Harvests and Axes

Posted on January 2, 2025 by Daniel

In my latest movie marathon, I was only disappointed by one choice from my streaming watchlists. Let’s find out which one and why.

BLOOD HARVEST (2023)

This 80-minute film is astonishingly uneventful and offers absolutely no chills or thrills. It’s like someone had a good idea for a plot but then didn’t figure out a way to make it unfold with any sort of tension or suspense.

There’s not much to say, considering not much happens. A woman, her two teen kids, and her second husband come to stay at her family home in a small town. The kids begin to suspect weird things happen in the town, in part because a man confronts them and tells them they should leave.

The kids find a CB in a barn and communicate with what sounds like a child, but they can’t extract enough information from the child to piece anything together. There are numerous flashbacks allowing viewers to know there were sacrificial rituals in this town…where there don’t appear to be any children. It’s Grown Ups of the Corn basically. I just don’t understand how life continues to go on in this town if they never let children reach procreation age.

Even so, that plot could have made this a terrifying ride for the two teens as they try to escape a cult of adults, but it’s really bland and over before anything actually starts to happen.

NIGHT HARVEST (2024)

Indie director Charlie Steeds’ movies rarely disappoint me, and this little slasher was another goody. It’s sort of like a Pumpkinhead concept with an actual pumpkin-headed killer.

The first scene is shot in black and white and has a farm family torturing and killing a goon who lives in the mountains after he commits a heinous act. It takes place on Halloween night, and the rest of the movie appears to be set in the fall, but this isn’t an official Halloween-themed horror movie, for the holiday is never mentioned again. However, the music used for the opening credits is clearly inspired by John Carpenter’s Halloween theme.

Next, a group of young people is traveling in an RV. They are soon being pursued by the police, because it turns out one of them has pyrokinesis and accidentally caused a devastating fire.

Just for the hell of it, we are introduced to the scarecrow-like killer in an awesome scene in which two young dudes make a pitstop in a cornfield to pee. There’s something almost gay about their connection, but they aren’t around long enough for us to really get a sense of any character traits.

In classic slasher style, the main group finds somewhere to crash for the night, has sex, and is stalked and viciously slaughtered by the killer. Awesome. If only there were more victims for a higher body count.

There’s no actual explanation as to why the killer came back for revenge, but he’s obviously supernatural, and he can also get inside the head of victims and make them see and hear things. It’s definitely an underdeveloped killer concept, but it’s fun purely for the slasher aspect, and of course, the main dude’s pyrokinesis comes into play for the final battle.

#CHADGETSTHEAXE (2022)

I’m not usually a fan of the most cookie cutter found footage films, which this essentially is even if it’s actually supposed to be a live stream, and I loathe obnoxious influencer movies, but this one worked for me simply because it had a few clever and unique death scenes. I just wish there had been more of them.

There’s a small group of irritating as fuck influencers (do people in real life actually enjoy the over-the-top shtick of these shallow people?), and their chronic need for attention leads them to Devils Manor, previously a home of a satanic cult that committed murders.

As they explore the location, split up, and piss on a pentagram they find on the floor to entertain the masses that keep them “employed”, we are subjected to all the viewer comments scrolling up the side of the screen. Ugh. The constant text posts don’t do the otherwise pretty good atmosphere any favors.

There are a few creepy death scenes, and eventually our leading man Chad finds himself alone and being chased by someone in a mask and hooded robe and carrying an axe. What’s so satisfying about the final act is that we get to watch one of these self-important influencers receive backlash…911 knows who he is and hangs up on him, and online haters cheer on the possibility that what they’re watching is real and that Chad is actually going to get murdered. Teehee.

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STREAM QUEEN: they came from Hulu, Prime, and Tubi

Posted on December 29, 2024 by Daniel

The latest trio of films I watched were plucked from three different streaming services, and it was quite a variety.

THE INHERITANCE (2024)


This Hulu selection is somewhat of a slow burn, and it’s not a terrifying experience, but I actually had fun with it.


A 75-year-old man assembles his estranged children together at his secluded mansion and informs them “something” is going to come for him that night, so he locks them all in the house to stay safe, an option that never ends well for anyone.

Naturally, these uppity siblings are at each other’s throats, but they try to play nice and go along with daddy’s delusions because of all the money they each stand to inherit.

Then something supernatural starts stalking, terrorizing, and killing the siblings. The first kill from the perspective of under the water in a pool is a perfect sequence to grab your attention.

There are plenty of suspense scenes, ghostly entities crawling from paintings Ringu style, a room full of creepy collectibles (including a huge statue of Pazuzu!), a dark twist, and best of all, someone actually asking another character in a horror movie, “Why are you sitting in the dark?” FINALLY.

DON’T LOOK AT THE DEMON (2022)

Ever watch a movie that just throws so much chaos and plot points at you that you get exhausted and simply go for the ride for the horror scenes? That’s how this one was for me.

Fiona Dourif plays a psychic medium in a group of paranormal investigators that also includes horror hottie Randy Wayne.

They head to a house to start investigating ghostly disturbances, and before long this turns into a possession film.

In Evil Dead fashion, the possession has a domino effect, hitting one person after another until it finally settles in a shirtless pretty boy. I was jealous that the demon was the one inside him.

We get loads of action, plenty of freaky and bloody horror moments, a nasty fetus extraction scene, and the unfolding truth of how Fiona’s character has encountered this demon before.

NOWHERE LAND (2022)

I’m a big fan of the indie flicks of the Crum brothers, so I was looking forward to this one. However, it ended up being their most disjointed venture yet.

Did you ever watch a movie, and you hear every word of dialogue and see every action of the characters, but you haven’t a clue what they’re talking about or what they’re doing? This is that kind of movie. Somehow, it keeps moving forward, but I have no idea why or how.

It has something to do with a kid’s TV show. A few barely developed characters set out to try to figure out what has happened to their children…I think. It appears they were mutilated by or possessed by something that comes out of the show. Again…I think. Not sure.

The characters bounce from location to location speaking with different people about the troubling power of the TV show, and eventually they start clashing with some visually awesome, hideous looking mutants. Unfortunately, it is just hard to grasp how these monsters are materializing as they do.

According to the IMDb description, “Children’s TV show puppets come to life, but take a sinister turn. Following the dark events unfolding as the initially cute puppets wreak havoc in reality”. I’d say the hard-to-follow composition of that description bleeds into the structure of the movie itself, because neither one is easy to comprehend.

I was intrigued by a brief flash of shirtless men looking as if they’ve been impaled on posts in Cannibal Holocaust fashion, but how it relates to anything else that happened in the film is beyond me.

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Three strung out animal movies, three different drugs of choice

Posted on December 27, 2024 by Daniel

Naturally, Cocaine Bear triggered a bunch of copycats, so I watched a marathon of three more. No, I don’t know why (but at least I didn’t subject my hubby to them). It almost wasn’t worth it, but one film saved this from being a total disaster. So, which one gave me the best horror high?

COCAINE COUGAR (2023)

This is bottom of the barrel jungle junkie horror. It runs 51 minutes long, has 10 minutes of closing credits, and perhaps five minutes of time-filling montages in between, including one really long one of rides at an amusement park.

A cougar escapes a lab, attacks a druggy in the mountains, busts open a bag of coke, and then attacks anyone who wanders by.

There’s red cougar POV, snarls that I’m convinced are the sound sample from Janet Jackson’s “Black Cat”, and a CGI cougar that looks like something out of a late 90s video game. It even floats off the background at times…like a glitch in a late 90s video game.

There are mostly off-screen kills with no cougar/human contact (probably because they couldn’t get the CGI cougar to stop floating above victims), but there is gay representation, with a dude heading into the woods to meet an online hookup.

METH GATOR (2023)

Despite jumping on the whacked-out wildlife trend, Meth Gator offers absolutely no humor, so the meth eating aspect is irrelevant. It’s simply a “giant gator terrorizes a small community” movie, giving this a very 2000s SyFy movie vibe.

It opens with a drug bust in the wilderness. A bag of meth falls into the water, and what alligator can resist a bag of meth? He gobbles it down and immediately gets red-eyed.

This one takes place in hillbilly land, so our Black sheriff has to contend with lots of American flags and white trash while he and his team search the swamps for a hidden meth lab in order to break the gator’s addiction. He’s even forced into a slap fight with a redneck.

The gator looks pretty cool despite its CGI construction, and there are plenty of irrelevant characters thrown in just to serve up dinner for the gator and blood splatter for us. Yay!

The only downside to this paint-by-numbers movie is that despite the mayor demanding that the big parade coming to town not be canceled, there’s no parade massacre! What the hell?

CRACKCOON (2024)

If I have to watch an indie cash-in on Cocaine Bear, this is the one. This sleazy, bloody, silly, crass, low budget flick nails it, and is perfect for a watch party. Best of all, it has a gay hero of sorts!

It does its trashy tone right, with loads of rednecks and druggies being taken down by a raccoon puppet thrown at them from off screen. There’s comedy, sex, female nudity, some toilet humor, and plenty of practical gore effects with buckets of blood. The raccoon puppet is an evil looking bugger that resembles a baby version of the American werewolf in London.

So, a gay drug dealer starts selling a new drug to his customers (blame it on the gays), and immediately they turn into infected with yellow eyes, foaming mouths, and violent urges. I was feeling it and momentarily wished that this wasn’t going to turn into a drugged-up raccoon movie.

Thankfully, the raccoon is a blast, and I quickly forgot about the infected people…and so did the movie. Once the raccoon shows up, it’s a fast-paced streak of people being devoured.

There’s even more than one gay guy in the movie, and one of them helps take down the raccoon in the end, landing this film on the does the gay guy die? page.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: from the 50s, 60s, and 80s

Posted on December 26, 2024 by Daniel

These three were all blind buys for me. I’d never seen any of them before, and only one disappointed.

ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES (1959)

This creature feature came as a double feature with my Blu-ray upgrade of Night of the Blood Beast. It’s another lost treasure that is clearly a precursor to so many tried and true tropes of horror to this day. It’s an absolute gem, beginning with the awesome old school horror organ music and a fisherman in dark, murky waters at night when he spots something horrific in the water.

Quite contemporary in presentation, it has a sexy as hell cop with a furry chest on the case as people go missing, a slutty bombshell who is cheating on her slovenly husband with a hot young man, and some eerie underwater segments with the giant leech monsters.

Rather than killing victims, the leeches bring them to an underwater lair, where they then suck the blood out of them, slowly draining them of energy in the process. Eek!

There’s a scene of dead bodies floating to the surface (awesome), an underwater rescue mission to find survivors, and a plan to take out the leeches once and for all. Perfect.

EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1960)

 

While it’s not terrifying by today’s standards, if you watch this French film within the scope of the year in which it was released, it will shock you that the movie goes where it does and is as graphic as it is. It is so clearly the precursor to so many horror movies we’ve been treated to since.

The story is simple if not somewhat slow. A mad scientist is delving into transplanting organs…and skin. His daughter’s face was terribly disfigured in a car accident, so he keeps her hidden away and wearing a mask until he can perfect face transplants. He also rewrote her accident as a disappearance.

Now, his devoted assistant lures young women to his isolated home so that he can attempt to peel off their faces and transfer them to his daughter’s face. And he does, in graphic detail. I really can’t believe this movie was allowed to be released in the early sixties.

While the daughter’s mask is creepy and “faceless” for good reason as she lurks around her home and father’s lab trying to learn what he is really up to, just like Frankenstein, the scientist is the real monster.

Meanwhile, there are detectives closing in on the truth.

The concept is truly horrific when you realize that not only is the daughter suffering from the loss of her face, but she is also being re-traumatized each time a transplant fails, further damaging her fragile psyche. Naturally, the only recourse is for her to stop the madness. By today’s standards this might seem like a cookie cutter concept, but this one actually made the mold and is a must-see for those dedicated to horror history.

VENOM (1981)

This is one you definitely don’t want to blind buy, even if you are obsessed with 80s horror as much as I am. This is possibly one of the weakest “nature strikes back” flicks of the era, despite starring both Oliver Reed and Klaus Kinski.

They are part of a trio that plans to abduct a boy from a wealthy family. However, due to a mix-up at the pet shop, the boy brings home the wrong snake…a deadly one that immediately gets out.

This all happens so quickly, as does Reed panicking, shooting a cop outside, and leaving us with a movie about a trio of kidnappers trapped in a building with a deadly snake slithering through the vents, complete with snake POV.

Much of the time is filled with conflicts between the kidnappers and the police plotting how they are going to infiltrate the building. There is very little in the way of snake attack action. It’s a total bore. And naturally, there’s a cliché, hatched egg final frame. Yawn.

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These human monsters are like fish out of water

Posted on December 23, 2024 by Daniel

They morph with humans and become blood-thirsty creatures! Awesome. Let’s get right into this feeding frenzy.

CROCODYLUS (2023)

Half-man, half-croc? I’m in! On top of that, Crocodylus opens with first a lesbian couple then a little boy getting attacked! Now that’s how you start a hybrid human-croc party.

No one cares about the lesbians, but a search is immediately on for the little boy. A team of experts is assembled to determine what the threat is. The mayor doesn’t want to close the lake for the holiday weekend. You know the drill.

There’s also some lore introduced about how the Crocodylus came to be, and I think it’s more nightmarish than the Crocodylus main storyline, which is basically similar to any SyFy original plot from back in the day.

The movie, sadly, doesn’t show the creature until the last four minutes, and it’s only briefly. Plus, the kills are all off-screen, with just blood splatters coming into frame. Good news is the “director’s cut”, as it’s labeled on Tubi, is only 70 minutes long, so the pacing is pretty good. Unfortunately, the big climax is not so big. It’s really anticlimactic.

The one funny part of the movie? The missing boy’s last name is Dingle, so everyone keeps referring to him as “the Dingle boy”. All this trouble just to locate a dingleberry?

CROCODYLUS: MATING SEASON (2024)

How do you fix a franchise about a human-croc hybrid after the first film was underwhelming? Make it an all-out comedy creature feature with plenty of scenes featuring the rubber suit creature.

Two connect the two films, one guy from the previous movie appears in the opening attack, where the farcical tone is immediately established.

Next, a woman hires a private detective to find her brother, who she’s convinced has become a Crocodylus. They become somewhat of a comedy team, and the countless kills are pure camp. Love it.

The Crocodylus even ends up in a bra at one point, there’s monster mouth POV, there’s a shirtless hottie, there’s a slapstick sex scene, there’s a kooky scientist, and there’s a tag after the closing credits that promises a sequel…and it looks like it might be Crocodylus vs. Bigfoot. I’m so there for it.

BAD FISH (2024)

This indie effort is another water creature/human hybrid movie, and it has a trippy, Dagon-like vibe to it, so I kinda liked it.

After a drunken fisherman says his crew was attacked by something inhuman and body parts start washing up on the shore, an investigation is underway.

There’s a mermaid angle to this one, but it’s really about a human-fish legend and a sort of cult protecting the creature’s existence, culminating in a nasty cannibalism/sex scene. Eek!

We once again get an awesome rubber suit monster, and the ending is quite dark, twisted, and satisfying.

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TUBI TERRORS: masked killers!

Posted on December 20, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a trio of slashers flicks, and I had a major favorite. Let’s find out which one.

BAD CONNECTION (2023)


This is the kind of simple stalker/slasher fun I needed in my life right now. Bad Connection is a blast, with a nonstop chase, a sinister masked killer, a determined main girl, and plenty of blood and violence.

After a douchebag customer ruins her phone, a waitress is gifted a new one by her sexy boyfriend. Actually, it’s not a new one…it’s used and hot off the street because they’re broke.

The main girl discovers a video on the phone of a woman being murdered. Within minutes, a masked killer starts relentlessly pursuing her through a seedy side of town for the remainder of the film. Awesome.

There are plenty of victims to hack up along the way, great suspense scenes, an appearance by scream queen Tiffany Shepis, and Perez Hilton in a minor role as a gay doctor (landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page).

The only real miss in this film is the silly final frame scene. It’s just so derivative and pointless.

KILLER INFLUENCE (2024)

Yet another slasher that relies on the lowest common denominator of current trends…influencers gathering together in a house to get hacked up. I just want a movie where someone kills every influencer through some sort of computer program so we can be done with this era of societal obsession already.

It’s almost an hour before the killer actually kills someone. Until then, a group of multiple female influencers and one male influencer deal with relationships (mostly the main lesbian one), body image issues, and the pressure of being successful by creating the shallow-assed content that people crave these days.

We do get one sex scene with plenty of tits (because it’s a lesbian sex scene), and the group sits in a room full of candles and tells some scary stories. The weird thing is, the girl hosting the party promises it’s going to be the scariest night of their lives, but there’s no pay-off to that promise. I mean, were ghost stories the most creative thing an influencer could think of to entertain and scare viewers? It feels like a whole crucial part of this party is just completely missing.

The real theme here is that influencers have to be really careful of revealing their location because stalkers exist. Yep, that’s it. The masked killer shows up, and in the final act kills a bunch of them, has a body count party, and then chases and fights the final girl. There’s no killer reveal, and no specific motivation.

If you must watch, I’d suggest just hopping over to the fifty-minute mark and starting from there…or a little earlier if you like lesbian sex.

GO AWAY (2024)

I was so excited when this one started at a family Christmas party. But alas, only the opener takes place at Christmas, so this isn’t a holiday horror flick. However, the first sequence has some great low budget charm, with masked home invaders tying up victims and forcing them to decide who dies. It’s a backstabbing hoot, so to speak.

The main focus of the film is a guy going with his girlfriend’s family. Tuesday Knight plays the mom, and Felissa Rose plays the loud-mouthed aunt, providing plenty of mean-spirited humor.

There’s family drama and infighting for a while, discussion of a bunch of murders years before, and a hot bear shirtless in a sex scene.

42 minutes in, there’s a very cool intro to the home invasion. There are knocks on numerous doors all at once. Eek!

Masked invaders bust in, and the killing begins immediately. All I’m going to say is that my three favorite people in the movie all die first. WTF?

After that, the killers release the rest of the victims and force them into a cat and mouse game, promising that if they can get away, they live. The tone of the film shifts, with none of the over-the-top tone presented earlier.

The gore is really good, but there’s not much in the way of suspense or tension, and the low budget look and feel doesn’t allow for much atmosphere. However, despite it being an underwhelming home invasion flick, there are several twists that keep things interesting.

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Backwoods horrorthon

Posted on December 18, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a foursome of fright flicks in the forest, with masked killers, unmasked killers, vampires, and Bigfeet. Let’s get right into them.

WOLF MOUNTAIN (2022)

This is a really uneven slasher. A young man is struggling with suppressed memories of what happened to his parents, so his therapist (played by Tobin Bell) recommends that he return to the spot where they fell off a cliff.

He, his brother, and their friends head into the wilderness. One friend happens to be played by Matt Rife. You’ll be shocked to know he plays a douchebag. His versatility as an actor is amazing.

Meanwhile, Danny Trejo and some other dude are a couple of criminals traipsing through the woods. Trejo is also the first murdered.

The main group has a run-in with some park rangers, including one who is supposed to be some sort of comic relief, but his shtick, while funny, is totally not in keeping with the tone of the rest of the movie.

It takes a while for the kills to kick in, but once they do, they are about the only upside to this weak flick. The cast spends lots of time walking around the woods, we only see the killer’s mask fleetingly, and despite falling off a cliff during the final confrontation with the main guy, the killer (who is a mere mortal) somehow comes back for another sequence at the end…completely unscathed.

ANOTHER CABIN IN THE WOODS MOVIE (2024)

Based on the title, you’d think this was going to be an over-the-top slasher comedy spoof. That isn’t the case. Virtually the only comedy and spoofing here is that if you pay attention, there is often a television or a radio on in the background, and the dialogue or song lyrics are literally telling you exactly what cliché is about to occur in the movie.

Unfortunately, the slasher aspect of the film isn’t all that thrilling either, despite good production values and some bloody kills. Predictably, a group of friends goes to a cabin in the woods, this time for a newlywed celebration.

They meet the weird old caretaker (of course) and actually invite him to party with them. Another apparent joke has his voice going from normal to demonic every time he speaks, and no one seems to notice. Don’t expect it to hold any significance, because it doesn’t.

Instead, the movie plays out with the usual tropes. There’s infighting, couples have sex (yay!), they split up, people begin to disappear, etc. We never see the killer, and there’s no mask.

Once we find out who the killer is during the final battle, there’s a twist that requires basically the whole movie to be recapped in flashbacks for it to make sense. Eh.

VAMPIRE LAKE (2024)

I can’t believe this film comes from the director of Midnight Screening, which had some standout moments for a low budget slasher. Vampire Lake is just void of anything engaging.

A couple of women and teenage girls are having a girl weekend at a cabin in the woods. They mention a legend about summoning a vampire by the lake. After lots of talk, one of the teenage girls finally heads down to the lake alone and does the ritual.

40 minutes in, the vampire appears to her. No atmosphere here since his appearances are always in the daytime. Not to mention, he’s not all that menacing. The characters spend the rest of the film running around the woods. The most blood you see is dripping from the vampire’s mouth and occasional on a victim’s neck.

Despite the film being flat with no onscreen horror to speak of, the ending twist is clever. I only wish it had been attached to a better movie.

FEET OF DEATH (2024)

If this Bigfoot film had been about 80 minutes long instead of 105 minutes long, I probably would have enjoyed it more. Not even several bearded rednecks in uniform helped kill the time. I prefer my bearded rednecks in uniform when they’re all action, no talk, but it’s the opposite here.

It opens strong with a young woman finding a missing influencer dead in the woods. Then a park ranger grieving from the loss of his woman has to get himself together to investigate with the local sheriff.

Seems there have been numerous cases of people getting attacked or going missing in the woods, and legend has it that Bigfoot is the culprit.

Do not expect any major Bigfoot thrills. This is basically a mystery movie, with the lead characters investigating the murder by speaking to various “experts”, including an animal behavior expert, a coroner, etc.

The final act is where all the fun happens. There are several twists, and while they are goodies, I’ve actually seen them in other Bigfoot movies, so it’s nothing new. There’s some very brief Bigfoot action, but the plot takes a final turn that is so not a happy ending, and I just love that kind of thing. This movie simply needed more Bigfoot attacks and less talk.

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DIRECT TO STREAMING: three more from Louisa Warren

Posted on December 11, 2024 by Daniel

It was time to catch up on some of the latest releases from prolific indie horror director Louisa Warren, and I found these three on streaming services, so let’s check them out.

RETURN OF PUNCH AND JUDY (2023)

This is not a sequel and goes by both the “Return of” title and simply “Punch and Judy”. Either way, it’s one of Warren’s more throwaway films, and the Mr. Bill vibe I was getting from the manual movements of the puppets gave me a giggle.

The plot is really simple. A grandmother tries to bury a box of evil puppets but falls ill in the process. She’s dragged back home and dumped in bed so the family can throw a birthday party for her adult granddaughter. They also bring the box of puppets back home without telling grandma.

The granddaughter’s friends show up. The puppets come to life and start lurking around the house killing guests by stabbing them and chewing on them. The sound of the chewing is so cartoonish it made me chuckle every time.

It’s sort of like the Puppet Master movies with no budget puppets, but I feel like the film should have just leaned into the campy possibilities instead of taking itself seriously. It also should have delivered gorier, unique deaths. The only standout (aside from the old blow dryer in the tub trick) is one victim having her eye gouged out.

Unless you’re a completist of Louisa Warren’s output (not sure if I’m the only one), you could probably just skip this one.

OUIJA CASTLE (2024)

Having just covered Warren’s flick Cinderella’s Curse, I’m kind of surprised she made such a similar movie in the same year. However, I think Ouija Castle is an even juicier, meaner-spirited, gorier flick that creates its own unique, hybrid fairy tale instead of specifically adapting a classic.

This scary storybook tale has the usual—a handsome prince, an evil witch/queen, a femme fatale princess character, and even a big ball.

The prince of a royal family is in love with a princess, but the evil matriarch of another family intends to get control of his kingdom by having him marry her daughter instead.

So, this witchy woman and her daughter lure the princess into their home and poison her. She falls into a deep sleep, and then the prince keeps her perfectly preserved in bed, hoping for her to revive…considering she’s pregnant!

What unfolds is a kingdom of evil fuckers doing awful, vile, and violent things to each other. But the real horror occurs when the princess awakens and is mutilated by the evil queen and her daughter in hopes that the prince will never desire her in such a horrid state.

So, the princess summons a faceless, demon fairy godmother figure using a Ouija board (the reason for the terrible title).

The demon fairy godmother gives her a mask to hide her hideousness and sends her off to a ball to get her revenge on all those that have wronged her. It really is an oddly cookie cutter version of Cinderella’s Curse, but both movies rock with practical gore effects, and they make for a great, grisly fairy tale horror double feature.

LEGEND OF LIZARD MAN (2023)

I love me a campy, rubber monster suit creature feature throwback to horror flicks of the 80s, and this one is cheesetastic with one major flaw—it’s nearly 2 hours long for no good reason.

The film opens with a family’s car breaking down on a deserted road at night. We get neon colored monster POV from the woods, along with hilarious POV from inside the monster’s mouth, complete with cheaply drawn teeth outlines.

We are then bombarded by excessive clips of news reporters, podcasters, and everyday folk talking about the legend of the lizard man, just one of numerous segments that are unnecessarily long.

Next, we meet a group heading to the swamps to investigate the legend. A pitstop at a convenience store is the next overlong segment, with the kids talking to a store clerk who is cashing in on the infamy of the legend. They also have a run-in with a redneck, as is required in every movie in which city kids head into the woods.

Another long segment involves the group around a campfire and their encounter with a supposed park ranger named Ed Gein. Seriously. However, he has no disembodied vaginas to offer—just another long monologue that drags down the pacing.

56 minutes in, the kids start getting attacked by monster mouth POV, but there is one highlight featuring a classic monster silhouette outside a tent. This scene also delivers an actual monster attack finally.

After several more kills, the group of kids encounters a survivalist in the woods who has been hunting for the monster for years…which leads to another excessive monologue. Argh.

There’s a final fight with the creature, and if I’m not mistaken, for some reason its fleeting rubber suit appearances shift to a fleeting CGI appearance suddenly. I would have taken even more CGI monster if it meant replacing the pace-killing dialogue with horror action sequences.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: it happened in 1971

Posted on December 10, 2024 by Daniel

This is an influential but forgotten trio of flicks I bought on Blu-ray that ironically all came from 1971, and one of them has some homoerotic content, landing it on the does the gay guy die? page.

FRIGHT (1971)


I imagine this overlooked film was some of the inspiration for movies like Black Christmas, Halloween, When a Stranger Calls, and Trick or Treats. I’d never seen it before picking up the new 4k release, and I’m glad I did, mostly because of how obviously influential it was.

It opens in dark, misty woods at night as a pretty young woman walks to a babysitting job in the middle of nowhere. She’s just asking for it. Get a damn taxi or something!

Once at the house, she does some conversing with the couple before they leave. They give each other shifty-eyed looks, and the wife gets uncomfortable when the husband references ghosts.

No, it’s not a ghost movie. Not literally.

Once the babysitter is alone, we soon see someone lurking outside.

The babysitter’s boyfriend visits…at least I think he is her boyfriend. She’s a dick to him because he keeps trying to scare her, but he learns his lesson soon enough.

This isn’t really a stalker film or slasher. It’s more of a home invasion film. There are several atmospheric moments of the babysitter being spooked by sights and sounds, and in between we keep getting scenes of the couple out to dinner, which are included as an avenue to eventually reveal to us who the stalker is.

The final segment of the movie focuses on the babysitter being terrorized by the stalker. There’s no mask or anything, but he doesn’t need one because he’s creepy as is. There’s even a really effective, understated assault scene that completely drops any audio cues. Quite unnerving.

I didn’t love the final few minutes much. We’re taken out of the “alone with a psycho” setup as police arrive for a standoff. A rather disappointing finale, although it does have a dark tone.

I DRINK YOUR BLOOD (1971)

Two years before Romero’s The Crazies and six years before Cronenberg’s Rabid, this infected movie was slapped with an X rating. Don’t get too excited…it’s pretty tame considering some of the things we’ve seen in the 6 decades since.

Thankfully, the jazzy 70s score that ruins the early part of the film is replaced by that more trippy, early 70s horror music sound later on, but that doesn’t help make the film scary. It’s fairly bland.

The basic premise is that violent hippies invade a nearly deserted town, rape a young woman, are then tricked into eating pies injected with rabid dog blood by the raped girl’s young brother, and then become even more violent!

There’s lots of dismemberment and that tomato soup color “red” blood that was used in movies of this era, and the infected hippies foam at the mouth, but there’s no biting or cannibalism. Which begs the question…how do they start spreading the infection? I’m guessing it’s when a group of construction workers rapes one of the infected hippy women (not shown, but implied).

Horror queen Lynn Lowry has a bit part as one of the infected, but that was the only familiar face here. Other than that, the only thrilling part is when the infected hippies invade the bakery where the pies were made. It’s also the funniest, because they also “knock down” an entire wall that appears to be made of some sort of flimsy cardboard material. My favorite infected hippie is one that laughs maniacally while swinging a machete and a decapitated head. He could have been the lone killer in a much freakier movie.

For a slightly darker and more satisfying ending, you’re better off watching the slightly longer “director’s cut” instead of the “original X-rated theatrical cut” on the Blu-ray.

BLUE SEXTET (1971)

Included on the same Blu-ray release as I Drink Your Blood because it’s from the same director, this bizarre film plays out mostly like a whodunit, as a group of friends gathers together to talk about their recently deceased friend and ponder how he died.

A sexploitation flick at heart, it continuously flashes back to events leading up to the death of the friend, including one wonderfully perverse orgy scene of varying sexualities hooking up, with two hot dudes even wrestling in their undies.

However, there’s one nightmarish segment, which is why I’m covering this film.  It’s supposed to be footage shot by the deceased, who fancied himself a filmmaker, and it features this deformed ghoul in a hooded robe doing some sort of cult ritual with a naked woman tied down.

He bites on her nipples until she bleeds, and we get that warped, psychotropic visual and audio vibe that’s so indicative of early 1970s horror, drenched in red light. I wish the whole movie had been built around this haunting moment.

In the end, the movie leaves us guessing as to what happened. Was it a drug-induced accident, a suicide, murder, or was this group of people actually dabbling in the occult? The sudden upbeat, celebratory ending is so jolting and bizarre.

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Of females and frights

Posted on December 6, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a trio of flicks about girls getting into scary situations, but I wasn’t fully satisfied with any of these. Let’s find out why.

LET’S SCARE JULIE (2019)

We’ve scared Jessica to death, now it’s time to scare Julie! I have to say, I really liked a lot of what this film had to offer. In fact, there’s only one aspect that limits its ability to deliver any scares—it’s one of those movies that is mostly shot in one take, which means the camera must stick to a set location instead of following different characters as they split up.

There’s a group of girls having a little party in one girl’s bedroom. I really liked the group of girls here. Their interactions feel very natural and genuine. The girl who lives in the house tells a creepy story of the neighbor woman, whose father disappeared under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind nothing but a photo that was taken of him from behind. This isn’t a found footage film (although it has the same vibe due to the single take approach), but that final photo detail is reminiscent of the “standing in the corner” plot point of the Blair Witch legend.

Anyway, the girls decide to scare the mysterious woman next door. One by one, they head over to the house…and never come back. We’re left with a growing urgency to know what’s happening over there, wherein lies the problem. We don’t get to go with any of them, which leads to a majority of the film focusing on the reactions of the girls who haven’t ventured over to the neighbor’s house yet. On the one hand, that adds to the suspense, but on the other hand, it becomes repetitive.

However, things do eventually narrow down to one final girl, so it is then that we get to follow her to the house for some creepy moments accompanied by orchestral stingers to up the scare factor. The final frame, however, definitely gives big time found footage vibes, with us never actually seeing what the fate of the girls has been all along, a mystery amplified by a simple off-screen scream. Sigh.

Of note is that, whether intentional or not, the movie most definitely makes a statement about girls having their fathers in their lives.

THE CURSE OF THE NECKLACE (2024)

This one mashes up several familiar subgenres of horror, which is about the only reason it brings something “new” to the table. It’s essentially a tween horror flick, because despite a serious storyline, it’s just the usual cheap ghost scares we’ve been subjected to since The Conjuring series became popular.

A woman is trying to raise her two daughters as a single mom. The husband, played by Henry Thomas, is attempting to stay in their lives, but the mother doesn’t want to have much to do with him because of his issues. However, he is a cop, and he comes over for dinner one night and gives the younger daughter a necklace…that he secretly stole from a crime scene. Uh-oh.

Yep. The necklace is cursed. By a little boy. The girls begin getting terrorized by him and a few other entities.

Soon, the mother is digging into the origins of the necklace. There’s a detective, a psychic medium, and just when you think there will be a ghost busting conclusion, the script is flipped and this turns into a possession film for the final act…at just about the point where it started to run too long and bore me, so the rerouting definitely saved it a little, because at least we’re fed some new horror action.

You’ve most likely seen it all before, and there’s a goofy zinger scare scene after the credits that isn’t worth waiting for. It didn’t need to be after the credits because it’s pointless beyond a goal of making twelve-year-old girls at sleepovers squeal.

BLOODY TRIP: THE EQUINOX KILLER (2024)

I seriously have no idea what I just watched with this one. On the bright side, it’s a badly dubbed Italian movie, so I was getting retro 80s Euro horror flashbacks.

Three girls go to an isolated house for a bachelorette party. Conveniently, one of them is into horror, is working on a movie, and tells a story of an equinox curse involving offering sacrifices to a demon to stop the dead from rising.

Just as they finish discussing the tale, someone in a mask shows up at the door. Did they summon him by indulging in the legend? Not sure.

Either way, this quickly becomes reminiscent of The Strangers, as the masked person lurks around outside and the girls try to stay barricaded inside. Even so, one of their male friends manages to arrive and make it inside the house safely.

Then there’s a wacky twist, more baddies arrive, and the main characters try to just stay alive. There’s running around and lots of fighting with a variety of weapons that can do some major damage, but there’s just nothing conclusive happening here…right up to the ending, which says “to be continued.” Ugh. And based on a listing on IMDb, I’m thinking the next movie is going to be a zombie film. Yes, of course I’ll watch it…while I ponder how the masked killer knew the names of all the kids so he could assign each one a personalized candle…

 

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