The three latest additions to my collection were blind buys—one was included with a 3-movie set that I bought for one of the other films, the second is a remake of an 80s trash classic so I felt obligated to own it, and the third is the latest installment of a popular franchise, which I needed to complete my collection.
DEMON WITCH CHILD (1975)
This product of The Exorcist boom, which comes from the director of the Blind Dead movies, has some original ideas, but they only manage to make it all the more goofy rather than good.
When a baby goes missing, the number one suspect is an old witch.
She’s taken into custody, and when she dies, her spirit possesses the daughter of the main detective. Like, we literally see her ghost leave her body, head over to the young girl’s bedroom, and climb into her body.
Although the possessed girl does levitate once and her whole upper body joins in on a head spin, she isn’t confined to her bedroom and doesn’t turn all demon. Instead, she physically morphs into a little version of the old witch and also speaks like her when she goes out at night to join her coven to sacrifice babies. Awesome.
The side story is about a dude who has just decided to give up women to become a priest and isn’t well equipped to perform an exorcism. That would explain the lame finale, which takes place in a field with no suspense or horror to speak of, simply the priest sticking a crucifix to her head then watching her die.
Of note is that this movie may be the only possession film to feature an appearance by David Cassidy, even if it’s only on a poster on a bedroom wall.
STREET TRASH (2024)
This is such an underwhelming remake of a 1980s schlockfest, despite trying really hard to be equally as schlocky.
The plot is simple. The rich have crushed the middle class, so the homeless population has skyrocketed. The man running the city comes up with a plot to kill them all with a fatal chemical. When a small group of homeless friends uncovers the plot, they decide to revolt.
The film gives us an early taste of what the chemical does to victims—total gutting, oozing, melting flesh, and vomiting in neon colors.
It also sets out to prove how revolting and tasteless it can be by offering us a scene of a cop getting his dick chopped off by a fence.
The highlight here would be the practical effects of the gory melting bodies, which is icky, gooey goodness. Other than that, the film fails to make us really connect with the main characters, the action is weak, and the humor didn’t really hit for me at all.
That’s not entirely true. There is one character that delivers plenty of good, crass lines. Unfortunately, it’s a little blue imaginary friend of one of the main characters. It’s both stupid and annoying yet gets all the best lines that could have and should have been spread around to real human characters, leaving the imaginary friend out completely while making the main characters likable and memorable.
There is also some homeless gay-for-pay humor, and the little blue imaginary friend begs his maker to fuck him up the ass in a tag scene after the closing credits—an afterthought that makes me think modern filmmakers don’t have what it takes to make the kind of trash they used to in the 1980s.
V/H/S BEYOND (2024)
This turned out to be one of my favorite installments of this popular series, and it mostly avoids the sloppy problem with the last film, where you couldn’t distinguish the separation between stories and wraparound half the time. There are still some convoluted moments here and there, mostly because the unnecessary wraparound jumps back and forth between interviews with alien experts and stories of those who believed they encountered aliens. It’s irrelevant to the segments and should have been simplified or mostly scrapped if you ask me.
The stories are more like insane horror situations than actual stories, and that’s just what I want from my V/H/S movies.
1st story – a law enforcement team busts into a mansion, and it immediately turns into infected chaos with an onslaught of deformed humans jumping out left and right. This one is basically like a condensed take on the movie Quarantine…with something totally bizarre and freaky up in that top floor room. Eek!
2nd story – this is another awesome slaughter fest. Paparazzi tailing a gorgeous pop star go to a video shoot. There’s mention of rumors of the pop star practicing witchcraft, so is it any surprise that the cast and crew of the video are soon being mutilated by some sort of mutant creature? Gory!
3rd story – more intense horror chaos and gore. A bunch of people go skydiving, but before they can jump from the plane, it is attacked and destroyed. They all come parachuting down into an orchard full of viciously violent aliens. Amazing.
4th story – a group making an undercover video to investigate a woman who has a dog business at home discover the really fucked up thing she is doing to bring people and pets together…
5th story – if this really weak story had been cut, as it should have, the film would have been about 90 minutes long, which would have been perfect and left the film on a high note. This segment feels completely out of place, because it lacks the same hardcore horror tone of the other four stories. This is a weirdly spacey, abstract, and visually distracting tale of a woman that has some sort of alien experience in a cave. It feels like an experimental art piece and just drags the whole final part of this previously adrenaline-filled flick down.
There is some brief horror pay-off in the wraparound to make up for the disappointing fifth story, but it is super brief and feels like an amends for including that fifth segment.
