I just can’t get away from zombies

No matter how played out zombie movies get, inevitably I’m going to dive into more of them. So let’s get right into this trio of indie flicks.

THE MANSON BROTHERS MIDNIGHT ZOMBIE MASSACRE (2021)

This is a wrestling buddy action zomcom, so go into it for the mindless zombie fun–and all the unfiltered gay subtext that comes with sausagefest movies.

You’ve gotta love that there’s a review on IMDb praising this movie for not being woke…when in fact it’s loaded with sexually-tinged man-on-man stuff. It’s a perfect example of how straight men are fine with homosexual content as long as it’s masked by “butch” dudes in male dominated arenas like the wrestling ring. For instance, Midnight Zombie Massacre makes sure to squash straight male fears of the homoerotic nature of the locker room by infusing a shower scene with elements that remind us that males are “gross”, not sexual…sure they may be showering together, but only feet away, a dude is sitting on the toilet in a stall with the door open talking to the men in the shower as he takes a noisy dump.

Gay dudes will most likely see things through a different lens. The showering guys, men hanging around the locker room in only towels, a dude feeling up another dude’s belly, one wrestler giving another wrestler an atomic wedgie, our main characters donned in leather uniforms that scream “hurt me, daddy”…

Anyway, I’m sure the majority of men in this cast are real wrestlers. I recognized a couple and had no interest in checking to see if the rest of them are. Real actors or not, they make this movie work. They all seem quite comfortable and familiar with each other, and they are clearly having a good time together. They even deliver on the humorous tone the movie is going for. The only handicap is that the material isn’t funny enough. The actors and their interactions actually rise above the weak writing.

What works best here is the zombie action. The zombies look great, there’s loads of practical gore effects, and because these are wrestlers, they deliver on the zombie fight choreography. The bulk of the action comes in the last half hour, so the early silliness and filler definitely leads to payoff.

Other things to note:

  • The movie revolves around a steel cage match event on Halloween, and the holiday is mentioned several times, yet there is simply no holiday vibe here. I’ll add the film to the holiday horror page, but it’s not a film that’s going to get you into the Halloween spirit.
  • DB Sweeney appears in the film as a wrestling manager.

  • The film attempts some “representation”: a beefy Black wrestler appears to be given one scene so the filmmakers can claim they had a diverse cast, and a gun-toting little person is relegated to the usual campy role.

  • The first pre-zombie wrestling scene goes for the retro vibe with an 80s-style rock song playing in the background.

  • As another reminder that these are tough, masculine dudes with nothing gay going on between them, one guy disses another guy by telling him to go binge The Golden Girls.

  • When the full zombie action hits, some electronic suspense music kicks in that is very reminiscent of the awesome score in the Dying Light video game.

SCAVENGERS (2022)

The title of this “zombie” film is very telling. We’ve all been overloaded with Z Nation, The Walking Dead and its spin-offs, and various one-season zombie shows that feature survivor communities, so we’re all familiar with the teams responsible for going out to get supplies. That’s what this film is about…the lives of the scavengers that hunt and gather. And it’s handled with a low budget, agonizing melodrama, a hokey score, and endless dialogue.

This feels like a home-brewed production. Following the outbreak of an infectious disease, the whole “community” ends up partying in a nice suburban backyard with rich green grass, a crystal clear in-ground pool, a trampoline, and even red Solo cups.

There are approximately four zombies throughout the course of the film, several infiltrate the community 53 minutes in, and near the end the main guy points out what he calls a “huge horde” of zombies, which is approximately 15 people shuffling along a deserted road.

Why watch this cheap attempt at an indie when you can just watch one of the numerous zombie TV shows out there and get better storytelling, better acting, better production value, and more zombies?

PANDEMIC UNDEAD (2022)

I’ll never understand this type of note in the trivia for certain movies on IMDb, but this film is described as being edited from the 2007 film Zombie Farm. I’ve never seen that film, but this has the same exact cast, the same exact director/writer, and the same exact running time, so I have no idea if there’s actually any difference between the two cuts.

Either way, this movie has a little too much going on for an indie. We have FBI agents investigating the poisoning of a small town’s water supply. There are terrorists. There are rednecks on a farm.

There’s a foursome of horny young people heading to the farm to deliver an eviction notice. And there’s a hunky military guy who believes in government conspiracies and is totally ready to be a survivalist.

Taking place entirely during the day, this is a low budget zombie outing, and includes both practical gore effects and some funny CGI effects, but it all works to make for an oddly entertaining experience. The film does, however, take itself a bit too seriously instead of going for all-out zombie action fun.

For me personally, the best part is the four young people dealing with the zombie outbreak on the farm.

One cute douchebag gives good pit and eventually teams up with the military hunk to survive, and quite frankly, I wish the bulk of the movie had focused on them, because they make a cool zombie-fighting duo.

Yeah, that’s what I was hoping for. The two hotties wasting their time fighting zombies together when all they have in the world is each other and they look like this…

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on I just can’t get away from zombies

TUBI TERRORS: a backwoods slasher, witchy woods, and a desert horror

Each of these three flicks had a slow burn element to them, and two of them turned the heat up higher after the burn. Let’s find out which ones.

THE HOOT OWL (2022)

Running only 71-minutes long, this is a backwoods slasher with an Evil Dead vibe, but the decision to start killing people 52 minutes in hurts the pacing.

A movie that’s just a bit over an hour should not take almost an hour to get to the good stuff.

The plot is simple. A group of friends comes to stay at a house in the woods.

They discuss music (Billy Joel vs. Elton John), they drink from red Solo cups, they have conversations by the fire, they fish, there’s sex with boobs, the girls put on a fashion show montage, there’s pregnancy drama, and there’s a tale told about violence that befell a family that lived in the house.

Yet with all that, there’s not much character development to make us feel anything for these characters when a killer in an owl mask shows up with only 20 minutes left to go.

Even so, the practical effects gore is awesome, the Evil Dead feel of the camera work is like coming home, and the cast is killed off quite quickly. It all leads to some heinous visuals involving pregnancy. Ew. However, since the character development isn’t all that, the final actions of the lone survivor seem quite extreme.

Meanwhile, this daddy stole the show for me just by being on camera.

THE WINTER WITCH (2022)

The Winter Witch is as slow and dull as The Blair Witch Project, with one upside…we get to actually see the witch. Twice.

A journalist is sent by her boss back to her hometown to explore a rash of child deaths blamed on “the winter witch”.

There’s an estranged grandmother who believes their family is cursed, there’s a detective lurking around because he’s on the case, and there are some locals that believe the journalist has brought the curse upon them by returning.

Almost an hour in, we get the first witch appearance. It’s brief but delivers a satisfying jump scare. The second appearance is also fleeting near the end, in one of the most anticlimactic final battles ever.

BURY THE BRIDE (2023)

Directed by Spider One, who is the brother of Rob Zombie, lead singer of Powerman 5000, and the director of Allegoria, Bury the Bride is a Tubi original and the absolute winner in this bunch. I don’t want to give much away, so I’ll make this brief and sort of vague.

Scout Taylor-Compton, her sister, and her friends go on a trip for her bachelorette party to a cabin in…the desert? It’s a nice change from the usual cabin location.

Keep an eye out for the friend in glasses who looks exactly like the late Penny Marshall.

There’s a bit of a slow burn as the girls party and get spooked by a few faux scares.

Also of note is a dance montage set to the now wave goodie “Your Addiction” by Night Club.

The party is crashed by some unexpected guests…Scout’s white trash redneck fiancé and his buddies (proving white people can be two colors at once).

The film soon does what horror should…it makes you very uncomfortable. It feels like the guys have something very nefarious planned, and I feared this was just going to be some exploitative rape/revenge flick. I was psyched to discover it isn’t—it heads into classic horror territory. Plus, our final girl kicks ass. And that’s all I’m going to say. I’d highly recommend this one.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Sound Check - The Songs Stuck in My Head, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on TUBI TERRORS: a backwoods slasher, witchy woods, and a desert horror

TUBI TERRORS: creatures around every corner

My latest triple feature covers racial issues, high school issues, and found footage clichés. Let’s get right to them.

STAY OUT (2022)

Even though it’s not a great movie, you’ve gotta love a 69-minute indie horror flick that shoves “woke” down your throat and openly mocks white supremacy, religious extremism, and unfortunately, Florida, which has become somewhat of the capital of both.

2 interracial couples are on a road trip to South Beach. Dumbest characters ever for even driving through Florida.

Anyway, loads of dialogue features snarky swings at everything awful that conservatives hold dear.

Naturally the kids get a flat. Oddly, they end up in a seemingly abandoned town where they actually find a Black couple running a diner.

Then it’s tons of talking again. Sigh.

As dull as it is, the final act brings on an interesting twist that is nothing like you’d expect, lands the film in a traditional horror subgenre, and has some suspenseful horror elements, even if they are cheap due to budget limitations. That doesn’t mean I’m recommending this movie in any way.

HORROR HIGH (2020)

Made by a high school AV club with little money, this film with a clever plot, sleek production, and some intense creature feature moments is hindered by an excessive 107-minute length that really hurts the pace and leads to a lot of repetition before finally getting to the monster madness.

The film was originally called Tardy Terror because it’s about a monster that kills off kids that come to class late, but the word tardy is so last millennium, so I guess the distributor made the title change to the generic Horror High.

There’s somewhat of a nonlinear narrative here, which also spoils the flow of the film, but the basic premise is that a bunch of nerds has to contend with a tardy monster and its emotionless school staff minions. it’s definitely reminiscent of The Faculty—hell, there’s even an early 2000s EMO style song used for a montage at the end.

The first half of the film can feel like a drag. You have to stick with it to follow what’s going on, because many of the initial attacks are presented in flashbacks each time the main kids gather at an arcade to review what is going on in their school. They also find an unlikely ally in an adult burnout (who adds some comic relief), plus they have to avoid a bunch of bullies while trying to save their city.

Once the creature finally comes out to play, it’s here to stay. You can really tell the kids that made this movie did their homework. There are great suspense moments and intense camera angles, and the monster is a satisfying treat.

I think the film is worth a watch, especially for aspiring filmmakers to see what can be done on a limited budget…when you have your school’s AV equipment at your disposal.

WE FOUND SOMETHING (2022)

As much as I despise most found footage films, this equally formulaic film would have been one of the more satisfying ones if the creature didn’t look like a cheap Halloween store makeup job. It’s bad to the point of distracting, especially considering it’s always soaked in bright flashlight beam. Maybe the makers of this film should have seen what a bunch of AV club kids pulled off with their monster…

The premise is familiar. The characters—this time a brother and sister—head into the woods. Reason being, the brother is afraid of heights and his sister is making him go rock climbing to get over it. To think they could have simply gone to one of those indoor climbing walls in which you’re strapped to a harness.

Doesn’t matter, because after the usual conversational filler, the brother barely gets to climb before he sees a two-legged creature eating a bird. He becomes obsessed with finding the creature.

At the halfway mark, the creature encounters ramp up, which would be awesome if not for the Halloween costume aspect.

However, what I like about this film is a) the reveal of a secret the sister is keeping from her brother, and b) the truth that comes out about the creature in the final few minutes of the film. There’s something very raw, disturbing, and found footage fresh about the way things play out.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on TUBI TERRORS: creatures around every corner

BOUGHT ON BLU: vacations of terror…sort of

Let’s take a trip back in time with a Mexican horror flick from the end of the 80s and its Halloween themed sequel!

VACATION OF TERROR (1989)

Atmosphere, creepy synth musical cues, fog machines, and an 80s vibe are the highlights of this goofy horror flick.

After she vows to get revenge, a witch is burned at the stake, and all her belongings are thrown into a well, including a doll.

In modern times, a man inherits a summer house and brings his family to check it out, including his niece and her boyfriend.

His young daughter falls down a well, where she finds a doll that seems to possess her…yet the little girl appears to be controlling the doll’s supernatural actions—you know, the usual creepy girl talking to her doll scenario. She even has the doll harm her pregnant mother.

The husband takes the mother to the hospital, leaving the kids alone. Then the daughter—this is about an evil little girl with a supernatural doll, it’s not a witch revenge flick—begins to terrorize the niece and boyfriend for the rest of the movie.

It’s scene after scene of the daughter whispering to her doll and then the doll’s eyes shifting to make paranormal shit happen around the house.

There’s even a toy car used like a voodoo doll to make an actual car go on fire.

Watch this one strictly for the 80s nostalgia.

VACATION OF TERROR 2 (1991)   

Would you believe it’s a cheesy sequel that’s better than the first movie? Vacation of Terror 2 takes place on Halloween (landing it on the holiday horror page), downplays the stupid demon doll, brings in an actual demon, and is so deliciously sloppy it feels like 80s Euro horror. Also…it has nothing to do with a vacation.

The boyfriend from the first film is back. He meets a pop singer, and she invites him to …a Halloween birthday party?…for her little sister, who is in possession of the doll.

In the meantime, we get to see the pop singer perform for the party—a song that sounds totally like the Sinitta 1988 dance track “Cross My Broken Heart”, only in Spanish.

After the little sister cuts her finger and bleeds on the birthday cake, the doll eats some of the cake under a table then turns into an awesome yet totally standard looking demon.

The boyfriend from the first film, the pop singer, and her little sister end up alone at the birthday location (which just seems like a town square decorated for Halloween).

The little sister is supernaturally dragged away, and then the main guy and girl run around the streets trying to avoid a demon intent on killing them while they attempt to save the little sister.

It’s silly, it’s hokey, it’s a mess, and yet it’s so much better than the first film.

Posted in Living in the 80s - forever, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on BOUGHT ON BLU: vacations of terror…sort of

BOUGHT ON BLU: aliens, demons, zombies, and more

My latest triple feature of movies in my collection spans decades and subgenres. Let’s take a look.

I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958)

Before The Stepford Wives, there was this delicious little black and white sci-fi flick about body-snatched husbands. With plenty of themes that were ahead of their time, this film makes the point that even when taken over by aliens, men are cold-hearted, aloof, violent assholes that manipulate women, imprison women in marriage, and struggle to come to terms with their feelings.

The night before his wedding, some dude leaves his bachelor party and gets taken over by a freaky alien on a deserted road. Right after he gets married, he starts to infect more and more men with his alien smoke screen. Hot.

His young wife immediately recognizes that something is wrong with him. She gets him a dog, and the fucker kills it! Dog death in a horror movie in the 1950s! There’s also…a cat kill! WTF?

Anyway, the bride dooms all female decisions in horror movies for years to come by following her man into the woods when he sneaks out of the house at night. She sees plenty of evidence to conclude that he’s an alien. But no one believes her, especially the men…because they’re all being turned into aliens, too!

At the same time, it’s one giant leap forward for womankind thanks to a strong feminist friend character who makes a comment to the wife that them being alone together will look “funny”, and describes getting married as having her power taken away.

Aside from eerie 50s sci-fi alien effects, there’s an early form of a chase scene in the woods, suggestive bar banter, a fricking drunken whore, and a very sexy scene of young people lounging on each other in the park. We even get alien laser guns.

The best news is that the canine kingdom eventually gets revenge on the aliens for what they did to that one pup.

THE OMEGA MAN (1971)

As I’m watching all my movies from A though Z, I came to The Omega Man and realized I’d never covered it, so here goes.

Yet another adaptation of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend novel, The Omega Man is a much different movie than Vincent Price’s The Last Man On Earth. To me it’s very reminiscent, ironically, of Beneath the Planet of the Apes from a year before, which ironically features an appearance by Charlton Heston, who stars in this movie.

Sci-fi really never goes out of style as it seems to always capture elements of future realities. The Omega Man involves the concept that germ warfare between Russia and China led to the virtual elimination of human existence.

However, Charlton Heston’s character, a former military man, has survived and seems to have immunity to the virus after injecting himself with an experimental vaccine. He lives an isolated existence in the remains of a large city, and talks to himself and mannequins to keep from going crazy due to lack of companionship.

Meanwhile, there is a cult of infected humans still around. They are albinos that wear hooded robes and sunglasses as protection against the light. They think Heston is the root of all evil (religious themes are embedded in the plot), and that he is going to be the death of them if they don’t do something about him.

This is more an action film than a horror movie, but it doesn’t have much to offer in terms of action either. Even with their zombie eyes revealed, the cult members simply aren’t scary, and the action consists mostly of car chase scenes. The ideas presented are cool, but the movie suffers from that hokey early 1970s vibe. The real highlight in terms of breaking cinematic ground is that Heston eventually encounters a Black woman (in a cool mannequin scene) and begins an interracial relationship with her.

CURSE OF THE BLUE LIGHTS (1988)

This little indie was released just as the glory days of 80s horror were coming to an end and every direct-to-video movie was basically crap.

There’s so much promise in the opening scene. This fantastic scarecrow kill in a field delivers in-your-face camerawork. I can’t fathom how someone could deliver a scene like this and follow it up with the hokey underground ghoul clan horror flick this becomes.

A group of kids goes to park in a hot spot swirling with a supernatural reputation.

Sadly, the truth is that well-dressed, talking ghouls live under a nearby cemetery and are hatching a plan to revive a demon. Ugh. This is just so bad.

The kids happened to have found the one relic the ghouls need to complete the ritual. A witch woman the kids consult gives them pointers on how to combat the inevitable, devastating ritual.

The kids end up underground fighting the ghouls.

Meanwhile, zombies crawl from the graves up above. And finally, the demon is resurrected and the kids have to escape that as well.

Cheesy music, no suspense or scares, and no gore is what you can expect. In fact, the two best, brief, gory moments are only watchable in the bonus features on the Blu-ray and sourced from an old videotape.

Posted in Living in the 80s - forever, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on BOUGHT ON BLU: aliens, demons, zombies, and more

BOUGHT ON BLU: a psycho killer, aliens, and a silly sequel

I bought one because it’s a sequel to an 80s flick, one because it was the only flick I still needed starring Bruce Campbell, and one because it stars Traci Lords, Ricki Lake, and Ted Raimi. So were they worth adding to my collection?

SKINNER (1993)

Somehow, this dark killer thriller with a dose of camp passed me by in the 90s. I think we even had it at the video store I worked in, and for whatever reason I never got around to watching it (I was too busy going to techno clubs and raves).

Deliciously twisted and trashy, Skinner features Ted Raimi as a psycho killer who rents a room in Ricki Lake’s house while her blue collar husband regularly has to leave her home alone to travel for work.

Personally, I’d never let him leave…

Meanwhile, Traci Lords plays a druggy who was also a victim of “Skinner” but managed to get away. She’s now on the hunt for him to enact her revenge.

Ted works in a warehouse and spends his free time picking up prostitutes, skinning them alive, and then wearing their skin in Leatherface fashion. The neon lighting is great, and there’s plenty of detailed gore, but at this point, at least for me, there was something almost cartoonish about it that lessened the intensity of the horrific situations.

Having said that, there is one long sequence that is heinous and disturbing. After an altercation with a Black guy at his job, Ted kills and skins the guy and then runs around in his skin speaking in a stereotypical Black dialect. This goes on for a looooong time.

I usually don’t like “portrait of a serial killer” movies, but this one just feels so unapologetically offensive in its execution, brings to mind how awesomely subversive films could be back then, and focuses on a different faction of society than we usually expect.

TERMINAL INVASION (2002)

Sean S. Cunningham of Friday the 13th fame directs this made-for-SyFy original. Watch it for Bruce Campbell, but don’t watch it expecting Bruce to do his shtick.

It’s sort of like Stephen King’s Storm of the Century vs. The Thing. A group of people is trapped in a small town airport during a blizzard. Cops come in with a prisoner they can’t get to the precinct in the storm. That prisoner is Bruce, and he is totally in his prime here, looking mega hot.

Before long, the group discovers that not everyone is what they seem. There are aliens among them! When they are revealed, their eyes change and they sort of behave like they’re possessed.

Naturally the group splits up in an effort to figure out a way to escape the airport, and no one knows who they can trust. There are some fun moments, including an attack in an x-ray machine, kids turning into aliens, and a suspenseful scene viewed through monitors, but it’s an hour in before we get the first satisfying alien attack.

The high point is that Bruce and the remaining survivors take on the leader of the aliens in the last ten minutes, which are definitely the highlight. We also get a nice and slimy CGI alien explosion.

SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-O-RAMA 2 (2022)

Over 30 years later, David DeCoteau’s cult favorite from 1988 gets a sequel…that he has nothing to do with. Instead, scream queen Brinke Stevens directs. She was in the original with Michelle Bauer and Linnea Quigley. Here, Brinke and Michelle return as ghosts.

Linnea was apparently set to appear in the film but got into a bad accident just before shooting, so 80s horror queen Kelli Maroney stepped in as her sister, the house mother of the sorority.

Running only 62 minutes long, the film opens with a jazzercise session set to 80s style music to get us in the throwback mood. Then we are presented with numerous montages as the sorority girls prepare for pledge night.

There are two showering montages, boys spying on the naked girls, a whipped cream hazing, a party montage when they get to the bowling alley, a flirting montage, and finally a cat fight 37 minutes in.

This is the moment when a trophy is broken in the bowling alley and the little Ghoulies rip-off from the first movie is released.

He grants everyone wishes while purposely misinterpreting them. He also turns some of the girls into demons as in the original film, but overall, this feels much more like a typical, amateurish Full Moon film of recent years rather than 80s direct-to-video trash.

 

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on BOUGHT ON BLU: a psycho killer, aliens, and a silly sequel

HOLIDAY HORROR: Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day with a side of gay

This foursome offers up a nice mix of holidays and subgenres. They are all getting added to the holiday horror page, and one of them earns a spot on the homo horror movies page as well. But will you want them to be part of your annual holiday horror traditions? Let’s find out.

KIDS VS. ALIENS (2023)

An alien tale from V/H/S 2 gets extended into a full-length feature running a tight 75-minutes long. This is essentially like an 80s Steven Spielberg film with gore. Or…Stephen King’s Silver Bullet with aliens.

A group of nerdy tweens is regularly harassed by the town’s teen bad boy and his friends.

On Halloween night, all the kids end up at a house party without any parental guidance.

It isn’t long before aliens bust in and start dragging them away. Eek!

Our main kids get drawn into a pretty freaky underwater alien lair where they are subjected to some cruel practices…like being dissolved with acid. Frightful fun for adults, this film would be considered a full-fledged horror movie to kids.

There are plenty of atmospheric and suspenseful chase scenes, and our main geek girl gets to squash her hero envy with a sword.

But be warned, this film does not have a tidy ending and begs for a sequel. Also note that there’s tag scene after the closing credits.

AUTUMN ROAD (2021)

This isn’t your ordinary haunted attraction film. It’s a slow, brooding story that focuses more on those affected by the disappearance of a little girl on Halloween in a small town than it does on concrete horror.

Ten years later, the missing girl’s sister is going through a dark period and has an awkward relationship with her mother, played by Friday the 13th Part 7 star Lar Park-Lincoln.

Twin brothers, one sweet and one weird, were the last two people to see the little girl alive, and they are now running a popular haunted attraction.

The main girl befriends the sweet twin, and as they slowly grow close, she extracts information out of him about his last minutes with her sister on that tragic Halloween night.

Meanwhile, someone in a mask is doing some seemingly random terrorizing and killing. However, this film is not a slasher. “Masked killer” moments are few and far between, but one of them, which is a sort of stalking/home invasion sequence, is fantastic and fresh.

As intriguing as it all is with sinister October atmosphere, it’s also very bizarre and doesn’t quite come together—a lot of open-ended details leave it up to viewers to decipher what exactly transpired.

TWO WITCHES (2021)

Like a mashup of a Sam Raimi movie and 80s Euro horror, Two Witches delivers all the hocus pocus you could hope for. But don’t expect Halloween witches. They’re more like winter witches considering the events take place at Christmas time.

Broken into a few “chapters”, the film is essentially two different stories that come together at the end of the second part…sort of. Just like 80s Euro horror, there’s a lot going on here, it’s all really spooky, none of it quite makes sense, and there’s no resolution to clarify things beyond a promise that the story is “to be continued”. I’ll gladly take a sequel since the ride is so much fun.

The first part is about a pregnant woman who becomes convinced a witchy woman is stalking her.

She is friends with a couple that is into the occult, so they gather together one night to dabble in the magical arts to find out if she is hexed. Tension building edits and a slow burn atmosphere lead up to some freaky witch action.

The second chapter stars horror queen Kristina Klebe (Linda in Rob Zombie’s Halloween).

She is renting a room to an eerily weird young woman, played to witchy perfection by Rebekah Kennedy.

Kristina tries to be friendly and supportive, but Rebekah’s craziness moves into Single White Female territory. This is when the witchy goodness spins out of control…and into total chaos. But it’s so satisfying I didn’t even care. I’d especially like to learn how Rebekah pulls off this levitation trick…

Make sure to stick around for the after-credits scenes and the old school final frame moment.

LOVE HURTS (aka: Most Horrible Things) (2022)

Although I am not a fan of movies that piggyback on the Saw concept of throwing a group of less than pure people in a room to either physically or psychologically torture them, I watched this one because it’s a holiday flick with queer characters.

6 people accept an invite to a mansion for Valentine’s Day with the promise of winning money. They are greeted by a butler, played by the psycho Santa bear from Once Upon a Time at Christmas. He looks particularly hot when framed by penis head lighting.

He makes them sign waivers and takes their phones. Uh-oh.

The guests bicker and mock each other’s credentials to give us some character development, and then their host arrives and drags even more character details out of these unlikable people. The host is referred to as “they” by one character and doesn’t even give a straight answer when asked if they should be called “sir”, so we can only assume they are a they/them. They happen to be deliciously dark, bitchy, and condescending with no sense of personal space. I felt like I was watching an interview on the Drew Barrymore Show when they spoke with each guest.

While the host slowly draws dirty secrets out of each guest in what seems like an effort to get them to make romantic connections, the bulk of this film focuses on two gay guys—a hot Black gay and a snooty white gay. This is the highlight of this otherwise typical flick, because it dives into interracial dating, white tribalism, and bigotry within the gay community.

It all leads to the gays cat fighting, at which point I began wondering, “Why don’t the other guests just bow out of the offer of money?” And this is perhaps the most unique aspect of the film. They suddenly do all decide to pass on continuing to join in the Valentine’s Day festivities!

Of course, leaving isn’t as simple as it seems, so it’s a major letdown that there’s only one moment of violence and gore in the whole damn movie. Also, so many plot points feel like they’re left dangling, but there is an attempt to make the ending unique and unexpected. Unfortunately, the takeaway for me was that a) even when a majority of the focus is on queer characters, they are still going to be at the mercy of straight characters, and b) the whole point of the movie seemed to be to present an absurdly complicated way of going about getting a date.

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on HOLIDAY HORROR: Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day with a side of gay

Bad things always happen in the middle of nowhere

Whether it’s a motel, a country house, or a forest campsite, people just never learn. So which of these three isolated locations worked best for me in my latest triple feature? Let’s find out.

MYSTERY SPOT (2021)

If you come up with a cool premise for a horror movie but don’t have the budget to offer anything but 110 minutes of mostly dialogue-driven plot, I’d suggest waiting to raise more money to give us an experience we won’t forget…and would gladly sit and watch for 110 minutes.

There is intriguing stuff going on here. There’s a motel in the middle of nowhere run by a nice old gay guy with a bit of a flirty, lecherous side to him. Oh how I miss the days of being admired by guys like that. Shit. I guess I’m supposed to start behaving like one of those guys now. Anyway, this dude lands Mystery Spot on the does the gay guy die? page.

There’s a “mystery spot” near the motel—an abandoned roadside attraction with metaphysical powers that defy the laws of gravity, according to the old gay guy. And that’s exactly why it’s such a shame that there is no exploration of the damn inside of the attraction. WTF?

Instead, this is a character study of the people staying at the motel, including Lisa Wilcox of Elm Street 4 and 5, a beary dude holding auditions for his movie in his hotel room, and a Black guy who just sits in his car outside and warns Lisa away from the mystery spot. Naturally he’s hiding an ulterior motive, but that unfolds very slowly. As does the whole movie.

Most of the mysterious aspects revolve around the bear, and it seems to involve either making porn movies, occult practices, or pedophilia. It’s all quite creepy for a while, but then it just loses steam as the lives of the characters come together in what is mostly a drama about people being haunted by their pasts. What a letdown.

DEMONS AT DAWN (2022)

Demons at Dawn is book-ended by a plot point about a prisoner, which didn’t add anything but confusion for me. However, the prisoner was a hot daddy, so I’ll let it slide.

The focus is on a hit man who takes one more job to pay his debt. When he arrives at the countryside house where he is to do the job, he sees a man dead in a field. I’m almost convinced the shot of a tree used in this movie is the same one from The Ring.

Before long the hit man is dealing with various “visitors” who seem to know something about a cult situation in the vicinity.

Soon after that, they’re all dealing with cheesy good, dime store demons like something right out of a direct-to-video 1980s horror movie.

It’s not a particularly innovative or scary film, but I really liked the throwback vibe during the eventual demon cult siege of the house.

Unfortunately, the home invasion is not exactly a substantial part of this 80-minute movie.

FREAK (2020)

This indie runs only 51 minutes long. Thankfully director/writer Lucky Cerruti makes use of every second. There’s no fat to trim here. This is a tight little backwoods creature feature demonstrating that Lucky has paid attention to the horror movies he’s watched and also didn’t let a limited budget restrain him.

Freak is simple, straightforward fun. The practical gore effects are icky great, and the mutant monster is fantastic, despite moments when his rubbery construction is quite obvious.

This is the kind of horror I grew up on, so it’s totally satisfying to me. Those that think CGI effects are the way to go might not appreciate what’s going on here.

So a kid tells his mom and his pretty dad that he’s taking his sister with him on a camping trip with friends.

During the ride to the site, an urban legend of a deformed man in the woods is discussed. That doesn’t stop the kids from setting up camp.

We get old school monster POV and grunting, plus a subtle yet genuinely effective music score. And before long, the monster wreaks havoc. Funny thing is, due to the short runtime, the kills basically happen all at once. With more money and a little more character interaction (for instance, an obligatory partying montage, skinny-dipping, some sexy times in the tents, etc.), the kills could have been spread apart, and we could have gotten some suspenseful chase scenes as well.

Despite the absence of the extra fluff, what’s here is a blast, and there’s even a nasty castration moment.

And the details on the monster, including close-ups of its drooling mouth, are nice and gooey. We even briefly see the monster running, and perhaps due to budget limitations, there’s something “freaky” about its grotesque movements.

The film ends abruptly and left me wanting more. Maybe a sequel is in the works?

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Bad things always happen in the middle of nowhere

The only way to survive the horror is to run and scream

When the survival horror genre was going strong in the early 2000s, game companies wanted to find ways to make the experience different. One way was to make “run and scream” games as I like to call them. In an effort to be known for something other than Resident Evil, Capcom did just that with Clock Tower 3. The main game mechanic is that you can’t fight back with weapons when you encounter enemies. Instead, you have to run while inevitably screaming as you search for a hiding spot where the enemy won’t find you. Think Nemesis in Resident Evil 3 without so much as a knife in your inventory. Sigh.

This was the first Clock Tower sequel on PS2. The first two games on the PlayStation One used an archaic system called “point-and-click”. It was basically a side-scrolling game with a little wiggle room and the ability to travel both left and right. However, moving required positioning a cursor on screen to where you wanted to travel before pressing a button that would get you to head there—called point-and-click because the games are usually played with a mouse. How fucking primitive.

The first installment on PS2 plays out like a horror movie…and controls mostly like a survival horror game. It’s visually atmospheric, and you spend the whole time searching for items and solving puzzles while fearing that an enemy will pop out of nowhere and chase you relentlessly until you find a hiding spot. The only time you use a weapon is for the boss battles at the end of each chapter.

You play as a teenage girl. You’ve come home from school, your mom is gone, and a creepy man is lurking around your house. You explore for a while, pick up some items and notes that are well lit so you can easily see them in the environments, and gather holy water, which you’ll need to open marked doors to teleport to new locations and also to sprinkle on enemies to very temporarily slow them down when they chase you. You can fill your holy water bottle at fountains you’ll find around the locations you explore, which is also where you can save at any time.

Unlike Resident Evil at the time, Clock Tower 3 does not feature tank controls. You move in the direction you push the thumb stick. However, because the game uses fixed survival horror camera angles instead of an over the shoulder POV, when the perspective changes suddenly, you are still pushing the stick in the direction you were originally moving, yet your character is actually heading in a different direction. Initially a smooth transition, it quickly falls apart when you need to change direction. You essentially have to release the stick and let it reset so you can once again push in the direction you want to go. Not convenient when a murderous enemy is on your tail. And speaking of, while the default character pace is running speed, there are times you need to press a button to walk slowly for more controlled movement. That’s because kicking items like cans on the street, which can happen easily if you’re running, will cause enemies to hear you and come hunting. Eek!

Instead of health, you have a panic meter, which can be calmed by taking lavender that you find during exploration. If you do hit full panic mode, your character comes to a standstill, shakes uncontrollably, and begins to get dizzy spells…all while being chased. Fun.

Instead of trying to complete a chapter while being pursued by an enemy, the goal is to find designated hiding places. When you slip into them, as long as the killer didn’t see you hide, they will lurk nearby for a while looking for you and then finally give up. However, sometimes if they stand right outside your hiding spot for too long, your panic meter will go up and you will exit the hiding spot in a panic! These types of hiding spots can be used over and over again. There are other escape mechanisms that are one time use—essentially glowing booby traps you can use once to take down the enemy temporarily, leaving you in peace for a while.

And finally, during your travels you will occasionally be bothered by ghosts. Just what we needed. The ghost will follow you and choke you, but you can shake them off. You can also free their souls. They are always near a dead body waiting to get back an item they lost in death. The idea is to find the item—which is usually nearby—and return it to the dead body while avoiding the angry ghost. Here you are trying to help the damn ghosts, and they’re still attacking you.

Those are the basics of the game, so now let’s look briefly at each chapter.

FIRST CHAPTER

This is one of my faves. You get teleported to London and run around deserted streets and some shops at night. After an initial cut scene that gives you a backstory about the killer of the chapter, the chase is on!

The killer is a hulking deformed dude with a giant hammer who grumbles, “Alyssa, where are you?” whenever he chases you. Terrifying.

Learn where the hiding places are, but don’t fully depend on them. Sometimes they’re too far away to be of help. The killer will also throw you completely off course when you’re in the middle of trying to accomplish something. Good luck finding your way back after you’ve been totally turned around.

The most infuriating part of this chapter has you crossing a plank over a stage and then crossing back again. Fall and you die. This segment totally defies the original rules of the controls. For instance, you are moving left across the screen, so you don’t push forward on the stick, you push left. When you start to lose your balance, the idea is to gently push the stick in the opposite direction than you’re falling. But if you fall towards your character’s left (which is falling towards the bottom of the screen because you’re facing the left side of the screen), you have to push right on the stick to balance yourself, not up, which is actually the character’s right! WTF?

When you finally get to fight hammer man, you’re equipped with a bow and arrow during a magical cutscene, and then the battle is on. No aiming is necessary. You just run around a fountain, wait for hammer man to swing at you, which temporarily gives him pause, and then you hold down triangle to power up as much as possible and release to shoot (the only time you’re given an over the shoulder POV). There’s lots of running and aiming in the battle, and you can’t adjust your aim once it’s locked in, so the boss can just step out of the target range. It takes quite a while to beat him.

Note that you will find special red or green arrows throughout the game, but it’s best to save these for the final battle of the game, because there aren’t many of them, and your regular arrows are good enough for all the other battles even if they do make the battles last longer than they should.

SECOND CHAPTER

Before you even get to meet the second enemy, you do a lot more running around your mansion, and then tackle a lot of ghosts once you’re teleported to the area where this chapter takes place. As with all these older survival horror games, there’s no way you’d know where to go or what to do without a walkthrough.

Once you do meet the enemy, he is another bad ass right out of a horror movie. It’s a dude wearing an oxygen mask and protective smock and carrying a canister of acid he shoots all over you when he gets near you. There’s plenty of running around and another ridiculous plank crossing scene that is presented at an awful camera angle, plus this dude is on you even more than hammer man. And the one hiding space this chapter provides is a one-time use spot. Ugh. Again, you need to use a walkthrough. Without one, you’ll run in circles being chased constantly by the baddie without a hiding spot to temporarily rid yourself of him.

As freaky as acid man is, he’s also sort of campy. He even pounces on you by doing a butt bounce. Weird. The boss battle consists of running around a power plant room trying to aim your arrows at him without getting hit by his acid…or butt bounced.

THIRD CHAPTER

This one is infuriating and also sucks all the horror out of the game. Your enemy “The Chopper” feels more like a weasel of a superhero villain than a horror enemy, even if he does carry a sharp weapon in each hand. He hops and spins around you and taunts you jovially, which is annoying enough as it is. On top of that, in the first part of this chapter he chases you incessantly in a very minimal amount of underground sewer space. And this is while you’re trying to run around gathering items to help you escape the area.

And then you fight him the first time. That’s right. First time. You have two boss battles with him, and this is the easy one, even though it’s hard. It’s in a tight fighting arena, and he bounces around so much it’s hard to line up shots with him. Argh!

After you conquer him, you end up in a graveyard and have to teleport through several portals to reach different parts of the graveyard…where you have to collect items to solve puzzles while The Chopper haunts you along with glowing butterflies that leave you disoriented when they get near you.

And just when you’re feeling you’re in any easy part, you have to cross a cavern bridge that begins to crumble beneath you as the camera angle and dust clouds fuck you up. Argh. My suggestion is stay to the right and you should make it. Once you do get safely to the other side, you don’t get to save, because it’s right into a boss fight. Fuckers.

Fighting The Chopper in the graveyard is infuriating, will take you forever, and is only slightly more doable if you use a Codebreaker. Just saying. The Chopper is even more aggressive. He chases you relentlessly so it’s rarely possible to get distance enough from him to line up a shot. You get stuck on tombstones. You get stuck in a loop of getting knocked on your ass. And he flings blue boomerangs at you.

And that is the key to this battle. The ONLY time your arrows hurt him is after you’ve successfully shot one of his boomerangs with your arrow and boomeranged it right back at him. Then you get several opportunities to power-up your arrow and do damage to his health bar. Then it’s just running in circles waiting for certain verbal cues he gives that let you know he’s about to throw a boomerang again. The worst is when you miss the boomerang and have to start the process of waiting for him to throw another one all over again.

FOURTH CHAPTER PART 1

Here you have your friend with you, and he looks like Weasley from Harry Potter. In the first part of the chapter he gets captured by one of the enemies and you have to find him in a hospital. There are several ghosts to contend with immediately, and as you search the hospital you find the objects needed to set them free.

The enemies this time–that’s right, plural—are a nod to the original game. The original point-and-click game enemy was called Scissorman, and he chased you around with huge shears. Now there are brother and sister twins with big scissors, but once again, they come across as superhero villains. Imagine if the Wonder Twins decided to go on a cutting spree. Despite them not being scary, dammit if the game seems to realize they aren’t scary, so it offers up the biggest damn jump scare in the whole game.

You never encounter both twins at once—it’s always one twin or another. However, they do appear frequently like The Chopper. Worst of all, this is a two-floor hospital, and only one floor has a hiding spot.

Even so, this is a fairly short segment requiring a lot of back and forth running. There’s no boss battle, and eventually you end up at a castle.

FOURTH CHAPTER PART 2

This is a fairly small castle. It’s almost pointless to explore the small west wing unless you want to save the ghost in there. However, that requires finding the necessary item in the east wing and going right back to give it to the ghost’s corpse. Otherwise, you actually never go back to the west wing, and if you’re a completist you won’t successfully save all ghosts in the game.

The problem is that the scissor twins come at you constantly here, and there’s no hiding place! There’s one trap that you can use to get them once in the useless west wing, and another trap usable just once in the east wing.

There are also limited saves and holy water refill stations, so you will be doing a lot of backtracking to save and replenish. Problem with that is it often requires running through a hallway of knight statues that hack at you in a sporadic pattern. Tedious.

There’s some fetching to find items to insert in statues to open new doors, and then there’s a whole section you would never have a clue about conquering properly unless you use a walkthrough. It requires going down elevators hidden in iron maidens in each corner of the knight room (argh) to unlock doors down below in a prison. Once you do, you then have to pull a lever and run perfectly in a straight line to a door that unlocks on the other side of the prison. If you run even slightly off track (and you will), walls come down and block your path. Guess what. You then have to go back up in the elevator to the knight room, get to the iron maiden that takes you back down to the switch, and try again.

Meanwhile, you’re going to want to return to the last save room several times, because when you least expect it, you are thrust into two boss battles in a row without a save in sight. That save point? Through the hall with the knights. Argh!

FIRST FINAL BOSS

It’s the scissor sister, and she’s really annoying…mostly because for whatever reason they’ve decided that for this boss battle only, you don’t get auto aim on your arrows. And by that I mean you don’t get auto aim plus you can’t adjust your aim. WTF? You have to run in circles then try to get her in front of you as she teleports around the room, then press the arrow powering button and hope she’s in your sights when it switches to the over-the-shoulder view. If not, you need to let go of the arrow button fast or she’ll whack you good.

Other than her regular attacks, she occasionally sends a wind around the room that you can try to dodge until it goes way.

SECOND BOSS BATTLE

It’s the scissor brother. He’s actually easier than his twin simply because your auto aim is back. He does, however, have a few more attacks than her.

After you defeat both of them, you get to save. Then you climb winding stairs, pull some levers, crawl your way through a bunch of gears in the clock tower, and finally reach one more save room before the final battle.

FINAL BOSS

Not even the Codebreaker can save you from this horror show, because the code for the powerful arrows, of which you only have four at most, does not work. The only way to seriously beat this boss would be to have infinite powerful arrows.

You’re on a round arena platform with two open holes in the floor. Can you fall into them? I don’t know, because somehow I managed to avoid them. It was everything else I couldn’t stay away from.

The boss has a double life-bar. He relentlessly throws purple orbs at you. When they hit you they hold you mostly in place. This gives him the time to hit you with another orb…and then a third. Once he hits you three times he can one hit kill you.

If you manage to get past taking down his first life-bar, he adds blood puddles to the ground, which also catch you and hold you in place. This gives him the opportunity to walk right up to you, pick you up, and suck life out of you to replenish his life-bars. Yep. Not only does his second life-bar replenish, his first one does, too. This is the part of the game when a smart person gives up, because your lame normal arrows will never take him down.

If you are some sort of video game pro, once you defeat him it’s not over. You have to run around the holes in the floor to get to a specific spot to hit X in order to trigger a cutscene. The boss is still able to attack you, and if you die before getting to the hot spot, you have to fight the whole boss battle over again.

I can’t believe I thought this was one of my favorite horror games at one point.

Posted in The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror, What I'm Doing With My Joystick | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on The only way to survive the horror is to run and scream

British monster invasion

There’s a lively indie horror scene coming from the UK, and it’s somewhat of an incestuous situation, with a circle of writers, directors, and actors working together regularly. For my latest triple feature, I checked out cheesy monster movies that all happen to feature indie horror vets Chrissie Wunna and Stephen Staley (whose hotness I recently covered in another post).

CROC! (2022)

It really bums me out that SyFy no longer snatches up all these hokey, low budget flicks featuring nature’s animals striking back. Croc! is a perfect selection for a SyFy Saturday marathon of CGI killer animal movies. Those were the days.

A shirtless mega hunk and his girl get eaten by the awesome, big-mouthed croc for starters, and then guests arrive at a mansion for a wedding.

Stephen plays a friend of the groom and Chrissie a friend of the bride.

In the best plot device ever, the groom needs to keep the eating of the first guest secret, which totally backfires when the croc shows up at the wedding to start chomping on people.

This is everything you want from a CGI croc movie. The croc’s mouth is mesmerizing, and its movements and attacks are laugh-out-loud funny.

And just as important, the characters make dumb and hilarious decisions left and right, like running around outside when there’s a perfectly good mansion to hide in.

That is until the croc gets inside. Oh, SyFy, you don’t know what you’re missing.

MONSTERS OF WAR (2022)

The director of Easter Bunny Massacre delivers a monster movie that isn’t even good enough for SyFy.

Chrissie plays a woman traveling on a country road with her two kids. They are terrorized by a weird creature, they meet two other guys, and they all run into a cave.

Within minutes, terrible CGI monsters, including 2 T-rexes, kill a couple of the people, and the rest end up at a church. Stephen is there, but he plays a fairly minor role in the film.

The movie gets weighed down by endless dialogue and character development we couldn’t care less about. We just want bad CGI monsters and laughable kill scenes. We get too few of them. The monsters aren’t even varied enough to entertain.

Worst of all, there isn’t a major battle with the monsters in the end. The survivors basically just hop in a car and escape.

DINOSAUR HOTEL (2021)

Dinosaur Hotel is about desperate contestants (all women) that participate in an underground game to win money. Little do they realize that the goal is to survive the night in a hotel filled with raptors, Pterodactyls, and a T-Rex.

Chrissie lands a spot in the game after a brief talk with Stephen, which is the last time we see him.

This is very much the same general plot structure as Monsters Of War. However, there are a lot more laughable kills, thankfully.

There’s also a silly floating eye host.

Once again, Chrissie has two kids with her, and they break off and sneak into a cave they find outside the hotel, so she has to go find them.

The best thing I can say about this one is that it’s more worthy of airing on SyFy than Monsters Of War. Now if this had been a film with a cast of all women in the 1980s, we would have gotten pillow fights, shower scenes, cat fights, and more. How far the monster movie genre has fallen…

 

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on British monster invasion