These three aren’t just random selections from my watchlists—they each star Sadie Katz, one of my favorite contemporary b-horror scream queens.
CLOWN FEAR (2020)
Clown Fear has great clown horror atmosphere and some hunky killer clowns, including my horror buddy Marv Blauvelt. I believe this might be his best performance yet. He’s perfect as a beefy, psycho clown.
Sadie Katz stars as a bride about to get married when her fiancé calls off the wedding. So she hits the road with her bridesmaids, and they eventually end up at a desolate hotel that celebrates clowns.
This is a sort of backwoods clown family horror flick with many of the familiar elements you’d expect. The problem is the film is 110 minutes long and doesn’t deliver much in the way of the clowns killing, leaving us with too many scenes padding the runtime. For instance, there are two opening kill scenes, taking place ten years apart. The one from ten years before isn’t all that exciting and doesn’t do anything for the plot.
The wedding scene in which Sadie is dumped also runs too long, with too much dialogue. It’s a launching pad plot point that could have gotten right to it to get the action rolling. There’s also a scene in which the girls go out for a day in the sun and encounter some not so friendly cops. It’s another scene that adds nothing to the movie other than slowing down the pacing. And then there’s a bathtub scene in which a girl with her tits out has a nightmare about the clowns killing her…and she’s never even seen the clowns! It is one of those dream sequences that screams “we know we have pacing issues, so let’s throw in a horror scene by way of a dream”. Argh!
Having said that, there’s a good old sex scene between Sadie and horror hottie Randy Wayne, but unfortunately she spends a good amount of time alone with him (I don’t blame her), so even her role as the main girl gets watered down, and she’s not given a lot of time to show off her horror chops. There are also a few great horror sequences—we just needed more of them.
There are a couple of kills of minor characters, but the bride and bridesmaids don’t get picked off throughout the course of the film, instead having all the terror they experience crammed into the tail end of the final act. It’s just a missed opportunity for a film with a basic “wrong turn” plot and clowns that are so awesomely big and ominous.
WOODS WITCH (2023)
Woods Witch has all the elements at its disposal to be a satisfying, low budget found footage film, including a sexually twisted cult concept as well as a cast of horror veterans including Tom Sizemore, Lisa Wilcox, James Duval, Shawn C. Phillips, Sally Kirkland, Robert LaSardo, and Sadie Katz.
Unfortunately, what begins as an entertaining, slightly off the wall and humorous approach to classic found footage films eventually dissolves into an incoherent mess reminiscent of the tacky shit that Troma and Full Moon have defaulted to in their more current releases.
A small group of influencers decides to go into the woods where there’s a legend of a witch and adults and children have gone missing.
In Blair Witch style, they begin interviewing locals (some of which are funny and campy), but unlike Blair Witch, the stories they offer up do little to establish a backstory or give us the creeps.
Most enticing is a story about a magical tree in the woods that oozes menstrual blood, which you would think is setting us up for some sick shit later on, but you can forget about it, because the movie doesn’t live up to its promises.
The biggest promise is when the influencers finally come upon a commune of sexually charged nature lovers where Sadie Katz is sort of like their madam. It’s a shame she is not utilized in the position considering she is one of few horror actresses these days who is willing to really go for it in her roles. Also underutilized are a hunk with a big dick and a pretty queer boy. They are the most intriguing (and sexy) characters in the whole movie and should have been further exploited to raise the trashy bar this film seemed to be going for.
Inevitably a cult ritual occurs, but it’s just a bunch of nonsense instead of a well-staged sequence. Bummer.
NIGHT OF THE ZOMGHOULS (2022)
Pretty trippy when I started watching this one and noticed about a quarter of the cast is also in Woods Witch. I kind of took that as a sign of what to expect.
This is a weird low budget flick that jumps on the bandwagon of recent movies about animatronics come to life. As simply designed as they are, the “zomghouls” (as the animatronics are called) are the best part and are given some traditional horror vibes and music when they stalk and kill victims. That’s not to say the death scenes are good, because most of them are pretty bland.
The story is somewhat confusing. A serial killer escapes a cop and then sneaks into the arcade/haunted house (that’s how the main location is labeled on the sign) and seems to worship the animatronics or conjure some evil entity or something else. I’m not sure.
Then we meet numerous workers at the arcade. This includes Sadie Katz, who is once again lost in the shuffle. How do you waste the presence of a scream queen in your movie? I just don’t get it.
They have an employee meeting, they all worry about losing their jobs, and they sit around for most of the movie talking. One girl seems to get possessed, and the animatronics kill people once in a while.
We’re also introduced to a family bringing their daughter to the arcade for her birthday, and they’re not even given much to work with. Not to mention, they are the only customers in the whole place.
There is some blood an hour in (including bad CGI gore), but it doesn’t much help the final half hour of chaos in this poorly plotted and planned film.
