CHRISTMAS HORROR ROUND-UP 2022

Posted on December 20, 2022 by Daniel

This turned out to be a major year for seasonal scares, in part thanks to horror friends on social who pointed out some movies I might have missed otherwise. Therefore, this is a huge post with a substantial batch of Christmas horror flicks that are getting added to the complete holiday horror page.

(CURSE OF) JACK FROST (2022)

Unlike the 1997 Jack Frost, this is not about a killer snowman. This evil old folk legend gets a dark backstory in fairy tale form. He disemboweled Mrs. Claus, so Santa had him dismembered and the parts buried all over the place so he couldn’t come back…

He’s baaaAAAck.

Oddly enough Jack is a kind of bad ass goth rocker in a leather jacket who gets his own guitar rock theme song every time he appears, with winds whipping up and snow swirling around him. He looks like a guy wearing a mask and rubber hands, and that totally scratched my silly seasonal slasher itch.

Jack targets a family responsible for guarding one of his remaining missing body parts. The young pretty daughter ends up at a church with her female friends, establishing a typical slasher scenario.

Jack Frost goes to work taking them out, usually using strings of Christmas lights as his weapon of choice.

There’s running, screaming, dying, Jack Frost taunting victims…it feels low budget, but it does have a dark tone and holiday atmosphere.

THE KILLING TREE (2022)

The director of the Winnie-The-Pooh horror flick brings us a 72-minute, campy holiday slasher that is similar in tone to the 1997 fave Jack Frost, only with a killer Christmas tree instead.

It opens with a woman casting a spell to resurrect her dead criminal husband in…a Star of David pentagram? This Christmas horror flick is anti-Semitic.

It’s kind of hilarious when the dude comes back from the dead only to realize he’s in the form of a Christmas tree. His reactions and comments throughout the film are the only comedy here…everything else is played straight.

The tree is out for revenge, determined to take down the girl whose parents he killed the Christmas before, which is what led to his death.

Luckily, she’s having a Christmas party at her house. Don’t you love how the kids in these movies always have a party a year after the tragic event they haven’t gotten over yet?

What makes the film funny (aside from the Christmas tree talking) is that it’s literally a slasher with a walking Christmas tree killer. There’s some hokey CGI tree effects, and the tree size never remains consistent—sometimes it’s the size of a person, other times it looks like a 2-story monster. It also has long, tentacle-like arms and light strings that do a lot of the dirty work.

It’s cheesy, but it definitely gets you in the Christmas horror mood and makes a good background horror flick while you’re enjoying your own festivities at home.

THE CHRISTMAS TAPES (2022)

This indie holiday anthology delivers fairly basic found footage clichés.

A family of four is exchanging gifts. The son is presented as gay (as demonstrated by his reaction to getting a scarf for Christmas), and the daughter is a wannabe filmmaker. She sets her video camera in motion when a home invader ties up the family and forces them to watch some Christmas horror video tapes…

1st story – a couple going on a camping trip for their internet travel channel does a spell on a scarecrow that brings it to life. The tent action gave me Blair Witch flashbacks, however the scarecrow is scarier than that witch bitch could ever be.

No Christmas spirit here, because the couple is missing Christmas at home to traipse through the woods.

2nd story – a dad decides to surprise his kids by hiring a Santa service that puts him in a big gift box and delivers him to their door. What could possibly go wrong?

3rd story – this is a super short tale about a package that needs to be delivered before a timer runs out…

4th story – we finish things off with some Paranormal Activity vibes. A couple moves into a new home, things start getting weird with their holiday decorations, and so they call in a paranormal expert…horror comedy king Dave Sheridan! As much as I love Dave, this story drags out in hopes that Dave’s comedic shtick will steal the show, but it doesn’t. However, he does make a power bottom quip that made me feel all warm and fuzzy…

HE KNOWS (2022)

Watch this holiday slasher strictly for the eerie elf and the violent death scenes. Underdeveloped characters meander around the sets waiting to be killed, and the story lacks any logical flow.

As a child, a girl sees her father killed by the elf.

As an adult, she tells her daughter a great, dark tale of Sammy the Elf and how elves hate humans but Santa enslaved them to work at the North Pole.

She then leaves her daughter home alone with her mother, played by horror veteran Lynn Lowry.

Meanwhile, the elf, who has a kick ass mask and does this freaky head jerk motion, starts killing off a list of naughty people. That would be all the meandering characters I was talking about, who feel totally disconnected from the “main characters”, who are forgotten for most of the film.

The elf definitely delivers on the creepy holiday spirit and brutal kills. However, the film runs painfully long at 100 minutes, and the big mask removal reveal at the end is disappointing—it seriously “introduces” the killer as a main character all of a sudden right before the film ends.

If you stick around after the credits roll, there is a “pre-movie” scene that gives you significant backstory that wasn’t presented in the movie itself.

Not to mention, I’d be curious to know if the killer was supposed to be gay, because it really seems to be implied.

WEREDEER (2022)

Running just a little over an hour long, this is the kind of absurd Christmas horror film you watch because it’s called Weredeer. Meaning if you watch this and then go online to bitch about it, you’re just going to make yourself look stupid.

The opening scene is straight up comedy as 2 hunters offer some funny banter before creature POV comes for them.

Then we meet a straight couple heading to the guy’s family home in the woods for the holidays. This family of rednecks even includes a lesbian couple!

The dialogue and character interactions aren’t particularly entertaining, but again…you’re here for the weredeer.

The main guy’s girlfriend is bit by a deer in the woods and soon turns into a very pretty creature. But that doesn’t mean she won’t beat you to death with her front hooves, which is exactly what she does to victims, and it’s quite funny.

And yet after the blatantly comedic opening scene with the hunters, the film doesn’t play as a comedy. It’s fairly serious in tone and allows the silliness to speak for itself.

NUTCRACKER MASSACRE (2022)

Yay! A simple Christmas slasher about a big killer nutcracker! The only issue I had with this film was that the creators felt the need to open with a kill that actually takes place later in the film, and therefore is presented again where it’s meant to be chronologically.

That’s because our killer nutcracker doesn’t come to be until after some major story development. Our main girl is on the outs with her boyfriend, so she accepts an offer to come visit her aunt for Christmas.

On the way there she stops at a store and buys a little nutcracker as a gift. But once she gets to her aunt’s place she discovers her aunt has a man-sized nutcracker already.

Some evil Christmas magic brings the big nutcracker to life. The general idea is that this nutcracker is supposed to protect the “sugar plum fairy” (aka: the main girl), but as this giant nutcracker turns more and more evil looking and does some pretty violent and gory killing, it doesn’t appear to just target her enemies. Even the most innocent people are taken out.

The biggest bummer for me was when the nice, hunky boyfriend of her bitchy cousin gets killed while walking around shirtless and in his undies in the nastiest scene in the film. Let’s just say this is the kill in which the nutcracker lives up to his name. Ouch.

In true supernatural slasher form, the main girl has to do some digging to figure out what brought the nutcracker to life and what can stop it. There’s cat and mouse chasing, plus there are body reveals.

I definitely had festive fun with this one.

STUFFINGS (2021)

This is one of those films that’s not unwatchable yet not really worth a watch.

I do like the general premise. An influencer couple that is having some relationship issues heads to a supposedly haunted forest to do a Christmas show.

The locals have some weird stuff going on. There’s a sinister “lottery” that forces the winners into a dark situation, and everyone displays creepy Santa “scarecrows” to keep away a freaky Santa Claus creature that needs a sacrifice…

We meet several weird characters, several people are killed off, and then the local crazies eventually come for the couple.

There are a few hints of quality horror sprinkled throughout the film, but this indie feels like it’s missing the little extra something needed to make an impression as a backwoods holiday slasher.

It’s also listed as a comedy, but the only thing that was kind of funny—but more like bizarre—is that the killer kind of looks like someone dressed as Santa and wearing a demented turkey head mask.

THE LEECH (2022)

The Leech is being labeled as a horror comedy. There’s definitely dark humor embedded in the depressing plot, but the only way this is horror is if you’re a religious nut who thinks it’s horrific for a priest to get drawn into sodomy, abortion, and murder.

Sigh.

A priest has a pathetic congregation…four parishioners to be exact. He hopes there will be a Christmas miracle at midnight mass on Christmas Eve.

Meanwhile, he offers a dirt bag loser a ride, then offers to let him sleep over, then ends up having the dude’s girlfriend move in.

As the troubled, uncouth couple begins to encroach on the priest’s personal space, he gets sucked into their godless sex lives, and the guilt of doing so starts to drive him mad.

Hey, at least there’s plenty of homoerotic stuff mixed in there.

As for horror…there seems to be a moment when the priest hears demonic voices, and like I said, there are some murders. However, I wouldn’t consider this a full-blown horror film.

CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS (2022)

This is a no-nonsense grindhouse throwback flick that does the job it needs to do—it  gives us a nonstop killer Santa experience.

Loaded with scenes drenched in Christmas lights, the film features a girl and her cute buddy (with really bad 80s hair even though it’s present day) hanging out on Christmas and having excessive, drunken, philosophical and 90s pop culture conversations.

This is really the only cringy part for me. These types of Tarantino conversations in movies are so over. As good as the actors may be in the rest of the film, they seem to struggle to get all the meta dialogue out and are never believable as adoring fans of what they’re discussing. And speaking of Tarantino inspiration, the constant F bombs make the script feel amateurish at times—almost like there was a lot of improvisation and the actors just defaulted to the F bomb when they couldn’t think of how else to compose quality dialogue on the spot.

You just have to let all that go, because Christmas Bloody Christmas delivers sex and violence once a mall “RoboSanta Plus” inexplicably takes on a life of its own and decides to kill anyone it comes across. It also seems to have Terminator’s determination to specifically hunt down our main girl.

It’s pure festive chaos, with a combination of a 70s-esque rock music soundtrack and an 80s synth-driven score.

Aside from the main cutie guy, who even expresses an appreciation of being pegged, there’s a hot daddy bear bartender with a fantastic beard who doesn’t get enough screen time.

While the movie is action and violence heavy, there are a few suspense scenes and jump scares. Personally, I liked the first half of the film better than the second half, which becomes a bit repetitive as our main girl is relentlessly chased by the RoboSanta.

WHOEVER SLEW AUNTIE ROO? (1972)

Teaming up again with the director of What’s the Matter with Helen?, Shelley Winters plays a rich widow with a dirty secret…she keeps the skeleton of her deceased daughter tucked away in a bedroom upstairs in her mansion.

She also holds séances to try to contact her daughter.

Meanwhile, she has a Christmas party for children from an orphanage and becomes enamored with a little girl who reminds her of her daughter. The girl and her brother are thrill-seekers, so they explore the house and find some freaky things.

And then…Shelley keeps the sister when all the other kids go home!

The brother, who is convinced Shelley is the witch from the story of Hansel & Gretel, decides to break into the house and save his sister before she can be cooked for New Year’s dinner.

Whimsical yet dark, this is like horror seen through a child’s eye. It’s relatively tame (Shelley isn’t all that frightening), but it is nice to see the dastardly little ending that doesn’t stray too far from the fairy tale that inspired the movie.

THE LAST SLAY RIDE (2022)

This holiday horror comedy feels like a student film about film students acting like film students with constant geek banter about movies and the art of movie-making. On top of that, while there are a few serviceable performances, most of them feel low budget indie quality, and the film suffers from awkward pauses between lines of dialogue that cause the flow to stutter constantly.

So what about the humor, horror, and holiday? There are very few laughs to be had, and the horror is minimal and just goofy. There is plenty of Christmas to go around, starting with a guy in a Santa suit terrorizing a film student who owes him money.

Meanwhile, that film student and his friends suddenly get some funding to make a movie. So we have to sit through an unfunny montage of people auditioning and then tedious sequences of them making a low budget camp slasher, which takes up a good portion of the running time.

Finally, the students are forced by the Santa to go to the house of the investors so he can collect his money. The house is full of people in Santa and elf suits.

They reveal they’re vampires (52 minutes in) , kicking off low energy chases around the house.

And yet…the lack of humor and horror still abound. I just wasn’t feeling this one at all.

RETURN OF KRAMPUS (aka: Krampus: The Return) (2022)

Despite the title, this is not a sequel to any Krampus movie. It’s a movie about Krampus coming back to terrorize a family it just won’t leave alone.

As far as Krampus looks go, this one is pretty freaky. What makes that a bummer is that the film is not all that great. It’s very slow with lots of talk.

Speaking of talking, the backstory concerning this family’s history with the mythical monster is summed up in a voice-over at the beginning of the film. Unfortunately, an ominous filter effect is applied to the narrator, so his dialogue is hard to understand. Do filmmakers not carefully watch their movies back to look for issues like this before releasing them to the public?

Anyway, I do like the dark tone. Following the death of her brother, a young woman comes home to deal with the aftermath, bringing a support group of loved ones with her. There’s lots of dialogue about her guilt, her brother, and the Krampus curse….

One couple is killed early on. The next kill is 60 minute into the film, which runs only 80 minutes long. That should tell you everything you need to know about the pacing.

Despite my disappointment overall, and the lack of holiday spirit (I guess that makes sense since her brother just died), the few kills are satisfying when the film finally goes into slasher mode in the last 20 minutes, complete with Krampus killing people with sharp weapons.

VIKINGS VS. KRAMPUS (2020)

It’s no secret I’m no fan of period pieces…and this one takes place in 812! I can’t even say that year without tripping over my syllables because there’s no “teen” in the number.

Sure it’s all about Krampus, but there’s not exactly Rockefeller Center excursions and sitting on Santa’s lap in 812. But the movie does take place on “Yule Day” in December.

The tale is basic. A royal family’s castle is overthrown by Vikings. The king of this castle wants it back, and some witches in the woods suggest conjuring Krampus.

He agrees, Krampus appears, and then a whole lot of battles take place in the woods.

Of course there’s a catch—Krampus’s service come with a price. So the remaining royals are also at odds with the creature in the end as he comes seeking payback.

Krampus looks cool in a sort of “awesome costume, dude!” way, but I really don’t care about a bunch of people in 812 getting into sword fights.

SEASON’S GREETING 2 (2019)

I covered the first Season’s Greetings here, and considering these are short film anthologies of short films, combining both parts would give you a full-length feature. Part 2 only runs 45 minutes long.

A dude in a Christmas sweater serves as the host, introducing each of the three tales.

1st story – this odd but unique Christmas tale is about a young woman picked to be the “Virgin Mary” in a sort of satanic ritual for the birth of the “new messiah”. It’s a cool plot but nothing frightening to see here.

2nd story – this is a fun stalker film in which a girl is terrorized by a crazy dude after passing up an invitation to come to her mother’s house. It includes a great under the bed moment, and the main girl makes the ending quick and satisfying.

3rd story – this is a good way to finish off the anthology, with friends gathering for a Christmas party then being chased around a house by a freaky killer elf.

PSYCHO SANTA (2003)

Psycho Santa finally showed up on streaming after almost two decades, and the reason why must be the release of the sequel I cover below! I always assumed Psycho Santa was a bad, super low budget flick since it was impossible to find anywhere, but overall I thought there were some cool ideas here. Unfortunately there’s too much filler and no onscreen killing!

The approach to telling the story feels like an anthology, but all the separate segments are connected because they all tie in to a killer Santa named Chris. A straight couple is on a road trip to enjoy some holiday festivities and the guy begins his tale(s):

1st story – girls at a cabin in the woods wonder where their other friend is. There’s a clever scene of one of the girls taking a walk by a lake, and we see there’s a car submerged in the water. However this tale is mostly filler, with what seems like a director fantasy shoot of the other girl with pierced tits and pierced, hairy pussy showering and then the two girls dancing in lingerie. There’s a good Tales from the Dark Side zinger ending, but any killing is left to our imagination and just mentioned by the guy in the wraparound!

2nd story – guys robbing a house find a secret room. There are growls and off screen kills! We do, however, get quick flashes of what happened during the return to the wraparound. Looks like some nasty good fun, with glimpses at the killer’s actual face. I just wish we would have gotten more than teases.

3rd story – this is the backstory, with a man relating how he locked up his killer son (wraparound story in a wraparound movie). The son escaped, dressed like Santa, and began his killing spree (with another off screen kill).

4th story – the Santa killer breaks into another house. There are more off screen kills and an overly long scene of a dying woman crawling to a phone jack on the wall to plug it back in.

5th story – two siblings go to get a Christmas tree and their car breaks down. There is loads of filler footage of them walking through the woods, and then some cat and mouse stuff.

In the end it’s believed the killer Santa dies in a burning cabin, but we know better thanks to the wraparound.

PSYCHO SANTA 2 (2021)

It’s shocking that a sequel was made nearly two decades later with a totally different director. The only thing interesting about this one is the concerted effort to connect it as cleanly as possible to the first film.

The narrative is all over the place, and the goofy low budget kill effects demonstrate why the maker of the first film perhaps chose to not show the kills at all.

The opener uses footage of the robber scene from the first movie, and then the film begins digging itself into a deeper and deeper hole of confusion. A dude comes home to find his roommate has raped and killed a girl. They fight (to the sounds of funny punch effects), and then Santa appears and kills the rapist.

For reasons I never understood, another guy receives a gruesome gift package on his doorstep.

The cops interrogate the roommate, who wasn’t killed by Santa. We learn his father was somehow the burned up Santa from the first movie.

The dude who received the head starts following Santa around to pad the film.

A couple of people are killed in lame death scenes while we begin to wonder if the roommate guy is the killer, if the Santa from the first film has come back, or if it’s just a figment of his imagination.

Finally, there’s a sudden, inexplicable flashback to the chase scene of the siblings from the first movie followed by a montage of all the kills from this movie, none of it serving as any kind of actual end to this film.

I don’t know who thought this poor sequel to a relatively unknown film was a good idea.

AXEMAS (2017) and AXEMAS 2 (2018)

These are just short films and run less than an hour long combined.

In the first film, a hunky dude working at a storage facility invites his friends to party overnight. No real character development…straight to the slashing Santa. Yay!

There’s a shirtless hottie, some good chases, a few traditional death scenes with sharp weapons, red horror lighting, and even some split screen.

For the sequel, the final girl returns and is suffering from PTSD. Unfortunately, someone is back for revenge, so she spends another night being pursued by Santa.

She’s not alone. A few more people are thrown into the mix to up the body count.

There’s also some humor in this installment, which ups the fun factor, as does the action during the chase scene.

The ending is an intriguing follow-up to the end of the first film and promises a third film.

KILLER CHRISTMAS ELVES (2021)

Running only 68 minutes long, this short film is festive, fun, and funny.

A little witchery causes the elf dolls in a toy shop to come to life.

Meanwhile, a father is welcoming his rebellious son into his house for the holidays hoping to repair their fractured relationship.

That bonding comes when the elves show up to cause murderous havoc!

There’s not much more to say about the plot. Father and son join forces with neighbors to save their community from these devilish dwarves. The father, who is both cute and funny, steals the show, as do the elves, which gave me the chuckles with the cut and paste way in which they’re presented on screen as they terrorize the townsfolk.

THE APOLOGY (2022)

I really can’t with Shudder anymore. When is this never-ending “curation” of trauma porn gonna stop? I wanna be scared not sad. This movie shouldn’t even be on a horror streaming service, and the only reason I’m covering it briefly is because it’s on the most significant horror streaming service out there.

It’s sort of a “thriller” that takes place at Christmas time, but there are few thrills and nothing beyond snow and Christmas lights to ring in the season.

This is the move in a nutshell. An alcoholic woman still grieves the disappearance of her daughter 20 years ago. Her ex-brother-in-law shows up at her door during a Christmas Eve snowstorm to tell her something that will finally give her closure…and also make her want revenge.

**SPOILER** This is a tale about rape, pedophilia, and incest. There’s some cat and mouse chasing and fights, both physical and verbal, but it simply never feels intense enough for this guy to seem like a real threat.

On the bright side, it’s refreshing to see Janeane Garofalo in a serious but small role as the neighbor.

There’s little in the way of satisfying revenge when all is said and done, and don’t expect suspense, scares, or blood.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: Lugosi and friends

Posted on December 16, 2022 by Daniel

It began with me buying one Bela Lugosi vampire film and one Ed Wood movie starring Lugosi, and that spiraled into me buying a 4-disc set of Universal films starring Lugosi and Boris Karloff…which led to me buying one of the last films in which Lugosi appears. I have a feeling one of these days I’m going to get the urge to own every horror movie Lugosi was ever in. Anyway, let’s take a dive into the black and white days of Bela!

MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935)

I simply had to own this one because, like Return of the Vampire, it’s another film in which Bela Lugosi appears in his classic Dracula form without actually playing Dracula. It runs only an hour long, and unfortunately I feel totally duped. Let’s just say this movie features the kind of surprise that eventually made a classic 1986 slasher go down in infamy.

A man is murdered and bite marks are found on his neck. The medical examiner believes the culprit is a vampire, but the inspector thinks that’s tomfoolery. And as in many of these old films, everyone just always seems to be hanging out in the house of the deceased for no apparent reason other than to save on sets.

Anyway, the murder victim’s daughter is soon targeted by Bela and his pretty vampire woman minion, and those scenes capture that classic gothic vampire vibe. The film even opens with a spooky cemetery scene, but overall it is just incredibly flat, and the twist only compounds the disappointment.

There are two interesting things to note that easily could have gotten this film some attention in the Queer for Fear documentary. First of all, this is credited as being the first film to deliver the cheap “cat scare”, and when it does, two men scream like girls and clutch each other like a couple of lovers. Second, Lugosi never lays a fang on the daughter character—it’s straight up girl-on-girl action, for each time she is attacked it’s Lugosi’s female minion doing the sucking while he watches. Vampire women really have always been lesbians, haven’t they?

THE BLACK CAT (1934)

A 65-minute flick that stars both Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, this film features standard horror movie elements of the time but also feels ahead of its time.

A couple in Hungary shares a ride with a doctor played by Lugosi. They get into an accident, and he takes them to a “friend’s” house because the woman has been hurt.

The friend is Karloff, who plays an architect. Rather than the usual gothic haunted house you’d expect him to be living in, this one is very modern.

The story is odd. Lugosi is back from war and is looking for his wife and daughter. He believes Karloff has something to do with their disappearance. He’s also terrified of black cats and believes they take over the bodies of the deceased—which is a concerning theory once the woman from the car accident begins acting quite different when she awakens after being tended to.

It’s no surprise that there are dark secrets buried in Karloff’s home, and it involves keeping women preserved in glass cases and practicing Satanism. Awesome. There’s even a gruesome kill before the film is through–not visually presented, however, but it’s fun to see Bela and Boris doing some BDSM.

THE RAVEN (1935)

While The Black Cat used a Poe title with no real connection to the works of Poe, The Raven is basically an homage to Poe stories. This is the gothic horror you would expect from Bela and Boris together.

Lugosi is a surgeon obsessed with Poe. A judge’s daughter is badly injured in a car accident and he asks Lugosi to heal her.

Then Karloff comes to Lugosi asking him for surgery to change his appearance. I don’t know why, because he makes a hot bear.

Evil Lugosi decides to deform Karloff and promises to fix the mess he’s made if Karloff helps him abduct and torture the judge and his daughter in his Poe-inspired dungeon. Yippee!

Lugosi and Karloff give us just the kinds of performances we want from them, the Poe themed dungeon rules, and crazy Lugosi has a wicked way to abduct the daughter…her bedroom in his home is rigged to simply lower into the dungeon like an elevator. Amazing.

An interesting note about what very well may have been an intentional self-referential moment (if they even thought of things like that in those days): there’s a scene in The Black Cat in which Karloff plays creepy music on an organ in his home, and there’s a scene in The Raven in which Lugosi plays creepy music on an organ in his home!

THE INVISIBLE RAY (1936)

This odd movie is sort of a roundabout way to retell the Jekyll & Hyde story. Other than Lugosi looking suave with a goatee, I found both him and Karloff to be rather flat here.

It begins on a stormy night in a gothic house, which seemed like a good place to start. But it doesn’t hold onto that atmosphere.

Things turn sci-fi. Karloff has a lab and is doing experiments. He assembles a team to head to Africa to examine a crashed meteorite. As is common with early 1900s movies, Black people are relegated to the roles of native tribesmen, and they aren’t treated very humanely.

Karloff gets poisoned by the meteorite’s radiation, so Lugosi, who plays a doctor, creates an antidote Karloff must take regularly so he won’t go mad–or glow….

So much for that miracle of medicine. Karloff does start to go mad and plots to kill people…as well as to get revenge on his cheating wife.

That’s about it. There’s nothing particularly chilling or thrilling going on in this one.

BLACK FRIDAY (1940)

This one gets points for inspiring numerous movies over the years, but overall it feels more like a gangster film than a horror movie.

Karloff is a doctor who transplants a gangster’s brain into his friend when the friend is involved in a car accident.

The friend starts to act violent, but that doesn’t stop Karloff from taking him to New York, where the gangster hid a large sum of money. Karloff is hoping the friend with the gangster’s brain will remember where.

Instead, the friend is more interested in getting revenge on the gangster’s enemies. You would think that would lead to a juicy body count. Wishful thinking.

Lugosi has a minor role as a gangster and never interacts with Karloff.

This one is a total dud.

BRIDE OF THE MONSTER (1955)

When Bela Lugosi hopped aboard the Ed Wood train for a few of his last films, there was no telling they would become cult classics. Sure, Plan 9 From Outer Space is the more famous (and infamous) collaboration, but I personally think Bride of the Monster is the true classic.

I’m guessing the title was chosen to bring to mind Lugosi’s years doing Universal monster movies, and that just sucks, because this movie has nothing to do with Frankenstein’s bride, which is how it sounds.

One of the real monsters here is mad scientist Lugosi’s pet octopus! It’s awesome both when it’s stock footage of a real octopus and when it’s just an octopus model that actors are pretending to struggle with by wrapping its arms around their bodies. I wouldn’t be surprised if this film was an inspiration for the pet crocodile in Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive. Hell, there’s even a scene of a battle with an alligator or croc in this film!

The ominous horror music is spot on for the time, and there’s a rainstorm crashing around Lugosi’s creepy house throughout the film. As much as Ed Wood is known for being a horrible director, this film feels on par with many better-received flicks from the era.

Seems there have been disappearances in the area around Lugosi’s house, and a female reporter is convinced that some sort of monster is killing people in the wilderness. She decides to explore the area and is captured by Lugosi’s big goon assistant. Lugosi then uses his classic eye hypnosis to keep her asleep while he plots to make her the “bride of the atom”. Say what?

See, Lugosi intends to convert humans into atomic super humans to take over the world. I guess he needs a bride so he’ll only have to make two atomic super humans and then they can just procreate and have atomic super babies? Who knows.

A detective, a Loch Ness Monster expert, and some others head to Lugosi’s house as well to see what’s up, and sooner or later everyone either ends of up octopus food or a potential lab rat.

Considering the questionable sexual orientation and gender identity of Ed Woods, it’s interesting to note that when the detective/hero battles with Lugosi’s big goon assistant, the big goon tears his shirt off and the detective spends the rest of the time running around shirtless and wet in the rain. Delicious objectifying of the male body for a flick from the fifties.

One of the other major highlights is the way in which the detective puts a stop to Lugosi once and for all.

THE BLACK SLEEP (1956)

This film was pretty edgy for its time, and yet it’s still kind of slow until about the last 15 minutes.

A surgeon breaks a doctor friend accused of murder out of prison by slipping him a drug he created that makes a person appear to be dead. The surgeon claims “the body” and brings the doctor to his home lab and asks him to be his assistant. 

The surgeon is doing brain surgery experiments on what the doctor at first thinks are dead bodies. Nope. The surgeon is using live people and messing with their minds in the process. Eek! There’s even a surprisingly graphic scene of an exposed brain considering this is 1956.

Turns out those who have been mentally and physically marred are being held captive in a basement dungeon.

It’s pretty good payoff when the doctor and his lady friend discover all the deformed people, and these monstrous patients end up going on a psychotic rampage for the last few minutes of the film. If this movie were made today, the freaks would be pursuing them for at least half the movie and both torturing and killing them.

Lon Chaney Jr. plays one of the brain surgery victims that has gone mad, and Bela Lugosi has a blink and you’ll miss him role as a mute butler.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: three from the 90s

Posted on December 13, 2022 by Daniel

One feels like an end of the 80s slasher, the other two are silly sexploitation horror comedies. Are they as fun as they should be?

DEAD GIRLS (1990)

Dead Girls is so totally 80s it gets five stars for nostalgia alone. Hair band hair galore, leather jackets, boomboxes and cassettes, acid wash jeans, chest hair…I longed for my teen years as I watched this low budget slasher.

There is, however, one major flaw; it runs too long. There was no need for this to be 105 minutes long. Other than that it throws in everything it could that screams 80s horror, beginning with kids doing a satanic ritual.

Next we meet the Dead Girls, a rock band that shockingly doesn’t get one song performance scene at all. The main girl has a combination of psychic dreams and nightmares that lead to her running home to her estranged sister, who has fallen ill.

For whatever reason, the main girl decides she and the band need to drag the sick sister to a cabin in the woods. Unfortunately, it takes forever to get to that part (if only all the filler had been edited down).

Anyway, once at the cabin, the main girl’s dreams persist and she gets visions of her band members as they’re killed off by someone in a black coat, skull mask, and black fedora. It’s interesting to note that virtually the same look would be used a year later in the 1991 slasher Scary Movie.

Dead Girls offers up basic slasher tropes, with heavy breathing, killer POV, scantily clad victims, a creepy local dude skulking in the shadows, cheesy good gore…and some surprisingly effective atmosphere and music to set the tone for the “scary” scenes. And the 80s boys are hot.

However, there’s a laughable element—a yellow envelope is the killer’s calling card.

The envelopes seem to predict the ways in which the kids will be killed. When the kids are not accusing each other of leaving them lying around, the killer is shoving them in victims’ faces (what’s the point of giving victims an envelope with pertinent information inside when you kill them before they can open it?). Meanwhile, the last few minutes of this film has so many red herring and twists that it feels like everyone is the killer.

Dead Girls is a treasure as a lost slasher I’ve never seen before, and that includes the fact that it’s an absolute mess (as the best direct-to-video slashers of the 80s always were).

THE INVISIBLE MANIAC (1990)

What can I say? It’s Zapped! with murders (and thankfully without douchebag Scott Baio).

A geeky child is verbally abused by his wicked mother for being a pervert that peeps naked girls with his telescope.

When he grows up and becomes a scientist, he creates an invisibility serum that fails to deliver during a demonstration in front of his peers. So he loses his shit and murders them.

He then breaks out of a mental institution and comes back with a new identity as a teacher. He perfects his serum then goes around ripping off the blouses of female students before murdering them.

It’s silly, sexually exploitative, campy, and only occasionally funny, but there are a few pretty violent deaths. I had the most fun whenever the killer beat up boys in tight 80s pants with the actors attempting to do their best mimed battles against the “invisible maniac”.

Even so, make no mistake—this movie is all about showing as many tits as possible.

WITCH ACADEMY (1995)

This is just a silly sexploitation comedy from Fred Olen Ray about a bunch of S&M sorority sisters that have to contend with the devil as he hunts for a bride.

Scream queen Michelle Bauer and a bunch of other babes show off their tits and spank each other before hazing a geeky girl and leaving her tied up in the basement.

Veteran actor Robert Vaughn, looking for a paycheck, plays the devil, who makes the geek girl into a bombshell minion and also turns her into a rubber costume monster to attack people.

The humor in this weak script is occasionally funny, and it is at its best when Priscilla Barnes of Three’s Company shows up briefly.

Too briefly. She easily could have stolen the show with her campy performance, but her presence wasn’t taken advantage of.

There are some funny, goofy monster moments, but they can’t save this cheap film, which is solely watchable for the nostalgia of living through the direct-to-video indies of the VHS era.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: these people have serious issues…

Posted on December 12, 2022 by Daniel

I filled in a gap in my collection of essential horror by finally purchasing The Bad Seed, plus I added two recently released 80s horror flicks I had never seen, one of which has a major gay plot.

THE BAD SEED (1956)

A classic of the psychological thriller genre, The Bad Seed novel was soon turned into a play that was then adapted into this movie with most of the same cast. The movie pans out like a play with the story unfolding through talk, not action. For that reason alone it could have been trimmed down from its whopping 129-minute length, because the dialogue becomes quite repetitive after a while, especially between the mother and her evil daughter.

The plot should be familiar to everyone—people seem to die around a little girl, and pretty soon her mother figures out that she’s a killer who doesn’t feel pity.

Funny thing is…there are no onscreen deaths. In fact, there are only three people killed through the course of the narrative, and it’s always off screen. The first is a little boy the bad seed goes on a school trip with and drowns in a lake. This is what starts the mother suspecting she’s a killer, and eventually the daughter confesses to it by describing what happened.

The daughter then also describes how she killed an older woman they knew after her mother presses her about the woman’s death.

The final murder comes after a gardener figures out the daughter killed the boy. She ends up burning him alive, and this is the most “graphic” scene in the movie. We hear his screams of pain and smoke coming through basement doors. And yet to lessen the gruesome implications, the little girl is playing a loud whimsical song on the piano during the scene.

This comes after the mother has already tried to cover up the murder of the boy. That’s what’s most compelling about this film—the mother struggles with accepting her daughter’s mental issue while also loving her and wanting to protect her.

**SPOILER** Another interesting thing about the movie adaptation is that the ending is altered. The novel is very The Omen in its final moments; just as the father of Damien fails to kill his evil son and dies while the son goes on to cause more murderous havoc, the evil daughter in The Bad Seed book remains alive while her mother dies from a murder/suicide attempt. I guess that seemed like too dark of an ending for 1956. And yet, the movie ends with the mother living and the evil girl dying! You kind of gotta love that allowing a bad girl to live was considered inappropriate back then, but killing off a little girl was seen as a happy ending. Tee hee.

The good news is that nothing happens to the hot father…

And as if to negate all the craziness of a making a movie about a little killer girl, the film’s closing credits are presented like a play, with all of the cast members coming out to take a bow…and then a playful moment where the mother spanks her daughter. Weird.

HANGING HEART (1983)

This totally lost film of the early 80s (just released on Blu-ray in the Homegrown Horror Collection 2) suffers from Elm Street 2 syndrome—it seems like the gayest film ever, but all the delicious homoerotism (which demands loads of screenshots)  merely exploits the fact that the film is inherently anti-gay.

The beautiful pretty boy lead spends much of the film in his tighty-whities right from the first scene.

He’s a struggling actor performing in what seems to be a very queer play and living with his doting gay lawyer, which is helpful when he becomes the prime suspect in a string of murders.

This is a pseudo-slasher in that there’s a disguised murderer killing women, but the body count is low, and the killer simply chokes victims to death with a stocking.

The numerous nightmares the main hottie has deliver the only blood—and even that isn’t much.

More than a slasher, this is sort of like a giallo/erotic thriller mashup. It’s drawn out and nonsensical at times, with loads of sexploitation and the main guy going through a whole lot of weird shit before all is said and done.

But most importantly, this gets an honorary spot on the homo horror movies page because it is just so queer…and anti-queer. It tries to throw every awful gay stereotype found in horror at that time into one film. Here’s what you can expect:

  • The main guy has homoerotic dreams about getting sexual with his lawyer in the shower yet seems to be suffering from homosexual panic

  • The main guy is sexually confused due to a past that involves being sexually abused by his stepfather

  • The main guy has sex with women but is also presented as being jealous of women, and is even accused of hating women

  • The main guy gets arrested and is given an anal cavity search

  • The main guy is tossed in a jail cell with a male “couple” that wants a piece of his ass

  • The main guy is forced to watch the guys in the jail cell have anal sex

  • The main guy ends up in a mental institution and gets whipped by an inmate wearing girlie undies while other inmates watch

  • The main guy is found wearing a wig and makeup while in a daze

  • The lawyer has guilt about abandoning his father and is in love with the main guy
  • The lawyer feels up a statue of Jesus on the crucifix and envisions Jesus as the main guy

  • There are James Dean posters on the walls in the lawyers house
  • The lawyer is beat with a bat by an angry dude who then calls him a faggot
  • The killer looks like the Dressed to Kill killer with a black wig instead of blonde
  • It’s really obvious who the killer is, and it’s no surprise that the killer is queer and that the killer’s queerness is the reason for killing women
  • Once all the fun is done and the killer is captured, the killer passionately kisses another guy

While the film is slow and not particularly scary as far as killer-in-drag movies go, it does a whole lot of exploration into sexual dysfunction. Sexual desire is presented as sin that needs to be cleansed through turning to religion; homosexuality is equated with nightmares, being in jail, and being committed to a mental institution; homosexuality and an inability to connect with the opposite sex are painted as being the result of troubled childhoods and unhealthy relationships with fathers. Hey, at least the father gets the blame for a change instead of this being another film about a queer momma’s boy killer.

BLOOD DELIRIUM (1988)

This slice of late 80s Euro horror sleaze simply is what it is. You either go for this skanky, gory crap set to clashing melodramatic music or you don’t.

An artist who believes he is Van Gogh and that his wife is his muse feels defeated after her untimely death. Then he discovers his butler licking and fucking her dead pussy before she’s buried.

But he doesn’t fire the butler…because who better than Niles the necro to help him dig up the body once she’s buried so she can continue to be his muse?

Meanwhile, the artist brings home a woman who looks exactly like his wife and romances her…while essentially keeping her captive.

She eventually discovers there are gruesome things happening to women in the house while she also experiences what appears to be a haunting.

If you love Euro trash of the 80s, this is good bottom of the garbage truck fodder to check out.

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2 out of 3 from 2022 ain’t bad

Posted on December 9, 2022 by Daniel

I caught one on cable and two were streaming. Cable is the biggest loser this time around, so let’s get into them.

INCARNATION (2022)

This film is visually problematic right from the start because it uses both that distracting shaky cam effect and in and out zoom style we see in sitcoms where there’s supposedly a cameraman filming everything, like The Office and Modern Family.

Taye Diggs and his wife move into a new rental home, with Michael Madsen as their really weird landlord. Basically this film shows its hand right from the start, but I continued watching in hopes there would be some surprises.

There weren’t.

The couple is trying to open a new business. She wants to have a baby. They fight over money. She finds some oddities in a room upstairs, including a satanic book and a handful of gold coins. Where is Leprechaun when you need him to make things interesting?

Taye reads a ritual out loud from the book and starts to act weird. He has dark flashbacks, including his father killing a dog he brought home when he was a child.

Eventually things go really bad between him and his wife and him and the landlord. They’re all awful people and there’s little in the way of actual horror elements until the last minute. It’s messy, it drags, and it disappoints.

SLASH/BACK (2022)

This may be a movie about teenage girls battling aliens, but it doesn’t lack on horrific visuals and gore.

It goes harder than any of those tween haunted house movies that make so much money at the box office. It even opens with a vicious face sucking scene.

So these girls live in a rundown Arctic settlement in the mountains.

When they’re out hanging in nature one afternoon, they see a bear that isn’t acting anything like a bear. That’s because it’s been invaded like the dog from Carpenter’s The Thing!

As the kids figure out something is using the local wildlife as hosts, the alien species begins to infiltrate grownups as well.

These people look like contorting zombies wearing Leatherface masks. Eek.

Not to mention, tentacle appendages pop out of their faces to attach to other life forms.

The likable kids band together to fight the alien life forms using any weapons they can, and the film is loaded with suspenseful sequences and freaky encounters with the transformed adults. It’s fun from start to finish with fantastic outdoor scenery.

TROLL (2022)

This Norwegian film (dubbed in English on Netflix) takes the best of King Kong, Godzilla, Cloverfield, and Troll Hunter to bring us a giant monster movie with a dash of fantasy mixed in.

Turns out trolls are these huge mountain monsters and not those little things with the bushy hair that you’d stick on the end of your pencil in the 1980s.

A paleontologist is called in by the government to help the military take down the creature after it attacks people in the mountains, and her military leader is a cutie.

The first encounter with the monster is fantastic. Actually, every encounter is if you’re a fan of big monster movies like the ones I mentioned above.

The backstory that is eventually presented caused me to sympathize with the troll. I wanted him to kill all those damn military men (except the hottie). I was also psyched to learn that trolls hate Christians and throw stones at their churches. We seriously need a troll in every state in the U.S. to put an end to religious fanaticism in this country once and for all.

Troll is a blast, and the final battle is as entertaining and thrilling as some of the big Hollywood monster movies.

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HALLOWEEN MOVIE ROUND-UP 2022 Part 2

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Daniel

I know, I know. It’s December. But the number of Halloween horror flicks I discovered this year keeps growing. At this point the only one I have left to watch is Terrifier 2, which I won’t be getting on disc until it releases at the end of the month. Meanwhile, I have a load of Christmas horror flicks I’ll be getting to soon, but for now, I give you another smorgasbord of Halloween horror flicks I didn’t get to on the first post I did in October.

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS VAMPIRES (2020)

Halloween is gently integrated into this entertaining film that is best described as Jeepers Creepers with a vampire.

This is how you start a horror movie—a shirtless hunk on the run from a relentless RV.

The hunk crashes into a young woman driving on a dark road on her way to a friend’s house for Halloween.

Soon they’re on the run together, with the RV in hot pursuit.

This is when the main girl ruins the movie by giving the hottie a shirt to wear. Teehee.

But seriously, I would really like to see director Logan Thomas make more horror movies, because he delivers several fantastically suspenseful scenes in this straightforward flick.

The main pair arrives at the friend’s house, and after some Halloween festivities (Halloween decor, pumpkins, discussion of what horror films to watch, a trick or treater) the vampire shows up and they’re on the run again. And it doesn’t get more Jeepers Creepers than arriving at a police precinct, where they continue to be terrorized by the vampire.

The film has the hottie, some humor, some great tension, a cool vampire, awesome 80s style music, and even some cameos, including horror queen Maria Olsen, 80s queen Meg Foster, and the late Judy Tenuta with her accordion.

The eerie scenes deliver right up to the final act, and the only problematic issue the film has is the rather convoluted back story of the vampire and his reason for pursuing the two main characters.

HALLOWEEN JACK (2022)

This indie is what I’d call a mini-slasher. It’s a perfect warm-up for your Halloween horror marathon, and it’s clearly made with love by true admirers of the slasher genre.

I just wish they had thought of a different title considering that a Halloween Jack film and its sequel already exist.

It begins with a counselor telling us a campfire story of what happened at the camp site a decade ago…which offers us a quick, mini slasher within this mini slasher!

A bullied counselor dons a Halloween mask, grabs a pickaxe, and goes to town on the other counselors. Awesome.

Then it’s on to the modern day. What’s refreshing about this slasher is that it focuses on an older cast for a change. Three survivors—two men and a woman—come back to the site to pay their respects and have a reunion. As they prepare for the arrival of more of their friends, they clean up and goof around in a montage set to 80s style synthpop.

There are a few near encounters with Jack in true slasher fashion before getting to the final chases and fights. The movie nails everything—camera angles, atmosphere, suspense, editing.

It all takes place during the day, which makes it even more impressive that the film delivers such a tight slasher feel. If there’s any downside, it’s that the “reveal” at the end is very predictable for any veteran slasher fan.

SHRIEKSHOW (2022)

This anthology may not have the biggest budget or sleekest production, but it’s my kind of indie horror.

The wraparound and festive opening credits deliver plenty of Halloween atmosphere, but two of the three stories are not Halloween themed (bummer), instead falling into the category of backwoods horror.

Then we meet a young woman and her friends, who decide to go to abandoned, haunted fairgrounds for kicks.

After walking through a creepy attraction, they meet a guy who calls himself the ringmaster (he gives off a very Tim Curry vibe) and begins to tell them three tales….

1st story – this seems like a standard low budget crazy hillbillies story, but it has a couple of twists and a devilishly nasty little ending.

2nd story – this one gives us an opening kill scene with two lesbians camping in the woods. These two are awesome because they’re raw, not “lipstick lesbian” male fantasies. These girls whip out their big juicy boobs and even offer up some humor. Then we get a great wink wink cameo from Felissa Rose as her husband sets off on a fishing trip in the woods with some friends…which leads to us finding out what killed the lesbians in the opening scene. This one has a cool, monstrous edge to it.

3rd story – a young man is still traumatized by a childhood birthday party that turned into a massacre. Eek!

Tuesday Knight of Elm Street 4 plays his therapist, and the meds she gives him amplify his fear that the killer clown from that party is still out there. The clown is freaky cool, and there are several visuals that make it clear it’s Halloween time.

The wraparound ends with the main kids being chased by crazy clowns, a heinous pie to the face moment, and a gross intestines out of the mouth scene, reminding us that practical effects still rule.

THE SLEEP: SURVIVAL HORROR PART 1 (2022)

I’ll get the Halloween part out of the way—it’s incidental and not integral to the plot at all. Friends just happen to be partying together in a house on Halloween when they are drawn into a weird drug experiment. It’s pointless to even put this one on the complete holiday horror page.

As for the story, which is written by the director/star, this just so isn’t my thing. The cast has loaded political and social conversation at first, and the overall theme of the movie is about the use of depression drugs as mind control to craft killing machines for military combat.

The friends devour a pizza that is delivered to them for free and then wake up to find themselves trapped in psychotropic hell.

Honestly, it’s hard to be scared when it’s obvious from the start that everything they experience is hallucinatory. At the same time, they are pitted against each other, and there are annoying shots of them having manic episodes of screaming directly at the camera.

The group seems to be trapped in a mental institution with possession, zombies, psycho killers, and…oh yeah…a magic wand. Sigh.

Honestly, this is one of those movies that leaves me wondering how the writer even managed to coherently put everything that happens on screen in a script and thought that any of it made any sense.

THE BARN PART II (2022)

The retro 80s Halloween flick from several years ago gets a sequel, and I think this one may be even more fun than the first one.

Not only are several of the original characters back, along with the creatures from the first movie, but this film changes things up and turns into a zombie Halloween film!

The first move is recapped briefly through a campfire story, and that leads directly into a good old massacre with practical gore effects.

There’s also an adorable bear with a great smile, if only he stuck around longer…

The baddies from the first film are resurrected to get revenge on the survivors of the first movie. One girl is in a sorority and they’re planning a fundraising haunted attraction in a barn. Wahoo!

Ari Lehman returns as the heavy metal show host, and Linnea Quigley returns as the uptight woman who wants to now ban Halloween.

However, both actors get a much juicier role this time, eventually battling zombies themselves. Awesome. And you have to love this scene of Linnea by a lost dog sign, which I imagine might be intentional considering she’s a huge animal rescue proponent in real life.

There are also brief appearances by Doug Bradley, Lloyd Kaufman, and Joe Bob Briggs, and the main cutie is back for more.

Once the attraction opens, the killing starts. It’s a straightforward supernatural slasher until the three main monsters start turning people into zombies!

Throw in some sexy scenes and boobs, along with the faux 80s music and score, and this one is a total Halloween party film, and you don’t even need to see the original to enjoy it.

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DREAMCAST DAYS: revisiting survival horror game Blue Stinger

Posted on December 1, 2022 by Daniel

Rather than just rely on the big name in survival horror back then (Resident Evil), Dreamcast scored a handful of exclusive takes on the genre (none of which turned into cherished franchises ). Blue Stinger has familiar elements of survival horror games, but it feels more like a weak, annoying action game with monsters.

For starters, the look of the game does not lend itself to the feelings stirred by the dark, empty corridors and sinister locations that make survival horror games so eerily immersive. Like most Dreamcast titles, the graphics are vibrant, crisp, colorful, and blocky, bringing to mind an animated cartoon. Not to mention, the game takes place during the day—although you’ll only know that when you’re using outside boardwalks and bridges to get to inside locations that all look the same.

Oddly you land on “Dinosaur Island” (which is more like an ocean facility like in Deep Blue Sea), but there are no dinosaurs. You’re mostly attacked by deformed humanoids with numerous big arms. You’ll also encounter tentacles that whip around from the floor or hang from the ceiling, monster birds, flying monster bugs, land piranha, giant caterpillar things, and annoying as hell drones that shoot at you while you’re running around frantically in open spaces trying to figure out where the hell to go next.

Worst of all, monsters respawn. You can accidentally go back the way you just came after killing a monster—leading to a load screen (remember those days?)—go right back to where you meant to be (waiting for the load screen again), and have to fight the same monster again. Argh! Killing monsters sends coins flying, and you have to run around and collect them all like a Mario brother. Would be nice to just have a damn magnet to draw them to you. Not to mention there were times when the coins would fall in a place on screen that my character couldn’t reach. On the bright side, you need that money to buy supplies at vending machines, but considering you keep encountering the same monsters over and over, you’re basically just making money you need to buy supplies you just depleted while killing the same monster again.

Occasionally you just incidentally stumble upon bosses that come up unexpectedly while you’re in the middle of a mission, and killing them usually scores you some object you need to move forward in the game.

Health and ammo can also be found lying around, but there’s a reason there are vending machines all over the place…you need a lot of health and ammo to battle monsters repetitively. These vending machines also offer better weapons if you have enough money to purchase them.

You can shoot enemies with firearms, which is simple—a single trigger/reload button plus auto aiming gives you somewhat of an advantage. If you’re low on ammo you can also melee fight monsters. Again, it’s just one button to execute a melee attack, but there are a bunch of combo strikes that you really have no control over (literally accomplished by button mashing the melee button repeatedly), and melee fighting leaves you more vulnerable to attack since you’re right on top of the enemy.

Since there are fewer buttons and sticks on the Dreamcast controller, the layout is simplified. Unfortunately, this leaves you with no control over the camera, and it’s absolutely terrible. You often run into new rooms to find your camera is aimed down. You can’t move your view up to see the names of rooms above doors, so when looking for particular locations you have to run back away from the door to get the sign in the view of the camera. It also creates a disadvantage when trying to fight monsters you can’t see onscreen, or when you are required to specifically shoot objects as part of a task, but you can’t get those objects in your sights at all. Worst of all, there are times when you walk into a room and can’t even take one step forward before either regular enemies or a boss start attacking you, leaving you no choice other than to just stand in that doorway shooting and just hoping for the best.

And speaking of doorways, if you accidentally click near a door the game immediately sends you through it even if you didn’t intend to go through it, yet if you leave a room accidentally and want to go right back in, the game totally ignores your clicks on the door when you turn around. You literally have to walk away from the door and approach it again before the clicking will be recognized. WTF?

Blue Stinger doesn’t have tank controls like Resident Evil did back then, but the controls respond too fast to the point that you feel like you can’t contain the character’s crazy running, turning, and reversing. How hard you press on the stick determine how fast or slow he moves, but trying to hold a steady hand for slow movement is tedious, and quite frankly no fun. However, there are times you want to walk slowly…like a segment involving traveling on lots of catwalks. I learned the hard way that this game is not forgiving if you move to close to the edge of a drop-off. Adding to the frustrating movement issues, there are also underwater swimming segments. Swimming is tedious because you run out of air fast and have to just figure out the trick to swimming up for air. Compounding the wonky swimming controller issue and lack of air, there are also giant fish to contend with. Sigh.

The inventory screen is fairly basic and does freeze the game in the background as well as pausing the timer during timed side missions. Within the inventory screen is the map, which is pretty useless, with no names of rooms and just a different color showing the room you’re in—no handy arrow designating your character and which direction he’s facing. Certain rooms have a map download station and save station where you do the good old slot saves whenever you want, plus there are often vending machines in these rooms.

Another interesting aspect of this game is that you actually have a partner with you, but he is only seen on screen during cut scenes, and he doesn’t join in battles! You can, however, switch playable character in the inventory screen if you want to use a different weapon. Each guy has unique weapons, and some weapons are better than others for fighting certain bosses. Also of note, at one point these buddies get naked together for a relaxing bath in the middle of all the chaos they’re dealing with! There’s a very daddy and his boy vibe between them.

And speaking of having someone with you, perhaps the oddest element of this game is that you are constantly followed by a little blue Tinkerbell type fairy. I have no idea what her purpose is (she sucks as a guardian angel), and honestly, she’s basically a fairy flashlight, because her glow lights up darker areas.

Other than fighting the same monsters over and over, the game mostly involves just running around collecting keys for other doors. No puzzles to solve beyond figuring out how to push boxes around to climb on them to reach other areas to find items you’ll never even know are there unless you read a walkthrough. Seriously, a walkthrough is essential to get through this game if you don’t want to waste hours going in circles, because there are really no clues as to what you are supposed to be accomplishing at any given time—just running through endless halls and into rooms clicking on the scenery hoping you’ll accomplish something.

There are also side missions that involve saving characters and doing other tasks, and you get special weapons as rewards, but I didn’t quite know when I was doing a side mission because they’re just integrated into the game. You don’t even have to do them and not doing so doesn’t affect the game at all, but you wouldn’t know that as you play. As far as I can tell, the side missions were all timed segments. I hate timed missions. With these timed segments, you really have no idea what to do or where to go within that time unless you follow a walkthrough. It doesn’t help that everything looks alike and it’s all a big maze with a lot of running back and forth.

So how else can the game make running back and forth with respawning monsters more annoying beyond catwalks of death and killer fish in the water? There’s a section that requires you to run through freezer rooms cloaked in mist. Brrrr. You have to keep an eye on your body temperature and find warm rooms in between trying to accomplish shit in the area—which makes those respawning monsters infuriating. Eventually you find a “heater” which turns off your temperature meter. My advice? Read a walkthrough and go for the heater unit immediately before doing anything else, because good luck finding the warm rooms when you’re on the verge of freezing to death. Unfortunately, there’s a similar challenge with a section filled with poisonous gas…and you don’t find a gas mask to get through it. Sigh.

Later in the game there’s a frustrating area that requires you to repeatedly crawl up pipes and on ceilings to travel through vents. The camera angle is topsy-turvy, the controls seem to go in the reverse of the direction you want to go, and it’s not just a straightforward crawl—you have to click by the vents to move on to the next area.

As you near the end of the game, it’s one tedious task after another. You first have to swim through loads of tunnels filled with killer fish. You then have to climb your way to the top of a tower, with dropout platforms and a few enemies along the way. The game also puts you facing a drop-off every time you climb a ladder, with a super close view of the back of your head, so if you don’t turn around or if you take the slightest step forward you will fall off the tower. Not fun.

Then, right before the final boss, a guarding mission is thrust upon you. You have to keep some invincible enemies away from one character for three minutes. Bye-bye to all that ammo you need for the final boss.

The giant final boss mostly breathes fire at you and will try to step on you, but it doesn’t take many shots to kill him if you have one of the heftier guns.

And finally, there is a twist near the end that explains why it’s called Dinosaur Island, plus there are aspects of the game that make it appear this game somehow takes place at Christmas time, including one of your characters donning a Santa suit (the daddy, of course).

Because it has been so long since I played Blue Stinger (like…20 years. Damn!), I don’t remember thinking back then “I never want to play this game again”. Going forward now that I have replayed it, I will make it a point to remember that I never want to play this game again.

 

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TUBI TERRORS: did these vampire movies suck?

Posted on November 29, 2022 by Daniel

Tubi offered up three vampire films that looked appealing to me, making for the perfect triple feature. Well, not quite. In the end only one satisfied. Let’s take a look.

BITE NIGHT (2022)

This movie had one job to do. A female punk band selects a bunch of fans from the audience and takes them to an isolated house to “party”, which can only spell a night of horror house terror for the fans. You know…Night of the Demons with vampires. So how the hell did it become such a confusing mess of nothingness overpopulated by music montages? I can’t even explain that myself.

For starters, the film begins with not one but two full-length song performances by the band at a club. I was totally digging the new wave sound of the second song, but still—nearly ten minutes of musical performance without any introduction to characters?

That is a huge issue here. The characters are barely developed, from the vampire chicks to the fans. They all arrive at a house drenched in 80s horror color lighting, they go to their rooms to prepare for dinner, they experience some odd things that mean nothing to us and make little sense, and then they finally gather with the band for dinner, where they quickly realize something is very wrong at this house.

The guests get infected with something that causes veiny and black-eyed side effects, and eventually they do battle with the band with some surprise twists and some cheesy, 80s level magic power lightning bolt effects.

There’s also some sort of creature crawling around (the highlight for me).

I honestly understood none of it, but I would have liked a bit of expansion on one male fan’s flirtation with wearing dresses.

CRYPTIC (2014)

I’m kind of here to just warn you about this movie if you’re looking for a comedy (which this is described as), or a vampire movie (which is also implied by the description). It’s really neither. Instead, this feels like a dialogue-heavy play turned into a movie.

A group of mob guys is hired to guard a coffin in a crypt. What unfolds is nonstop talk as we get to know the personality of each character and they question what’s in the coffin. 52 minutes in there’s a hint that it might be a vampire.

After much bickering about just opening the coffin, there’s a shootout with just 15 minutes to go.

With about 5 minutes to go, we learn what’s really in the coffin, and the denouement makes it feel like someone wanted to make a Saw type of movie with a vampire angle.

I’m not sure who this movie is supposed to satisfy. Horror fans waiting for some vampire action will be hugely disappointed. Mob movie fans will be confused by the constant talk of vampires…and the constant talk. Notice how most of the screen grabs I included all look the same? That tells you how much variation you get in this movie….

LET THE WRONG ONE IN (2021)

 

Coming to us from the director of Stitches and Dead Meat, vampire horror comedy Let The Wrong One In was an immediate DVD purchase for me after I finished streaming it.

This British flick is loaded with humor delivered by the minimal cast of characters…including Giles from Buffy! It is a blast watching him play a rather manic, much more adventurous vampire hunter than he did on Buffy.

Another plus is that the lead guy is deliciously full-bodied, especially in the thighs and the booty. Yum.

He’s also adorable.

He is strapped with the problem of helping or staking his vampire brother.

Humor, comedic battles, and loads of spraying blood abound as the pair and Giles deliver a farcical vampire conundrum.

Eventually more vampires complicate matters, even turning into bats (awesome), and the action moves to a dance club for the final act.

This is most definitely a party flick and an instant classic in my book.

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It’s almost like he comes to you in your dreams…

Posted on November 15, 2022 by Daniel

It’s a trio of slashers with killers that aren’t quite all there…until it’s time for the killing to start!  Kinda reminded me of an infamous baddie we all know and love.

BRING ME A DREAM (2020)

I checked this one out mostly because Martin Kove of Karate Kid/Cobra Kai fame appears in it with his hot as hell son, who plays a cop.

A young woman on the run and suspected of murder arrives at a sorority house that seems to be in the middle of nowhere and holds the college crowd hostage. She starts to ramble about the Sandman, and before long all the kids are experiencing nightmarish hallucinations from which they can’t wake up.

The whole movie feels like a psychotropic trip. The kids are mostly experiencing nightmares in which they are bullied by all the other kids based on their insecurities and vulnerabilities—pretty girl, closeted gay guy, Black guy, etc. (and the n word is used a lot in his sequence—like seriously uncomfortably too much).

The Sandman is mostly a shadowy illusion, but he does take a larger role (and does some killing) when there are only about twenty-five minutes remaining.

There’s some gore, but nothing particularly frightening happens, and the plot is rather convoluted. Reminds me of when the Elm Street franchise started going off the rails.

But damn is Martin Kove’s son fine.

THE MANOR (2018)

This time around the one dragging her demons into the real world is a young woman just out of the psychiatric hospital, where she was under the care of Rachel True (one of our favorite witches from The Craft), which we see in occasional flashbacks to her therapy sessions.

Thinking it will be good for her daughter’s mental health, the young woman’s mother decides to bring her to a resort to meet all her distant relatives. This doesn’t stop her from having freakish visions of a demonic man committing grisly murders.

And although the visual elements are horrortastic, the demon remains just visions for a majority of the film. Most of the time, the main girl is dealing with weird relatives, horny hunters, and some sort of spiritual cult and their big burly leader.

The demon, wielding an axe, does his first hack job 45 minutes in this 92-minute movie, but it’s not until an hour in that the kills start coming fast.

Of course the question remains…is this demonic killer real or is the main girl just batshit crazy?

It’s predictable, reminiscent of the later Elm Street films, and a little quirky and odd—but at least the demonic killer is entertaining when he finally shows up, and he does have a hunger for a muscle hunk.

THE BLOODY MAN (2020)

The shaky acting, indie vibe, and practical effects of this film may turn some people off, but it perfectly captures the feel of 80s direct-to-video horror…plus it takes place in the 80s. What hurts it is the unthinkable decision to not edit it down from its 2-hour and 13-minute running time. This so easily could have been remedied in large part if they had simply removed several unnecessary segments that are supposed to be stories the kids in the movie are telling each other. I would love an edit of this film that omits them completely.

When things finally get going, this is the type of movie that would have spooked the hell out of me when I was a young teen in the eighties and would have become an instant cable and video rental classic. It offers an 80s style synth score, plenty of 80s pop culture references, and some faux 80s pop songs, yet smartly refrains from trying too hard to get the eighties fashions exact, which only makes throwback films look like a bunch of people dressed for a bad eighties costume party.

The plot is just quirky enough to capture the weird storytelling of many 80s indie films. A boy bullied at school is struggling with his home life. His mom died (played by Lisa Wilcox of Elm Street 4 in flashbacks), he fights with his older brother and younger sister, and he’s not too happy that he has a new stepmom, played by Tuesday Knight of Elm Street 4. Tuesday even performs several of the faux 80s songs used in the film—and now I totally want a soundtrack CD to be released.

The inclusion of these two actresses makes sense, because after way too much family drama that pads much of the film, it ends up having a very Elm Street vibe—the best one of this trio of films.

The main boy reads a little wish spell on the back of a comic book…which brings to life “The Bloody Man” just in time for the kids to be stuck at home with their stepmom when the dad goes away.

The lights go out, the phone line is dead, and the main kid begins to think stepmom is evil because she suddenly begins to act very different. Tuesday Knight’s performance as the stepmom when she’s normal is rough, but once she gets to acting sinister and mean, she rocks it.

The movie gets intense as the kids run around in the shadows of the house trying to avoid their stepmom at first and then eventually The Bloody Man. The scary scenes with The Bloody Man are so Freddy Krueger, and there’s also plenty of cheesy kid-centric horror camp, including a fight with a dismembered arm and some inspiration to fight back brought to them by He-Man!

Unfortunately, all this good stuff doesn’t kick in until 90 minutes into the film. I sooooo wish this feature film had been trimmed down to its core elements, because I really think it would totally be embraced by fans of true 80s horror if it were a bit more streamlined.

 

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The holidays at the Amityville House?

Posted on November 10, 2022 by Daniel

Not exactly. I check out two short indies that cash-in on both the Amityville name and the holiday horror trend. Between these two and Amityville Cop, which takes place on New Year’s Eve, Amityville titles are popping up all over the complete list on my holiday horror page. When will we be getting an Amityville Halloween flick?

AMITYVILLE THANKSGIVING (2022)

This 72-minute movie is such a disaster…but it has a trashy Long Island charm I can totally connect with and even shows actual footage of the town of Amityville and the infamous house as they are today during the opening credits. Not sure if that’s even legal.

The real bummer for me was that it fails to deliver on the Thanksgiving festivities. Like…just make a movie with a damn scene in which a cooked Turkey comes back to life at the Amityville house dining table and attacks guests. Is that too much to ask?

Or better yet, have the Indian burial ground that is supposedly under the house and influenced Ronald Defeo to shoot his whole family get tasty Thanksgiving revenge for what the white men did to Native Americans back in the day.

Instead, this is a roughly acted film about a sleazy Amityville therapist who sends a straight couple to a cabin to work on their sexual problems. This couple is so New York that I couldn’t help but like them—their hokey acting as they argue with New York accents about their intimacy issues is the perfect comical tone the film needed.

I was just disappointed when they find a turkey costume in the cabin, think it was left there by the therapist for their sexual role-playing, and then refuse to put it on. Come on! We need a turkey costume sex scene in an Amityville Thanksgiving movie!

Meanwhile, a private detective is investigating why couples have gone missing after seeing the therapist. We get to see interview videos with some of the couples, including two gay guys discussing their bear identity and getting flirty with each other, which lands this film on the does the gay guy die? page.

The best part is the goomba man in the main relationship getting possessed after they find a Ouija board, tearing off his shirt, and grunting lustfully as he gives his woman the bang she’s been begging for.

After some demonic and satanic revelations, the movie fills the final 20 minutes with interviews of people speculating on what became of the now missing therapist.

Not exactly the Amityville holiday film we can be thankful for, but I’m so there for the sex plot.

AMITYVILLE CHRISTMAS VACATION (2022)

I had high hopes for director/actor/writer Steve Rudzinski’s output after seeing his film Everyone Must Die, but his low budget films have gotten progressively less appealing to me, and going for the “public domain” Amityville name drags his filmography down to a Mark Polonia level production.

Rudzinski uses this film as a vehicle to make himself the focus so he can give us 47 minutes of his humorous charm, which just isn’t sustainable as a virtual one-man show. For instance, his character, Wally Griswold (if you know, you know) wins a Christmas vacation to Amityville, and he gives us an unfunny, too long montage of him packing his bag with silly items while merry Christmas tunes chime.

He then arrives at the Amityville house, only to reveal that he’s staying at a B&B next door. I give him credit for mocking the fact that he’s just totally cashing in on the Amityville name to capture a built-in audience for a movie that isn’t even about the house.

At the B&B, he keeps encountering a female ghost drenched in horror/Christmas red lights, accompanied by an overplayed orchestral sting every time she appears (which could be a parody of how cheap scares are created in all the tween supernatural flicks these days). Steve isn’t scared because he thinks she’s just another guest, and before long they fall in love, she gets kidnapped, and he has to find her.

A few other characters are written in to make it seem like this film isn’t all about Rudzinski’s shtick, but it is. And his shtick can’t quite carry the whole film…but it’s still more entertaining than any of the material he gives to the other actors in the film.

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