TUBI TERRORS: shark movies

Posted on June 16, 2023 by Daniel

I just can’t wait until shark week to indulge in bad shark movies. However, I’m running out of options, so this trio is definitely a deep, desperate dive.

SHARK WATERS (2022)

This is a shark movie that should be all over the Harry Potter network…uh…I mean…SyFy. If you’re stuck inside on a hot day with the AC cranking and nothing to do, check this one out for the bad CGI, cute shark faces that look like something out of an animated movie, and the laughable shark attacks, battles with sharks, and scenes of people falling off a boat.

Following a couple on a jet ski getting attacked during the opener, we meet a young woman charting a boat for some fishing with a few other people.

This movie plot is almost identical to another shark movie I watched in the past year in which the lead girl has to depend on her father to come save her when the attacks are at their worst.

So, anyway, she’s on this boat with some people, and there’s a brief attempt to develop characters before about half of them quickly get knocked off the boat and eaten.

Then the film slows down drastically as the survivors get stuck on a sandbar and battle the sharks until daddy arrives…in a lifeboat. Hilarious.

SHARK LAKE (2015)

I imagine this mess was a SyFy original 8 years ago, but I never saw it.

It’s not even worth getting into it too much. Horrible CGI sharks and CGI gore are sprinkled throughout a weak story involving Dolph Lundgren as some sort of criminal.

This literally feels like a separate movie than the one about the shark until Dolph finally gets incorporated into the shark action in the final act.

Meanwhile, the cop who put him away is dealing with her sleepy lakeside town being terrorized by something in the lake…a lake that inexplicably has a sand bottom.

The most thrilling twist is that there are multiple sharks in the lake. The funniest part is when Dolph fights a shark off with his fists.

SWAMP SHARK (2011)

The only downside to this CGI shark extravaganza is that it stars right wing loon Kristy Swanson. However, she’s right at home playing rifle-wielding white trash that lives by a swamp.

The hilarious premise has animal smugglers accidentally allowing their big truck’s cargo tank to roll down a hill and into the swamp.

Worse, it’s almost time for a big gator fest event, so the locals have all crawled out of their trailer homes to prepare for the thrill of their lifetime.

The most glaring aspect of this film is that in a small redneck town holding a gator fest, at least half the victims of the shark are Black men. WTF?

There are plenty of goofy good CGI shark attacks, DB Sweeney has a starring role, and the finale involves a rescue mission to save Kristy’s sister and her friends, followed by a battle to the death with the shark at the gator fest.

Despite Kristy Swanson’s presence, this is the best of this bunch.

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

TUBI TERRORS: not so terrifying zombie flicks

Posted on June 15, 2023 by Daniel

It’s one lowbrow flick from the end of the 90s and some newer indies from the 2000s. Let’s see how this movie marathon worked out for me.

HOT WAX ZOMBIES ON WHEELS (1999)

When this low budget indie first began, I had high hopes because it felt like it was going to be a raunchy little throwback to the direct-to-video days of the 80s. Even the rockin’ theme song fit the bill.

The plot is also perfect 80s throwback trash. In a small town, a leather biker woman opens a waxing salon…with wax that turns people into horny zombies.

You’d never know they are zombies though. There’s no zombie makeup whatsoever. If there isn’t going to be any zombie action, you need to make sure you lay it on thick with the gratuitous sex and camp, and this film just doesn’t quite deliver enough of either.

There are some flirtations with gay humor and gay sexual situations, but not even that is enough to make this film worthy of b-movie goodness.

STRAIN 100 (2020)

All I can do these days is watch zombie movies hoping for some good living dead action, because the plots have all been done to death and are all the same.

This indie is clearly COVID inspired, beginning with a montage of virus and vaccine controversy, CDC talk, and news clips.

Then we jump right into the outbreak scenario. Kids are camping in the woods, one turns zombie, everyone gets attacked, and our main girl escapes. She is one of the highlights here…actress Jemma Dallender definitely kills it as a final girl.

She ends up on a journey with a small group of survivors, and that’s when all the plot elements become cliché. Survivors trapped in a diner. A jerky alpha male. An attempt to escape. Someone keeping it secret that they’ve been bit. The group hoping to get to the CDC for help, but ending up at a farm being terrorized by zombies instead. We’ve seen it all before.

However, aside from CGI blood splatters, the zombie action is fun. The zombies look great, the nighttime scenes are effective, and the gut munching totally delivers with practical effects. There are no scares to be had, and the plot in between the zombie scenes is derivative, but I have to give the makers credit for capturing a classic zombie movie vibe.

5G ZOMBIES (2020)

I’m going to guess this movie was created during COVID lockdown considering it’s comprised of snippets of individuals conversing with their cameras rather than interacting with other people. And yes, COVID is referenced briefly.

It’s 100 agonizing minutes of people talking and coughing as the virus takes hold.

We are bombarded by short vignettes of people describing what they’re going through…and discussing conspiracy theories about the government using phones to turn everyone into zombies. Remember when Stephen King wrote a whole book with this plot?

There’s no makeup on the rare zombies we see, just people bleeding from…an inch below their eyes. Definitely a no budget feature.

STORM OF THE DEAD (2006)

I thought this was a full-fledged zombie flick based on the title, but instead it’s a low budget voodoo flick with no horror excitement at all.

After a Florida militia group shoots a looter in the swamps, his grandmother uses voodoo to turn herself into a young chick with big tits.

Instead of getting revenge on the militia, it seems like she just passes herself around and lets them squeeze her boobs.

She does shoot one guy near the end. Also, there is one zombie in the final frame of this film—which seemed to think it was going to get a sequel.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on TUBI TERRORS: not so terrifying zombie flicks

HORROR PRIDE 2023: movies and more

Posted on June 11, 2023 by Daniel

I rounded up some gay features to cover just in time for queer pride 2023 (most of which land on the homo horror movies page).

BOB (2017)

This silly, supernatural, 25-minute short is produced, written, and directed by the couple that stars in it. For me it is a too cutesy outing with absolutely no meat on its bones.

A thin, white gay couple moves into a new apartment, and almost immediately a photo falls off a shelf, lights flicker, the couple uses an app to contact “Bob”, and then they call in their fruit fly, who is a medium. Would you believe she is a full-bodied woman with color streaks in her hair? I’ve been pretty much out of the concentrated gay community for years, but I guess nothing has changed….

Anyway, they perform a séance, we see in flashbacks that Bob is the gay guy from the Kirstie Alley sitcom Veronica’s Closet, and we learn he was involved with a self-loathing sleaze ball.

There’s really not much more to it than that, such as an explanation of how Bob became a ghost.

There’s barely any haunting, and the most ominous character present doesn’t even serve as a supernatural antagonist. Huge missed opportunity.

OUT OF BODY (2020)

Directed by and co-written by the leading man, this independent supernatural romantic comedy entertains and puts a smile on your face as two gay guys find themselves with a ghostly conundrum.

On Halloween night, Henry has friends over, and they end up dabbling in the occult.

Henry’s friend Malcolm, with whom he is secretly in love, decides to crash on the couch after the others leave.

The next morning, Henry wakes to find Malcolm is missing. Only, he isn’t. He’s a ghost, and he’s in the house. He has no idea how he died, where his body is, or how to let Henry know he’s there.

Slowly but surely, Malcolm makes contact with Henry and they begin trying to piece together what happened to him, why he’s still hanging around, and how he can cross over.

The film is funny, charming, and keeps us wondering what really happened to Malcolm on Halloween night. And therein lies the film’s one minor issue—it’s too long. With a running time of 104 minutes, it’s comprised of varying segments, most of which could easily have gotten their point across sooner—Malcolm realizing he’s a ghost, Malcolm trying to get Henry to realize he’s there, Malcolm and Henry using a magic book to determine how to help Malcolm’s ghost, Malcolm teaching Henry how to score a date with his hot neighbor, Henry having the date with his neighbor, etc. Some editing could have trimmed the film to a better paced 90 minutes.

In the end, while this mostly feels like a quaint ghostly love story, the final act brings us the resolution we need by delving back into the supernatural, and it’s kind of like watching an episode of Charmed. Pure, cheesy, sexy fun.

FIRE ISLAND (2023)

Breaking from what you’d expect of the usual gay slasher, Fire Island is not campy, not sexually charged, and doesn’t focus solely on overloading us with shirtless white hunks (although there are some in the background briefly).

Unfortunately, it also isn’t very inspired as far as slashers go. The plot and death scenes are bland and generic, most kills are essentially off screen, and there’s little in the way of suspense. It’s as forgettable as the myriad of straight-to-DVD, low budget slashers that followed in the wake of the Scream trilogy in the early 2000s, when everyone thought they could make a slasher.

There’s an opening kill, and then our mixed group of friends (gay male, lesbian, straight) heads to Fire Island. It’s May, which is the beginning of the tourist destination’s season, so it’s not a busy time of year. On top of that, this takes place during the pandemic, so the island is even more isolated.

There is, however, an old man that appears right on cue to warn the kids away. In this case, he’s more of a hot silver daddy, as it should be in a gay horror flick. He’s also one of many plot points that is left dangling. He speaks with an Irish accent, but we have no idea why. We have no idea what he’s talking about when he warns our main guy of danger, and it’s never clarified. He also just disappears from the film. Usually, these well-meaning weirdos are eventually murdered to up the body count. This guy must have just hopped on the next ferry back to the mainland and called it a day. Perhaps he’s seen more slashers than the makers of this film.

In a refreshing twist, there’s an older gay couple that gives us all the gay displays of affection, but the only sex scene involves a straight couple! However, they end up paying for it. Yay!

The killer wears a horned deer mask and often pops up in the shadows behind the characters. Scratch that. The killer constantly pops up behind characters. It’s like this is the one thing the filmmakers learned from watching slashers, so it is the go-to scare element here.

All the talk, bland kills, low energy drag host during a bar scene, and a pointless acoustic song performance fill the time unto we reach our final boy’s chase scene. There are definitely some effective camera angles and use of light during this segment, and it culminates in a body reveal party (yay!). However, the killer motivation is as uninspired as everything else, and the killer essentially comes out of nowhere. On top of that, would you believe COVID is the catalyst for all of the murderous happenings? Sigh.

And finally, for sticklers who know their Fire Island, the film fails to differentiate between Cherry Grove and The Pines and the landmarks that distinguish one community from the other.

BROOKLYN 45 (2023)

Brooklyn 45 comes from the director of We Are Still Here, but unlike the horror thrill ride that film is, this is more of a paranormal-tinged, wartime drama that unfolds like a dialogue-driven play. It’s just one of many movies Shudder seems interested in offering in their library these days that I call “trauma porn”.

As someone who isn’t a fan of period pieces, military themes, or films that are reflective of the horrible times we are living in politically (which is taking a toll on me and is something I try to escape from by watching horror movies), I personally couldn’t get into this one. But don’t let that scare you away, because it might just be your cup of tea, and it does offer some great performances from the likes of horror veteran Larry Fessenden, Jamie’s sister Lisa from Mad About You, and horror queen Kristina Klebe of Rob Zombie’s Halloween.

It’s Christmas time in 1945, and several military vets come to Larry’s house for a visit soon after his wife commits suicide. They quickly find out why he gathered them together—he wants to have a séance to help get closure after his loss.

Following an initial ghostly visit that really psyches you up for a supernatural experience, this instead becomes a character study about people who are fucked up due to “doing it for their country”. We learn about the awful things they did in war under the guise of patriotism. However, just like in our modern day climate, their “love of country” is actually nationalism; anyone not just like them is the enemy (aka: immigrants), and they use “just following orders” as their excuse for their evil actions. We also get some witch hunt torture, discussion about mental illness breeding nationalism, and citizens who pride themselves on their patriotism turning against their own people (as I said, all ripped from today’s headlines).

It’s not until the 65-minute mark of this 93-minute movie that supernatural and horror elements come back into play, and while they offer some of the fearful fun we’ve been waiting for, they are basically a metaphor for a committing atrocities is “just following orders” theme.

The film earns a place on the does the gay guy die? page because there is a gay character whose presence is reflective of the times—1945. Everyone knows he’s gay, and he brazenly flames out a bit in the presence of “friends”, but no one dare openly embrace his identity beyond throwing some slurs at him that he just brushes off. Oh. And playing right into the hate being aimed at queers today, wouldn’t you know it’s the gay character whose despicable actions involved children? Sigh.

ON TO THE HORROR TEASE…I MEAN, TEES

Not only is it pride month, but I just realized that May marked 10 years since I started Boys, Bears & Scares! So I thought I’d give you a look at my newest horror T-shirts.

I scored most of them on Amazon—but some of them are already gone from the site! I guess you really have to stay on top of what shirts they have to offer and order them as soon as you see them.

It’s Angela, a delicious vampire, centerfold Jason, and more. See them all in action in this quick video montage I put together. Happy Pride!

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on HORROR PRIDE 2023: movies and more

HULU HORRORS: ghosts, bloodsuckers, and a home invasion

Posted on May 26, 2023 by Daniel

It’s a buffet of subgenres I picked from my Hulu watchlist, so let’s get right into them.

GHOST TEAM (2016)

This supposedly satirical comedy about ghost hunting shows succeeds in doing one thing—reminding us of how charismatic Justin Long is on screen, even when he has absolutely nothing to work with.

If the goal here was to poke fun at how ghost hunting shows are total bullshit and there are never actually any ghost sightings, then I guess this film succeeds. Other than a ghost hunting theme, this is absolutely in no way a ghost movie when all is said and done.

Napoleon Dynamite gathers together a motley crew of people to go ghosting hunting on a farm in hopes of scoring a coveted spot on a popular ghost hunting show (there are appearances by actual members of the real Ghost Hunters show).

After a chunk of time is spent assembling the team, Napoleon and his group head to the farm. What follows is a whole lot of boring footage of them walking around, goofing off, and reacting to nonexistent scares, just like a real ghost hunter show.

There’s a twist that makes this not a horror movie, and the only two highlights are Justin Long wielding a paintball gun and the group singing Gary Wright’s “Dreamweaver” in the final moments of the film.

BLOOD (2022)

Combine Cujo, Let The Right One In, and Misery, and you get this predictable but still entertaining film from the director of Session 9.

A single nurse moves to a family farmhouse with her teen daughter, young son, and their dog. The dog runs off into the woods one night, and when it returns with glowing eyes it bites the son.

And then the son begins to change.

Soon the mom discovers the son needs blood to survive. So she starts stealing blood from the hospital where she works. But it isn’t enough. Soooooo…she’ll have to resort to an involuntary “donor”.

If you’ve never seen anything like this movie, I guess you’ll find it pretty damn awesome. But I’ve already seen everything it has to offer. Even so, suspense scenes are good, Skeet Ulrich plays the dad, and the inevitable finale is satisfying, so I’d say it’s worth a watch even for veteran horror fans.

ALONE AT NIGHT (2022)

 

I’m kind of tired of everything this movie is offering a social commentary on—live sex cam workers, reality shows, COVID isolation…. The highlight for me was the portrayal of a young woman who is in complete command of her sexuality and sexual desires.

Ashley Benson of Pretty Little Liars stars as a young woman who goes to stay at her friend’s isolated cabin (friend played by Sky Ferreira in a disappointingly small role).

It’s Halloween, but it’s cold so there’s some snow, and Ashley decorates the cabin in a blend of Halloween and Christmas décor. However, I’m going to stick this one with the Halloween movies on the holiday horror page because it’s officially Halloween time in the movie.

In between doing her job as a live sex cam worker, Ashley is put in unnerving situations with a myriad of visitors—food delivery guy, cable guy, neighbor, her friend’s cousin, a sheriff played by Pamela Anderson—and we just sit there wishing that one of them, any one of them, will be the killer and make this movie worth watching.

Instead, this is mostly a movie about being paranoid about everyone who shows up at your cabin door in the middle of nowhere…and yet welcoming every one of these strangers inside. Sigh.

Over an hour into the film, we finally meet the real home invader, and we get some fairly typical cat and mouse action. There’s just not a lot of horror meat to this movie. And making it worse are absolutely pointless scenes of a sort of Surreal Life celebrity reality show hosted by Paris Hilton.

 

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on HULU HORRORS: ghosts, bloodsuckers, and a home invasion

I just can’t get away from zombies

Posted on May 23, 2023 by Daniel

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

Posted on May 17, 2023 by Daniel

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

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Daniel

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

Posted on May 11, 2023 by Daniel

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

Posted on May 10, 2023 by Daniel

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

Posted on May 8, 2023 by Daniel

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