STREAM QUEEN: zombies!

Posted on December 20, 2023 by Daniel

As burned out as I am on zombies, I still keep going back for more. Was it worth going back for four? Let’s find out.

DAY ZERO (2022)

This Filipino language film combines the heart of Train to Busan with the action of a martial arts film to deliver a nonstop thrill ride of manic zombie horror.

A hunky baldy in prison has yet to meet the daughter he’s never known face to face. A former U.S. Special Forces military man, he is trying to get out on good behavior, but he keeps getting into trouble trying to defend his little boy toy.

Look, I’m not saying it’s blatantly stated in the film, but it is pretty obvious they have an “arrangement” and that he is the protector of his gentle buddy.

The film wastes no time in introducing the screeching, running, fast and furious zombies. They get into the prison, so the lead and his boy toy escape and head for the tenement apartment where his daughter and the mother of his child live.

We quickly learn the zombies are like the Silent Hill nurses—they remain eerily still unless you make noise. This offers loads of intense, suspenseful situations as the survivors in the apartment building try to stay alive…and eventually get the help of our fighting machine main guy.

A mission to save his daughter delivers plenty of character development, relationship building, tension, gore, atmosphere, fantastic camera work, and in the end, a total action sequence with our hero turning into a zombie killing machine. Awesome. And keep an eye out for the crazy head-turning zombie moment.

THE DRIVER (2019)

With all the heart-tugging zombie flicks about a father trying to protect his child after the zombie apocalypse (such as Day Zero, above), this film is generally derivative, but one aspect kept me watching to see how things turned out.

Our main guy lives in a survivor community with his family. He is one of the few people with a set of wheels, and he’s more concerned with the threat from other humans than he is with the zombies, which are triggered by noise (as in Day Zero).

After an action-packed sequence of humans and zombies busting into their camp, our main guy ends up on the road with his daughter. He’s heard of a safe zone up north, and he’s determined to get his daughter there before it’s too late, because he’s keeping a tragic secret from her.

It’s not as emotionally impactful as films such as Train to Busan, and there aren’t hordes of zombies, although there are spurts of them to balance the drama with the zombie attacks (sort of like an episode of The Walking Dead). The big issue here is that too much time is spent on scenes of the dad training the daughter to be a survivalist. These could have been trimmed down to a simple montage, which would have shaved about ten minutes off the film and helped the pacing.

The cool thing about the ending is that the father and daughter team up with two bad ass young women, and those characters are the focus of an unrelated sequel…

DEAD EARTH (aka: Paradise Z) (2020)

I’ll say it right up front—this zombie flick does nothing new for the genre, has a limited number of zombies, no scares, no gore, only two characters, and the zombies don’t truly attack until the 53-minute mark of the 80-minute runtime.

The non-story is that two young women are surviving at a resort after the apocalypse (no idea how they ended up here after the conclusion of the previous film). They lounge by the pool, carry baseball bats around, read, make art, have sex, and give us a dance montage.

There’s a nightmare sequence with one zombie 35 minutes in.

Things do get fleetingly interesting when the girls go scavenging and encounter two dudes. We finally get a glimpse at some personality and character traits of each girl, but it almost feels like an afterthought, as if the creators felt obligated to give them some sort of backstory and just tossed it in quickly.

Soon after that the zombies infiltrate the resort. They’re nice and gnarly looking and fast running, but the action is limited as the girls try to escape.

For me, the highlight is that the girls wear wrist protection during their escape so they can fight off zombies without getting bit on the arms.

A NIGHT OF THE UNDEAD (2022)

Considering horror franchises are getting multiple branching timelines these days, it should come as no surprise that public domain classic Night of the Living Dead would get resurrected in just that way.

This is as low budget indie and amateurish as a film can get. Is the premise of a direct sequel that ignores all the official sequels intriguing? I guess it depends on how much you can suspend disbelief.

The notion is that the events at the farmhouse in 1968 have become folklore. Some believe it really happened, others think it’s a hoax, and still others believe there was a government cover-up.

Oh boy.

Anyway, four podcasters decide to travel to the farm where it all happened for their show. Don’t expect a house that looks anything like the house from the original…this house looks more like a trailer home. Sigh.

Conveniently, despite it being about 45 years since the original incident, there’s like one zombie roaming around the area.

We see it a few times, but most of this film has the podcasters just chatting in the house. None of the concepts presented in this endeavor are explained.

Eventually the zombie breaks into the house, inevitably the podcasters begin getting bit, and as a result, shooting and killing them becomes a necessity. Really, there’s just nothing to cling to here.

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Christmas Horror Round-Up 2023

Posted on December 19, 2023 by Daniel

It’s that time of year again, and I think between this and a previous Christmas horror post, I’ve checked out all the Christmas horror for 2023. I’ve added them all to the complete holiday horror page, so let’s find out which ones were my faves.

THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE BARN (2023)

This is an enjoyable, semi-comedy horror flick that is visually stunning, has plenty of Christmas atmosphere, and delivers violence and blood. It’s also notably reminiscent of Gremlins, from aspects of the concept to the PG-13 family vibe.

An American family—father, son, daughter, stepmother—inherits a house in Norway.

Before long, the son discovers an elf in the barn and learns that there are rules to keep it from turning on you.

The family breaks the bright light and noise rules as soon as they set up their massive Christmas display.

There is somewhat of a slow burn here, but instead of enhancing the suspense, it causes the film to drag for a while. It’s not until 42 minutes in that the elf first gets into the house and we finally get a kill scene.

However, that’s when the film takes off. After a fight with the family, the elf calls in its village of elves. Eek!

Talk about change of pace. The film goes into overdrive, with loads of battles, chases, and Christmas red blood splatters. The family is likable, the elves are likable in an evil way, there’s a funny zombie reference, pokes at American gun culture, and a hokey, heartfelt ending. There’s Something in the Barn will definitely get you in the Christmas horror spirit.

THE SACRIFICE GAME (2023)

Despite doing something a little different with the home invasion premise and delivering plenty of Christmas décor, this film just didn’t give me any sense of tension or suspense. It did, however, deliver plenty of torture and gore.

Two girls are left behind at a boarding school during Christmas break and learn of a series of Christmas home invasions and murders (beautifully presented in the opening scene).

Wouldn’t you know, the home invaders invade the school.

We’ve seen the first part of this film many times before, with victims being terrorized while tied up at a table. However, since these serial invaders have been leaving signs of Satanism behind at the sites of their crimes, the film does eventually get that twist…and a few twists on top of that. I really liked the general idea, but I simply didn’t get enough thrills from how it all unfolds.

A CREATURE WAS STIRRING (2023)

This is one trippy Christmas horror movie that will have you questioning whether you’re watching a creature feature, a parable, a fairy tale, a comic book adaptation…or a little bit of each.

Christmas visuals perfectly mesh with horror lighting as we meet Kate from This Is Us, who gets to play a very different character in this film.

She lives with her daughter, they have a volatile relationship, and right from the start you begin to question who the real monster is—or if there’s even a monster at all.

Suddenly their home is “invaded” by Scout Taylor-Compton and her brother, who are actually just looking for refuge from the storm.

You’ll soon start feeling like you’re high on something as no one in the film seems to really comprehend their own circumstances, cryptic conversations fly, tensions over faith arise, and the horrors the mother and daughter are hiding begin to come to light.

Whether real or imaginary, the monster is definitely fricking awesome and provides satisfying horror even if we never quite understand what’s going on. There’s a snow tunnel scene that is the horrific highlight of the whole damn movie, as well as a delicious monster transformation scene.

The only catch is that because the movie is so surreal and trying way too hard to be complex and psychological, it’s not one I could turn to when I just want to watch some comfort holiday horror. The film does its best to explain everything with one final sequence, but when the writing requires an addendum to all make sense, it sort of takes the fun out of watching everything that came before it.

ADULT SWIM YULE LOG (2022)

To think an excruciating movie like Skinamarink was getting so much positive attention while an awesome, out-of-the-box flick like Adult Swim Yule Log is going unnoticed.

This movie is batshit crazy and I couldn’t stop watching. It just doesn’t give a fuck, which is what makes it so entertaining. Is it a Christmas movie? Not specifically, but we do tend to think of Christmas when we hear Yule log.

The fact is, a couple is staying at a cabin in the woods, and the dude makes money filming Yule logs for the internet. So he sets up a camera facing the fireplace…and burns the wrong log.

At first, much of the film is shot from that fixed POV (very Paranormal Activity), but that changes to standard 3rd person POV…as well as the POV of the Yule log. Not even kidding.

There’s a hillbilly woman and her masked son on the loose killing people. A group of friends shows up claiming to have rented the cabin for the weekend, but they can’t get in touch with the landlord to see if it was a double booking (a very Barbarian moment).

Then shit gets crazy.

This movie has trippy scenes due to edibles being eaten by the characters, the Yule log comes to life and starts flying around bashing people’s heads in, a character simply changes to another character with no logical explanation beyond supernatural fuckery, the hillbillies show up to cause more chaos, there’s an alien angle, and there are moments of split screen showing the history of what has happened in the cabin, from slavery, to queer people, and more. None of it makes sense but it is impossible to look away, and the horror elements rock.

NIGHTMARE ON 34TH STREET (2023)

It is inexcusable to make an anthology with three stories and a wraparound 2 hours and ten minutes long. That could have been avoided if the writing had focused on the basic premise of each story instead of going for some sort of art house vibe.

These stories fall apart because they are all over the place. I’ll try to narrow down the narrative of each story as best as I can—just know that none of them is this straightforward.

The opener is enticing enough. Three creeps in Christmas costumes break into a house and kill most of the family and some cops. One child is left alive and a dude dressed as Santa starts telling him stories.

1st story – a puppeteer fails to land a job at an audition, has flashbacks of a traumatic past, and begins killing people while wearing a reindeer a mask and carrying around his snowman puppet.

2nd story – dealing with an absent father at Christmas, a kid soon has to contend with Krampus sneaking into his house. Krampus is more human than creature, and he’s oddly campy.

3rd story – a former holy man endangers his whole family as a sort of vengeance cult targets everyone he knows before coming for him.

The film has cool horror elements and plenty of Christmas spirit, but that alone wasn’t enough to keep me mesmerized. I was really never sure of what I was witnessing, and I was trying so hard to make sense of it all that I couldn’t enjoy it—I was even convinced at one point that the stories were actually all interweaving. Were they? I don’t know.

YULE LOG (2023)

Running only 71 minutes long, this is a Mark Polonia movie, and I’m guessing he was giving his own no budget twist to a similar concept as Adult Swim Yule Log.

Three middle-aged men go to a cabin in the woods, cut a log off a tree used to kill a witch once, and then start to experience terror at the cabin as tree branches encroach on it, complete with a sloppy attempt at Evil Dead camera POV.

But there’s more to it than that—however, not a killer Yule log. The witch is lurking in the woods, and she’s pretty cool in a haunted attraction witch costume sort of way. The only thing that spoils the battle to the death with her at the end is the appearance of a demon that looks like a CGI Ghidorah, the three-headed monster.

If you bother to watch this one, keep an ear out for an in-movie radio plug for another Polonia Christmas movie, Sister Krampus.

WEREWOLF SANTA (2023)

This is a 71-minute long movie with a campy concept and dry British humor, but going into it, you have to accept that there’s no budget, so the werewolf Santa is just a guy in a Santa suit and a cheap werewolf mask. Even so, I found it to be entertaining.

The film begins with Joe Bob Briggs in comic book form narrating the entire “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” poem, which is totally unnecessary beyond landing his name on the film.

We then meet Lucy, who has an online monster hunting show. When she and her cameraman are visiting her family for Christmas, they go out into the park to hunt for werewolves and end up seeing Santa get attacked by one.

Santa goes all lycanthrope, and now it’s up to Lucy and her family to save Christmas by killing him.

As silly as it is, there’s holiday atmosphere, humor, and even some good suspense, most notably in a haunted attraction they stumble into (on Christmas Eve?). There’s even a good twist at the end.

SANTA ISN’T REAL (2023)

Running 75 minutes long, this is another one of the better flicks in this year’s choices, so I’m glad I finished off with it. It has a lot going for it. It’s sleek and beautifully shot, there’s loads of Christmas atmosphere, the setup is really intriguing and tense, and there is some good gore (eventually).

The opener has a young woman alone on Christmas when someone in a Santa suit and mask comes down the chimney and attacks her. She’s in a coma for a year, and it was believed she attempted suicide.

Once she’s awake and back in business, she decides to go to a cabin in the woods with her boyfriend and her two best girlfriends. There she tells them what really happened to her…and then strange things begin to occur in the cabin.

The first part of the film totally sucks you in, but the turning point causes two problems—it basically makes it easy to guess who the killer is, and it also slows the pace drastically. There’s even a plot point about religion, God, and faith that kind of killed it for me. Discussions about God in a Christmas horror movie? Sinful.

The other thing to note is that with only four characters, there is barely a body count, and the killing only starts in the last fifteen minutes.

It almost seems like the filmmakers were concerned about that fact, because there’s a totally random scene after the credits that bears no connection to the rest of the film and has a completely different, cheesy tone. And in the end, I still have no idea if Santa was real or not.

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Stream and slash

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Daniel

I was due for a good fix of simple slashers, but with the three recent ones I watched, only one satisfied—and it even lands on the does the gay guy die? page.

CRUEL SUMMER (2021)

I’ve been a fan of Scream Team Releasing movies because they usually capture the spirit of 80s slashers, but lately it feels like they’re just distributing any indie release that is 80s related and has a synth score.

There were a few immediate bad signs for this movie. First, after a hit-and-run, a dude just sits in his car laughing for way too long before the opening credits role. Next, we meet girls in shorts talking about school being over, but in this movie called Cruel Summer, the sky is gray, there are no flowers anywhere, grass is brown…it looks like it is early spring at most.

A group of amateur actors–I mean—friends heads off to a cabin in the woods for an 80s slasher murder mystery weekend.

There’s a nice old groundskeeper.

There’s a neighbor that comes complaining about the noise.

And there’s a guy without a mask knocking off random people that are walking around in the dark at night. Once we see him, it seems kind of pointless, but he does eventually don a mask.

There’s nothing scary here, but at least there’s an effort to deliver some bloody kills. It’s mostly just messy chaos, and the kids in the cabin eventually uncover a killer backstory—a long-winded, complicated one with too many layers. There are so many indie slashers out there, so I don’t really see the point on settling on this one. The highlight for me was this girl, who totally sold her kill.

CRUEL SUMMER PART II (2022)

Yes, I went back for more. The upside to the sequel is that the film quality looks more cinematic. Downside is that the rest of it is just as messy as the first film.

Although it takes a while, the survivors from the previous film decide to participate in a theater production of their experience as trauma therapy. They also determine the killer is probably still out there.

We get more people being murdered by the masked killer with plenty of references to popular slasher movies—a clear reminder that these types of low budget slashers are more often made by fans mimicking their favorite horror movies than the product of creative filmmakers.

I was impressed that a character dropped a Lords of Acid reference, I liked that a victim blinded in the previous film is targeted in the eyes again by the killer (mean!), and there are once again several killer related twists, but I saw the most “shocking” one coming from the beginning.

THAT’S A WRAP (2023)

The director of the Blood Feast remake and Blind saves my slasher triple feature selection with a film that has the more mature styling of adult-oriented Euro slashers of the 80s, complete with classic setup shots and incessant neon lighting. Awesome.

Perhaps running a little long, the film basically vacillates between great kills and heavy-handed dialogue. Sure it gives us plenty of character development and a bevy of suspects, but it’s not all that necessary in a hack n slash flick. Even the killer’s monologue at the end drags and just sucks the life out of the final scene. However, it did give me Scream 4 final dialogue flashbacks.

Having said that, not only does the film deliver brutal death scenes, it also has hints of underlying dark humor and meta references hardcore horror fans will appreciate.


This shot alone is reason enough for me to add it to my collection if it’s released on physical media.

The premise is simple—cast and crew at a wrap party for a horror film begin getting stalked and slasher by a killer in a red leather coat and a blonde wig. The look totally gives off gender-bending killer vibes, and I’m pretty sure that’s reflected in what appear to be homages and nods to films like Psycho, Dressed to Kill, and Sleepaway Camp (beware that hot curling iron!).

Best of all, there’s a gay subplot that involves one of the best exchanges of dialogue in the bunch, as well as a gay kiss and a blow job. Yay!

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Getting into the 2023 Christmas spirit

Posted on December 4, 2023 by Daniel

It’s a trio of holiday horror flicks that have already hit the streaming services for this seaosn, and I’ll be adding them all to the holiday horror pageholiday horror page, so let’s get right into them.

IT’S A WONDERFUL KNIFE (2023)

The director of Tragedy Girls and Good Boy tackles the trendy subgenre of time travel slashers framed as a play on It’s a Wonderful Life. This festive flick delivers Christmas atmosphere and violent kills by a cool killer all in white, plus it’s all wrapped up in a charming lesbian love story.

Justin Long plays the greedy mogul trying to basically take over an entire little town. Joel McHale plays a fellow real estate agent, and he has a daughter (the main girl), and a gay son (who scores a gay kiss, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? pagedoes the gay guy die? page).

A highlight of the film is Katharine Isabelle in a very different role as the cool lesbian aunt, and her girlfriend is the psycho girl from Influencer.

Within the first fifteen minutes of the film there are multiple kills, mostly at a Christmas party, and our main girl saves the day. But a year later she is still suffering from PTSD and wishes she was never born.

Bring on the It’s a Wonderful Life angle. Our main girl ends up in an alternate version of her town a year later, when she didn’t exist to stop the killer. The murders have continued, and now it’s up to her to unmask the killer and figure out how to get back to her original reality.

Things get a little wonky in the final act—it almost feels like a new concept is introduced at the last second, but overall it’s a fun ride with a lot of heart…and a lot of kills. Yay!

THE MEAN ONE (2022)

This film barely started and I knew it was an instant buy on Blu-ray for me. A gory slasher with violent kills, loads of Christmas spirit, and humor, it so perfectly pays homage to How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

The narrator speaks in rhyme, occasionally incorporating lines from the source material, and the film has plenty of Grinch references imbedded in both dialogue and the surroundings.

When our main girl Cindy was a child, she witnessed a horrorific murder on Christmas Eve. 20 years later she’s returning home with her dad to sell the house in Newville, a town that has completely stopped celebrating the season.

Cindy has a reputation for having claimed a green monster killed her mother, and even spent time in a mental institution. It’s no surprise that as soon as she returns home, people start dying and she begins claiming the green monster has returned.

And he has. The dude who plays Terrifier plays The Mean One with a perfect balance of sinister and silly.

He shines most during a major massacre at a bar.

And of course there’s the final fight to the death, which delivers a horror twist on the conclusion to the original classic Grinch story. This is an instant annual watch for me.

BLACK SANTA (2023)

This indie flick is touted as a horror movie on IMDb because it involves a guy in a Santa suit keeping all the people who made his childhood miserable tied to chairs with an array of torture weapons on a tray nearby, but the first major kill doesn’t happen until 75 minutes into this 83-minute movie.

More a commentary on the struggles of Black men in society, this is basically a no budget portrait of a Black kid who had it hard as a child and has finally snapped as a result. He lost his father, was abandoned by his druggy mother, was bullied, went into the foster system, saw his brother die at the hands of a doctor…all of which is revealed in endless flashbacks.

The scenes with the tied up victims are all the same, with Black Santa threatening to kill them violently and them all begging for their lives.

Honestly, the highlight for me was when our hunky killer gets shirtless at around the 23-minute mark.

I’m glad we have him to look at for 83 minutes, because there’s just not enough substance here to sink your teeth into, and not enough killing to satisfy your holiday horror itch.

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Hairy scary streaming selections

Posted on December 1, 2023 by Daniel

The three latest movies I crossed off my streaming watchlists focus on furry transformations, but were they the kind of hairy horror flicks I crave? Let’s find out.

WOLF HOLLOW (2023)

When a film opens with an awesome campfire party werewolf massacre, it definitely gets my attention. This gathering also happens to be some sort of leather orgy, and I’m pretty sure I saw someone wielding a dildo as a weapon against the werewolf attack.

But alas, there’s not much story following that. A group of filmmakers comes to make a movie in Wolf Hollow, where one dude has family from which he’s estranged.

Lynn Lowry briefly plays an actress with a diva attitude, Hannah Fierman of the original V/H/S has a super brief cameo. and Felissa Rose has a slightly bigger role than both of them.

The werewolves are reminiscent of The Howling werewolves, and after some dialogue-heavy scenes the werewolf action goes full blast for the second half of the film.

However, this doesn’t feel like a scary werewolf movie so much as it does like a grittier version of one of those werewolf bloodline fantasy flicks. The film literally turns into a werewolf war movie.

Having said that, the werewolves kick ass, and there is a fun scene in a haunted attraction at the end. Most importantly, there are two gay guys among the film crew who step up when the time comes and go all in on the werewolf war, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

SCREAM OF THE WOLF (aka: Wolf Manor) (2022)

The director of Inbred gives us another gorefest with a demented looking werewolf instead of a classic creature design.

A film crew is making a vampire film in an abandoned house in the country when suddenly they are being killed off by a hairy beast.

In most cases, this extra fun werewolf likes to hack their heads off. Yay!

As one of the filmmaker characters mentions in a monologue, too much backstory is boring, so the film reflects that by giving us barely any.

It’s all about the werewolf horror, and I was so there for it.

There’s humor, suspense, chase scenes, and great atmosphere. This is definitely one to watch if you want to scratch your werewolf itch.

IT BE AN EVIL MOON (2023)

This British film is categorized as a horror comedy, but personally I found it to be a very melancholy film with just minor quirky elements. It’s also heavy on dialogue, light on any excitement.

A man who lives with his aging mother is trying to develop a cure for baldness, which leads him to get mixed up with a mob type dude.

35 minutes in, he uses his serum on his own head and wakes up full of hair…but is he a werewolf?

After a bit of a promise of some horror, he is on the run due to a rash of murders that could be pinned on him.

He ends up in the woods for a while and is taken in by a nice couple, so it’s tragic when the mob dude shows up looking for him.

This is mostly a drama in my opinion. I personally wasn’t feeling it.

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Taking a trip back to the Darkside

Posted on November 29, 2023 by Daniel

Tales from the Darkside is famous for having one of the scariest theme songs ever, with an ominous narrator voiceover and what should be beautiful shots of nature instead looking eerie when accompanied by the music.

The pilot episode aired in October of 1983, but the first season didn’t start up until a year later in 84. Having viewed all four season again, here’s a list of episodes I found notable for specific reasons, as well as the ones that were my faves.

SEASON 1

Trick Or Treat
I’ll never forget when this episode, co-written by George Romero, aired a few days before Halloween in 1983. It was a slice of horror heaven for my fourteen-year-old mind. A Halloween Scrooge has a devilish fondness for terrorizing less fortunate people with his Halloween décor. But the haunter becomes the haunted when a terrifying witch from hell shows up to join the fun. 40 years later and this one still chills me to the bone.

I’ll Give You a Million
This one has a very 1970s vibe as a rich man makes a deal to buy another man’s soul. There’s not only a visit from a dead man, but also from the Devil!

Inside the Closet
A grad student rents a room from a science professor and believes something is living in her closet. She’s determined to find out what, and when she does, the payoff is deliciously freaky.

The Word Processor of the Gods
Not particularly a favorite episode of mine, however, this is based on one of Stephen King’s short stories from his Skeleton Crew collection. A writer inherits a word processor that takes everything he writes literally. I love the nostalgia of the huge floppy disc (you had to be there).

A Case of the Stubborns
Co-written by Robert Bloch of Psycho fame, this is a silly, comical tale about a mother and son who are shocked to discover that recently deceased grandpa just wants to live and starts hanging around the house. This is a really annoying one, but I was happy to see a witch make an appearance at the end. I love witches.

Snip, Snip
A witch and a warlock do battle over a winning lottery ticket. Carol Kane is perfect for the odd, dark tone of this one.

Madness Room
A wealthy couple has a visitor over and they play with an Ouija board. It points them to a hidden “madness room” in their home. The episode is loaded with supernatural elements and has a good Tales from the Crypt style twist.

Levitation
Two young dudes go to see a magician and think he’s a hack. They confront him and demand he do the amazing tricks he’s known for. He shows them.

Bigalow’s Last Smoke
This story about torturing clients who want to quit smoking whenever they take a puff is notable because it’s very similar to the Stephen King short story “Quitter’s Inc”, which was adapted for the Cat’s Eye anthology film the same year this episode aired.

SEASON 2

The Impressionist
This one comes from the director of He Knows You’re Alone and Cameron’s Closet and is about an impersonator hired by the government to communicate with a hostile alien.

Parlour Floor Front
A couple wants to evict one of their tenants and begins experiencing weird situations around their apartment. The wife becomes convinced he’s using voodoo to harm them. There’s a sick little twist to this one.

Halloween Candy
Directed by Tom Savini, this one holds a special place for me. It aired a few days before Halloween, and it was on the first night I babysat two younger friends of mine that lived next door to me. This tale about an old man terrorized by a little demon on Halloween night scared the hell out of them. Heh heh.

The Devil’s Advocate
Written by George Romero, this one stars Jerry Stiller as a nasty radio host—basically a heartless, callous conservative type—who gets just what all those hateful conspiracy theorists deserve, even today.

The Trouble with Mary Jane
Phyllis Diller in an episode about a possessed girl with goat hooves. Need I say more? Ok, I will. The little possessed girl is pretty awesome, too.

Ursa Minor
From the director of Silent Night, Bloody Night, this is a tale of a little girl’s evil teddy bear.

Monsters in My Room
A young Seth Green stars as a boy who sees monsters in his room—from under his bed to in his closet, but his mother and stepfather don’t believe him. The monsters are creepy, including another great witch.

A New Lease On Life
A man takes an apartment under some odd conditions because the rent is so good. He’s told by the weird landlady not to hang anything on the walls. When he ignores her rule and nails a hammer into the wall, it awakens something on the other side…

The Last Car
A Thanksgiving episode of sorts, this tale has a young woman board a train on which there are only three other passengers—and they all get terrified whenever they go through a tunnel. This one is fun, classic 80s macabre.

Strange Love
Another one from the director of Silent Night, Bloody Night. A doctor makes a house call when a woman hurts her ankle. He soon discovers she and her husband are vampires, and they’re going to keep him hostage to care for her. Best part is that he ends up shirtless and chained up with a dog collar on. Hot. There’s also a fun and campy vampiric twist.

The Casavin Curse
This one starts off with a grisly murder scene, so it immediately caught my attention. A young heiress claims her boyfriend was murdered due to a family curse—which leads to a hot shirtless guy being chased by a demon! That’s how you end a season.

SEASON 3

The Circus
George Romero co-writes the premiere episode of season 3. A newspaper man who exposes hoaxes targets a circus. The ringmaster reveals that his horrific attractions are most definitely not fakes, including a hideous vampire, a werewolf, and Frankenstein’s monster (renamed).

I Can’t Help Saying Goodbye
There’s nothing like a “bad seed” story, and in this one a little girl has the ability to kill people just by touching their faces while saying “goodbye”.

The Geezenstacks
What’s tragic here is that this episode aired close to Halloween, yet after two great Halloween episodes they didn’t bother to make one for the third season. This story stars Craig Wasson of Elm Street 3, Body Double, and Ghost Story, who begins to notice that anything his daughter pretends happens to her dollhouse family happens to his actual family.

Black Widows
This is how you do a short horror story. A woman who never met her father wants to get married against her mother’s wishes. When she ties the knot, she finds out why…

A Serpent’s Tooth
It’s the nanny’s mom Sylvia Fine in a tale about a mother whose totally 80s adult kids are too rebellious while living in her house. So she uses a talisman to get them to listen to and appreciate her. This one has a campy tone, but it’s actually quite dark.

Season of Belief
On Christmas Eve, a father…who looks old enough to be his wife’s grandfather…tells his kids a scary story of a monster called The Grither. He warns them never to say his name out loud. Naturally they can’t resist saying it because they were told not to. This one definitely has that eerie Christmas horror atmosphere, and the ending is insane!

My Ghostwriter – The Vampire
A struggling horror writer, played by Jeff Conaway, is offered the best material ever…from an actual vampire who wants the author to write his story.

Auld Acquaintances
Directed by Robert Friedman (Scared Stiff, Doom Asylum, Phantom of the Mall), this is a tale about two women that have been witchy rivals for centuries.

The Swap
A wife cheats on her husband with a super hot handyman, and that’s enough for me. As a bonus, the husband plots a supernatural revenge.

SEASON 4

Beetles
Another one penned by Robert Bloch, this tale travels familiar but always satisfying territory. An archaeologist steals from a mummy and there’s hell to pay…in the form of beetles. Blech.

The Moth
Debbie Harry plays a woman who asks her mother to perform a ritual that will capture her soul in a moth so she can be resurrected. It’s a fairly bland tale, but there’s a classic anthology story twist at the end.

No Strings
If only every episode had been this macabre. A mobster hires a master puppeteer to use one of his human victims for a show. It does not go as planned. Eek!

The Grave Robber
In this campy episode, two archaeologists break into a tomb, and the angry mummy forces them to play strip poker with him.

The Yattering and Jack
This Christmas tale was written by Clive Barker and stars go-to horror little man Phil Fondacaro as a holiday demon that wants to steal a man’s soul. It’s campy with a dark edge.

Seymourlama
A nice winter episode, this one stars David Gale of Re-Animator fame as a man whose family is visited by strange Himalayans, the leader of which is played by Divine! He claims their son is supposed to be the new Lama of their country. It’s a cartoonish episode, but it’s Divine!

Sorry, Right Number
This one comes from the director of the Tales from the Darkside movie and is written by Stephen King. A woman gets a phone call from someone begging for help, but the line goes dead before she can find out who it is. The twist is as horror anthology as it gets.

Payment Overdue
A bill collector who derives pleasure from harassing people on the phone starts getting creepy calls saying she has an overdue bill. This one has a classic dark horror anthology ending.

Love Hungry
This episode is kind of heinous. After popping a new diet drug, a woman hears every piece of food she or anyone else eats screaming in agony. There’s also a tragic element to the tale.

The Cutty Black Sow
A dying grandmother warns her grandson to keep a fire burning to ward off an ancient monster. This episode actually takes place on Halloween, even though it first aired in May of 1988, and the main boy is responsible for taking his younger sister trick or treating. They do a ritual in their house and things just get perfectly creepy, plus we get a monster, which is rare in this series.

Do Not Open This Box
This is notable for a shocking reason; Jodie Foster directed it! A couple opens a box that specifically says not to and then the postman gets freakishly intense about getting it back.

Family Reunion
Directed by Tom Savini, this is a tale of a man who is on the run with his son because he believes the boy has a monstrous illness. It has a classic monster movie vibe, a twist, and stars Patricia Tallman, the lead from Savini’s remake of Night of the Living Dead.

Hush
A boy invents a “noise eater” that looks like a vacuum cleaner with an aardvark trunk, and it terrorizes him and his babysitter. It’s so 80s teen/sci-fi/horror I couldn’t help but like it.

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Road trip trouble at the end of the 00s

Posted on November 28, 2023 by Daniel

It’s always fun to find movies I’d missed from the 00s about young people getting into horror situations, and this trio satisfied that criteria, so let’s get into them.

ROAD TRAIN (aka: Road Kill) (2010)

This Australian flick is like Stephen Spielberg’s Duel with a much more supernatural angle…and a group of pretty people.

It starts immediately with a sex scene and some cute man booty in a tent.

Then we meet two couples on a road trip.

We don’t get much info about the trip, because they are almost immediately run off the road by a big rig. Their vehicle is totaled and one of them is badly hurt.

Setting out on foot, they quickly come upon the big rig, and it’s empty. They hop in and start driving…and supernatural shit begins to happen.

They end up stuck near a cliff, they split up, and the truck seems to begin giving them delusional visions and then “possessing” them. There’s also something going on in the cargo hold, and you basically watch the whole film to find out what it is…and to appreciate one of the guys running around shirtless for the second half of the film.

What begins as an intriguing slow burn turns into a convoluted, slow, repetitive disappointment, and nothing is ever explained—like a recurring, three-headed wolf theme.

FROM THE DARK (2009)

This cabin in the woods film actually does something a little different than the usual—although the concept is kind of odd and never irons out the details of what exactly is unfolding. That didn’t bother me so much in this case; I found it fun to just go with the supernatural insanity.

The film opens strong with a teen party interrupted by a crazy monster attack, which establishes the threat here…some sort of other dimensional portal appears in open doorways and tentacles come out to drag victims in.

After a very brief appearance by horror veteran Lar-Park Lincoln, plus some naked man butt, we meet a new group of friends. They go to a cabin in the woods to party and we get the usual drinking and banter.

And then…a bloody girl shows up at their door. They take her inside, and pretty soon those portals are opening and tentacles are impaling victims left and right. And it’s not just doors to the outside. Even the interior doorways randomly turn into portals.

Soooo…you would think the kids would all just gather in the middle of a room and stay away from doorways. Nope. Too stupid for that, but of course that’s the only way to up the body count.

Even though there seems to be a portal, the film gets confusing, because sometimes we see the victims still alive outside and in the clutches of some sort of monster that is totally shrouded in darkness. I lightened this still shot to get a better look at it.

The pace does plod along after a while as the kids sit around drinking and having sex in between playing Russian roulette with doorways. However, the final act adds a new element to the threat and delivers some nice gore. Personally, I think it would have made more sense to introduce this twist earlier in the movie so the kids would have seemed like they were smarter than sitting ducks…and because it was the best aspect of the movie.

NECROSIS (2009)

I guess this movie might be interesting for those that haven’t seen many other films just like it. Two pop culture reasons to watch it include horror icon Michael Berryman as the obligatory old dude who tries to warn kids not to go to a cabin in the woods…

and 80s teen pop queen Tiffany as one of the “kids”. What’s most notable is that she isn’t given a meaty star role and is instead a background character. However, this role was her gateway to her breakout starring appearances in Mega Piranha and Mega Python vs. Gatoroid…

Anyway, the kids go to a cabin in the woods in an area where the infamous Donner Party resorted to cannibalism years before.

They’re snowed in, and one guy on “meds” begins to see dead people.

They also find a dead body. Then the body disappears. They all start having dreams and visions of cannibalism.

Eventually they begin turning on each other, almost like they are possessed by the Donners. It’s an interesting premise, but personally, I’ve seen it before.

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Going back to where Silent Hill all began…Silent Hill

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Daniel

Silent Hill Origins, which came late in the life of the PS2, is an “origins” story, but like most Silent Hill games, it doesn’t really fit into any sort of timeline, so basically it’s just another standalone excuse to drag us happily back into the foggy town of terror. You play as Travis, a truck driver who sees a young girl run into Silent Hill and chases her. Why bother if she’s not your daughter? Anyway, let the screaming and running begin!

Since this was such a late addition to the PS2 library, the game is enhanced for widescreen televisions, even giving you an option of either full screen or widescreen modes. Awesome. There’s no difficulty option, but I played from a cleared data save, so I guess I got through it once without a problem. Great thing about the cleared data is that it starts you off with a kick-ass power glove that pretty much lets you beat the fuck out of most enemies in the game with no problem.

The challenge here is that this was from that period when survival horror was giving up on tank controls but opting to keep the fixed camera angles, which means you often find yourself running in tight circles as the camera angle changes furiously and so does the direction you’re running despite never taking your finger off the thumbstick. Or more likely because you aren’t taking your finger off the thumbstick. You are equipped with over-the-shoulder reset of the camera with the press of a button, but it’s useless if you’re too close to a wall or in tight spaces.

Another challenge in this installment is that it annoyingly goes for the realism factor. The more you run, the quicker you run out of oxygen, which slows you down to catch your breath. Argh! Not an ideal gameplay feature when there are plenty of moments when you are swarmed by monsters on the street and simply have to run.

You have the radio as usual to warn you of incoming threats, you can turn your flashlight on and off, and there are prominent red triangles on walls that serve as save stations. You can also pick up infinite ammo for firearms and items to use as weapons. Pressing down on the d-pad picks up and immediately equips weapons, and going into your inventory to reload instead of doing it while in combat freezes the action so you won’t take damage. For melee weapons you have quick hits, or can hold X for harder hits–but melee weapons have a shelf life and eventually break. Aside from combating enemies, you will also tussle with them, which requires you to button mash X quickly to break free before they can rob you of too much of your health. Cool thing is if you knock down enemies and they’re not dead, you can just press X and stomp them to finish them off before they get back up.

And naturally, there are scavenger hunts to find items and notes that help you solve puzzles. But here is the catch in this game…you choose when to go into dark Silent Hill. To do so, simply find a room with a mirror and click on it and you’re in the dark zone. Eek! And you have no choice, because the items you need cross over the two different dimensions. That means you will most definitely need a walkthrough if you don’t want to spend hours jumping back and forth between two dimensions trying to find items and then knowing where to use them.

Another hindrance in the game is the way in which you “see” items. Nothing sparkles to let you know there is an item to pick up. Instead, your character’s head will sort of glance over to where an object is. Ugh! Items totally blend into the dark scenery, and if you move too fast through spaces you won’t even notice the character’s head turn.

One last thing to note before I cover the main areas to explore—the slow load times whenever you pass through a door really kill suspense between rooms.

HOSPITAL

You begin on the streets, but before long you’re in the hospital. The nurse character from the other games is here, and of course the killer nurses are as well. Plus you fight your first boss, one of the straitjackets, which then becomes just a normal enemy on the streets.

SANITARIUM

The second stop is a sanitarium, where you encounter shadowy, hulking figures and big sluggish creatures. This is also where you’ll discover what a pain in the ass it is to have to know when to jump through a mirror. Even using a walkthrough, at one point it sounded like I could just mosey on over to another corridor and take the stairs to my next destination. Not true. Doors were suddenly locked and I had no way forward, so I had to trial and error my way through mirrors and up and down floors in both worlds to finally reach my destination.

The boss in this section is a bitch in a bell hanging from the ceiling. If you get too close, spikes shoot out of her and stab you. She also spits poisonous gas. You can easily avoid her and keep shooting with a gun, but if you don’t reload in the inventory menu (keep track of how many shots you take), the reload animation can leave you vulnerable.

THEATER

This is a long and creepy section, especially since there are freaky puppets that hang from the ceilings and attack as you run by. They also drop to the floor and run after you on their hands. Yikes! They do, however, go from creepy to annoying, because there are more and more of them as this section progresses. The boss on the theater stage at the end totally rocks though. As big and monstrous as he is, he too becomes just another enemy on the streets once you leave the theater.

HOTEL

This is the longest section of the game, and it is crazy how much running and fetching you have to do in both worlds just to find the key to room 500 to fight a boss.

The new enemy here is a heinous creature in the motel rooms that looks like two monsters humping. That doesn’t stop them from trying to pound you when you interrupt them as if they’re forcing you into a threesome.

If you’re playing through the game a second time and you find the room 502 key on the street before arriving at the hotel (use a walkthrough), going in the room will give you an immediate alien ending, done anime style. Just make sure to save right before you go in so you can pick up where you left off and actually complete the game.

The first boss at the hotel is reminiscent of Pyramid Head. You fight him in a tight space, but there’s a kitchen island between you, so if you just circle and shoot you’ll defeat him. However, if he grabs you…QuickTime button mashing or instant death! Ugh!

The second boss after entering room 500 is attached to a wall in a tiny room with only a straight forward POV. You have to run back and forth, shoot him when you can, and avoid dropping tentacles that grab you and force you to button mash to break free and also leave you vulnerable to the boss attack.

There is also a little pyramid puzzle you would never figure out without a walkthrough. NEVER.

On the way to the final boss, you’re treated to the usual dark Silent Hill with nightmarish grids and catwalks in virtual darkness as monsters come from all sides.

 

The final boss is kind of fun. He’s a big red goon that reminded me of the devil in the South Park movie. The arena is big, and he hurls fireballs at you that fall down from above, so you have to watch for the shadows on the ground to know how to avoid them. Also avoid him or he’ll beat your ass. Just blast away at him with a gun and he’s done fast.

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Directors doing the gay horror thing

Posted on November 20, 2023 by Daniel

Yay! It’s gay directors and actors I’ve followed for years giving us gay characters in three different films that I’ll be adding to the homo horror movies page. Let’s get right into this queer trio.

BEFORE THE NIGHT IS OVER (2020)

Richard Griffin, one of my fave gay indie directors, returns to horror with a gay vengeance.

After the death of her parents, a young woman comes to live with her aunt…in a gay whorehouse. Awesome.

The slow mo, in-your-face, man-on-man action as soon as the main girl enters the whorehouse foyer is delicious, and it’s pretty much nonstop from there, including full-frontal action.

The setting has that feeling of classic haunted mansion movies, the staff is perfectly weird (as they should be), and it wouldn’t be a creepy mansion movie without a mysterious locked door.

Much of the focus is on (mostly queer male) characters dealing with their relationships and their sexual proclivities, with a nice dose of judgment against religion thrown in for good measure.

There also happens to be a killer on the loose. If there’s one downside here, it’s that there are only a few death scenes and barely visible flashes of the killer. Sure there’s a large naked man count, but there’s a low dead body count. Even so, one scene involving a sort of cannibalism by proxy situation is, dare I say it? Delicious!

The film might not be for everyone, but the final act captures the vibe of trippy, weird, supernatural occult horror of the early 1970s where you didn’t quite know exactly what the hell was going on, but you knew it wasn’t going to end well for the characters.

LGBT: LETHAL GAY BUTCHER OF DEATH (2023)

This indie film has been given a flashy, gay slasher style cover, but don’t get your hopes up. There are only two kills, and both look like they were shot on the same corner, with the same setup—guy going to his car gets injected by the killer and is then found gutted the next day.

There are no scares here. This is instead a long-winded police procedural loaded with actors who bring absolutely zero energy to their performances.

The killer does wear the mask that is featured in the poster, but it’s irrelevant, because he removes it after the first attack, and we know who he is for the rest of the film. In other words, there’s no mystery here either.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—my gay perspective as a New Yorker is quite different than that of filmmakers from the Midwest and south. My goal when writing my gay horror novels is to present mostly happy gay men who just happen to land in horrific situations. Movies such as this one, which comes from Ohio, seem to be a cathartic project for the filmmakers, focusing on gay dysfunction—drugs, alcohol, cheating, compulsive sex—stemming from guilt and shame over being gay while being ostracized by all of society. Although it is too heavy-handed for my tastes, it is telling the stories of other less privileged gays who grow up and live in oppressive parts of the country, so we can’t take that away from it, and there are viewers who will feel quite connected to the story.

Even the title of this film originally carried weight. I’d say the name change made for release was smart. On IMDb it’s called Leviticus. The title Lethal Gay Butcher of Death is much more fun, but alas, this gloomy movie doesn’t live up to it.

Aside from the lack of horror, the writing suffers from plot holes. For instance, the detectives (one of which is a cute red bear) keep following leads on information the audience is never given, such as knowing exactly what the killer looks like!

And then there’s the moment they conclude that the killer has a “type”. The only two victims we get are not the same type at all, and the cop they use as bait to catch the killer is not the same type as either of the victims. Suffice it to say, my husband and I watched the film with another gay couple and this didn’t go over well as our movie night selection.

On the bright side, I was happy to see my social media buddy and scream king Roger Conners in the cast, playing a character named Roger Conners! Plus, the gay men in this film all look like regular guys, not pretty muscle boys, and there’s a nice amount of gay bear representation.

WHEN THE TRASH MAN KNOCKS (2023)

I’ve been watching Chris Moore films for years. Not unlike Lethal Gay Butcher of Death, his previous film Children of Sin is one that I found to be more of a story about the horrors of queer hate rather than a horror ride that happened to be about queer characters.

He bypasses the social commentary with the slasher When the Trash Man Knocks, which goes for fantastic atmosphere, great setup shots, violent and gory kills, and loads of nods to the original Halloween. It takes place over Thanksgiving weekend, so it’s going on the holiday horror page, plus Chris stars in the movie as well and plays a gay character.

If there’s any flaw here, it’s in the story. First off, there’s a great “legend” presented about The Trash Man, who comes knocking on Thanksgiving. If you answer the door, he butchers you and stuffs your body parts in his trash bags, inevitably collecting enough body parts to build his own family. That legend is played upon in the first half of the film but then all but forgotten for the second half, so don’t expect a body reveal Thanksgiving dinner party, which would have been awesome.

The other issue is that the script seems to have too much backstory. The main character and his mom both suffer from some form of PTSD—he sees visions of his brother, she sees and talks to her dead mother. The brother is the threat here, locked away after committing murder, then escaping, killing more people, and disappearing again. Therefore, the entire plot line about the mother’s mother is unnecessary, muddies the focus, and causes the film to run too long in an effort to flesh out the details of her issues.

To help the audience make sense of how the mother and son connect to the Trash Man lore, Chris gets a big monologue 75 minutes into the movie. At that point, it doesn’t seem to matter that much, because we’re mostly invested in the slasher elements and not looking for disruptive exposition.

You just have to overlook all that, because the death scenes show just how great Chris is at tapping into classic slasher style and delivering suspense and scares. Even the use of orchestral stabs for jump scares works to full effect numerous times and brings to mind the original Halloween. Chris also successfully uses the twist trope near the end to deliver a moment you really won’t see coming.

On top of all that, Chris’s love interest is a sizzling hot daddy—I don’t blame Chris for casting him….

Also of note is that the mother is played by an actress who first appeared in the 1983 Fred Olen Ray horror flick Scalps!

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TUBI TERRORS: a trio of horror comedies

Posted on November 17, 2023 by Daniel

If you want some killing with a dash of horror humor thrown in for good measure, this trio of films I watched on Tubi may be what you’re looking for. Here’s what I thought of them

BABY BLUE (2023)

This bizarre film combines hints of found footage, possession, and supernatural slasher, so it’s not much of a surprise that it is all over the place, but it had enough humor and horror excitement to keep me entertained.

A group of friends with a video channel decide to do a documentary on a serial killer named Baby Blue.

Their investigation begins with a video clip clearly inspired by that real video of the woman who acted all freaky on an elevator and was then found dead in a water tank on top of the building.

The kids go to the apartment of the elevator victim and strange occurrences lead to them to being terrorized by the ghost of Baby Blue, a dude in a leather jacket who thinks he’s just too cool and kills people by making it look like suicide.

Oddly, there aren’t many kills in the movie, but the one major death scene involves a cutie running around in his undies. Hot.

As the investigating continues, the kids encounter a guy who keeps his husband chained up to protect him from Baby Blue, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

They also have a consultation with a crazy psychic at a diner (funny scene). Most significantly, one of the kids gets possessed, and they all end up trapped in a house with an old psycho bitch (just wait for the tit milking scene. Blech.).

It’s all just really weird with a quirky tone throughout, all of which makes it quite watchable.

BLOODY FRICKIN MARY (2023)

If you watch the trailer for this film, you’ll know what kind of low budget schlock you’re in for. I watched the trailer and immediately started streaming the movie right after, knowing it was going to be my kind of crap.

This is essentially an urban horror comedy spoofing the infamous Bloody Mary urban legend. A group of Black and Hispanic girls has a slumber party, but smoking weed isn’t enough fun for them, so they decide to take the Bloody Mary challenge that’s trending on social media.

Luckily for them, it doesn’t take effect right away. That gives the boys a chance to come over and bring on the crass content, from a nasty bathroom shit scene to some sex action with the girls.

There are some good comic performances and some humor that works, but Bloody Mary’s arrival definitely saves the fading entertainment value as the movie hits the forty-minute mark.

Classic low budget makeup effects, practical gore effects, and Bloody Mary’s campy performance totally steal the show and make the second half of the film a blast. Plus we get a studly shirtless dude.

6 WHEELS FROM HELL (2022)

It’s not every day that you see a torture porn attempt to be humorous, but 6 Wheels From Hell tries its best. When we first meet our main group of kids on a road trip, they’re jamming out to “Rainy Monday” by Shiny Toy Guns. Awesome.

Not surprisingly, our redneck psycho drives around in a big truck—although I’m pretty sure it’s actually a school bus in big truck drag. Either way, the back of his truck is his torture chamber—a mobile torture chamber? How lazy have we as a society become that the torture chamber has to come to us?

I kid not when I tell you most of this film takes place in the back of the bus, where mutilated body parts are hanging from the ceiling. The goal of making this a horror comedy is helped by the fact that these body parts look like they were bought at Spirit Halloween. In fact, one head in particular is the same exact head that I hang in my library every Halloween–and the killer made the same face when fondling it that I make when I hang it.

After a run-in at a roadside diner with the psycho killer, the main kids are soon captured and chained up in his mobile torture chamber. This is like 20 minutes into the movie.

There they spend the majority of the film being taunted and antagonized by his nonstop, running monologue that is meant to supply all the humor. It seriously wears thin quite fast. To lighten the mood even more, the kids don’t act all that terrified by the fact that they will soon be parts of his torture chamber décor.

It’s actually a relief when the action finally moves out of the truck for the final act, but the film is still too tedious for that to salvage it.

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