Sequels and anthologies

Posted on August 18, 2025 by Daniel

This foursome of flicks features sequels to two films I’ve already covered and two anthology films. Let’s check them out.

CORN II: MIND HARVEST (2025)

The original C.O.R.N. was a Halloween themed flick, and it was wild and weird, which was the reason I enjoyed it despite the chaotic unfolding of events. And although it was about a cult that used humans for taxidermy, it was actually a slasher at heart.

The sequel is barely a horror movie, does not take place on Halloween, and is not a slasher. It’s instead a character study of sorts about both a young girl who is pretty mental because she grew up with the main scientist psycho from the first movie, and the police therapist assigned to work with her, who is working through issues of her own involving her child.

The girl is in a foster home, so when people start dying and disappearing around her, the therapist steps in to deal with her. The girl acts like a victim, terrified that her mad scientist father is coming for her, but she’s also a fricking killer, so it’s hard to feel for her.

Meanwhile, the scientist dad is hunting her down, and he’s also moved past basic taxidermy and on to transplanting people’s souls into other people and reaching into other planes of existence.

It’s a mess. It’s really a mess. I wasn’t feeling it at all.

DOGMAN 3: FIGHT TO THE FINISH (2025)

I was a fan of the low budget, cozy country creature feature feel of the first two Dogman movies, and while I’m happy to see several of the characters back for more, this movie doesn’t build on the others at all and delivers barely anything in terms of monster action. The characters are simply going through the motions because they’ve been down this road before.

There have been new attacks in town, and our main man Larry Joe Campbell just assumes the Dogman issue is back. With the help of those who went through all this with him before, they try to figure out why people are being infected and why the special moss that conquered the infection in the last movie isn’t working.

28 minutes in we see the classic Dogman mask when a woman spots him. There are some implied kills, a brief Dogman attack 52 minutes in during which a guy gets scratched but gets away, and in the last few minutes, they find a dead Dogman sitting in the driver’s seat of a car.

That’s it. That’s all the horror you get. I have the first two movies on DVD, but I just don’t see the purpose in buying this one if it gets a physical release other than to complete the trilogy in my collection.

JINXX PRESENTS: THE DEVIL’S VORTEX (2024)

This anthology is hosted by Jinxx of the band Black Veil Brides, in a sort of wraparound about a house he was going to buy…so he researched its history. Are the incidents that took place inside these walls terrifying? Let’s find out.

1st story – a guy goes to get a tattoo but has no recollection of it being done when he comes to with a demon image on his back. And then the demon enters the real world. Eek! This one is short and to the point, and this demon, a bald-headed ghoul, appears in almost all the stories.

2nd story – my absolute favorite of the bunch because it feels complete, this one takes place on Halloween and has a satisfying twist. A mute girl comes to the door during a Halloween party, and something doesn’t seem right with her, so out of concern, the partygoers invite her in. Uh-oh. So short and satisfying.

3rd story – this is where the stories start to falter. A woman comes home to find her daughter missing and her husband and another man hooked up to electrocution devices. Now she has to decide who she wants to save.

4th story – the bald ghoul serves as the devil on the shoulders of characters for the final three stories. In this one, a boy being haunted by ghosts tries to get someone to believe what he saw and why he did the awful thing he did…which we never get to see him do. Story falls short and feels unfinished.

5th story – four female friends are out at a bar, and when the driver starts dropping them off at their homes, she seems to snap thanks to the bald ghoul whispering in her ear.

6th story – I really have no idea what this one about a man stuck at home and visited by the bald ghoul was going for, but it is quite dull, so this anthology doesn’t end on a high note, and you are not left with any sense of the stories tying in together despite the shared ghoul.

LORE (2023)

This is a polished anthology that takes the simple, straightforward route, with a traditional wraparound. Four friends meet a creepy haunted tour guide in the woods, and he sits them around a campfire to partake in a ritual in which each of them tells a scary story.

1st story – this is perhaps my favorite of the bunch. A dude being chased runs into a warehouse, and soon a large creature crawls out of the shadows to take out the men pursuing him.

2nd story – totally a cheap thrills ghost story, this has a mom and son living in haunted house and being terrorized by a female ghost. There are incessant loud stingers whenever the ghost woman appears, she moves in a jerky motion like Silent Hill nurses (eek!), and there’s a Lights Out element to the haunting.

3rd story – love me a sexual tale about morality, and in this one, a straight couple just looking to swap partners for the night is drawn into some sort of cult.

4th story – the anthology ends strong with an atmospheric slasher in a movie theater, complete with kills, chases, and a big goon in a mask.

For such a tightly produced anthology, with a good array of subgenres, the only disappointment is the conclusion to the wraparound. So anticlimactic, and I didn’t really get what was going for. Also keep an eye out for a tag scene after the end credits start to roll.

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From kids’ characters to holiday horror

Posted on August 15, 2025 by Daniel

The bodies pile up with Popeye, Goldilocks, and two movies for the holiday horror page. Let’s take a look.

SHIVER ME TIMBERS (2025)

I’ve already covered Popeye’s Revenge, so I was so ready for another spinach-fueled slasher.

Actually, this evil Popeye is fueled by a meteor. A group of friends goes camping in the woods for a viewing of the burning rocks from space but spend most of their time partying and telling campfire stories instead.

That is until the meteor shower transforms an old fisherman on a rowboat into a hulking, killer Popeye! Awesome.

Running only 73 minutes long, this is a simple slasher that goes for the basics, and I found it to be gory fun with a mix of a classic, 80s-style synth score jingle and raucous metal music during kill scenes that perfectly fits the splatterfest feel.


“Well blow me down!”

Popeye really beats his victims to a pulp, which often involves squishing their heads. There’s also a humorous edge to the nastiness, including a trashy outhouse scene, complete with the splashing sounds of the dump and even Popeye taking a turn on the crapper.

And after the chaos of running through the woods, the final girl goes hardcore with a giant saw to hack away at Popeye in a scene that looks right out of a video game.

GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEARS: DEATH AND PORRIDGE (2024)

This is one for the home invasion loving crowd, but it’s like comfort horror—an easy watch that requires nothing new to absorb.

Friends gather for a reunion at a house in the woods, realize they’ve come to the wrong place, and decide to break in and crash there for the night.

As they explore the house, the references to the classic tale are fun, and there’s a foreboding tone, right down to the POV of watchers breathing in masks from the woods.

However, it’s 38 minutes before we first see one of the characters outside a window (people wearing Goldilocks and the Three Bears masks). One guy thinks he’s hallucinating the sightings of the characters in some effective setup shots.

It’s not until 49 minutes in that we see all four psychos and things finally take off. There’s some gory killing and torture, but in the tradition of The Strangers, there’s no apparent reason for what’s going on. Only Goldilocks talks, but it’s just to taunt victims, and it’s in a high-pitched, singsong voice with her mask on, so I could barely understand what she was saying, and I didn’t feel like reaching for the remote to turn on subtitles.

Speaking of the masks, the cheesy final frame has Goldilocks remove her mask while her face is out of frame and hold it up to the camera, essentially breaking the fourth wall.

GNOME SICK: 7 SLAYS TIL MITHRAS (2025)

This campy Christmas comedy knows exactly the style and tone it’s going for and nails it from the start. It’s a movie made with bold confidence and has plenty of moments that made me laugh.

It also has a super Christmasy tone and loads of festive décor, which it should considering it takes place in a town called Christmas, and the main guy’s family owns an ornament making business.

Having broken away from the family business to become an actor, the main guy returns home to find his family is missing. His family also happens to be part of a pagan Christmas cult, and his father is an infamous Santa slasher that kills people and sucks up their souls.

This is where the movie is imbalanced. The Santa killer is a hoot and has cheesy CGI minions helping him do his dirty work, giving their presence a very cartoon Christmas special vibe. Unfortunately, the kills take a backseat to the characters that revolve around our main guy, including his old friends, neighbors, and high school sweetheart. The humorous shtick between characters makes them endearing, but it really starts to wear thin when we know there are killer gnomes waiting in the wings to spread Christmas fear.

Even though the film could have been shortened for better pacing or focused on more kills, it’s still a seasonal bonanza and quite charming.

The guy playing the sheriff gives off a Frank Grillo vibe and was the highlight for me, and the two detectives on the case have a very funny fight with the gnomes, but I was disappointed that they don’t get much focus. Why? Because right at the last second before they are killed, their gay love for each other is expressed. WTF! If flirted with throughout the film, that plot line could have been comedy gold. Especially if they had survived…

WICKED SEASON (2024)

This one opens strong on Halloween night. A woman leaves a Halloween party and hops in an Uber, only to find her driver wearing a scarecrow costume. Things do not go well for her.

Next we meet detectives at the crime scene. There’s a crucified body, and it looks like a copycat of “the scarecrow killer”, who murdered the daughter of one of the guys on the case.

The detectives decide to go to the abandoned prison where the scarecrow killer was incarcerated to look for old records. The caretaker takes them on a tour, and then this goes into Thirteen Ghosts territory with no signs of Halloween.

There are a handful of different specters roaming the halls, including a psycho in drag with a switchblade, a girl ghost who looks like she just crawled out of a well, a feral werewolf sort of guy, and a big guy with a chain who goes around asking victims to play with him. Eek!

The setting is great, and the camera work and lighting are spot on, but instead of focusing on the detectives being chased by the psychos, the film delves into a lot of procedural investigative stuff, and eventually it steps into the spooky spiritual realm, as if it has taken a slight turn into religious horror territory.

I do like the discovery of how you stop these seemingly unstoppable ghosts, as well as the connection between a killer scarecrow choosing to crucify victims in the same way that scarecrows essentially are, but I’m bummed that the film had such great killers at its disposal but instead focused on the otherworldly plot. The conclusion also seems to set us up for a very apocalyptic sequel.

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Vampires and witches

Posted on August 11, 2025 by Daniel

It’s all about the classic creepers of the dark in this foursome of flicks I check out on Tubi. Let’s get into them.

BLOODTHIRST (2023)

I can’t believe a movie with a whole vampire cult and a gang of redneck vampire hunters would have so little action and so much talk, but that’s what happens here.

The good is that you get a few familiar faces, including Tara Reid with fun vampire makeup on. Also good is that all vamp voices are drenched in audio effects, so Tara Reid doesn’t sound anything like Tara Reid. I’m not even sure they used her voice.

In between all the vampires talking about making more vampires to satisfy the master and the slayers talking about ways to take down the vampires, there are a few instances of the vampires attacking victims, but that’s as exciting as it gets. The whole thing takes place in a desolate desert, so there isn’t much to work with here.

The master looks like something out of a Buffy episode, and there are a few humorous moments, the best being when one girl says of a bunch of other rednecks, “Let’s go before they get rapey again”, but the final battle is totally hokey, and they don’t even kill the master! Be warned. A final title card promises a sequel. Can’t promise I’ll be watching it…

YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE LET ME IN (2024)

I was really feeling the sleek, sexy, and suspenseful vibes of this Tubi original, and it even has a major gay character, so it goes on the does the gay guy die? page, but there just wasn’t enough oopmh in the events that unfold to keep me riveted.

The opening scene is the standout moment for me, with a girl leaving a club and then getting pursued into an alley in a very Subspecies long shadows/long fingernails kind of way.

Our main girl and her gay BFF head to a villa in Italy to join in on the bachelorette party of one of her friends. The gang gets together, there are some creepy encounters with locals in the village, and then there’s a sexy and spooky dancing montage at the local club.

The main girl meets a handsome dude (aka: vampire) and invites him and his minions back to the villa to party. This is where the movie loses steam. There are some atmospheric moments, but our sexy vampire simply isn’t mysterious and ominous enough to put us on edge.

There are some light, sexy shenanigans, including the gay guy scoring a kiss, as well as a lesbian kiss, plus a few subtle chase scene moments, but it’s just not intense enough to deliver on thrills and chills.

We finally see the vampire in his true form near the end of the movie, and I just think there was so much missed opportunity for him to have turned sooner and really terrorized the girls (and gay) trapped in this house with him. Bummer. However, the final scene is a tasty little zinger to conclude the film.

THE TEXAS WITCH (2025)

It’s Blair Witch without the found footage POV and with an actual witch. Eureka!

We begin with a bearded muscle hunk and his woman in a tent in the woods. It starts off with classic opener suspense, but cuts short before getting to the guts, if you know what I mean.

I think the first act is where the problem lies in the pacing. We meet the sister of the now missing hunk, who decides to take matters into her own hands when police refuse to go look for him in “the forbidden territories”. There is way too much back and forth between her and her friends before they all get on board with the search party idea and finally leave.

Once they’re in the wilderness, the local legends of the woods and the witch are revealed during the hike and during campfire discussion. There’s even a flashback to the old days when the witch was working her black magic and was murdered by townsfolk. And she’s haunted the woods ever since.

We get early glimpse of the witch, and then she finally attacks 47 minutes in. Don’t expect to see full Monty witch face though. She’s always just rushing by the camera or shown in mysterious black silhouette. Still more witch than we ever see in Blair Witch.

There are some bloody elements, but nothing too extreme as the foursome of friends tries to escape the forest. As in Blair Witch, members of the group go missing, and those that remain end up at an abandoned house in the woods. It’s fairly entertaining, but it still needed some trimming to tighten up the runtime. And yet, the final moment is still more horror than we ever get from Blair Witch.

IT SHALL NOT BE NAMED (2023)

The effectively creepy opening scene of this witch flick sets a tense tone, but this particular moment takes place later in the chronology and wasn’t necessary draw us in since the movie’s suspenseful situation unfolds very quickly.

The film features a single set and minimal characters. We meet our main girl, who doesn’t bother to vet her new roommate. She immediately begins to suspect that the roommate is up to something sinister. It’s Single White Female with a witch. Awesome!

The atmosphere and mood in this little apartment are great, and the scare sequences rock, but there are a few problems that go along with that. First, there’s an exorbitant number of jump scare stingers. Like, even when a phone rings…stinger! It really dilutes the jump scare factor.

The other issue is that virtually every excellent, eerie sequence is a nightmare sequence! Is our main girl actually experiencing these things, or is she under some sort of spell?

As she delves into what the new roommate’s deal is, her boyfriend runs hot and cold—at times he tries to help her expose the truth, at other times he tells her she’s being ridiculous.

Considering there are only three characters and one setting, the claustrophobic feel is high, but the excessive nightmare sequences and lack of actual scary events make this start to feel like it’s not going anywhere. However, for a low budget project, it’s generally a spooky experience, the visual horror is quite satisfying, and there are some delicious surprises in the final act.

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BOUGHT ON BLU AND DVD: from the 50s to the 90s

Posted on August 7, 2025 by Daniel

Time to cover six horror flicks I’ve added to my collection over the last few months, and they span decades. Let’s get into them.

THE MOLE PEOPLE (1956)

I love me some black and white sci-fi horror, but despite having freaky monsters, this one takes a turn I didn’t expect, becoming notably heavy on social commentary for its time.

After being caught in an avalanche, archaeologists in the snowy mountains drop down into a hole to rescue one of their team members. The use of a flashlight beam to create visual suspense is great and foreshadows so much horror that was yet to come. We even get an eerie, early glimpse at one of the monsters.

Things get even more terrifying when the men have sacks thrown over their heads by monster hands and get dragged into the ground. Eek!

They wake up in a sort of forgotten city. Here’s where things go awry. There are albino humans living there, and they are heavily into believing in religion and gods in the sky, which they use as an excuse to enslave and torture the mole people. They also consider one ‘normal shade of white’ woman in their society as a sort of monster and refer to her as a “dark” one. Holy crap.

To escape the city, the archaeologists end up teaming up with the mole people. Bummer. It’s one of those “humans are the real evil monsters” movies…especially the extra white people. There’s even a less than happy ending, which is another surprise.

The mole people and the idea of them dragging victims into the ground is so freaky that it’s sort of disappointing that this isn’t the whole plot of the movie, and we are instead made to feel empathy for them. This movie was woke decades before woke was even a slur.

TORSO (1973)

I finally picked this one up due to it being considered both a giallo and a precursor to the slasher genre. It definitely delivers on both counts, but just make sure to watch the 94-minute cut and not the 90-minute U.S. edit, for without the grisly gore moments, it would definitely be a little flat, despite being loaded with sexual situations. Yay!

Appropriately, it begins with a torso and tits at an orgy with a creepy doll laying around. This is really a film about men leering at women, which the camera also makes sure to do as well.

The settings is a college, where someone starts killing off pretty people with a black and red scarf. The first kill is classic slasher, with killer POV as a couple has sex in a car. The killer even wears a ski mask.

The kills have the usual odd and engrossing giallo style setups—like a girl walking through misty, dark woods and falling and then rolling around in mud with her tits hanging out when the killer comes for her. In each death scene, the killer scarfs the person to death then does some dissecting and mutilating with a knife while flashes of that creepy doll pop up on screen. Based on the title, I really thought this was going to be a situation in which the killer is gathering body parts to make a stitched together masterpiece.

There are plenty of shots of lecherous male gazes around campus. Each main girl has man trouble…obsessive, stalking behavior to confuse us with red herring.

Eventually the girls make a getaway to a country villa to escape the madness, but the killer follows them. The final act is somewhat disappointing, because it’s a perfect setup for the girls to get picked off one by one, but instead the final girl wakes up to find all the girls dead in one big body reveal moment. After that, she spends the remainder of the movie trying to get out of the house while the killer is inside with her. It should be super suspenseful, but I wasn’t totally feeling the tension. And the final frame features a couple walking off into the night to the sounds of sappy 70s soundtrack music. Ugh. Way to kill the vibe.

THE FREAKMAKER (1974)

I think this is the last movie I needed to complete my collection of every horror movie Donald Pleasence starred in. While there are some eerie aspects to the film, Pleasence is incredibly drab, forgetful, and completely overshadowed by his plant-human hybrid creations and the real deformed people hired for roles as sideshow freaks.

Pleasence is a scientist working at a college. He’s also up to some sick experiments. No surprise there. Haunting, natural images of plants in time lapse as they mutate sets a tone, along with Pleasence’s monotone musings on science that serve as narration.

There aren’t many strong characters, so there’s not much to cling to that can carry you through the movie. Pleasence is using the freaks as assistants to abduct college students for his experiments, and in exchange he promises them he will be able to fix them.

His main mutant sidekick begins to realize Pleasence won’t be keeping his promise, so he tries to convince the other freaks to revolt. This is the most compelling part of the plot.

Meanwhile, college students are chased and killed in some atmospheric scenes set to unnerving music. However, there are no standout characters among the group of students.

The climax is pretty good, with one of Pleasence’s man plants finally walking around terrorizing people. I really appreciated the look and feel of the film, but in general it’s low energy and doesn’t quite live up to its premise.

UNTIL DEATH (1989)

This Lamberto Bava flick features a plot that has been done to death, especially in short tales in anthologies. This particular take on it is drawn out and has very little in the way of satisfying horror elements.

A woman and her lover kill and bury her husband then start life together, but you immediately wonder why the woman would kill her husband for this dude. He is extremely abusive and hates her young son.

A drifter shows up looking for a room, so the woman lets him stay. The boyfriend becomes jealous. He also becomes convinced the handsome drifter (who looks like Jensen Ackles) has something up his sleeve.

As the couple gets into more and more fights, with the boyfriend repeatedly coming close to raping the woman, her son is having nightmares of the husband coming back from the dead.

I was curious as to how the hot drifter was going to play into all this but was left not quite understanding it at all. It almost seems like he was the dead husband in hot man form, making this some sort of unexplained supernatural situation, but all the dead husband sightings both the woman and the boyfriend begin having seem to be delusions. I really didn’t get it. However, whether real or not, the final melding of hubby and hottie is freaky good.

MOM (1990)

This one is loaded with a late 80s horror sleaze vibe, and despite working at a video store back then that had mostly every horror movie that got released on VHS, I’d never seen it. It was a blind buy, and I have no regrets, because it gave me all the nostalgia feels. It totally delivers on the weird horror style of that era.

In the opening scene, a woman is attacked by horror king Brion James, who transforms into some sort of monster, presumably a werewolf. Awesome.

The newscaster on television reporting on recent animal attacks on pregnant women comes home with his girlfriend to see his mom. They inform her that they are having a baby. Uh-oh.

Soon after, Brion shows up at Mom’s house to rent a room, becomes aroused by some meat she’s serving for dinner, bites her, and turns her into a monster, too.

Then the son discovers that they are out on the dark city streets at night together luring in homeless people to eat.

Faced with the dilemma of what his mother has become, the son tries to keep her from killing anyone else while throwing police off the scent.

Mom has some fun monstrous moments when she attacks people, but she never really turns fully into a monster, which is somewhat of a letdown. The body count is also disappointingly low, even when Mom enlists her son to bring her more victims. And the plot point about pregnant women being targets all falls apart.

The late 80s horror charm is there, but I definitely feel the film could have pushed the envelope a little more—more monster action, more kills, more blood.

DEATH MASK (1998)

The director of Jack-O, which also starred Linnea Quigley, decides the way to hook low budget horror fans into his movie is to begin it with her in a shower scene…that doesn’t actually fall chronologically into the events of the plot until ten minutes before the end. So we get to see it twice.

This is a simply, cozy plot. Linnea is a stripper at a carnival. Wilbur, one of the “freaks” in the carnival, is played by Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane from The Dukes of Hazzard. Wilbur has a fairly basic scar on his face that he simply cakes with makeup so it doesn’t look as noticeable. Really not that impressive of a physical deformity considering that he’s supposed to be hideous.

Wilbur has the hots for Linnea and tries to woo her away from her sleazy boyfriend, the guy who runs the carnival. Wilbur wants more out of life, so he visits a swamp witch and makes a deal with her. She gives him a magical piece of wood, which he uses to carve a mask.

He soon learns that he can get revenge on those who wrong him by putting on the mask. His victims see it turn demonic and then suffer some sort of violent accident.

It’s silly and basic, but it has that early direct-to-DVD charm, two familiar faces, sex, and a mask that comes alive. You get what you pay for, which probably would have been a 7.99 price tag at Best Buy back in the day.

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Man meat and dead meat at a gay club

Posted on August 5, 2025 by Daniel

Queer horror fans are always waiting for the next major release that celebrates queer lives and queer fear, and this year it looks like Meat is the one to see…and to add to the complete homo horror movies page. The title works on several levels, from the sexual man meat to the slashed dead meat, not to mention this is one meaty movie, running a momentous two hours and fourteen minutes long. Did it need to? No, but even being the stickler that I am about overblown lengths in indie horror flicks, this one managed to deliver enough in-your-face sex and violence to keep me watching.

When scream queer Roger Conners is involved in a movie, whether acting in it, directing it, or both, queer characters are always at the forefront and integral to the plot even if it’s not an inherently queer film. Not to mention the queerness is always unapologetic and not trying to appease cis het sensibilities. This is a film directed and co-written by Roger, and he also has a minor role in it as well.

With a title like Meat, it’s no surprise that we get a sleazy queer slasher (yay!), not one in which we cozy up to likable characters and root for them to make it to the final frame. This is a look at a nasty side of queer club culture. While approached from a queer perspective, it’s also in keeping with more modem slashers—despicable characters get what they deserve.

We meet Noah, who is drawn into the club scene by “friends” that prove to be vile excuses for humans. There’s a roofie/gang rape situation that leads to a tragic death. It’s a reprehensible take on the old school slashers in which a group of people did something “last summer” (so-to-speak), and eventually someone in a mask catches up with them to enact revenge.

In this case, that someone is dressed head to toe in silver studded leather. The killer’s presence is darkly sexy and flamboyantly flashy all at once. The kill sequences revel in brutality and practical, gruesome gore effects. While not an overly “scary” slasher, some of the chase and death scenes deliver on the suspense magnificently and are beautifully orchestrated as they carry you through the stalking and slashing, from a locker room shower scene to a bathhouse massacre. I really loved the longer kill sequences here.

Another highlight for me, naturally, would be the hypersexual situations. There’s plenty of unapologetic butt, balls, and dick action drenched in sleek neon lights and dark shadows, marrying the spirit of the club scene with the horror atmosphere. Even the dance music is actual thumping dance music reminiscent of decades past, not the low BPM, hollow rhythms of the EDM most popular these days. Hell, I’m old so I don’t even know if there’s a club scene at all these days…they were all closing in New York City back in the first decade of the new millennium, just as I was settling into being an adult and swapping out late nights and city lights for takeout and movies at home with the hubby.

It’s a challenge to make the perfect slasher—pacing, tension, scares, gore, sex, character development, mystery, story, visual presentation, a chilling score, etc. So many elements need to come together, and most films don’t tick all the boxes, but it’s no fun being a purist, so as long as there are aspects of the production that really grab me, I’m good, as I was with Meat. The kills and sex really carried this movie for me since these are those loathsome types of characters you don’t want to connect with—you just want to see them die. Even with a two-plus-hour runtime, I didn’t get the sense that any character was fully realized enough to sympathize with.

Instead of a single evening of slashing at a gay club situation, the film structure doesn’t let us settle in one place on one night with a core group. It spans a course of days and jumps locations, so there isn’t a straightforward plot throughline to carry us from start to finish. The killer seeks out victims instead of waiting for victims to walk right into their own demise, so the isolation of each character sort of reflects fractures that keep the queer community from standing together in safe spaces.

Meanwhile, there’s also a subplot featuring detectives on the case, but that tends to falter and eventually fades out of the picture completely. Bringing an investigation element into the story doesn’t carry much weight when there aren’t many mystery elements or false clues dropped along the way. Barely anyone seems like a red herring here, because we know most of them are destined to die. Only one character gets to shine, and that’s the “stud” of the group, who far overshadows the “final boy”.

As for the killer, the murdering motivation is somewhat derailed when the kills veer off into random victims to up the body count (not complaining about that) rather than sticking to those responsible for the specific incident that triggered the slashing to begin with. While the killer’s identity felt to me like it came out of left field, the killer’s final appearance perfectly encompasses the whole tone of the film—it’s both sexual and disturbing. Awesome, but I can’t share a visual of it because I don’t want to spoil the payoff.

In the end, I hope this one gets a physical media release, because it’s a goodie to add to my gay horror collection…along with all the other Roger Conners flicks I already have.

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A foursome of flesh-eating fun…mostly

Posted on August 1, 2025 by Daniel

I almost had a totally satisfying zombie movie marathon with four flicks I chose from my Tubi watchlist, but one didn’t quit live up to the challenge. Let’s take a look.

DEATH VALLEY: THE REVENGE OF BLOODY BILL (2004)

This is 2004 direct-to-DVD goodness, and I was so here for it. I’d blind buy crap like this every new release Tuesday at Best Buy in the early 2000s and revel in the cheesiness of it all when I forced my hubby to watch my purchases with me.

After car trouble in the desert, a drug trafficking dude ends up on foot and reaches a ghost town, only to discover minutes later that it’s actually a zombie town! The undead swarm and attack him to the sounds of metal music and the sights of grindhouse filters.

That sets the tone for the rest of the movie. In fact, that pretty much is the rest of the movie. It’s one raucous, skin-stretching zombie attack after another.

A group on a road trip stops to help a guy who turns out to be in cahoots with the first drug trafficker. He holds them at gunpoint and makes them drive…right to the ghost town.

Soon, the zombie attacks begin, but there’s a little more to it. Not much, but enough to add some extra monster action. The group learns of confederate soldier Bloody Bill, who is out for revenge because he was killed during the Civil War. He cursed the town as he died, and now the dead residents are his army.

Just pop the corn and pour the cherry cola, because this is a perfect popcorn movie time waster.

DEAD GETAWAY (Infected Paradise) (2014)

It’s another one that’s all about the action and fun, with little in the way of pesky depth. If you’ve ever played the video game Dead Island, this is basically that as a movie. Friends go on an island getaway and zombie attack. That’s it.

The acting isn’t great, but it doesn’t even matter. There are loads of shots of shirtless guys before they even get to their destination, landing this one on the stud stalking page.

Once on the beach, some dude washes up on shore not looking so great. Soon after, he samples his first piece of human flesh. Not long after that, there’s a whole horde of zombies! I have no idea where they all came from so fast, but it might be something in the water.

The rest of the movie has people who are really infected, not zombies (they simply growl and have blood on their faces) chasing after and biting people with just mock munching, no actual gore effects. The movie is all about the actors play fighting on the beach, and they all throw themselves into the parts.

Eventually, they attempt to make their way to a rescue boat for the final battle. It’s simple and low budget, but it’s high energy and a lot of effort was put into creating zombie chaos.

PANDEMIC (2016)

Rachel Nichols of P2 is a doctor on a search and save mission after a zombie apocalypse. She only has three other members on her team: the bus driver, Mekhi Pfeiffer, and Missi Pyle.

As soon as they drive out of the safety of their bunker, the action begins, and it pretty much never lets up. Their reinforced bus, which is right out of the Dawn of the Dead remake, is somehow penetrated in a tunnel (which is right out of 28 Days Later), by zombies that easily get in and have to be fought off…first person shooter style! Yep. Every time there are zombie attacks, the film switches to first person POV. It’s visual chaos, with blood-splattering zombie kills right in your face. Either you love it or you hate it.

Adding to the fun as the team drives through decimated L.A., the zombie they are dealing with are fast, smart, and oddly almost human. They even feel pain when hurt and beg for mercy.

The film has some minor character development, but it’s mostly comprised of the team moving from one dark, creepy location to the next encountering zombies. There’s a great, night vision scene right out of Quarantine, and there is a character twist eventually, but this is another one you should just go into with a bowl of popcorn and a glass of cherry cola.

GONE WITH THE DEAD (2024)

 

Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed it by watching a fourth film. This one broke my streak of zombie midnight movies, which is a shame, because it seemed like it was going to unintentionally hit the mark at first.

I overlooked the poor decision to have a horror host dude introduce the movie. It served no purpose. However, that shifted to some very satisfying zombie footage and a voiceover about the outbreak during the opening credits, set to a classic, throbbing synth score.

We then meet the actors in all their stilted dialogue delivery badness. It works somehow, giving the film a campy tone, complete with unintentional laughs. There’s also early 1970s horror style with really cheap grind house static effects on the film that only kick in during zombie action. Again, it felt like part of the cheesy vibe. Meanwhile, there’s some gory gut munching, but all the blood splatter is CGI.

The plot is just a meandering cliché. A group of friends discovers there’s an apocalypse, so they try to navigate the new landscape. This leads to lots of zombie attacks, encounters with other survivors, a scientist gets in on the action to propose using a vaccine…you know the deal.

By the time we start getting hit by “missing reel” moments during zombie attacks, I had checked out. The cheap, amateur feel of the film really starts to drag it down after a while.

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Alien zombies, a corpse killer, and a mermaid musical

Posted on July 30, 2025 by Daniel

It’s subgenre insanity time as I knock a trio of random flicks off my watchlists. Let’s get right into them.

THE LURE (2015)

This Polish film is a really dark and sleazy horror musical, landing it on the screamin’ and singin’ page, and it features a variety of song styles that add some flavor while also capturing the essence of the nasty tone. It’s not a pleasant experience, and as such it kind of reminds me of Cabaret. It’s gross and icky.

A cabaret club scores two mermaid sisters and exploits them as part of the show. On top of that, both men and women at the club are sexual predators that take advantage of the mermaids and the “slot” that each has in her tail when she gets wet. We’re talking fingering scene. Ew.

The sisters have different feelings about being on land. One sister falls for a young man at the club, while the other one goes out and feasts on men. That’s the one thing the movie needed more of. There simply aren’t enough kills to show how much of a monster she is. This is more (mermaid) character study than horror.

The relationship between the sisters starts to fracture as they chose different paths in life, and they begin to take everyone in the club down with them. As a result, the people at the club turn on them and dump them back in the ocean, which leads to another disappointing, missed opportunity to deliver on the horror—the sisters return, but they really don’t get revenge on the cabaret family that betrayed them.

As it delves deep into the conflicting desires of the two sisters in a gruesome way in the final act, the film is a downer, which is the only place for it to really go.

SKINJACKER (2024)

There are plenty of other movies with the same basic premise as this one—with more scares and suspense than this offers. Not to mention, better character development.

While the isolated island setting and atmosphere are well established quite quickly, it’s the initial reaction to a strange occurrence that is the first red flag for a problematic experience. A woman and man wake up after hearing a loud sound. They quickly run over to her parents’ home to find they’re not there. Minutes later when they are back home, her father appears in a stupor with blood dripping down his face, and she literally starts asking him why he’s acting weird and to stop fooling around rather than running over to him with shock and concern. WTF?

Following that we meet several more random people who just seem to be wandering around with no clear motivation. The only one who stands out is a dude with a snarky attitude about how obviously shady he is. In fact, he’s the only one who gets some backstory later on in forced, black and white flashbacks.

Anyway, we see one guy get dragged off by something that’s growling. Then the various strangers conveniently all meet up, people continue to disappear, the rest lock themselves in a house, and several of the missing people show up outside the door acting like zombies for a brief Night of the Living Dead moment.

Eventually the group finds a glowing spot in the hills where it appears something crash landed. They go down into an opening and find themselves in some sort of alien container.


Tell me you’ve never seen Samara in action
without telling me you’ve never seen Samara in action

All we get out of the deep dive into the ground is some attacks by the zombified people before the survivors just climb out of the container, destroy the hole, and decide that they can’t tell anyone because no one would ever believe them.

Seriously, there’s not much more to it than that. It’s all just weird and underdeveloped.

ARISEN (2015)

Time for another episode of ScareBearDan’s “indie horror movie that shouldn’t have been two hours long”. Making things worse, the editing is sloppy, the music is often much louder than dialogue, sound completely cuts out at times, mostly during outdoor scenes, and dialogue spoken in outdoor settings gets drowned out by wind blowing against microphones.

The movie itself is just as messy. The opening scene takes place at Christmas time. A kid is brought into a children’s home handcuffed because he apparently killed a family. Then…a different kid kills other kids in the home. At least, I think it’s a different kid who was already in the home, unless there’s a brief flashback moment to him arriving in handcuffs and I just didn’t realize it was.

As if things aren’t confusing enough already, this opening scene has absolutely no bearing on the rest of the plot as far as I can tell.

Next, it’s Halloween. There’s a house party. They use a Ouija board with little fanfare. Then one of the guys disappears while walking home.

A year later, his sister is still grieving his disappearance. Detectives are still on the case. Apparently, Halloween now coincides with the brother’s birthday, because she’s throwing one in his honor. There are absolutely no Halloween decorations anywhere. Someone does speak the famous “one good scare” line from Halloween, and her last name happens to be Wallace. Double meta groan.

A towering man who looks like a corpse starts going after her friends. His visual appearance is the best part of the movie. I don’t know if he’s her brother. I don’t know if he’s the kid from the beginning all grown up. I don’t know if he was conjured the night they used the Ouija board the year before. I don’t know why he’s after all of them. Unless I just couldn’t hear the explanation for all this madness over the sound of the wind hitting the microphones, none of it is ever clarified, but there is a final confrontation between the sister and the killer.

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A trio of films with masked killers

Posted on July 28, 2025 by Daniel

The masks are cool, and there’s killing with sharp weapons, but only one of these three truly delivers on hardcore slasher action. Let’s find out which one…and why the others didn’t quite satisfy.

HE NEVER LEFT (2023)

I love the concept of the production company Witching Season Films—each of their horror movies takes place at Halloween time, the tone is set with classic Halloween decor and fall foliage, and there’s a filter applied that captures the look and feel of 80s VHS tapes. So naturally, this one lands on the complete holiday horror page.

The problem with He Never Left is that the Halloween season plays no part in what happens, and the masked killer hyped in the movie and on the poster art has very little relevance to a majority of the movie.

Instead, the film focuses on a guy hiding out in a hotel room after murdering someone. Virtually the whole film takes place in the hotel room, with the guy, who is perfectly portrayed as intensely paranoid, seeing visions of his victim and hearing the sounds of someone screaming in the hotel room next door.

There is a side story involving the police who are looking for him, and the legendary “Pale Face” killer that we learn terrorized the town years before does come into play, but this is no slasher film, and by the final act, the “mystery” is so convoluted and confusing, with new characters being introduced at the last second, that it’s not quite clear what the hell is going on, despite one of the newly introduce characters having to literally explain it to us.

BUTCHERS BLUFF (2023)

Argh! Why do filmmakers not review their movies and really feel the weight of runtimes that kill the stretches between the best parts? This is a backwoods slasher with a familiar, basic plot, vicious kills, quality gore effects…and a running length of 123 minutes. No, dammit. Just no. This could have been a great, simple backwoods horror flick if it had been 90 minutes long instead.

Jeremy London, who stars in Bone Face (below), actually appears in the opening kill scene of this one, which is a classic—couple gets it while parked in their car at night.

Gritty kill footage during the opening credits is almost like a mini-slasher in itself. Another plus. Then we get interviews following the murders, with locals talking about the legend of the Hog Man.

Our main characters are film students that come to town to do a documentary about Hog Man. They start asking questions. They follow leads. They learn the backstory of Hog Man, which is right out of Rob Zombie’s Halloween. They encounter horror icons like Brinke Stevens and Bill Oberst Jr.

Eventually, they head into the woods and the murders begin. There are gruesome kills, scenes in Hog Man’s lair, sex scenes, including one with girl boobs and another with hot man butt. Awesome. This meaty butt is right up in the camera, and I wanted to wash that snack down with some Cherry Cola. This one definitely lands on the stud stalking page.

Unfortunately, there’s also that 123-minute issue. The plot isn’t deep enough to support 123 minutes. I would have added this one to my movie collection if it had been a tighter script.

BONE FACE (2025)

Imagine if Friday the 13 Part V married an Agatha Christie novel, and you have Bone Face. I really couldn’t believe what I was seeing, which was mostly a lot of talking, so I won’t spend much time on this one.

Don’t get too excited about the cool masked killer on the poster art and the awesome opening massacre in which a load of camp counselors is slaughtered. That’s the most slasher you’re going to get.

Jeremy London plays a sheriff that arrives on the scene of the crime with his deputy. They quickly conclude that the killer is not the infamous Bone Face behind a legend mentioned by the camp counselors before they died, but is actually one of the numerous people inside a nearby diner. So, he locks them in the diner and spends the rest of the movie interrogating them to solve the mystery. There’s red herring, arguing, fighting, and more surprises in the mounting mystery, but no Bone Face.

That’s it. That’s the movie. Eventually the person who posed as Bone Face is revealed for a final showdown with the law in the final, slasher-free act.

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Cheap ghost scares galore

Posted on July 25, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a trio of supernatural flicks that want so badly to make us jump in terror. Did it work on me? Let’s find out.

THE DESERVING (2024)

This 75-minute movie is not really my thing. It’s one where the killer is essentially portrayed as the victim…although the title tells the real story.

We meet a mute photographer who brings women to his home for photoshoots and then kills them. He seems like a very nice guy, and the mood of the film captures his loneliness and lack of communication with other humans.

We also get flashbacks in which we see that he had an abusive father, providing insight as to why he murders women. Personally, I didn’t give a fuck about his sob story when typical corpse-faced ghost girls began terrorizing him.

The film throws all the ghost girl scares in the book at us and they are just so predictable and never succeeded in bringing me to the edge of my seat. Eventually the ghost girls swarm him, sitting around cackling like Deadites in Evil Dead.

The movie is definitely going for a psychological study of a killer’s mind, but I was so not there for it. It also ends with a twist that, while done many times before, feels a little different and more clever here than usual.

THE PAINTED (2024)

This one is very reminiscent of all the supernatural haunted house flicks of last decade, so if movies like The Conjuring unnerved you, this is a nice throwback to that style of supernatural storytelling.

A woman is made the executor of a distant cousin’s estate, so she and her family go to the cousin’s dark, shadowy house to settle things. Once there, they begin to experience strange occurrences, including physical attacks while sleeping.

Before long, they discover that painted portraits hung on the walls are fricking crawling off the canvas and roaming the house. Eek!

It’s pretty effective at first, but obviously it’s not a concept that can prolong itself, so the family eventually does what most haunted house movie families won’t; they get the fuck out. If face-eating paintings don’t convince you to leave, nothing will.

Wouldn’t you know the ghosts follow them? It becomes a very predictable scenario with them looking into the past of the family and the paintings and discovering a paranormal past in the bloodline. It’s a decent plot for a ghost movie, but overall it’s nothing new, so go into it if you’re looking for a comfort ghost movie, not if you’re hoping for something that will blow your mind. And the denouement is melodramatic, supernatural sap. Not really my thing.

CANDLEWOOD (2025)

The highlights of this movie for me were the fall foliage and the dad, who is kind of cute. I wouldn’t mind jumping in the leaves with him.

The opening of bloody dead people on a lake shore was intriguing enough. Then we meet a blended family that moves into a lake house.

They immediately begin encountering one strange neighbor after another and experiencing delusions of apparitions. They learn a legend of a mixed-race couple that died for love in the lake.

And then the delusions just keep coming, all in that cheap, fuzzy, unfocused visual style of early 2000s direct-to-DVD movies. The family starts to turn on one another, and the weirdness of the neighbors intensifies.

There’s really not much more to it than that. The film ends with a massacre by the lake, just as it began, and then we get a whole monologue from one of the neighbors about how the locals protect their past from outsiders. There’s not much here to hold the plot together.

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There’s something supernatural in the air…and the slashing

Posted on July 23, 2025 by Daniel

While not all of these films are straight up slashers, each one features a supernatural force killing people off. But only one really came together for me. Let’s take a look.

MS. KANYIN (2025)

I thought this Nigerian film was going to be more of a folk horror type of movie. The opening scene even features a spiritual tree in the woods that craves blood.

However, despite a 110-minute runtime that makes for a major slow burn, the movie ends up becoming a basic, super fun supernatural slasher in the final act.

There’s a whole lot of focus on the students and teachers at a boarding school, most notable a girl struggling in French class, the teacher trying to educate her, and the pressure both of them experience at the hands of men.

Eventually, the female student becomes desperate to pass the class, which leads her and her friends to doing something drastic…which leads to a tragic accident involving the teacher and the mystical tree in the woods. Uh-oh.

That’s when the intensive character studies, social commentary, and occult elements are tossed out the window with a sudden shift into a fast-paced, bloody revenge slasher. Awesome. I had fun with this one despite it being too long for what it actually delivered.

THE GOATMAN (2023)

There’s a great looking, horned creature in this movie…if you can manage to catch a glimpse of him when he appears on screen very briefly. This proves to be more of a supernatural flick, with the creature acting as some sort of Wendigo that appears to people in the form of someone they know.

The setup is simple. A bunch of siblings and their significant others camp out in a desert and soon begin to experience the unknown. Everyone starts acting weird, they split up, they explore the desert, and they’re terrorized by faceless people, which are the absolute highlight of the film.

Another highlight is a very creepy scene in which one girl checks her appearance in the mirror, and it’s quite noticeable that the reflection looking back at her is actually looking back at her. Freaky.

After a while, the group concludes that the main creature is making the faceless people appear as doppelgängers of the group. It’s all kinds of confusing in terms of plot, the horned creature is never referred to as the Goatman, and the tone moves into deeper, emotional territory in the final act. Personally, I just wanted more faceless terror.

#FLOAT (2022)

This 76-minute-long movie fails to create a cohesive plot or unfolding of events, rendering it kind of pointless to watch.

A wannabe influencer and her friends take the ashes of their friend, who died a year before, to the cabin and river where he died and where they do some sort of river float thing every year, which literally just consists of sitting on floats in the river.

The first night they are there, a redneck dude comes to the door and warns them to stay away from the river. They don’t listen.

The next day, they start disappearing, splitting up, and getting killed with absolutely no explanation how. And despite all the madness going on around them, those that aren’t hurt or missing just continue to go back to floating on the river. Like there’s literally a scene in which a girl gets sucked under water and a fountain of blood spurts up while everyone witnesses it, and then the next thing you know, they’re just floating on their floats again.

Meanwhile, the redneck dude keeps warning them to stay away from the river. He also claims it preys on your weaknesses, but we are never shown any actual weaknesses for it to prey on. He even abducts some of them, making us think maybe he is the one killing people rather than it being the river at all.

There’s eventually a gruesome confrontation with him, one of the remaining survivors is attacked in some sort of shadow puppet dance that implies there’s a monster, and then the influencer girl drives off and discovers she’s suddenly totally going viral. But why? It’s never implied that she’s been doing a live feed of their excursion all along, so what is attracting new followers? When there’s this many plot holes, there’s simply no solid ground for a plot to stand on.

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