icky tale in which a pedo picks up a young trick or treater to bring home. But the trick is on him, and it’s so satisfying.

3rd story – teen girls celebrate Halloween by using a Ouija board to summon a dead friend.

4th story – a man discovers that things you bury under a pumpkin patch don’t stay dead. Eek!

5th story – this is a COVID take in which a woman is trying to avoid answering the door for trick or treaters. Therefore, the Halloween fun must force its way inside.

6th story – a man meets a woman on Halloween night and brings her home thinking she’s at his mercy. As we all know, it never works out that way in these stories.

The wraparound keeps the holiday horror going, becoming a horror tale of its own. I could see putting this one on in the background annually while decorating for Halloween.

LEPRECHAUN: THE BEGINNING (2025)

If you’re going to make one of these low budget, mythical creature slashers with a dull script, you need to at least make the kills something to write home about…or for me to write about on my site.

No, this isn’t part of the iconic franchise. The leprechaun in this movie is a full-sized man with a face that looks like something out of a scene at Lorne’s karaoke bar on Angel.

The leprechaun isn’t menacing, the kills are few and far between and very generic, and the plot is typical.

A family comes to the home of the deceased matriarch and explores the house looking for his treasure. Naturally, that treasure once belonged to a leprechaun, who comes out to play.

Other than that, there are some family tensions, flashbacks provide a backstory to the leprechaun’s history with the family, a few people die (very few), and there are a few little surprises at the end.

The film gets added to the St. Paddy’s section of the complete holiday horror page, because when else would you watch a movie about a killer leprechaun, but if you’re going to do that, just watch the Leprechaun franchise.

FINAL RECOVERY (2025)

This isn’t a Christmas-themed horror movie, but it does take place during the holiday, and there’s plenty of seasonal spirit in the background.

In fact, the film begins on Christmas 1974, when a young girl witnesses her dad being murdered by a druggy.

In the current day, that girl has grown up to be a woman who loves wearing ugly Christmas sweaters while running a rehab center all decked out for December. I guess the Christmas season just makes her do crazy things….

Most of this film isn’t horror focused. It’s all about the messed-up residents at the rehab, but it’s also obvious that the woman who watched her dad die at the hands of a druggy isn’t exactly sympathetic to the addicts she treats.

There’s definitely something underhanded going on, and two residents—a regular and a newbie—begin to unravel the truth.

It’s not until the last fifteen minutes or so that they (and us) discover what is being done to patients. There’s an electric saw and a lot of blood and body parts suddenly tossed in to make a big splash in the last few minutes. It’s really not one to watch if you’re looking for suspense or thrills, despite the grisly payoff.

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Shark overload!

Posted on June 10, 2025 by Daniel

The hubby and I kicked off the summer early with four shark flicks. Well, more like I subjected him to four shark flicks whether he liked them or not. So did he? Did I? Let’s find out.

INTO THE DEEP (2025)

This is a pretty basic shark movie, but it definitely made for a simple, cheap thrills ride for the hubby and me. Plus, it has Richard Dreyfuss still giving nods to his career changing role in Jaws, and horror queen Scout Taylor-Compton in the leading role.

In a pretty nasty opening sequence, a younger version of Scout and her mother watch from a boat as her father is gobbled up by a shark. This movie has a few pretty great scenes in which we see the shark mouth actually chomping off a limb. Ouch.

The “elevated” part of this movie is that adult Scout is still suffering PTSD and has to face her fears with flashback help from her motivational grandfather—Richard Dreyfuss. It’s all a little too hokey for someone like me who’s over meaningful shit and is just in it for the shark attacks.

Thankfully, we get plenty of those. Scout, her man, and some friends go out boating, get boat-jacked by pirates, and are forced to dive down deep to rescue the pirates’ treasure.

Like I said, it’s all totally basic, and it just gives everyone a reason to end up in the water at one point or another in between fighting each other. The shark attacks are good, and that’s all that really matters.

Keep an eye out during the closing credits, where Richard Dreyfuss does a PSA about the importance of sharks to remind us that they are truly misunderstood due to movies like the one he just starred in.

SHARK WARNING! (2024)

This would have been a total SyFy extravaganza fifteen years ago. It checks off all the boxes—unintentionally campy acting, an inconsistently sized CGI shark, a recycled plot, and most importantly, a recognizable face from like 30 years ago.

In this case, David Chokachi of Baywatch is that face. A dude has come back to a fishing town 20 years after his little brother was eaten by a shark. Chokachi, his uncle, was supposed to be watching them and fucked up, so the main dude has a beef with him.

Meanwhile, the fishing town has suffered a shortage of fish for years, which doesn’t bode well for the upcoming fishing tournament. So…the evil mayor tells one of her henchmen to go blow a hole in the nearby damn to let the fish flood in.

Naturally, the shark swims through, too. This is where things get goofy and funny. For whatever reason, one fisherman after another tries to go out on a paddle boat to kill this giant shark…with a manual harpoon spear. Not even a harpoon gun. And in two case, the fisherman ends up killing himself accidentally! SyFy gold, I tell you.

All the main players end up on boats at the end trying to take down the shark—which, by the way, is supposed to be the same shark from twenty years ago. I love that this movie borrows generously from the worst of the Jaws movies. The mayor gets the best bad monologue, and the shark even growls at the end. Jawesome.

SHARK EVIL (2023)

This 76-minute Asian shark flick is totally about the visually artsy presentations of the massive, CGI shark leaping out of the water in various ways and snatching people right off boats.

The shark is quite menacing and is covered in battle scars that make it clear he’s seen some things. In the great opening sequence, he takes out a handful of fishermen with the help from a little friend. It’s campy and awesome. It also briefly totally steals from the score to Jaws.

Next we meet a group of pretty young people. They go out on a yacht. Within the first 35 minutes of the movie, all of them get devoured except the two final girls.

They end up stuck on the boat of the dead fishermen and have to figure out a way to get the malfunctioning propeller going again.

Simple. Straightforward. Sick looking shark. This one was quite satisfying.

NIGHTMARE SHARK (2018)

Okay. I was getting desperate to keep a shark weekend going. This flick about shark attack survivors suffering from nightmares about a monstrous shark creature actually features characters from other SyFy shark movies, which is clever.

At first, I was feeling the absurdity. Each survivor has nightmares that are right out of Elm Street…with a shark. Shark fins pop up on the street.

Shark fin in the tub. Shark swimming outside a window.

So, these survivors go to a house in the woods for therapy with some quack who gives them pills that are supposed to keep them from dreaming.

It appears blocking their dreams causes waking nightmares. It’s a hot mess as the shark terrorizes them, and there aren’t really any good attacks or kills, but the shark is definitely nightmarish.

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HYBRID HORROR: a home invasion, ghosts, a witch, possession, and trans representation

Posted on June 3, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a trio of indie flicks with various subgenres within subgenres. Does that make them more intriguing or just create chaos? Let’s find out.

THE WRAITH (2025)

This one begins with a woman getting burned as a witch and vowing revenge offspring in the 1940s. WHAT? We also learn later that the sheriff at the time was Black. WHAT?

Those anachronisms aside, the film moves to 1985. Four ghost-hunting friends head to a rural home to help a couple with a haunting and the disappearance of their daughters.

The couple lets the ghost-hunting team stay in the house and leaves. The four friends begin to experience weird occurrences, but the first scare is a nightmare sequence. Sigh.

They investigate the history of the woman burned as a witch, and not much else happens for quite some time, but eventually one of the main girls becomes possessed. From that point on, things get complicated. There are plenty of horror aspects, but the plot is all over the place.

We get a scary ghost that tries to help the sole survivor, gut-munching, someone killing people, witchcraft, and a backstory that unfolds in flashbacks, but the plot about the haunting and the missing daughters is totally forgotten. Meanwhile, I was totally eating up the eye candy…

CRYSTAL LAKE (2023)

It’s unfortunate that indie filmmakers continue to try to capitalize on massive movies and franchises using a deceiving title that will perhaps get the movie watched, but will inevitably lead to harsh backlash online, thereby denying the film the chance to stand on its own laurels.

Crystal Lake not only steals its title from the infamous camp we all know, love, and in some cases worship, but the film even has a young boy named Tommy, a character named Jason, and a moment referencing a “Jason” movie tie-in to the murders that happened, which features someone in a hockey mask. Sigh.

So, with this not being a Friday the 13th film, does it stand on its own? I have to admit, I was growing bored with the film, for it’s loaded with dialogue, even if much of it is kind of campy, often controversial, and mostly sexual, but the final act completely turns the tables for an unexpected denouement that was quite refreshing and more intriguing than everything that comes before it.

A group of friends comes to stay at a cabin in the woods where there were some murders a few years before (depicted in gory clips during the opening credits). The killer was never caught, so the friends decide to start their own little investigation.

At the same time, we get scenes of two local cops on the beat and discussing the same case to fill in the details (or lack of them) for viewers.

In between talking about the murders, the friends discuss sex a whole lot, and there’s major trans/non-binary representation with one character played by one Emily Meissner. Thing is, the trans character’s identity is sort of played to be both bold and in your face, yet challenged by the other characters, which some viewers may find offensive, while others might think it’s an attempt to be realistic and balanced. I also was not able to verify whether or not Emily Meissner is indeed trans or a cisgender person playing the role.

The trans issues actually become the focus when screams are heard from the cabin, leading to the two cops showing up to check out the report. The shit really hits the fan, the film delves into how horribly trans people are treated, particularly by law enforcement, and there’s a shift in tone that does not paint cops in a good light and even delivers some commentary on headline-making cases about police brutality. So basically, the movie attempts to be highly offensive to both the left and the right. Pretty sneaky…cis (that’s a Connect Four commercial reference from the 1980s, for you young ‘uns…).

I was really feeling the out of the box approach to the final act, even if it shifted the film away from a straight-up horror concept. I just think the first half needed something more to hold viewers’ interest.

GHOST GAME (2024)

This one tries a different take on the home invasion subgenre with a bunch of twists. It didn’t work for me, and quite frankly, I was confused by the end.

A dude finds out his girlfriend and another guy take part in this video challenge in which they sneak into people’s homes and live there without the owners finding out while filming every moment.

Despite seeing video of his girlfriend and challenge partner doing something awful, the boyfriend decides he wants to participate in their next home invasion.

There’s a supposedly haunted house they sneak into with a dark, murderous past that has just been bought by a new family—a father, mother, and young daughter.

The family gets unsettling feelings around the house, and while the scenes are set up to create tension and suspense, how can it be any of those things when we know who’s hiding in the shadows? I guess we’re supposed to be on edge that the unlikable main characters are going to get caught?

While a majority of the runtime is uneventful, eventually all the twists are tossed in for the final act. Just when I thought there was a really clever twist involving ghosts (a twist that I personally think would have brilliant–probably because I thought of it), there was another twist that I not only didn’t fully comprehend, but it also negated my thoughts about the ghost twist.

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HULU HORRORS: don’t go in the water!

Posted on May 29, 2025 by Daniel

This triple feature revolves around sea scares, but they’re all totally different in plot, making for some nice variety. But is variety always the spice of life? Let’s find out.

THE LAST BREATH (2024)

The hubby and I are always ready for new shark movies when the summer nears, so we got an early jump on it with this cliché take on the subgenre.

We meet a group of friends looking to party in a tropical location. One guy has recently helped the late Julian Sands discover a sunken WWII battleship.

He hasn’t told anyone about it, but after lots of uninteresting talk between the characters as they party on the beach, he decides to take his friends diving.

The group becomes trapped down in a warship by a shark, with one room having an air pocket they can hide out in safely in between trying to escape.

And yet they still keep getting attacked. And they also conveniently end up in an underwater room full of like 70-year-old medical supplies when one of them needs to be stitched up.

The initial appearance of the shark had such an opportunity to be an amazing jump scare, but bad CGI made it a blip on the jump scare radar instead. The shark scenes are all CGI, so once you get past that, you just have to use your imagination to pretend it’s real.

The group does all the typical things wrong, but at least there’s plenty of bloody water. The two best moments include a scene in which one guy almost makes it safely back to the boat, and the scene in which the final girl fights back and takes on the shark head-on.

DEAD SEA (2024)

Even though it has a terrifying concept, this film is totally thriller lite. The events that unfold are so simplified that there is little in the way of suspense.

Our main girl and her female friend and two male friends go jet skiing, and there’s a really bad accident. One of the two guys simply disappears, the other guy is badly hurt.

For a moment it feels like this is going to be an Open Water situation, for we naturally get shots of sharks in the water. Luckily (or not), the trio is picked up by a sexy fisherman.

Almost immediately they are all held captive, and this turns into an organ harvesting and human trafficking movie. It’s definitely the most chilling aspect of the film, but it all just plays out so basically with no hitches in the escape plan.

Even the final rescue is hokey and buttoned up tight. Funny thing is that the simplification of the survivors’ trajectory comes down to them essentially making no mistakes…which goes to show you that scary movies would be pretty boring if characters didn’t do stupid things.

Meanwhile, the hot fisherman is shirtless for the final battle, so that’s a plus. He also pulls a Silence of the Lambs at one point by sending supplies down to his prisoners in a basket.

THE DAMNED (2024)

This is one you should probably check out if you like those unsettling period pieces like The Witch, where it’s all about the vibes rather than the visuals.

In terms of horror eye candy, the most you get in this movie is essentially all contained within the screenshots I’ve included here.

In a fishing village near the shore, the residents are contending with a brutal winter when they see a ship crashed on the rocks in the distance.

They argue over whether or not to go save any possible survivors. This is when the savagery of olden days is on full display. Actually, pretty much nothing has changed in today’s “civilized” society.

Anyway, after a boat trip to the ship that turns barbaric, the villagers place all the dead bodies that wash up on shore into coffins.

After that, the guilt begins to eat away at them and they start suffering visual delusions, getting violent, going crazy, and even killing themselves. It is pretty much up to the viewer to decide if they are actually experiencing anything or suffering from mass hysteria.

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Monsters of California and Australia

Posted on May 27, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a triple feature of movies including a Bigfoot, ghosts, aliens, a giant boar, and a zombie kangaroo. Is it all as fun as it sounds? Let’s find out.

MONSTERS OF CALIFORNIA (2023)

This flick has so much going for it, but it doesn’t deliver enough on the title, and the plot absolutely crumbles, running on fumes with no sense of motivation or story arc by the time it reaches the final act of it’s too-long runtime.

The vibe is straight out of an 80s Spielberg film, and I was loving it. We meet a dude and his two best buddies, who are always chasing paranormal experiences. The first sequence has them in a haunted house and encountering a ghost, and it’s 80s awesome, like something out of Ghostbusters. As a bonus, one of the dudes even gets stripped down to his undies.

Then we get a bunch of plot points. The main guy’s dad disappeared while studying something paranormal for the government. His mom is a religious fanatic. His uncle is a military man, played by Casper Van Dien.

His two best buddies are somewhat of a comic duo, and there’s this odd thing going on with them—one friend is somewhat obsessed with the other friend’s crotch. The crotch lover actually absolutely steals the show with his comical delivery. Meanwhile, there’s so much potential for a bromance turned homomance angle, but it never fully develops.

Instead, the main guy gets a female love interest, and I’m not being biased when I say that their intimate hetero moments destroy the pacing. There was no need for this romantic element other than to add to the 80s feel. In fact, if the romance and the religious mom aspect had been dropped, the pacing would have been so much better, because those two side stories add nothing to the already struggling main plot.

There’s only one other major “monster” in California, in another great sequence involving Bigfoot, which goes from suspenseful to hilarious thanks to the crotch lover.

Eventually, the group of friends gets entangled in a government coverup, and we even get a UFO sequence in the end that feels like a total nod to Close Encounters.

It’s a bummer that as much as this feels like an 80s comfort movie, it really falls short in both monster action and script strength.

BOAR (2017)

I wasn’t surprised to see numerous comments online comparing this movie to Razorback. It is another good old monster movie about a giant boar tearing people apart in the Australian wilderness, so it’s impossible not to read that description and think of the 80s classic.

For a majority of the film, the giant boar is presented without CGI, which is amazing in this day and age considering how big this beast is. However, it’s mostly closeups of the mouth and head for some great gory attacks.

In the final act, a decision is made to show the entire boar as it snaps victims up, which is when some seriously hokey CGI is used. Still cool attacks, but it does change the feel a bit.

The other issue with the movie is the messy flow. Early on, we meet Bill Moseley and family on a road trip to visit a super hunky, bald uncle…but then they disappear for a major portion of the middle of the film.

The focus turns to random people getting attacked and locals hanging around and talking in a diner. What they never talk about, however, is how this damn boar got so big. Therefore, you just have to go with the horror action, which delivers plenty of blood and guts. There are some delicious glimpses of man bods as well.

For the final act, the focus is once again on Moseley and his family, which is when the attacks shift to CGI. Even so, the whole sequence with the family trying to survive is a blast.

RIPPY (2024)

Would you believe it’s another Australian creature feature? And would you believe the hunky baldy from Boar also appears in this one? That was totally unintentional on my part when I selected these three flicks for a triple feature.

Rippy simply isn’t as horror-loaded as Boar, and many of the kills are essentially cutaway kills. Also, Rippy the killer kangaroo, who I think is supposed to be a zombie kangaroo, is pretty much exclusively CGI.

On top of that, each of the main characters (including Michael Biehn) gets their own little backstories, most of it concerning some form of PTSD. None of it adds anything to the plot, but what it does do is slow down the pace.

This just isn’t a very energetic monster movie, and there are large gaps of “character development” between the kills. It’s only in the final fifteen minutes that Rippy leaves the wilderness and comes to town to terrorize the main cast in a bar. This final battle is so disappointingly low key and over in the blink of an eye.

Finally, there’s one last scene that makes it look there could be a sequel focusing on human zombies.

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Horror queen Sadie Katz made me do it

Posted on May 23, 2025 by Daniel

I selected the films for my latest triple feature simply because indie horror queen Sadie Katz is in them. They offered different doses of Sadie, so let’s find out if I was satisfied by the scares even without much Sadie in some cases.

DEATH CLUB (2023)

This 72-minute supernatural movie has a direct-to-DVD early 2000s vibe. If nothing else, I was totally feeling it for that reason, because these days I’m feeling anything that doesn’t feel like now. Meanwhile, Sadie Katz only plays a ghost that comes in for what essentially amounts to a cameo 52 minutes into the movie.

The movie is about a haunted, abandoned dance club, so the opening credits feature a montage of sexual debauchery and queer characters that had me longing for the days of the 90s New York City club scene.

More importantly, although it takes until the end of the movie for the truth to come out, a gay couple appears to be the reason for tragedy that occurred at the club in the first place, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page. Awesome.

Other than that, this is a flat, low budget feature. A group of friends breaks into the boarded up club, which is surprisingly clean inside, and starts to party.

Then, they begin to split up, and in doing so, each friend is confronted by a ghost that forces them to admit the wrongs they’ve done in life. We’ve seen this one before, and this adds nothing to the concept.

Even worse, and this may be considered a spoiler, but there ends up being literally no punishment for any of these people for the things they’ve done, making the whole movie–and the mysterious masked figure that is presented through mask POV–rather pointless.

On the bright side, there’s a gay kiss in the final scene.

END TIMES (2023)

While most of this film feels as derivative as the zombie genre gets these days–our main survivors trek through the post-apocalyptic country encountering both zombies and monstrous groups of humans–it’s the final scene that really adds dimension and something quite fresh to the genre. That surprise, however, is spoiled because the filmmakers chose to open the film with a clip from the end, totally spoiling it.

The other problem is that the film runs an hour and fifty-two minutes long. Ugh.

Like I said, the majority of the film feels familiar, kind of like a season of The Walking Dead compressed into one movie.

Indie horror queen Jamie Bernadette awakens to find the world has gone to shit, and after some freakish encounters with both a gang of rapists and some lumbering zombies (awesome–it’s back to slow moving zombies for a change), she meets a survivalist guy, and they stick together to survive.

They get to know each other, there are montages of him teaching her to fight, there are a few zombie encounters (although not loads of zombies), and several conflicts with other groups of survivors.

Sadie shows up 64 minutes into the movie as part of a sort of religious cult group of survivors, and she has a slightly bigger part than she does in Death Club.

The real star here is Jamie Bernadette, who gives a great performance in the end, when we are presented with one character being infected. It is so sad and tragic watching them as they are able to describe what they are going through and feeling as they slowly turn. I’ve never quite seen such intimate exploration of the experience of the infected and the person that cares about them listening to how they are suffering during the change.

KILLER CONNECTION (aka: Hybristophilia) (2022)

I looked up Hybristophilia (the original title of this movie), and it’s all about getting sexually aroused by serial killers and other criminals.

This 76-minute movie takes on that theme with a major focus on lesbianism, bullying, and homophobia, with absolutely no subtlety in the messaging. It’s totally a lesbian horror flick, starting with lesbian sex and ending with lesbians having a happily ever after–for all the wrong reasons.

It’s also the one film of this trio in which Sadie is one of the stars. It’s a far cry from her fun and funny roles in movies like Party Bus to Hell, the kind of roles that got me hooked on her. Instead, this is a serious role in which she plays a pregnant woman.

However, that’s not the reason I wasn’t thrilled with this movie. It’s simply not very thrilling. A small group of documentary makers or content creators (not sure which) comes to a house where murder occurred, called there by the killer, who offers them a once in a lifetime chance for a one-on-one interview.

The lack of thrills is immediately established when the group passes out in the house, wakes up tied to chairs by the killer in a mask…and then the killer immediately takes off the mask and unties them. Like, what was the point of that elaborate entrance?

From then on, the killer just talks mysteriously about what led up to the murder in the house while giving the group a tour of all the spots where captivity, spousal abuse, sexual abuse, violence, and inevitably the murder took place.

At 67 minutes, the killer puts the mask back on and starts chasing and killing members of the group. Fear not–literally–because the chases and kills are bland. It all leads up to the “happy lesbian ending”. Even so, as dry as the film is, it does try to indulge in exploration of how family dysfunction and childhood trauma affected a young woman’s gender identity and sexual orientation. Not to mention, even the gay guys are thrown a bone when a shirtless hottie is targeted by the masked killer.

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The horror of listening to the radio

Posted on May 20, 2025 by Daniel

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

NIGHT TALKERS (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NIGHTMARE RADIO: THE NIGHT STALKER (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A NIGHT OF HORROR: NIGHTMARE RADIO (2019)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A haunted attraction, purgatory, and a psycho family

Posted on May 15, 2025 by Daniel

Each of the films in my latest selection of flicks for a movie marathon had something that kept me watching, but was it worth it in the end? Let’s find out.

NIGHT OF WRATH (2025)

This is an all-around cliché-riddled, 73-minute flick that doesn’t deliver any thrilling takes on any of those clichés. The most confusing part to me is that it takes place in a haunted attraction and there are plenty of jack-o-‘lanterns around, but there is absolutely no mention whatsoever of it being Halloween, and the holiday has no bearing on anything.

However, Sleepy Hollow gets a random mention as well, and therefore, I’ll add Night of Wrath to the holiday horror page since it gives off visual Halloween vibes inside the attraction.

We meet a group of kids in a series of melodramatic, dialogue-driven exposition for each character. They are then invited by some sort of secret invitation to a haunted attraction.

They’re the only ones there. An animatronic figure talks to them and gives them a very Saw-like ultimatum—do what it tells them to do or their darkest secrets will be revealed.

The group walks around the attraction a lot trying to figure out how to escape, however, it doesn’t look like much effort was put in to making it feel like an authentic attraction, probably due to budget constraints.

We don’t get anything in the way of horrific things the friends are required to do to survive, there are very few juicy secrets revealed, and there are no death scenes. Not to mention, the person behind the plot is revealed at the 43-minute mark, so there isn’t even much mystery here. Just a really underdeveloped script and plot all around.

GOD OF PAIN (2023)

There’s plenty of disturbing imagery, eerie visuals elements, and gore in this flick, but rather than an actual plot arc with main characters, this is basically a series of vignettes featuring various people being sentenced in purgatory for their crimes against humanity.

Sort of like a horror anthology of people just doing bad things and then getting tortured. It runs its course quickly, but a few twists in some of the “cases” add a hint of interest, although not enough to make this an approach to telling a story that I’d want to see again.

The funniest thing to me was that the “god of pain” is literally wearing the same exact mask I use on a mannequin that stands in my bushes for Halloween. It’s definitely a freaky mask—I purposely bought it to scar trick or treaters for life—so it should creep out most viewers of the movie, but for me it will always be a Halloween prop I bought online.

Who wore it better? Top image: movie. Bottom image: my house.

Top image: movie. Bottom image: my house. Who wore it better?

Anyway, here’s a breakdown of the baddies on trial:

— a dude who kidnaps and kills women, and his opening case is perhaps the creepiest of all, partially because we don’t actually yet know the premise of the movie

–a dude that dismembered and buried bodies

–a woman who cracked under the pressure of motherhood and killed her own kids

–a guy who killed his whole family

–a woman who killed people who did bad things (one of the twists)

–a guy wrongly accused of crimes and the guy who accused him (the second twist)

My absolute favorite part of this movie was when the god of pain kills a dude by breathing fire on him. Awesome.

WHAT THE WATERS LEFT BEHIND: SCARS (2022)

This is a sequel to What the Waters Left Behind, and it comes from the same director. However, the first film was in Spanish, and this one is in English…sort of. We have a rock band that speaks English and ends up in the same desert ruins of a town that the characters in the previously film did, and they encounter the same “backwoods” style, crazy family.

However, the family speaks Spanish, and there are no subtitles for them, at least none available on Tubi, where I watched this. I’m not sure if that was intentional to make English-only speaking viewers feel fear due to the characters’ inability to communicate with the crazies, but it made me more frustrated than frightened, because I felt like I missed like half the movie because I couldn’t understand it.

Even so, there’s not much to miss, I guess. Just like the first film, this is the same crazy psycho family formula, just with a new group of victims. And as with the first film, all the classic elements are included, but it’s all missing any edge, so it wasn’t very scary, suspenseful, or disturbing. For instance, when the family members first abduct the members of the band, they have animal skull masks on, but once they’re all tied up in the family’s lair, there are no masks, just hillbilly-looking crazies.

This sequel has a weird, homoerotic vibe to it, with lots of a flesh, sweaty man bods, tattoos, beards, and arm pits.

There’s also an implied male rape (one of those instances when the film holds back instead of actually showing us anything fucked up), landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page. Oddly, the prettiest male member of the band also calls one of the family members a faggot, which felt very out of place.

The kills and battles are quite generic, and even the surprise at the end isn’t all that surprising. This one simply doesn’t take the psycho family subgenre anywhere new.

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