Hairy scary streaming selections

Posted on December 1, 2023 by Daniel

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

WOLF HOLLOW (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IT BE AN EVIL MOON (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 Hairy scary streaming selections

Taking a trip back to the Darkside

Posted on November 29, 2023 by Daniel

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

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

SEASON 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SEASON 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SEASON 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SEASON 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , | Comments Off on Taking a trip back to the Darkside

Road trip trouble at the end of the 00s

Posted on November 28, 2023 by Daniel

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

ROAD TRAIN (aka: Road Kill) (2010)

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

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

Then we meet two couples on a road trip.

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

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

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

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

FROM THE DARK (2009)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NECROSIS (2009)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Road trip trouble at the end of the 00s

Going back to where Silent Hill all began…Silent Hill

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Daniel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOSPITAL

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

SANITARIUM

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

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

THEATER

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

HOTEL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Posted in The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror, What I'm Doing With My Joystick | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Going back to where Silent Hill all began…Silent Hill

Directors doing the gay horror thing

Posted on November 20, 2023 by Daniel

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

BEFORE THE NIGHT IS OVER (2020)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LGBT: LETHAL GAY BUTCHER OF DEATH (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHEN THE TRASH MAN KNOCKS (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on November 17, 2023 by Daniel

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

BABY BLUE (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BLOODY FRICKIN MARY (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

6 WHEELS FROM HELL (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on November 15, 2023 by Daniel

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!

Posted on November 10, 2023 by Daniel

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

Posted on November 3, 2023 by Daniel

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

Posted on October 24, 2023 by Daniel

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