A Valentine’s slasher at a gay guy’s house, a boogeyman, and a slasher comedy

Posted on July 8, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a trio of slasher subgenres, but did they deliver on the kills?

PRETTY BOY (2021)

This is a sequel to the home invasion flick Blind, which was about a masked psycho stalking a blind actress. This is quite an odd way to extend the story, starting off as a holiday slasher, then eventually segueing into a psycho family flick. Either way, it earns a spot on the holiday horror page.

It begins on Valentine’s Day, and I assume it’s supposed to be the same night as the first movie. However, I don’t remember Blind taking place on Valentine’s Day. This one is set at an 80s themed Valentine’s Day house party being thrown by a gay guy, and while there’s plenty of VD decor and red lighting, there’s not much in the way of romance. There’s also nothing to signify that this is an 80s themed party beyond a character mentioning that it is. And while the title Pretty Boy sounds really gay, the gay host is the only gay aspect of the movie, so this one goes right to the does the gay guy die? page.

There is, however, some sexual content, including a weird scene in which a hot, straight dude is handcuffed and blindfolded and thinks his woman is licking him when it’s actually a prank—the gay guy is the one licking him. A totally unnecessary moment and kind of makes the gay guy seem predatory.

The blindfolded dude does eventually have sex with a woman, and it’s a pretty funny moment before it gets to the penetration…with a machete, that is.

Meanwhile, for no apparent reason, the killer carries the blind woman he captured in the first movie into this house. He starts hacking up party guests with a variety of weapons, but I have no idea where he’s scoring all these different weapons. Regardless, the kills are bloody and awesome and use practical effects, so I was satisfied enough with the first half of the film.

However, once the killer takes down all the party guests, we end up at the house of his parents, played by horror queen Maria Olsen and Robert Rusler of Vamp and Elm Street 2, officially making his house more 80s themed than the gay guy’s house.

Things really slow down as both parents get longwinded monologues and we finally find out why this masked dude stalked and abducted the blind actress. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before and leaves us with a very anticlimactic climax.

REVENGE OF THE BOOGEYMAN (2025)

Sounds like a sequel, but it’s not. It is, however, a basic slasher that adds nothing fresh in terms of plot but does have grisly kills, a monstrous boogeyman killer, and some understated humor.

It starts off with a strong kill and then awesome opening credit fonts that are sooooo reminiscent of the 80s.

A two-timing dude goes to a cabin in the woods and bangs a girl while waiting for a bunch of friends to arrive. They’re having a supportive gathering for a friend who is freshly out of rehab.

This is where things get questionable. At first it seems like there’s a boogeyman killer that makes creepy, throaty groaning sounds as he gruesomely kills victims, but eventually it begins to seem as if the addict guy might be hallucinating or dreaming all the kills. There’s nothing more to the plot than that, and we don’t find out until the final act what the situation really is.

Watch it for the kills, the killer, a take on the That ‘70s Show pot smoking circle shtick, and a raunchy, hetero sex scene that starts off funny but ends up going on for an oddly long time. This dude has so much control that he lasted through the commercial break of the rental on Prime, and then kept going in a different position.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE MASSACRE? (2025)

This one is trying to be both clever and humorous in its approach to a slasher, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark in either case.

The title says it all—this is supposed to be about what happens after the slashing is done. In this case, two dudes come to a campground as the cleanup crew, but instead of getting an answer to what might actually happen after a slasher ends, we get what is basically a sequel that takes place immediately following a slasher we didn’t get to see. You know…like many slasher sequels over the decades.

It’s literally just a summer camp slasher about what happens to the next set of people that come for the second summer camp session of the season, although it looks more like winter than summer considering there are no leaves on the trees.

We do have the two main guys cleaning up some hints of the previous massacre, but this mostly features quirky characters getting killed off by “Red Face” before we have a chance to know much about them.

The killer mask is cool, there are nods to a few plot points from Friday the 13th installments, there’s killer mask eye hole POV at one point, the kills are basic with no chase scenes, the humor is lacking, and the climactic twist is short and uneventful.

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Beware the scary women

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a trio of flicks in which creepy women…well…creep around. Let’s get right into them.

PANDORA (2024)

Much of this movie feels like a drug dream, allowing viewers to connect with the confusion and chaos the protagonist is going through…without ever getting any sense that any of it is actually real or frightening.

The main man is a has-been, recovering addict musician with insomnia. His wife died from an overdose with drugs he gave her, landing him in jail for a while and creating distance between him and his daughter. His neighbor dude wants him to reboot his music career and wants to be part of it. His ex-manager is totally an enabler in every bad thing he does.

Our main man scores a drug that is supposed to help him sleep. After he takes it, he wakes up to discover slaughtered women in his home. He has no idea how they got there. His ex-manager helps him cover up the crime with no questions.

And then our main man is haunted by corpse-like girl ghosts in his home—but I’m not sure if he actually sees them or of it’s just us, the audience. He basically starts mentally falling apart and moving closer to using drugs while drenched in horror lighting for a majority of the film. More people die, but this doesn’t feel much like a horror movie after a while.

It’s only the final segment that brings things into focus, but it’s one fuzzy lens. It’s gruesome and twisted, but it comes out of left field. I guess you could say that at least makes it fresh and unpredictable…not to mention even more incomprehensible.

DEMON SLAYER (2004)

It’s one of my favorite setups—a group of kids goes to an abandoned building and unleashes an evil force that begins to possess them one by one. Problem is, the evil force doesn’t possess enough of them in this movie and the meat of the possession doesn’t begin until an hour in!

After a vicious opener in which an unfortunate dude enters the abandoned building and gets hacked up by robed women, we meet a group of delinquents being tasked with renovating an old mental institution.

The guys are cute, including horror hottie Adam Huss, who plays the obnoxious dude and balances out the good with the bad—he drops a reference to The Monster Club, but he also calls a priest a fag.

One of the main girls is open to visions, which are what make up the bulk of the “spooky” moments for the first hour. She also finds a diary that details various atrocities that took place in the hospital. It’s all low energy filler as we wait for the fun to hit the fan at the 61-minute mark.

The first serious possession hits hard, and it’s just weird to me that the film didn’t bother to bring this level of cheap thrills earlier. The whole tone shifts suddenly.

There are demon women, the two main guys come alive with humorous reactions to the situation, a campy priest with an eye patch shows up to save the day, and the demon action kicks into high gear. I seriously would have wanted to add this one to my physical media collection if only it had delivered sooner on the scares.

MERMAID’S CURSE 2 (2025)

Indie filmmaker Louisa Warren directed the first movie, but she only produces the sequel.

This film isn’t much different than the first film in terms of plot, but while the first film was strictly about “witches of the water” (its original title), this one incorporates elements of mermaid visuals into the story.

The story is that men are vanishing from the beach, and the viewers know the culprit is a siren—possibly mermaid—that comes ashore to viciously attack them. She even rips one dude’s dick off. Delectable.

Anyway, there are two brothers who run some sort of news business and need a good story to make money. They decide to focus on the missing men, because their own father vanished mysteriously, and their mother seems to be hiding the truth of what happened. The daddy is shown in flashbacks, and he is also delectable.

Meanwhile, one brother starts dating a pretty young woman, and the other brother suspects that she’s up to no good and begins following her around the beach at night. That’s about the extent of the plot. There are some twists as the truth about the dad and the girlfriend unfold, but honestly, the dick detachment is definitely the highlight for me.

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The Jaws novels—chomping at the different bits

Posted on July 2, 2025 by Daniel

It has been decades since I last read the original Jaws novel and the novelization of two of the sequels, so I decided it was time to revisit them on the 50th anniversary of the first movie. That summer, I was six years old, and our house was on a suburban street two blocks away from the single-film theater that played the movie the entire summer. And for that whole summer, there were cars parked up and down the streets and lines at the ticket booth that literally wrapped around the block and ended back at the theater!

I think anyone who is both a reader and a film fan loves to compare and contrast novels that are adapted into movies, as well as movies that receive novelizations of their screenplays, and in this case we get a dose of both. So, let’s get into the differences in Jaws, Jaws 2, and Jaws: The Revenge. Note that you will need to be greatly familiar with the movies to recognize the differences I lay out here.

JAWS by Peter Benchley


Some of the major highlights from the 1975 movie come from Peter Benchley’s original novel, with the general plot of the mayor wanting to keep the beaches open and Sheriff Brody taking the heat for it at the forefront of the plot.

The book opens like the movie, with the drunk girl and guy on the beach, him passing out, her getting devoured by the shark, and parts of her body being found on the shore later. As the joke used to go in the 1970s: How come the girl from Jaws had dandruff? Because she left her head and shoulders on the beach.

The infamous scene of the woman’s son getting eaten while out on his raft is in the book, although there are very few witnesses, because the beach is not full when this happens. There is also a scene of Brody and Hooper finding a hole in a deserted boat, but no head pops out. There’s simply a large tooth embedded in the boat.

Notable differences in the novel? There’s a whole organized crime subplot, the story with the mayor is more complicated, and Brody has three children, not two.

However, the most massive and shocking element of the book that is skipped in the movie is that…brace yourself…Brody’s wife Ellen has an affair with the Richard Dreyfuss character Hooper. Turns out she dated his older brother when she was younger, so now she has a shot with him since he’s no longer a little boy. Gross. There’s also a totally misogynistic, totally 1970s moment when she reveals to Hooper that she has a sexual fantasy of being raped by a man.

Brody does go out on the boat with Quint and Hooper for the final act, and they do attach barrels to the shark with harpoons, but it doesn’t all happen in one night. In fact, when Hooper goes down in the cage, he gets killed and then Quint and Brody return home! They go out on the boat again the next day, which is when the shark sinks the boat. However, Brody doesn’t kill the shark. Quint stabs it before he is eaten, and just as the shark is about to attack Brody, it simply dies from its wound.

JAWS 2 by Hank Searls

I don’t even know why this book says “based on the screenplay”. It is virtually a completely different story, and not a compelling one at that. Meanwhile, the author seems to be walking the line between writing a sequel to the movie and a sequel to the original Jaws novel. For instance, there’s brief mention of Brody suspecting Ellen was having an affair with Hooper, yet in this novelization, they have just the two sons, Sean and Michael, as in the movies. Several other town characters from the original novel that weren’t in the first movie or the Jaws 2 movie appear in this novel as well. Also, the events of Jaws are referred to as “The Troubles”, which is what Brody called them in the first novel.


So what’s the same? There are two divers that find the name plate of the Orca at the beginning of the book before getting attacked. There is a photo recovered from a camera that shows a sign of a shark being the culprit. There is the water-skiing scene, but this time it’s a husband and wife team. There also is an old lady in her rocking chair who sees it happen as in the movie. And finally, a helicopter does get attacked. It has two men on it, but they aren’t trying to rescue teens out on their sailboats when it happens. There’s a reason for that, which I’ll get to below.

Actually, there are barely any shark attacks in this book. It has a plot involving criminal activity affecting the government and businesses, expanding on themes from the original novel.

There is also heavy focus on some seals trying to stay alive and avoid the shark in their habitat. It terrorizes them more than it does humans! On top of that, a huge chunk of story is about some cop who shoots a baby seal on the beach and then becomes a thorn in Brody’s side as he tries to press charges against the man. Brody also brings the wounded seal home, and his young son Sean nurtures it back to health.

And the shark? The shark is mostly hunting for food because it’s pregnant and carrying baby sharks that get quite feisty in its belly. This bitch doesn’t have the time or energy to slash her way through a bunch of sailboats full of teenagers. Therefore, the bulk of the movie plot is completely missing from the book! WTF? The only thing similar in the book is that Mike and Sean go out on separate boats for some sort of sailing competition. Mike has the girl named Jackie on his boat, but she doesn’t lose her shit like Donna Wilkes did portraying her in the movie. We also don’t get Tina and her boyfriend being attacked in their boat, nor is there a scene with them coming upon the washed-up killer whale on the beach.

At the last second, the book forces something similar to the movie’s final moments into the plot—only it takes place at night. The boats in the competition are targeted by the shark, the cable comes up from under the water, and the shark bites it, but with no help from Brody. It’s just a lucky coincidence. The books really don’t seem to want Brody to be the hero.

Would you believe one of the seals gets the epilogue in the book?

JAWS: THE REVENGE by Hank Searls

With the same author writing the next novelization, there’s clear continuity from the Jaws 2 book. It even opens with the latest shark snacking on two seals, almost like it’s closing out the story of the seals from the previous book, which are mentioned, as is the cop that shot the seal in the Jaws 2 book.

The connecting threads to the original Benchley novel are also referenced, including Ellen’s affair with Hooper, the shark attacks being referred to as “The Troubles”, and mention of characters that originated with Benchley’s book and reappeared in the novelization of the second movie.

As with the movie on which this book is based, the events of Jaws 3-D are totally ignored.

The book begins like the movie, but after Sean is killed and Elen arrives in the Bahamas, there’s a chapter in which a whale that has already been harpooned several times by pirates is killed by the shark. This adds nothing to the plot and is just cruel!

We learn very early on in the book that the Michael Caine character Hoagie does some drug smuggling with his plane, and there’s a hitman after him. The Brodys in the books seriously can’t stay away from lowlife crime syndicates. The hitman action gets intense, with the mob even shooting Hoagie and Ellen down while they are out flying in his plane. On top of that, the art created by Ellen’s daughter-in-law plays a significant role in the plot and is tied to the organized crime subplot.

The book also delves into elements of racism on the island, and themes of psychic powers and voodoo are brought more to the forefront, from both Ellen and the locals. Her little granddaughter is even targeted in some serious rituals.

To add excitement to one of Mike’s encounters with the shark underwater, he hides out in an old wreck and comes across the skeleton of a long dead body. And although the point of the story is that the shark is supposed to be targeting the Brody family, the shark does chow down on some random victims now and then.

In the end, the book’s climax is like that of the movie, with a few extraneous characters on the outskirts of the action. Mario Van Peebles dies as he does in the theatrical cut, not in the alternate ending, in which he lives. And no, the shark does not growl…

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Big bad wolves…and no wolves beyond the title

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Daniel

What’s in a name? This foursome of flicks features two movies about werewolves and two that reference a werewolf or wolves in their names but have nothing to do with hairy beasts. Either way, were any of them worth a watch? Let’s find out.

THE FOREST HILLS (2023)

This is one of those “is he or isn’t he really a werewolf” movies. It’s moody and messy, as it’s plagued by delusion, flashback, and daydream sequences, and we’re never really sure if any of it’s real. However, from a horror standpoint, these same sequences totally carry the film. They are freaky, gory, and violent.

In one of her last appearances, Shelley Duvall plays a woman dying of cancer…all the more reason for her iconic cigarette to make a fleeting cameo…

Before her death, Duvall reconnects with her estranged son Rico, who is a total mental case. He believes he is being targeted by a werewolf, so he hides out in a house in the woods, waiting to kill the beast when it comes for him.

This dude is so nuts that he kills anyone that shows up at the house, assuming they are the werewolf. There are also flashes of him disposing of bodies in grisly ways, which leaves us wondering if he’s actually a werewolf or just a serial killer.

If you’re a fan of horror cameos, we also get Dee Wallace briefly, Felissa Rose briefly, and Edward Furlong in a slightly larger role that plays a crucial part in Rico’s behavior and basically clears up everything Rico is going through. All I’ll say is that if you come to this movie specifically because you’re looking for a balls to the wall werewolf flick, you’ve come to the wrong place.

THE BEAST COMES AT MIDNIGHT (2023)

This playful flick unfolds like a typical teen movie—oddball geeks vs. popular kids—with a sub-story of werewolf attacks hovering in the background for a majority of the running time before finally hitting full-blast in a final act that is an absolute hoot. I’m glad I stuck with it to the end.

With both Eric Roberts and Michael Pare in the cast, I knew I was in for a SyFy original style flick…the very reason I watched it. Not surprisingly, Roberts’ appearance is brief, and it’s only at the beginning and end, but Pare actually gets a juicier role for a change, and his presence adds to the fun for the final battle.

So, there have been a rash of animal attacks in a town. A geek with an internet show about strange phenomena decides to launch his own investigation while dodging the harassment by more popular kids. Surprisingly, the bullying is quite light, and all of the characters are pretty likable.

Helping the geek with his detective work is a pretty girl who cozies up to him, Pare as the owner of a carnival sideshow museum, and a woman with an occult shop. However, there’s no real meat to this aspect of the film, and none of it is injected with much excitement.

Only slightly more exciting are the “attacks” sprinkled throughout the film. Unfortunately, they all consist of someone screaming and being dragged off screen. We never see anything, which is to the detriment of engaging us before we finally get to the finale.

The first werewolf transformation doesn’t hit until 70-minutes into this 86-minute movie, but once it does it is an old school werewolf costume bonanza.

Special effects king Joe Castro plays the werewolf, and he hunts down all the cast members when they end up at the sideshow museum. The stalking and battle between the main cast and the werewolf make for perfect midnight movie laughs. I just wish the film had brought this energy sooner.

WEREWOLF GAME (2025)

This is not a werewolf movie, but the one thing that could have saved it would have been for someone to actually have been a werewolf at the end.

I really thought it was going to go in a The Beast Must Die direction, but instead, it was more like a Saw movie. Yawn.

A group of people wakes up to find they’ve been abducted and brought to a deserted island, where someone in a mask tells them they must play the werewolf game—every day they must come together to vote on who they think the werewolf is, and the person they vote on gets killed.

The person in the mask is so obviously Tony Todd based on the voice (and the fact that he gets top billing), but he only takes off the mask during the finale. There are also some masked henchmen that help terrorize the group.

There’s no excitement here. The group spends their days talking about how they’re going to work together to escape, and their nights turning against each other as they decide who to vote out of the house like it’s some fatal version of Big Brother.

That’s it. That’s the movie. I didn’t care about the characters (except the shirtless hunk), I didn’t care about the plot. I just wanted someone to really fuck with everyone’s heads by totally transforming into a werewolf in the end.

RAISED BY WOLVES (2014)

This one has absolutely nothing to do with wolves or werewolves, but it was actually one of the most entertaining horror flicks in this foursome, combining found footage with an Evil Dead premise.

We learn about a Manson-like cult and mass murder on an Indian Reservation farm in the 1970s.

Next, we meet a group of skateboard friends, and they are all douchebags. Why do modern movies feel the need to make all their characters assholes?

They go on a road trip, end up at the house and barn where the cult lived, and about 40 minutes in they begin getting possessed and terrorizing each other.

There’s nothing deeper to the plot than that, and the found footage approach covers all the clichés, but that’s what makes it so much fun. It’s just simple possession spreading like an infection between friends, and sometimes that’s all you need.

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But it said horror comedy on IMDb…

Posted on June 26, 2025 by Daniel

I was all in for a horror comedy triple feature with this selection of flicks from my Tubi watchlist, but things didn’t quite work out as planned. Let’s find out why.

BUZZ CUT (2021)

The scariest and not so funny thing about this horror comedy is that it runs 107 minutes long. No. Absolutely not. Just no.

The plot is basic. A “drinking club” comes to the woods to party, and a psychotic beekeeper starts killing them…mostly with a chainsaw. There’s literally one kill with a beehive, which begs the question: why even make the killer a beekeeper?

This movie drags so badly. It’s sort of a Clerks style approach in which these burnout characters stand around talking. Their dialogue, which is loaded with pop culture references, is supposed to also contain dry wit, but all I’ll say is that it sure did leave me parched. The edgiest thing about the content is that there’s a sort of blow-up sex doll mascot. In other words, in this day and age there’s nothing edgy at all about it.

The run time is also filled with things like a silent movie segment and a dance number, until the majority of kills kick in during the last 30 minutes as characters run around in a dark forest.

The highlight is absolutely Donna Wilkes of Angel and Jaws 2 fame. She totally steals the show in the final act. At the same time, Linnea Quigley makes a brief appearance and is severely underutilized.

PEOPLE IN THE WALLS (2024)

I watch everything the Crum brothers make, so I had to check out this one, which is very incorrectly labeled as a horror/comedy on Tubi, and a horror/dark comedy on IMDb. There really isn’t anything funny here beyond the usual kind of occasional humorous moment we get in many horror flicks.

The movie is definitely dark, with a creepiness that starts strong. There’s this viral video challenge online, and the object is to call the “people in the walls” in your house to come out to the real world.

In a tense opening scene, a teenager and her friend do it, and something does indeed come out of the walls and gets the friend.

The main girl and her family then move to a new house. Mom discovers a hole in one of the walls. The main girl meets a brother and sister in the woods who are determined to find a Wendigo they believe has abducted many people.

Instead, they team up to try to lure the people out of the walls in the main girl’s new house. The whole vibe reminded me of the 80s classic The Gate, only with a bit less excitement, although it does have some great moments.

This is definitely a lot tighter than the chaos that has ensued in more recent Crum brother movies, and the overall premise is frightening, with the thing that comes out of the wall seeming to actually be a Wendigo that takes over the bodies of people in the house. Also, the atmosphere is great, but we only get a few glimpses of what is coming out of the walls, so the movie never quite feels like it builds to a worthwhile climax.

FOR SALE BY EXORCIST (2025)

This film is a reminder that just because a movie is quirky doesn’t mean it’s funny.

It’s sort of a mockumentary about a real estate agent who does everything in her power to cleanse houses of spirits and demons before they’re sold. The whole movie consists of her doing interviews about her job in between visiting different houses to deal with their haunting issues.

There’s nothing in the way of connective tissues beyond that, so this feels more like a series of vignettes rather than a full-length movie. In fact, it feels like a low budget webseries that was strung together and labeled as a full-length movie.

Problem is, none of those vignettes are compelling, and the only time there’s any real “horror element” is in a final exorcism scene at the end—which is accompanied by a heavy metal band playing a full song for no apparent reason other than the fact that their performance appears to be what exorcises the demon.

The minimal highlights for me include the agent’s priest partner making a gay joke, a brief encounter with a gay leather gimp, and the fact that the film opens with a Halloween podcast and ends with a Halloween party.

However, the rest of the movie doesn’t take place on Halloween, so it’s not even a seasonal experience. More Halloween and funnier writing could have saved this one, because there are several segments that had great potential. I felt that the most interesting clients weren’t utilized to full advantage—like a gay couple at the beginning and a goth couple later in the movie.

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Getting ahead of Halloween

Posted on June 23, 2025 by Daniel

It’s not unusual for me to start plotting and planning new additions to my Halloween décor at this time of year, and the hubby and I have already done some shopping at the Halloween shop near us. So I was psyched to stumble upon three Halloween themed horror flicks on Tubi that I hadn’t yet seen, which are all getting added to the complete holiday horror page.

SPRINGSVILLE (2024)

This one is set up sort of like a horror anthology, but when you add all the segments together, it’s actually just a Halloween slasher that takes place in a town over a period of Halloweens.

Our host appears on color film to tell us about the downfall of the town following the disappearance of a young boy. He interjects with some commentary in between segments…all of which are shot in black and white with occasional red camera glare.

Essentially, every segment is simply a clip of the killer in a creepy mask getting another victim, always on Halloween.

The first segment takes place on Halloween 2009. A young boy alone at night is abducted. The segment quickly turns into a weird and moody reflection on the missing child. It definitely sets the tone for the rest of the film.

Most segments are pretty generic. The grieving father of the missing boy is killed. Two boys looking for their father in the woods are chased and killed. A police agent is killed in a hotel room. Another guy is killed when he finds a body in the woods.

The standouts are the last two segments. One feels like a mini-slasher in a record store, with multiple victims. The other is the finale, in which the killer chases and brutally kills trick or treaters. Awesome.

Like I said, it’s really just a basic slasher, with each kill sequence broken into its own segment. However, it does have a distinct tone and atmosphere, making it a good one to have on while decorating your house for Halloween. Especially due to the choice to film it predominantly in black and white. It’s definitely a vibe.

THE STALKING (2024)

Several years ago, I decided I needed to finally start avoiding most Mark Polonia horror flicks unless they featured some of my favorite content—like gay stuff, or, as in this case, a holiday theme. More specifically, Halloween, which made it perfect for this post. It is so rich with fall and Halloween spirit that it’s really the kind of comfort horror I need during this bummer of a summer I’m having.

And for a Polonia movie, it’s surprisingly hokey fun. The whimsical “scary” music even makes it feel like a family-friendly Halloween movie. Actually, there’s not much in the way of gore, the blood and kills we see are tame, campy, and often CGI, and there’s no nudity.
So what exactly is it about? Well…a killer sunflower. Sort of. There’s a whole lot going on in this festive, 73-minute movie.

The opening totally sets the Halloween tone, with rich fall colors and a witchy woman doing a ritual in the woods. However, her monologue in a witchy voice is way too long. The witches from Macbeth would be jealous.

It seems like her goal is to bring a vengeance scarecrow to life, but that doesn’t quite pan out. There’s also a “spooky” house that everyone is warned to stay away from, but the house never plays any significant role in the film, although I think it’s where the sunflower is growing.

We have a variety of random characters, and most of them end up by the sunflower at some point to be killed off by branches and roots. However, it’s not until there are only 20 minutes left that the sunflower takes on a kind of significant triffid form, and then only briefly.

If I had to pin down main characters, it would be a geeky dude and his friends, as well as a group of thugs that torments the geek.

As random people get killed off, we finally arrive at a big Halloween night bash the thugs are throwing. One thug that went missing comes back in a freaky mask, and she starts killing people. Then the sunflower takes over in its big triffid plant form, but only briefly before it seems to finally possess the scarecrow so he can do some killing. Don’t try to make sense of any of it.

The biggest let down is the grand finale. The geek doesn’t get to be a hero or anything like that. Instead, we hear the clock strike twelve (outside), and the whole spell is broken as a result. What a cop out!

HARLOW’S HAUNT (2022)

 

This was the dud of the trio for me. The 104-minute runtime did it no favors, especially since most of it is padded with dialogue drowned out by music due to a poor audio mixing job.

It starts with a 26-minute-long opener in black and white, which takes place in the 1800s to establish a barely fleshed out backstory. It’s literally all talk, and even Tubi got bored and tossed in a commercial break in the middle of the scene.

Next, there’s a looooong montage of the main girl just doing…nothing in the outdoors. Eventually, she meets up with two female friends and two male friends, and they talk until they finally arrive at a haunted attraction 62 minutes into the movie. Then it’s 6 more minutes of talk before they enter the attraction.

Shortly after, everyone gets split up and basically all the main characters are killed by a big creep with a sharp weapon in a matter of minutes. The minimal shots of the interior of the haunted attraction aren’t enough to add any atmosphere to this Halloween film, which offers absolutely no sign of the holiday beyond one of the girls donning flashing devil horns as her costume.

It really feels like a movie in which the writer came up with the twist ending first and then just filled time in order to get to it rather than make a substantial horror experience leading up to it. The meta “twist” is sort of clever, but even that falls flat and doesn’t deliver anything juicy.

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TUBI TERRORS: a demon, the dead, and a found footage flick

Posted on June 19, 2025 by Daniel

Even though I probably won’t ever revisit these three films, they each had their moments…in the moment.

BOOK OF THE DEAD (2024)

The intro scene of this indie definitely sets a tone—and raises expectations—with demon hands opening the Book of the Dead.

Next we meet four college students. It’s supposed to be 1988, but there’s no attempt here to capture the spirit of the decade, which is probably for the best, because that usually comes across as a really bad lampoon.

The kids head to a mansion for some sort of research project, and then spend the first 35 minutes of the movie talking. There is astoundingly little in the way of plot here.

Eventually, the geek of the group tells the story of the Book of the Dead, which is set to animated visuals…the most compelling part of the movie up to that point.

We finally get to dabble in some old school horror (and plenty of horror lighting) when the group finds the book, which then comes to life, bites one of the guys, and starts talking to them, warning them that a demon is coming for them.

There’s a hint of comedy as the crew preps to fight the demon, because they don’t have much else to do. There are some hints of Evil Dead, like shaky cam movement towards the mansion and one guy sort of turning into a Deadite after being attacked by the horned demon, but overall, this is a low energy flick with no thrills, scares, blood, or humor. Lots of potential to be playful homage, but it simply didn’t go for it enough.

NYCTOPHOBIA (2024)

Just when I thought the days of the most basic found footage films were behind us, someone was apparently inspired by the horrors of their youth and made a new one.

Nyctophobia is a fear of the dark. Who knew I’ve been suffering from the condition my whole life. Anyway, the film opens with two podcasters discussing a rash of mysterious disappearances of people from their homes. They acquire a videotape of a new case that happened to be caught on camera. So begins the actual movie.

Twin girls are celebrating their high school graduation with their male friend in their home. Also present is their mother and their dad, who has some sort of condition that keeps him in a daze—which you know means he’s going to end up standing in a corner staring at a wall like Deborah Logan at some point.
There’s a blackout, there are sounds outside, their neighbor, played by Dean McDermott, appears in their house bleeding from his eyes and says, “They’re out there. They tried to take my eyes!”

Soooo…they kick him out…

What unfolds is the usual found footage nonsense, with everyone running around in the dark with just a camera flashlight, which doesn’t reveal anything since we never see anything. There are monster sounds, and most of the characters are seen bleeding from the eyes at one point or another, which is always freaky. The eeriest moment in the movie for me is when one of the bleeding characters cries, “Are my eyes open?” Really captures the idea that blindness has taken over.

After the usual non-ending found footage ending, we hop back to the podcasters for a second ending in which they travel to another house where something is apparently taking place. There’s blood, but the final frame is total dullsville.

COLD BLOWS THE WIND (2024)

This one has the feel of a segment from a 1980s anthology expanded into a full-length feature. If I’m not reading it wrong, it also has a sort of tongue-in-cheek undertone right from the start and relies completely on characters making the oddest decisions, both of which add to the 80s anthology feel.

We are thrown right into the action. A straight couple that struck a jogger with their car arrives home with the jogger still alive in their trunk. The wife argues that they have to call for help, but the hot husband insists they can’t because they were drunk.

So…the husband stabs the poor jogger to death! They bury the body in a forest that gives off an awesome 80s vibe, then return home.

Pretty soon, indie horror queen Jamie Bernadette shows up at the door begging for help. They let her in and things get weird really fast. Jamie knows what they’ve been up to, and warns them of the dead coming back to life.

Before long, the dead come back to life. I can’t say it’s totally like the Evil Dead, but it has that same general setup, with the couple trying to keep the dead down, which has a domino effect.

There’s some nasty dismemberment in an otherwise tame film, and Jamie’s character is perfectly creepy, plus it sort of gets into Deadite territory as the plot progresses. Just don’t expect any of it to make sense in the end.

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

Posted on June 16, 2025 by Daniel

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

SUCCUBUS (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INCUBUS: NEW BEGINNINGS (2025)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on June 13, 2025 by Daniel

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

HOOK (2025)

 

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

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

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

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

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

POPEYE’S REVENGE (2025)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FAIREST OF THEM ALL (2025)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on June 11, 2025 by Daniel

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

HALLOWEEN CANDY (2025)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LEPRECHAUN: THE BEGINNING (2025)

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

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

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

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

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

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

FINAL RECOVERY (2025)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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