Directors doing the gay horror thing

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

BEFORE THE NIGHT IS OVER (2020)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LGBT: LETHAL GAY BUTCHER OF DEATH (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHEN THE TRASH MAN KNOCKS (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Directors doing the gay horror thing

TUBI TERRORS: a trio of horror comedies

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

BABY BLUE (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BLOODY FRICKIN MARY (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

6 WHEELS FROM HELL (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, Sound Check - The Songs Stuck in My Head | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on TUBI TERRORS: a trio of horror comedies

Season’s slashing: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve

With Halloween behind us, it was a treat to find movies covering the next three holidays while digging through my Tubi watchlist, all of which I’m adding to the complete holiday horror page. Let’s get right into them.

GHOST NOTE (2017)

This Thanksgiving horror flick had the opportunity to be a streamlined supernatural slasher with an iconic killer. Unfortunately, it instead opts on an overblown storyline that is drawn out, hurts the pacing, and dilutes the presence of the killer. Also, aside from a moment at the dinner table with everyone fighting, which is about as Thanksgiving as it gets, the holiday plays no part in the horror and is forgotten as soon as dinner is done (sort of like actual Thanksgiving).

The film opens in 1971. A Black jazz musician is abducted by a white guy and then tortured as the white guy preaches to God about casting out the evil. It would be easy to assume the white guy is a religious extremist racist, but the jazz musician makes it pretty clear that he is indeed evil and will be back to destroy the preacher’s whole family. Awesome.

In the present day, a teenage goth girl is forced to go to her grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving. It’s interesting to note is that there’s a mixed race family at the holiday dinner, but our jazz musician killer doesn’t play favorites and targets everyone.

This film clearly isn’t making a statement about race. They just made this Black dude an evil S.O.B. for no reason. They so could have just gone as anti-woke as it gets and called this movie Black Christmas.

Naturally the white guy from the beginning was the grandfather of the house and had stored some of the jazz musician’s belongings in the attic, warning the grandmother never to touch any of them.

Of course our main girl touches them. She also has a séance with her little cousins. And she gives an album of the jazz musician’s music to a record store owner, who plays the record backwards. Uh-oh.

This is where the film does the unexpected. Instead of the jazz musician simply being resurrected, it appears he possesses individuals for most of the movie…and pushes them to kill themselves! Yawn.

The killer does finally come out to play in the last twenty minutes, and he is so damn cool and menacing, with a cage over his head like something out of Thir3en Ghosts. But with so little time left to do much damage, he can’t really save the film.

IT CAME UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR (2020)

It’s a teen romance Christmas slasher nod to Scream that totally works, with likable characters, plenty of kills, a contemporary edge, a cool soundtrack, and loads of holiday spirit. You know a Christmas horror movie means business when it frames horror icon Michael Berryman in festive décor…

We meet our red-cloaked “Santa Slayer” killer in the opening death scene, and then we meet our charming main boy, who lives with his aunt since the death of his parents.

Maneuvering puberty along with his best female friend, he’s hoping to go on a date to a concert with the girl he really likes.

But the school bully and the return of the Santa Slayer after eighteen years are making just being a teenager a challenge.

After several kills, the main kid and his BFF are drawn into the investigation of the murders in a major way and realize they have to confront the killer to save the day.

There are plenty of nods to Scream, including several twists before the big killer reveal, and the climax at a Christmas party ups the body count quickly. It’s just simple, sleek, holiday slasher fun.

DANTE’S HOTEL (2023)

For years, director Anthony C. Ferrante was the king of SyFy movies, including the Sharknado films. Thankfully he’s still producing cheesetastic flicks, even if they’re harder to find thanks to the advent of excessive numbers of streaming services with bad interfaces.

Dante’s Hotel is perfect for your New Year’s Eve party viewing pleasure. AnnaLynne McCord is an event planner throwing a New Year’s Eve party in a high end hotel run by Ted Raimi.

Judd Nelson is a weird dude who actually lives in the hotel…on the entire 12th floor.

Most importantly, there’s a supernatural specter in an awesomely imposing Grim Reaper/Father Time costume handing out tickets for the VIP room, where individuals check in, but they don’t check out.

The death scenes are nice and gory, and it quickly becomes clear there’s some crazy supernatural element to these kills.

Before long, victims are coming back as ghost zombies! The plot just gets wackier as the film progresses, but it’s too much fun to care about the details. You need to just go with all the hokey horror elements.

The only dud in this movie is the actual party! It’s like they failed to hire enough extras to make it look like a total bash. There’s simply no energy at this shindig despite the pumping music. This movie will liven up your New Year’s Eve party, it’s just shame they couldn’t have shown the movie at the party in the movie…

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Season’s slashing: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve

STREAM QUEEN: Sequelized!

Weeding through my streaming service watchlists, I discovered several of the movies were follow-ups to other movies, so clearly a theme for a new post was emerging. Let’s get right into this mish-mosh of movies.

ANTHROPOPHAGUS II (2023)

A movie you never thought would get a sequel gets a sequel. This one goes for the baby eating in the very first scene to remind us why the original 1980 Anthropophagus is so infamous.

But where do go when you begin with the same idea that made the shocker conclusion of the first film so unforgettable? Worse gore and torture porn is all you’re really left with, and that’s exactly what you get.

The plot is basic—a teacher takes her class of female students to a bunker for their thesis. No cellphones allowed, and they need to sleep in the place for 24 hours.

As the girls make themselves comfortable, we are occasionally treated to gruesome scene of victims being tortured in a deformed killer’s lair.

Eventually some of the girls go missing, and the other girls go looking for them. That’s it. That is the plot. Just sit back, enjoy the very Italian horror lighting, and wait for girls to get abducted one by one and brutally mutilated and cannibalized. Nothing scary here. It’s all about the gross-outs.

MASK OF THORN (2019)

I always check out indie director Mj Dixon’s slashers, which are fun and simply throwbacks to 80s horror. This one is a sequel to Thorn from 2014 (also known as Legacy of Thorn), and it doesn’t add much to the plot of the first. So basically, in true 80s slasher style, it just brings in a new group of kids to kill off.

As a backstory to the main girl in this one, it begins in 1972 in a hospital, where our masked killer goes on a murderous rampage while his cult tries to abduct a patient’s newborn child. It’s sort of like the Thorn cult from Halloween 6 infiltrated Halloween II. There’s also a dude who looks like he borrowed Ross’s teenage years look from flashback episodes of Friends

The movie takes place in the 80s. A teenage girl and her friends break into a school to party, which comes complete with a dancing montage. What’s missing from the 80s slasher formula, however, is sex and nudity. Bummer.

The problem with this installment is that it’s an hour before the killer makes his presence known, but when he does it’s in a big way. The death scenes are violent, there are plenty of chase scenes, and the whole Thorn cult ends up getting in on the fun for the final act.

It’s all completely derivative, and this didn’t expand much on the Thorn legacy, but hey…we also didn’t need 12 Friday the 13th movies or 13 Halloween movies, yet here we are, always guilty of anticipating and hoping for more.

ALL HALLOWS EVE TRICKSTER (2023)

Is this an official sequel to the other All Hallows Eve Halloween horror films or just a cash-in on the name? My guess is the latter, but it doesn’t really matter to me either way, because this one is weird and trippy enough to stand on its own.

The IMDb description for the film offers more of a story for the wraparound than we actually get. What’s happening is barely clear, but basically a girl comes to a gas station and is apparently abducted and locked in a box by inhuman freaks that run the place. Granted we don’t see any of that happen, but the girl is suddenly in a box and forced to watch a television through a peep hole as the stories begin.

1st story – some kids bust into an empty house on Halloween to tell scary stories, and they each offer a different take on what became of the couple that lived there. What’s cool about this tale is that it’s presented as the kids being immersed in the action as unseen spectators.

2nd story – this is where we learn that this anthology has some unapologetically queer content, beginning with two cuties in this story making out in a car, which lands it on the does the gay guy die? page.

This is an open-ended slasher about someone in a very queer mask going on a killing spree on Halloween.

Not much of a story to tell, but the kills are so satisfying and gory. I just wish the film had indulged in its queer aspects to give us a substantial queer horror story.

3rd story – possibly my favorite tale, this one is about a mother who must feed victims to something monstrous in her basement. There’s even a nod to the inspiration for this  type of plot when the original Little Shop of Horrors is playing on a television. As with most of the tales here, nothing is explained or clarified in terms of narrative, so you just have to go with it and enjoy the awesome horror elements.

4th story – two cowboys meet a nun in the desert and are then suddenly thrust into a demonic situation.

5th story – the least exciting tale, this one has a dude ruining his former classmates’ lives by doing things like Photoshopping guys kissing other guys and then posting it online. It’s sort of a revenge story, but it’s quite flat.

6th story – the wildest and weirdest tale of the bunch, this is another favorite of mine. A sleazy dude harasses a girl singing karaoke in a bar. When he leaves he encounters a cyclops type of monster that…brace yourself…graphically gives him a rim job before fucking him with its monstrous penis. This is like something I would write in one of my Comfort Cove novels.

Finally, the wraparound has as unclear a conclusion as every story. It’s mostly just a look at all the freaks that dwell in a lair beneath the gas station. Also important to note is that despite the title, only a few of the stories specifically focus on Halloween.

SLASHFM 2 (2023)

Just like the first film, this anthology sequel features an unseen voiceover radio DJ as the host while festive Halloween scenes flash on the screen between episodes.

Despite him telling scary stories on Halloween, not every tale here takes place on Halloween…

1st story – This one occurs at Christmastime! I don’t know how they got away with this or why they even bothered, but this is basically a “remake” of Drew Barrymore’s opening scene in Scream, only it features meta references to that scene, with the killer virtually saying “Yo, bitch! I’m going to kill you Scream style! They even have the killer in the Ghost Face costume!

2nd story – although it’s irrelevant, this one takes place in 1983. It’s as basic as it gets, with a woman home alone when a group of freaks in masks invade. The masked intruders are definitely creepy, but there’s not much to this tale.

3rd story – in this attempt at a farcical tale, two straight-laced dudes use a murder machine on victims. This is another dud for me.

4th story – another tale with little story and no excitement, this one does take place on Halloween. A girl in her trailer home is terrorized by something we never actually see. Plenty of atmosphere here, but the payoff is a letdown.

5th story – I think this is the longest of all the tales, and as result it definitely has something meaty to sink our teeth into. Two dudes are posing as pizza delivery boys to get experience as serial killers, but things go horribly wrong for them when they deliver to a house where the kids have performed a satanic ritual and turned into demons. Awesome.

6th story – this one starts with torture porn and then becomes very stylized art house torture porn with no dialogue and loads of 80s Euro horror lighting.

7th story – this tale about a band entering a battle of the bands turns into a zombie outbreak. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough zombies for this one to really break out.

BRIDE OF THE KILLER PIÑATA (2023)

I’m a big fan of the original and even own it on Blu-ray, but seriously, this is a sequel we just did not need. The joke was taken to its limit in the first movie, and worse yet, this sequel runs an hour and 13 minutes long. What the fuck were they thinking?

It’s cool that the main girl came back, and the sequel gets credit for being very queer, but I struggled to sit through the whole thing. In between campy kills, the film keeps introducing quirky characters and creating backstories to fill the time. Sigh.

Basically, the main girl and her wife have the killer piñata, which just refuses to die, trapped in their basement.

A female piñata comes to life, helps the first killer piñata to escape, and they go on a killing spree.

For me, the best scene involves the little old lady shop owner from the first movie returning and getting into a funny fight.

But that’s not enough to have my OCD kick in, because I feel absolutely no urge to get this film on disc to have a complete Killer Piñata collection.

Posted in The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on STREAM QUEEN: Sequelized!

Masked killers and monsters

Wahoo! This is one of the most satisfying triple features I’ve watched in a while, delivering cheap horror thrills with no annoying elevation to get in the way. Let’s take a look at this trio.

PHANTOM FUN-WORLD (2023)

I’m a fan of director Tory Jones’s Halloween slasher The Wicked One in part due to its unpolished, indie look and feel, but I wasn’t loving the sequel or the follow-up film They See You.

He’s now back with a simple, sleek slasher that is tightly executed and perfect for anyone who just needs a basic slasher fix.

Years ago there was a major massacre at Phantom Fun-World, a sort of indoor amusement park.

It was closed down but is now reopening. Our main girl gets a job there, and then the killing starts.

We get a masked killer, loads of horror lighting, plenty of violent and gory kills using practical effects, a backstory about the first massacre, a brief appearance by Ari Lehman (the original young Jason Voorhees), a sex scene with a cute shirtless guy, a juicy chase sequence, and a big final battle.

This one has me looking forward to the next Tory Jones horror flick.

THE TANK (2023)

This is as straightforward as a creature feature gets. A man inherits a home in an isolated location from his deceased mother. He brings his wife and daughter to check it out, and they discover it’s a dump.

They also discover a trapdoor to an old water tank. So for no logical reason at all, the husband climbs into it.

And then he keeps going back to explore the depths of it…for no reason at all. See? Despite what conservatives will have you believe about the emasculation of men, they’re still pig-headed buffoons controlled by their toxic masculinity.

Eventually, something comes up from the tank. The first monster appearance isn’t until 40 minutes into the movie, and the body count is wicked low. Like two bodies low. More bodies and kills would have salvaged the first half of the film.


Is this what they didn’t show us in the movie Teeth?

Having said that, it is fun to watch the wife turn into the protector of the family, taking on the cool creatures in the final act, a sequence that really delivers and saves the movie.

THE CONFERENCE (2023)

It’s a campground slasher with adults instead of teens! Awesome.

Is there a storyline? Sure, it’s all about a company’s employee retreat and the building of a controversial shopping center. Sounds like a reason for someone to want to don a mask and kill off the company’s employees. Right?

None of that really matters, because this is all about the slasher elements from start to finish.

As the coworkers on the retreat delve into office politics (in their cabins), there are occasional, kick ass kills sprinkled throughout.

The death scenes are a blast. There are several chases, death by huge hammer, a hot tub kill, a unique zip line scene, a scalp peel, an awesome final fight, and even some man booty, landing this one on the stud stalking page.

The Conference is the perfect way to just shut off your mind and have fun.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Masked killers and monsters

TUBE TERRORS: dating apps, the dark web, and viral zombie vids

This trio of flicks from Tubi use our obsession with modern technology as a launching pad for the horror. So are any of these films worth diving into? Let’s find out.

SWIPERIGHT (2020)

The description of this movie on IMDb—a young man lures and kills girls through a dating app—is quite a stretch. There’s approximately one swipe right moment in this whole movie, which is more of a cabin in the woods flick that drags on for about an hour before anything of significance happens.

A group of girls heads to a house in the woods to practice for some sort of dance competition…which leads to several montages of them rehearsing to a “you are my taco” song without even a sign of tongue-in-cheek intentions…or should I say tongue-in-taco?

One of the girls replies to a dating app profile, meets a sleazy guy who lives nearby and uses a fly-covered shed as a slaughterhouse, and then hooks up with him! And then…she disappears.

It can’t be that obvious, can it?

While the other girls are tightening up their taco act and also partying with some boys that show up, they begin finding dead crows around. We also get flashbacks to a young boy with serious social issues who was locked away in a mental institution.

This film feels like it is trying way too hard to be complex, while simultaneously offering vapid actions from the characters. 66 minutes in, a killer in a ski mask starts stalking people, killing some, and keeping others alive in a lair.

The action feels chaotic, unplanned, and amateurish. For instance, the house is dark, and a girl runs upstairs while being followed by one dude. She treads carefully right into the arms of the killer…and the dude at the bottom of the stairs keeps his face turned from what’s going on just five steps away so he can act like he didn’t see or hear any of it happening. I literally laughed out loud.

Just when you think it can’t get any more tedious, the killer gives a long-winded monologue to explain everything.

THE DEEP WEB: MURDERSHOW (2023)

I remember back at the beginning of the 2000s when the internet was fairly young, and the “dark web” was ripe for crafting movies to strike terror into the hearts of those becoming hooked on the online world. Unfortunately, those movies failed to take advantage of the fresh new technology in a way that actually delivered a fear fest.

Over 20 years later, this simple little film, while in no way terrifying, at least offers some cheap thrills, a teen horror vibe, creepy killers in masks, and a sprinkle of torture porn.

A cute true crime podcaster begins to investigate the death of his sister, which leads him to…the dark web.

Turns out there is a site where people can anonymously pay good money to decide the torturous fate and death of victims on a live feed.

This isn’t a Halloween focused movie, but there is a random scene where we can see from the décor in the main guy’s house that it is Halloween time.

There are also a few brief encounters with gay guys, one being the main guy’s neighbor, the other being a fan.

The film moves at a good pace, with the killers stalking and terrorizing the main guy as he and his friends get closer to cracking the case.

It’s the last fifteen minutes or so that deliver on the fun horror, as the main guy and his friends end up in cages in the killers’ lair and get chased by psychos in masks with very sharp weapons.

It’s the final scene that delivers the biggest punch, making a harsh statement about law enforcement in our society.

FOLLOW THE DEAD (2020)

Despite the title, zombies take a back seat to everything else in this Irish film. The first zombie and bite aren’t until 55 minutes in—and there aren’t many more zombies after that.

The general idea is that a dude, his family, and friends from a small town are all basically modern day slackers who are so jaded by “fake news” and fake online videos that they don’t believe—or don’t want to believe—that there has been a zombie outbreak in the big city and that they’re going to need to take action in life if they want to survive it.

What we mostly get is a dramatic-driven character study with an undercurrent of humor from two of the guys, but that sadly never rises to the surface.

It would have brought this generally dull film to life. Also of note is that there is a Christmas tree and some Christmas lights in the family’s house, but the holiday is never referenced.

There’s also social commentary sprinkled throughout as the town becomes fractured by those who believe and those who don’t believe that there actually is a zombie outbreak and possibly the end of the world is near. Interestingly, this clash leads to a home invasion sort of final act, with some zombies thrown in for good measure.

It’s a curious approach to a zombie/home invasion/horror comedy/smart horror hybrid that definitely won’t be to everyone’s taste.

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on TUBE TERRORS: dating apps, the dark web, and viral zombie vids

Two more Halloween flicks for the 2023 season

Just when I thought I’d finished covering all this season’s scares, two more Halloween-themed horror flicks for me to add to the complete holiday horror page were released on VOD. They are currently both rentals, so you’ll have to cough up more than ten bux if you want to make it a double feature.

DARK HARVEST (2023)

 

On the surface, Dark Harvest may seem to be a standard creature feature with a monster that looks like a cross between Pumpkinhead and Sam from Trick ‘r Treat when he removes his sack. The creature, the bloody kills, and the Halloween atmosphere are definitely the highlights, but I think the story goes deeper than that.

However, the metaphor built into the story is easy to overlook because the concrete plot is all over the place. There are great ideas here for the legend of a creature that needs to be defeated each Halloween to save a town from ruin, but the details become convoluted and we are left doing a lot of head scratching at the end as far as that goes.

So what is the story?

It’s the early 1960s, and each year, groups of teenage boys are locked up and starved for several days until Halloween, when they are released onto the streets to hunt down “Sawtooth”, who rises from the cornfield each year. But this ain’t no Great Pumpkin. Sawtooth viciously slaughters any boy that dares go up against him.

If one of the teenagers is able to defeat Sawtooth, he becomes a town hero, is given a beautiful new car, and is allowed to escape the town for good, never to be seen again.

Truth is, as I, my husband, and our friends watched the film, we began to piece together what was actually happening and the details of how the legend worked–much more clearly than the film itself did! It’s like the writers were almost there but failed to fully explain what they were trying to present.

As a result, this action-packed movie is quite chaotic with a sloppy narrative. The creature confrontations rock, and these half-starved boys go pretty crazy. Their behavior gets into The Purge territory, making them just as much a danger to the town as Sawtooth.

Looking past its flaws, what this movie seems to be doing is making a statement about war, especially as it relates to the 1960s. Innocent young men with their whole lives ahead of them are being forced to fight a pointless war. The only way to get out of their hometown is to risk their lives, and their whole future relies on them surviving and becoming heroes. Some of them are terrified to fight and don’t want to participate, but they have no choice. They all wear masks to hunt Sawtooth, which is never explained, but it could easily represent the many faceless soldiers that are sent to war and die for our country without being known or remembered, especially considering most of the masks are skull faces, as if their fates are already decided.

There’s a bomb shelter scene that demonstrates how these soldiers are never truly safe while out on the battlefield.

And finally, and importantly, the film addresses another issue of war at the time…the idea that women, and in this case a Black female, weren’t allowed to serve in war…even if they longed to volunteer to fight for what’s right despite not being on a level playing field in their own country.

THE JESTER (2023)

After a series of short films that garnered positive attention on the Internet thanks to the iconic persona of The Jester, he finally gets his own full-length feature set on Halloween night.

As mysterious as he was in the shorts, his mystery motivation remains even more unclear in this movie. He appears on the street at night, where he will stalk an individual in an isolated location. Without speaking, he offers up a hand of cards for the person to choose from. I could extract a few different reasons why he was targeting certain people, but the reasons never seem consistent. On top of that, he will randomly kill people that get in his way in between terrorizing a specific person.

The focus is on a girl who loses her father at the hands of The Jester (but she doesn’t know that). After the funeral, she meets up with a sister she never knew…who had been abandoned by the father years before.

This is where the movie becomes fractured. The Jester relentlessly pursues the estranged sister on the street. At the same time, we get a lot of filler with the other sister hanging out with her friends and finally deciding to attend a Halloween festival with them.

The bulk of the movie has The Jester skulking around and harassing the estranged sister. It becomes so repetitive that he loses his mystique, causing the fear factor to plummet.

When he does occasionally kill someone, it’s fun and gory. In fact, the death scenes are so good that I was wishing The Jester had just gone around killing random people rather than focusing on a very limited number of hard targets. That worked in a short film, but we needed more from a 90-minute feature.

In the final act, the two sisters, who barely interact throughout the film, are suddenly thrust into The Jester’s sights. He really had it out for this family.

While it felt like we needed a fuller exploration of The Jester’s purpose, the movie definitely delivers on the atmosphere and the Halloween vibe.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Two more Halloween flicks for the 2023 season

A trio of horror films with Black leading characters

My latest marathon of horror films with Black characters in the forefront came from cable, Tubi, and Shudder. Let’s get right into them.

BITCH ASS (2022)

Ooh. Sexy title. Tony Todd introduces this film and mentions all the classic Black horror flicks, including his own.

The social message concerns not only the aftereffects of bullying, but the goal of a Black mother to help her son elevate his social positioning by going to school instead of running with the local gang.

The gang is led by Malcolm of sitcom The Neighborhood. He sends new recruits to break into a home as part of an initiation.

Turns out “Bitch Ass” lurks in the shadows, waiting to get revenge for the way he was bullied back in school. This killer’s M.O. is adapting classic games and puzzles into death traps and challenging his victims to a competition. My favorite is the use of a human corpse for a game of Operation.

Quirky with hints of humor, the movie also has some gory and brutal kills. It definitely doesn’t take itself too seriously. For instance, character cards appear on screen for the “vs. challenges” and get crossed off when a victim dies). As a result, it isn’t particularly scary—although the sets and lighting give off a creepy Saw vibe.

To add some interest to an otherwise repetitive, slasher-esque plot, we intermittently get clips that provide us with Bitch Ass’s backstory. Overall, I had fun with this one.

TRAP HOUSE (2023)

Another Saw-style flick, this one starts with a gory first kill scene and a Black detective discovering this case is personal for him.

The detective learns that some crazy shirtless dude in a gas mask is renting out space, catching victims in his web, and then moving on to a new rental space.

The detective goes undercover in the seedy world of drug dealers and worms his way into one of these trap houses with a bunch of drug heads. Awesome.

However, as sleazy and gritty as the plot setup is, and as gory as some of the traps are, this film felt too sleek and subdued to live up to its premise.

Not to mention, our leading man detective seems to take a back seat for most of the movie as everyone else is killed off.

Even the final battle with the killer is low key…and the shirtless nut doesn’t get enough screen time either, so his motivation and backstory are totally lacking. A crazy shirtless dude in a gas mask deserves to be interesting, and he’s just not. This dude just sits back and lets his traps do all the work, which is a bummer, because he’s creepier than all the traps combined.

THE ANGRY BLACK GIRL AND HER MONSTER (2022)

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster updates the Frankenstein and Pet Sematary concepts and sets them in a lower income Black neighborhood to wrap the horror in a hint of social commentary.

Queen Latifah’s daughter from The Equalizer stars as a super smart girl who goes to a special school, where she is treated differently for being intelligent, outspoken…and Black. Her father, played by Tyreese from The Walking Dead, has her back after she’s treated with prejudice by school personnel just the way we’ve seen it happening in real life on viral videos.

Now this is where you have to suspend your disbelief. This teenage girl not only steals dead bodies, but she somehow has a whole lab that no one knows about.

She believes death is a disease, and intends to prove it by resurrecting her older brother, who died as a result of gang activity, thereby curing him of death.

While the social structure of her town is developed for the first 45 minutes, the initial revival of her brother is underwhelming. It’s after she has a freaky nightmare about him that he goes on a killing rampage.

From that point on it is fun, he’s freaky, and there are some brutal kills. It’s just a bummer that the horror doesn’t kick in until halfway through the film, because he is a cool and creepy monster.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on A trio of horror films with Black leading characters

Indulging in three higher profile titles

Naturally I’m going to check out better-known titles in between all the awesome indie trash I watch, so it was time to catch up on a few newbies. They all had their moments, but only one was a winner for me.

V/H/S 1985 (2023)

This anthology series is getting more and more messy, to the point that each time this installment jumped to a new clip, it took me a while to figure out if we were in a new story, revisiting a story that hadn’t concluded earlier, or being thrown to one of the weird “commercial interruptions” that pop up in this excessive, two-hour long installment.

As far as I can tell, these were the stories:

1st – friends out on a boat while camping get targeted by a sniper. This one has some sort of paranormal aspect it seems, but no conclusion…at the moment…so it’s not immediately clear we’ve entered another story…

2nd story – especially since that story sort of becomes a wraparound. Scientists are studying someone in a lab, and this becomes a serialized story that we keep revisting.

3rd story – a Spanish story with English subtitles, this is about a crew trapped under a collapsing building. There’s some entertaining horror at the end when they discover what’s under there with them, along with the usual frenetic camera work to make it hard to see what the hell is going on, but this is a pretty cliché premise overall.

4th story – this is a quickie in which a woman doing a presentation on technology overtaking life is attacked by a virtual reality monster.

5th story – this one is connected to the camping story and sort of attempts to give us an understanding of who was targeting the campers and why, but it is just as inconclusive as its partner story.

6th story – the vicious and gory first-person kills are the highlight of this tale about a goth teen who claims he dreams about the murders before they happen.

The film concludes with that science lab wraparound, and at least it ends strong with a creature on the loose. My vote is that the next installment is called “V/H/S – Beta wars 1981.

TALK TO ME (2022)

This is how you do a throwback to the evil specter movies of the early 2000s while giving it a fresh twist. Combining Ouija board vibes with ghosts and possession, Talk to Me is fast-paced, frightening, brutal, and sad.

Our main girl is dealing with the loss of her mother when she goes with her best friend and the best friend’s little brother to a party. The unusual “game” they play involves siting at a table and holding a petrified human hand one of the guests just happens to have…um…on hand.

First you say “talk to me” to the hand. Instead of responding “talk to the hand”, the hand reveals a corpse sitting across from you. Then you say, “I let you in”, after which you are temporarily possessed by the corpse’s spirit…theoretically.

This fresh and freaky concept plays out with great suspense and tension, and while some might argue that it’s ridiculous that the kids keep doing it despite how disturbing and intense it is, it’s pretty clear that the trick becomes addictive and they can’t help themselves.

Things go terrible when the best friend’s younger brother decides to try it. You’re guaranteed to feel so bad for this kid, because it gets brutal. And when this movie wants to get nasty, it gets nasty, including a gross eye scene and an even grosser than gross foot sucking scene. That’s right. I’d rather see an eye removal than a foot BJ.

Our main girl has to figure out how to stop the spirits that begin terrorizing her. In the process, she just keeps digging herself into a deeper hole of horror. This flick is just awesome, and it even sends a message about putting suffering out of its misery.

THE BOOGEYMAN (2023)

This adaptation of a Stephen King story is an example of how not to make a throwback to the evil specter movies of the early 2000s.

The problem is the fucking lights. I felt like I was revisiting Sinister all over again. Turn on a fucking light! Lightless house settings are one of the laziest damn techniques for creating atmosphere.

We’re talking about a teenager (played by the young version of Juliette Lewis from Yellowjackets) and her little sister being terrorized by some sort of boogeyman that borrows from the Darkness Falls concept (there’s even a tooth stealing scene), yet they never turn on a damn light in their home when they think the boogeyman is hiding in the shadows.

For example, instead of turning on a kitchen light, the teen sister opens the fricking refrigerator. Another example is the little sister, who is already terrified, sitting in the dark playing a video game and then using the flashes from onscreen shooting to fend off the creature. Someone seriously thought this was clever and wrote it into a script.

Having said that, the CGI boogeyman…which is a four-legged creature, not a boogeyman…is pretty cool and finally sees the light in the final act, which is an action-packed extravaganza.

 

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Indulging in three higher profile titles

HALLOWEEN HORROR ROUND-UP 2023

Following up on my other Halloween movie post a few weeks ago, I think this is the only other one I need to do covering everything Halloween themed that I could possibly stumble upon this season to add to the complete holiday horror page.

THE MOUNT (2021)

I had so much hope for this movie when it started. An older, reclusive woman with her house all decorated for Halloween likes to scare trick or treaters.

She also intends to celebrate the holiday with a gentleman caller. My kind of cranky old bitch.

But then a group of weird kids pays her a visit. She is immediately relegated to being tied up in a chair and viciously tortured for the majority of the movie. Just like The Strangers, these kids don’t seem to really have a motive for terrorizing her, but in this case we see them just relishing tormenting her. They’re definitely more bizarre than the baddies in The Strangers, which adds an intriguing element to the film.

While much of what they do is gruesome and they are presented in a creepy, cultish manner, the tonal shifts often spoil the atmosphere, right down to a final knife battle set to militant, farcical music!

There was so much opportunity to make this a suspenseful cat and mouse movie, but that only shines through periodically in what is otherwise just a progression of these kids going more and more off the rails.

It was simply the compelling style of the film that kept me watching, hoping it would get better as it went along.

As a bonus, I watched The Mount 2 (2022). I don’t think it takes place on Halloween, but I’m not positive…because I’m not quite sure what’s going on.

Kids decide to visit the house from the first movie and have a total caricature tour guide in a wig perform a séance.

I believe it is supposed to be soon after what transpired in the first movie.

Pretty soon the original bad kids are back, more insane and bloodthirsty than before. There are hints of occult practices implied this time around.

However, the movie unfolds with numerous music and dancing montages interspersed with stalking and slashing scenes, and it starts to feel like an endless, artsy music video.

By the time a psycho chef came on the scene, I was over it.

THE WOODS OF PURGATORY (2018)

Considering it’s about a priest, this one has all kinds of religious metaphors. The priest is losing his faith and dealing with guilt after the death of his mother.

On his way home from a bar, he sees a girl standing in the middle of a deserted road, chases her, has an encounter with a satanic cult, and then becomes obsessed with possession.

Conveniently, one of his peers performed an exorcism recently, so he begins following the formerly possessed man. Perhaps the eeriest moment is when he witnesses the supposedly “cured” man suddenly suffer an abnormal spasm and let out a deep-throated noise while in public. Freaky!

That plot line aside, the priest is terrorized by the cult wherever he goes.

His priest buddy—a totally rad dude who loves Halloween and likes chasing girls—drags him to a haunted attraction, where things go very badly.

It’s a slow burn and a little convoluted, but I really like how Halloween is integrated into the story of a priest being pursued by a crazy cult that appears to be possessed.

It’s a unique twist on the usual cult plot.

THE CLOWN CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2022)

Turns out this low budget, 45-minute film was trimmed down for inclusion in the anthology Clowns of Halloween, which I cover in a post from several years back, so I won’t go into detail here. Just note there’s a Halloween party, a killer clown, nods to Halloween and Halloween 3, and a gay character.

ESCAPE ROOM: QUEST OF FEAR (2018)

This Russian film is almost two hours long, which works against it so badly for the first 75 minutes. At that point, when the crazy kills kick in, the whole tone shifts and I was mostly feeling it.

The “setup” is drawn out for no reason. One dude’s birthday is on Halloween, he receives an Ouija board as a gift, and he and his friends use it. There is absolutely no need for their Ouija session to go on for as long as it does.

At the same time, his parents go to an occult shop to get him a gift. Once again there’s a scene that just drags on forever, and this time it’s the store owner doing a Tarot reading for the parents.

The group of friends ends up at an escape room haunted attraction. We go on the tour with them as they escape one room after another, get split up, go looking for each other, and get chased by haunters in masks. Feels like the usual haunted attraction horror movie.

Then the killing starts. It’s brutality and blood galore, and the film gets this trippy 1970s insane asylum horror movie vibe, with that freaky style of music that goes right to your head, crazy camera work, psycho clowns, Saw-like sets, gut-munching cannibals, and practical gore effects.

The only thing that ruins the awesome atmosphere is the decision to throw in blaring thrash metal music during the death scenes. I don’t know why filmmakers ever choose thrash metal to serve as a “score”. I get that it implies chaos, but it always disrupts my immersion in a film.

RL STINE’S ZOMBIE TOWN (2023)

This is perhaps the biggest family-friendly Halloween letdown I’ve watched in several years. It simply isn’t charming enough, and the pacing is abysmal.

Chevy Chase makes a cameo in an opening zombie scene from a movie made in the town in the 1970s.

One of the first problems with this movie is that while there is Halloween décor, the film doesn’t take place in a quaint little community as these films usually do—yet the movie is called Zombie Town! This setting has more of an open, city vibe, which means there aren’t exactly lots of autumn colored trees around to beef up the holiday vibe.

On the bright side, the soundtrack has a good mix of songs, like “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us” by Sparks, “The Air That I Breathe” by The Hollies, “Pump It Up” by Elvis Costello, and “Rock Me Gently” by Andy Kim.

We learn the director of the film (played by Dan Aykroyd) is set to release a new film for the first time in decades. The main kid, who works at the local theater where it will be premiering, sneaks the girl he likes into the theater for a sneak preview of the movie before the event, which ends up unleashing zombies on the town (or city…).

Considering this is an R.L. Stine story, these aren’t flesh eating zombies. They instead do a little supernatural trick—their eyes glow and vapors escape from their mouths into the victims, who then become zombies.

The kids and Dan Aykroyd are then forced to run around their neighborhood trying to stop the outbreak, while determining what caused it.

There are some fun and funny moments, like their teacher-turned-zombie groaning “detention” instead of “brains”, and a suspenseful visit to a Halloween house party filled with zombie guests. And while the zombies might be deliciously disturbing for little kids (gateway movie, perhaps?), overall the movie misses the mark on humor, children’s scares, and Halloween spirit as compared to some of my faves like The Monster Squad, Hocus Pocus, and The Curse of Bridge Hollow.

It even tries to pull off an uplifting Spielberg vibe circa 1983 in the final moments, but it falls flat considering nothing that came before it calls for it.

THE PUMPKIN MAN (2023)

I always blind buy 80s throwback Halloween horror Blu-ray releases from Scream Team Releasing, and this year’s offering is a tried and true slasher theme—a pumpkin-headed killer. Yay!

In a small town, the legend of The Pumpkin Man still echoes, and they have a festival celebrating him every year. This year, however, a teen girl is so intrigued by him that she convinces her friends to help conjure him.

They had no idea it would work.

When the first victim turns up dead and the kids have nightmares of Pumpkin Man visiting them in their bedrooms, they realize they’ve made a huge mistake. Now they have to figure out how to send him back where he came from.

The Halloween and 80s horror lighting give the pumpkin man a great presence, and the death scenes are a treat, with all practical gore effects. Pumpkin Man even speaks with a novelty voice like Freddy Krueger.

There’s a montage at the festival’s haunted attraction, and most of the killings and the final act take place there. It’s nothing mind-blowing as far as indie slashers go, but it definitely has the holiday spirit.

Of note is the nonchalant diversity present here—the main girl’s mom makes a comment in passing about how she would be proud of her daughter even if she had a girlfriend, plus the Black female friend in the group has a white mother. As subtle as these aspects are, the anti-woke crowd will still probably lose its mind. I couldn’t be more thrilled.

This Blu-ray release also includes a 45-minute anthology of 6 holiday shorts from the director as a bonus feature:

1st story – takes a break from Halloween momentarily to give us a Christmas tale. A Scroogey businessman is terrorized by a creepy Santa. Great use of lighting to create the suspense in this one.

2nd story – back to Halloween. A guy buys Witch’s Brew coffee, not heeding the warning label. He goes all single-serve coffee machine when he should have made two cups, because he is immediately visited by a witchy presence.

3rd story – a demon that disguises itself as a trick or treater shows up at the door of a guy who hates candy corn. There’s a nice tie-in to the previous story, but it’s very confusing, because this guy’s house is decorated for Christmas!

4th story – a girl leaves a Halloween party and encounters a goblin…in a mask. Eek! This one is brief but brutal.

5th story – a girl goes through a haunted attraction in which one of the freaky creatures isn’t a guy in a costume. Another eek!

6th story – this is probably a short film that led to the creation of the full-length The Pumpkin Man movie. Witches conjure up The Pumpkin Man and are chased and viciously killed off. This is actually a faster-paced slaughter fest than the full-length feature.

HOLLOWHOOD (2021)

If only the creators of this indie had seen what it could have been if they had trimmed it from 106 repetitive minutes to a tighter 75 minutes, it could have been a campy queer Halloween horror comedy. Either way, it earns a spot on the homo horror movies page.

When her friends get together for Halloween weekend at a supposedly haunted house, a lesbian hopes it will be her chance to woo her ex back. For support, she brings her gay brother along.

What ensues for a majority of this film feels like a small group of friends sitting around, bored, trying to find something better to do, which kind of rubs off on the audience. The lesbian bickering and drama become tedious. Virtually the same dialogue about their failed relationship gets rehashed over and over.

Occasionally the friends go out walking on the streets and have encounters with individual locals—moments that have so much potential to be creepy but never quite nail it. There’s also a dancing montage in slow motion…a very slow montage even without the slow motion. Every aspect of this film just seems to linger on too long for no reason.

The performances are stunted and awkward, and the score is campy dramatic, but that all works to the movie’s benefit when the final act goes for the occult plot that was bubbling deep, deep underneath all along.

An hour and fifteen minutes in it’s finally Halloween.

There are costumes and decorations, and at last we get horror comedy action as the group of friends is terrorized by a cult, showing us what a campy, silly good time this could have been with stronger writing and major editing.

TOTALLY KILLER (2023)

This is the hit flick everyone is watching—and one I want on physical media asap. It’s not “totally” Halloween focused, but the plot centers around the fact that in the 1980s three teen girls were murdered at Halloween time. Plus, the final act takes place at a Halloween carnival event in 1987. Wahoo.

Speaking of the best decade ever, the soundtrack is so 1980s, including songs by Bananarama, New Order, Echo & The Bunnymen, Shannon, Chris De Burgh, and more. What’s significant about this song selection is that, unlike other 80s throwback movies that are at fault for anachronistic song choices, the songs here all come specifically from 87 or before—not from 88 or 89. Hey. Details like these matter to those of us who were there.

Our main girl is our favorite witch Sabrina, who is awesome in this film. Her mother is TV mom Claire from Modern Family, and her father is horror cutie Lochlyn Munro.

It’s Halloween, and decades after a trio of murders of high school girls, Sabrina goes to a concert on Halloween. While she’s gone, the masked killer strikes again in an awesome kill scene.

Sabrina ends up at a science fair and on a time machine her best friend made….that unexpectedly actually works and catapults Sabrina back to Halloween 1987.

For starters, Sabrina has to contend with the very culturally different times, which is a hoot, especially if you were a teen in the 80s. The way in which this movie is “woke” should appease the anti-woke crowd, because in a sense it pokes fun at how much harder it is to navigate the simple practice of saying anything out loud these days.

Sabrina also quickly befriends her teenage mother and father and the girls that are about to die and needs to stop the murders in order to change the events in her own present.

Reminiscent of Happy Death Day 2U, it’s funny and fast-paced, give us a slasher whodunit (which are lacking these days), the characters are likable, the meta jokes about Back to the Future and classic horror movies rule, there are great death scenes and action sequences, and there’s even a gay character at the very end. Totally Killer is an instant slasher classic.

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Living in the 80s - forever, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, Sound Check - The Songs Stuck in My Head, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on HALLOWEEN HORROR ROUND-UP 2023