NETFLIX AND CHILLS: struggling to get through two originals

Posted on August 26, 2022 by Daniel

One is a vampire horror comedy, the other is an alien horror comedy. Neither of them fully rose to the occasion, and both were longer than they needed to be, but one fared better than the other.

DAY SHIFT (2022)

Day Shift has some fantastic vampire action scenes, but like most movies today that stretch their runtime to almost 2 hours, a paper-thin plot can’t sustain itself for that long. As a result, the kick ass fight scenes are spread out between excessive filler.

Dave Franco steals the show as the comic relief later in the movie, because Jamie Foxx’s character is almost as lackluster as Blade—and he doesn’t even get the edge of being a vampire. He is merely a vampire hunter. Based on the press this was getting a few months back, I was under the impression it was going to be a horror comedy buddy movie with Foxx and Snoop Dogg as the buddies, which would have been a blast, but we don’t even get much of them together.

After a rockin’ opening fight scene with a vamp, we learn that Foxx is a pool cleaner moonlighting at an underground vampire hunting organization…which gives him the boot. So, with a vengeful female vampire after him, he ends up setting out on his own to do his job.

Actually he does the job with the help of some friends, including Snoop Dogg, Dave Franco, Steve Howey (aka: Van from the Reba show), and action movie hottie Scott Adkins.

Howey and Adkins come in as a brother team for some of the vampire fights and really save the film just when it’s starting to drag. They also look sizzling hot together. It would have been cool if they were a queer couple to really piss off the anti-woke crowd, but this film isn’t looking to be colorful.

For a horror comedy that so perfectly delivers on the vampire action, I’m really shocked that it mostly bombs on the humorous part.

OFFICE INVASION (2022)

I spent a good chunk of this 113-minute movie thinking that this trend of making every film almost 2 hours long needs to end because NOTHING IS HAPPENING. I was getting so much pressure from the hubby about how boring the film was that I was sure he was just going to go into the bedroom to watch something else. I kept swearing it would pick up any minute when all alien hell broke loose. The film proved me to be a liar.

It’s a fucking horror comedy about office workers taking on aliens. Just fucking run with it. What the fuck? Why do I have to sit through endless, unnecessarily drawn out plot about the business and the people working there?

To start with an opening kill of a night security guard being stripped to the bone and then have nothing alien happen for the next 90 minutes is unforgivable. If I wanted to sit through two hours of The Office, I’d just binge The Office, and I’d laugh a hell of a lot more in the process.

It seriously feels like a different writer was called in to write the last 23 minutes of Office Invasion to save it.

The three main guys finally sneak into their office building to steal something and uncover an alien plot behind the scenes. Then, for about ten minutes, each of them goes and confronts one alien in human disguise. It is definitely fun for a few minutes, but that’s all we get. There’s no teamwork to take down a whole building of aliens or anything. It’s just shameful.

And this film ends with the promise of a sequel. Maybe they should’ve just written the sequel, cut out the 90 boring minutes that are sure to stretch that one to 2 hours as well, and filmed the sequel back-to-back with the first film then edited them together to make one halfway decent 60-minute movie…

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TUBI TERRORS: women scorned

Posted on August 23, 2022 by Daniel

A ghost town, a haunted abortion clinic, and a lesbian couple’s evil baby in this trio of films I streamed on Tubi.

TEARDROP (2022)

This movie sets itself up in a promising way—a teacher brings some of his students on a field trip to a ghost town.

However, once they arrive and are helped at the inn by a creepy man who is so obviously from the past, it kind of seemed pointless to me for this movie to go on.

But go on it does. It drags on and on until the first true scary ghost appears an hour in!

The characters have a few run-ins with some people not of this time, mostly a submissive girl who is also so obviously from the past (although she could be mistaken as coming from the near future if conservative extremists have their way in the U.S.).

The students also have a few strange, creepy encounters that are written off as the result of indulging in weed and liquor. Lot of good all that does the audience as we wait in boredom for this ghost story to take off.

Eventually a few people die and a flashback plot about the gallows comes into play, but I simply was not drawn into any of this.

HARLAND MANOR (2021)

Harland Manor gets credit for wrapping its ghost plot around a very timely subject a year before that subject blew up in our faces—abortion. If only the movie had delivered on anything else it would have been a delicious horror movie to piss off the anti-woke crowd.

A small team of ghost hunters—3 guys, 1 girl—comes to an old mansion with an attached hospital to learn of its ghostly history.

That ghostly history? The man who owned the place did secret abortions on women in the basement when it was illegal, mostly for the mistresses of rich white men. He also had his way with young women put under his care.

Let me tell you, we get loads of exposition about this. We also get plenty of love triangle shit as two guys on the team battle over the girl on the team. Complicating that even further, the girl has a very personal investment in the treatment of young pregnant women.

There’s plenty of roaming around the building in the dark—way too dark. The film only occasionally opts for a “found footage” POV, but considering you can’t see shit on screen, I would have welcomed a found footage camera POV with night vision.

So what about ghosts? Aside from some lame shadows and drawers opening on their own and things like that, we don’t get an actual ghost attack until…nearly 70 minutes into the movie!

At that point, this turns into a possession film. A young female victim of the original owner is out to get revenge on any man she can, because all men are scum.

UNBORN (2022)

Sure, Unborn is yet another “What’s wrong with my baby?” movie in the tradition of Rosemary’s Baby, but if you’re okay with all the clichés, the difference here is that the expectant couple is a pair of lesbians.

And that’s about it. Some minor details make this demonic pregnancy different, but the plot is the usual: pregnant woman starts to suspect her fetus is something supernatural, no one believes her, pretty much everyone is actually in on welcoming her demon spawn into the world.

This being about pregnancy, there are a few notable statements made about the way women are treated when they’re pregnant, to the point that the pregnant lesbian even says she feels like she’s being treated not like a person but an incubator. I see a theme running through these Tubi originals.

The most fun for me was that anyone that falls under the spell of her pregnancy eventually gets a case of demon eyes for a few minutes, but don’t expect to be scared out of your wits by anything this film has to offer.

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Slash and crash

Posted on August 22, 2022 by Daniel

It’s a trio of killer flicks I checked out on Shudder and Prime.

SKULL: THE MASK (2020)

This Brazilian slasher film follows the trend of modern horror flicks that try to capture the feel of gory 1970s grindhouse flicks. There’s not a lot to think about here—just get on board for the splatterfest.

In the 1940s, an evil military experiment involving an ancient skull mask goes horribly wrong, kicking the film into high gear with some slaughter.

In the present day, the mask is unearthed at a construction site and lands in the hands of a lesbian. For whatever reason, her girlfriend decides to perform a ritual with the mask, awakening its evil spirit.

The mask attaches to some dude and goes on a wild killing spree, making this a basic slasher with a masked killer. Yay!

A dirty cop is on the case to find the mask, other people are plotting to get their hands on the mask, and all the while the masked killer is tearing people limb from limb.

Faces are peeled, guts are spilled, and the killer even attaches a cleaver to a line of intestine and uses that as a deadly whip. Awesome.

He even gets into a sword battle with a priest and turns a dance party into a massacre. There are no scares here, but the mutilation abounds, so dive in if you’re into that sort of thing.

THE CANYONLANDS (2021)

After watching this desert slasher, I was shocked to see all the bad reviews on Amazon Prime. If there’s any real issue here, it’s that the film is perhaps a little slow in the front half and could have been shaved down by about ten minutes. But once the killer came calling, I had a lot of fun with it.

The plot has a woman taking a small group of contest winners on a rafting trip.

The group is about as versatile and cliché as it gets:

— a social media influencer who is a caricature and cares only about the bars she’s getting on her phone and taking selfies to post

—a misogynistic, douche of a white boy who wants to be a professional fighter

—an awkward geek

—a Black guy who loves his pot

—a tough lesbian

Surprisingly, the group doesn’t raft for long. They end up hiking through the wilderness, and before long they split up for various reasons. Then out comes a zombie-like killer miner with a pickaxe to split them up even more. Yay!

Unlike most slashers, this one actually has some unique plot points, including a ghost girl and a Native American curse.

The killer is a cool creep, the kills are violent, and the scenery, whether CGI or real, is quite stunning. There’s even a cheesy-good, old school final frame jump scare.

TAILGATE (2019)

This Dutch film combines the road trip suspense of films like The Hitcher and Road Games with a leading man who makes the film infuriating…just like the asshole in that miserable movie Eden Lake that left me not giving a shit what happened to the leads because his douchey pride got in the way.

What’s weird about Tailgate is that there were times when I almost felt like it’s supposed to be a dark horror comedy; some scenes were just so absurd they made me laugh.

The premise is simple. There’s a straight couple with two young daughters heading to grandma’s house. There’s a great sequence that perfectly captures how the male ego can cause a man to work himself up into a dangerous level of road rage. The husband gets pissed at a dude in a white truck who’s going to slow, and when he finally passes the guy, they stare each other down.

Of course dad messed with the wrong man, because the van guy starts pursuing the family, eventually taking things off road and chasing them to shoot some sort of acidic chemical on them. He even makes it all the way to grandma’s house to terrorize extended family.

The killer, a plain old white dude, is painted as having an exaggerated, almost religious extremism level of morality. His need for someone to pay because a dude cut him off is psychotic.

There are great suspense sequences amplified because the husband does one stupid fucking thing after another, which is where the film becomes frustrating. It’s on purpose of course, but I’ll never understand why script writers think that’s a way to make viewers feel invested in a character.

As for the “funny” stuff, there were just some over-the-top moments, such as: the wife playing tug of war with the killer in an effort to free her husband from his grasp and completely stripping him of his pants in the process on a public street; the husband’s mother showering him down naked to remove the chemical from his body while the entire family watches on; and a ridiculous sequence of the family wreaking havoc by racing through a busy suburban neighborhood, where they are more likely to die from speeding than at the hands of the killer.

 

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Back to the middle of the 00s for a triple feature of killers and creatures

Posted on August 18, 2022 by Daniel

I was a major impulse buyer of horror DVDs in the first ten years of their existence, so I have a soft spot for indie horror from the era. These three passed me by back then, but upon watching them, I made up for lost time and added them to my collection.

SILENT SCREAM (2005)

If you need a post-Scream era slasher fix, here’s one you may not have seen before, and it’s loaded with tropes that will make you nostalgic and bring you some retro comfort.

It’s all about the death scenes as someone in an Urban Legend parka runs around the woods killing kids.

To get the ball rolling, we see a quick cut of an early kill, but this is one of those annoying tricks used in slashers that simply don’t have an opening kill idea, so they show us a kill from later in the movie that we end up seeing again…later.

Then we get a group of kids in class agreeing to go on a research retreat with their teacher. They show up at a cabin in the woods and get killed off in a rapid-fire session while hanging out by a campfire. Quite satisfying.

Then another group of kids shows up late, can’t figure out where the first group of kids is, and then they start getting killed off. Double the fun.

That’s all there is to it. We see where the opening kill scene actually lands in the timeline, deaths scenes are replayed in sepia tone every time someone finds a body, and the kids start making really stupid decisions. However, those choices lead to some of the best battles with the killer, which does get you rooting for the kids.

The real “unique” part is the surprise twist at the end. It also might really piss you off. So I’d suggest that as you watch the movie, just keep telling yourself “it’s all about the slasher kills”.

THE SHADOW WALKERS (2006)

How I miss cheesy mid-2000s direct to DVD flicks that even found their way to SyFy once in a while. The revealing lighting in this one makes it obvious it’s a low budget flick from those days.

That bright lighting also exposes the low budget makeup work on the mutants in this silly flick—men in latex masks with the edges glued down to their faces and the “gnarly” colors and textures of their masks just ending at the neckline, where standard human flesh is on display.

But who cares? It’s cheesy mid-2000s horror! And the plot is as basic as it gets.

After an opening massacre scene in an underground facility, the survivors awake and have to go on a mission to escape—travel deeper down to reach an exit that leads back up, all the while battling humans that have transformed into monsters.

There are low budget chase scenes, battles, deaths, sex, and an occasional switch to all red lighting or all green lighting to create variation in the horror atmosphere.

Honestly, you don’t watch this if you’re looking for a thrilling horror experience. You watch this for a nostalgic fix.

FROSTBITTEN (aka: Frost Bite) (2006)

A year before 30 Days of Night hit U.S. theaters, this Swedish horror comedy focused on a small town overrun by vampires during the winter period in which there’s no sunlight for 30 days. Well, what do you know?

It begins with military men encountering vampires in a cabin in the woods during World War II—a scene that definitely sets the icy cold horror tone.

In the current day, we meet a mother and her teen daughter, who come to a small town so the mother, a medical doctor, can work in a hospital with a genetic scientist she admires.

Turns out the scientist is doing testing with a pill that turns people into vampires! Unfortunately, one of the med students thinks these red pills are fun stuff to bring to a party, so you know where this is heading. And of course, the mother’s daughter is going to be at the party.

There’s just enough dark comedy to keep this one mostly focused on the horror elements, and it sort of takes on two parallel stories as the kids become vampires at the party while the mother has to contend with a way cool boss vampire at the hospital.

This is one of those indie horror flicks that totally delivers on the fun, especially if you like creepy crawly vamp monsters that walk on walls and ceilings.

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Holiday horrors for 2022: three for Halloween and one for Christmas

Posted on August 16, 2022 by Daniel

I continue to add to the complete holiday horror page with four more holiday themed horror flicks for the 2022 season.

YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER (2021)

This Irish film creates a compelling, haunting slow burn while managing to combine folk horror, Halloween horror, and the recent trend of exploring family dysfunction and mental illness within the realm of the horror genre.

A teen girl named Char is driven to school one day by her mother, who is having one of her depressive episodes. After school, Char finds her mother’s car abandoned.

The police don’t express much concern with the case of the missing mother because it’s the week leading up to Halloween and they are inundated with pranks calls.

As Char remembers Halloweens past and has nightmares about her mother, the mother returns with no recollection of where she was. Her spirits are high, but Char soon begins to notice she’s…different. A scene when her mother enters her bedroom is so understated but absolutely chilling to me.

As the mother begins to transition from creepy to crazy, we’re left wondering if she is simply suffering from dementia or if something has actually possessed her.

Thankfully this movie doesn’t stay in metaphorical hell…it ignites into full horror mode, with some body horror, terror on the streets as kids trick or treat, and the unraveling of the folklore that seems to have immersed Char in an invasion of the body snatcher situation with her mother.

It’s not a high energy horror flick, but I really do love the way it builds up the suspense concerning the mother’s condition, and it does a fantastic job of interweaving the Halloween season into the situation.

UNBOXED (2022)

Running only a short 72-minutes long and clearly a low budget endeavor, Unboxed really gets points for taking a different approach to Halloween horror.

A young influencer is doing a Halloween special in which she unboxes gifts her viewers have sent her.

Things get mysterious fast when she begins receiving texts and videos from a masked figure that is holding her boyfriend captive and will slowly torture him if she doesn’t do what is described in each box she opens live on her stream.

The short runtime lends itself to a brisk pace as the influencer is forced not only to do some nasty things on camera, but also forced to catch everything on camera as she subjects trick or treaters to some of the boxes. Although there’s no notable performance here, a few of the visitors that come ringing her doorbell are actually kind of funny. Plus, we get a hot daddy…

As for the horror aspects, had this been a bigger production, it could have gone a nastier and more brutal Saw-esque route, but it is clearly limited by its budget.

Even so, in the end our main girl is drawn into a brief cat and mouse game with the killer in her house. The film most definitely demonstrates that the pair that directed it has promise, and I would love to see them given the opportunity to redo this film with more backing. I had a lot of Halloween fun with it.

THE DAY AFTER HALLOWEEN (2022)

This is described as The Hangover done Halloween style, but while it seem like it’s simply going to be a dark, non-PC, tasteless comedy for its duration, it takes a surprising horror turn at the end—and I wish that surprise had come sooner.

When they wake up the day after a Halloween party with a dead body in their tub and “Welcome to the world of AIDS” written on their bathroom mirror, two slackers have to piece together what happened the night before.

Anyone who is hyper sensitive to the ignorance of straight white male humor might take offense to the comedy here. It’s fairly light in terms of how offensive it goes, but it does lean on typical, tired topics, including a few gay jokes, Swastika humor, misogyny, and a flirtation with the N word.

What’s rather ironic about those cheap jokes being delivered by the straight white male characters is that the funniest, most genuinely humorous lines are saved for the two female leads.

We never do find out what the point is of the AIDS message beyond being an urban legend steeped in hetero paranoia of homosexuality, but we do get confusing timeline jumps that make this feel more like a series of situations than an actual plot at times. This includes the guys running a drive-in theater, their separate relationship issues with women, how they decide to deal with the body in the tub, a hypothetical police interrogation scene, and some flashbacks to their past that don’t add much to the story.

Some of it feels like pure filler, even if it might give us a little chuckle now and then, but despite the distractions (including one of the leading guys being particularly cute as he shows off a variety of looks thanks to the flashbacks), I still couldn’t wait to find out what the deal was with the body in the tub.

With only about ten minutes to spare, The Day After Halloween does something shocking—it throws in a horror twist.

I won’t spoil it, but it’s fun and satisfying and I so wish the twist had come a bit earlier so the buddies in this buddy movie would have had a chance to interact while contending with an actual horror threat.

HELLBLAZERS (2022)

This little indie has a great vibe and cast, but it is a little restrained in the horror department.

Billy Zane starts off the proceedings with his special style of comedic delivery, leading a satanic cult in a ritual sacrifice in the woods. Bruce Dern is a crazy old veteran who happens to witness the unleashing of a big demon from the ground.

Next we meet our cast living in a small town. There’s a new sheriff, played perfectly by actor Ed Morrone, and his deputy, played by cutie Crash Buist, who has the most awesome name ever.

We also get a load of horror veterans: Courtney Gains (aka: Malachai from Children of the Corn); John Kassir (best known as the voice of the Crypt Keeper); 80s queen Meg Foster; Candyman Tony Todd; and Adrienne Barbeau (who plays the local DJ of course).

Along with the great cast, the movie takes place at Christmastime. There are loads of Christmas lights, plus the demon makes a Christmas tree lot its new home.

The film is described on IMDb as taking place in the 80s. We do get a quick faux 80s music montage scene featuring a boom box and classic arcade games, and Barbeau’s adult son name drops Elvira and Killer Klowns from Outer Space. But what’s weird is that twice the sheriff references horror names that were a major mark on 80s era horror—Michael Myers and Cujo—and his two young officers have no idea what he’s talking about. It almost feels like a gag meant for a contemporary film attempting to show the age gap between sheriff and the younger generation, but it doesn’t make sense in the 80s, when the young people would be more likely to know the names than the older sheriff.

Everyone is fun and entertaining, and the creature is not CGI, but there are only a few demon attack moments. Most of the film focuses on the cult members stalking and killing locals, which I think is the biggest flaw here. The cult battles are a blast, but to offer a scene establishing the release of a big demon right from the start and to then underutilize his presence is quite a letdown, especially since he’s wicked cool looking.

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Young and queer and trapped in a horror movie

Posted on August 12, 2022 by Daniel

It’s two more films for the homo horror movies page, and I found this queer double feature much more satisfying than the one I watched and posted about a week ago.

CUTIES (2020)

This low budget indie directed by Joshua Gratton manages to combine early 1970s acid trip horror, late 70s/early 80s Euro horror, and early 80s American slasher vibes to create an odd, rough around the edges but undeniably watchable gay horror slasher that had me mesmerized.

The peculiar plot sees a bunch of school kids that hang out together and appear to be predominantly queer getting picked off one by one by a killer.

One dude named Micah seems to be off in his own world. He’s desperate to have a boyfriend but too shy to go for it, and idolizes one gay couple he considers to be perfect.

Most of the other kids tend to shun Micah in one way or the other, and one really bizarre girl chips away at his gay ego while insisting he’s going to be her man someday.

But it’s not just her who is weird. Everyone is weird, and the quirky, almost disconnected performances add to the strange overall tone. For instance, I was seriously convinced for a while that the girl that’s preying on Micah was a ghost, because her presence just seemed otherworldly.

The kids hang out in the woods and smoke pot a lot, and any one of them could be the killer…right up until that moment when they get killed. Even their teacher is weird, and it’s not quite clear what class she’s teaching. I’d swear it’s a class on using a yarn spinning wheel, which is predominantly featured in several scenes.

It is all the quirky elements, including the hypnotizing, nagging score, that make this low energy movie (as in—stoned energy) so incredibly compelling and distinctly reminiscent of Euro horror. Most of the kills are somehow basic yet feature a little something extra unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, bringing to mind the execution of death scenes in giallos. Even the dialogue feels at times like it’s dubbed—just like the bad English dubbing in 70s and 80s Euro horror that gives those old films all their cheesy charm.

But the key ingredient that sets this apart from typical slashers is that Micah’s lack of self-worth is deepened by the fact that he becomes convinced the killer isn’t interested in taking his life because he’s not a “cutie” like all his friends that are dying off. It’s quite an interesting commentary on the pressure many feel in the gay community.

It should also be noted that a majority of the kills take place in gray daylight (very 1970s), and there’s no sexual exploitation at all. A butt during a skinny-dipping scene is as far as it goes.

Even the cast is very simple looking, without any stress on beauty or on objectification. They’re just normal looking high school kids.

This is how you do something different in the slasher genre while clearly revealing the types of movies that have inspired you without relying on constant meta cues. And the fact that it’s done with a queer cast of characters makes Cuties one I really want in my movie collection. As of now there’s no distribution deal for it, and we can only hope it can find its way to a wider audience and onto my horror shelves in either DVD or Blu-ray format.

SO VAM (2021)

Directed by Alice Maio Mackay, this short, 72-minute vampire movie is a perfect example of the kind of cathartic experience queer horror focused on bullied and bashed queers can be—unlike They/Them, which I just posted about the other day.

Triggering its plot with a gay bashing of our main male character, this film quickly establishes itself as a satisfying queer revenge horror flick. The main kid is saved by a group of young queer vampires that simply nourish themselves by targeting bigots. Awesome.

Rich with 80s Euro horror color lighting and swapping out montage scenes for drag performances, So Vam is like a queer horror Mean Girls.

Picked on by a bunch of tough girls at school, our main kid gets his chance for vengeance when he is turned into a vampire.

His new vamp clan, led by a trans girl with an emotionless, almost mechanical attitude (she brings to mind the singer Poppy), shows him the ropes of being a bigot killing vampire, making this an undeniably fun and darkly humorous film.

And just like Cuties, this is not a sexualized cast—everyone looks like a normal, everyday high school kid.

Intentionally self-aware of its “wokeness”, the movie also throws in some commentary on the traditional notion that queers identify with the monster in horror, with some dialogue that reflects on the classics Frankenstein and Dracula.

Even more satisfying for this queer positive film is that the main kid’s dad is not only a delicious daddy bear, he’s also not a total dick.

This makes two queer horror movies in one shot that I definitely want to add to my collection if they make it to physical media.

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TUBI TERRORS: a trio of Tubi originals

Posted on August 10, 2022 by Daniel

It’s a zombie snoozefest, a shark winner, and a killer tow truck driver that takes too many wrong turns to reach his destination.

SHARK BAIT (2022)

After just complaining in a recent post about another typical shark movie with an Open Water setup, I decided it was safe to go back in the water.

Glad I did, because Shark Bait rises above its generic plot by delivering on the shark terror! I was most definitely on the edge of my seat during this one and even jumped a few times.

First I’ll get the annoying aspect out of the way—the need for these movies to create some sort of conflict to serve as character development. In this case, it’s the usual cheating partner/love triangle crap. Ugh. Why don’t these movies just look to the movie that started this whole young people trapped at sea with a shark concept—Jaws 2, the best shark movie ever. There were no glaring character flaws with those kids. They were all likable, they all got along, they all cared for each other, and as a result, we cared about all of them, which made the shark that much more terrifying.

But, in this day and age you can’t expect to ever watch a horror movie that’s going to allow you to fully root for the cast, so expect a redemption plot line. Yawn.

However, the shark action is most definitely not a yawn. Partying kids at the beach steal jet skis and go for a joy ride. There’s your character flaw. Why did we need anything else?

Anyway, they end up crashing into each other, someone is hurt, and before long a shark shows up and starts picking them off on by one.

Some unique attack scenes and gruesome and gory kills make this one of the best shark flicks I’ve seen in a while, but of course there are also several frustratingly tense scenes in which these characters make the dumbest decision of all, thinking going back in the water for various reasons is somehow the solution to saving themselves.

DEAD ZONE (2022)

I’m absolutely dumbfounded that this movie was planned, filmed, edited, and released as is. This is such a soulless zombie film—it lacks suspense, thrills, scares, clearly defined characters, or any hint of a plot.

A team of men with high tech gear and equipment is sent into a radiation soaked town on a mission.

They encounter fast running zombies that are just people with blood on their faces. The absence of makeup is masked by dark shadows, quick editing, and flashing light effects throughout the whole movie.

I’m not even sure what the details of their mission are, nor do I understand why such high tech gear isn’t impenetrable—zombies can bite right through this shit.

What we end up with is the armed guys walking around buildings in stealth mode, occasionally getting attacked by an onslaught of zombies despite their stealth, with a whole lot of footage inside their special helmets.

They eventually encounter a boss zombie with a whip-like tongue, and fight him to the death.

That’s it. That’s the movie. It was so uninspired the hubby and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

TOW (2022)

A while ago, Kane Hodder played a killer ambulance driver in Old 37. Now he plays a killer tow truck driver.

I’m going to say this right from the start—there is a thrilling suspense/stalker/slasher flick embedded in this move about a woman towed away in her car and brought to the killer’s lair (a junkyard I think), where she then plays a game of cat and mouse with him.

Unfortunately, the writers tried to add layers to that simple horror plot, and we are left with a mess that time jumps, vacillates between dreams and reality, and bounces back and forth between the stories of two sisters so much that there’s simply no way to comprehend what the narrative trajectory is.

In short, the twins watched their parents get killed by the murderer years before. Now he is about to be executed, but one of the sisters is convinced he’s using occult magic to come for them again.

Good luck piecing together how all that interweaves logically into the best part of the film, because I couldn’t.

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80s oddities: beginning, middle, and end

Posted on August 9, 2022 by Daniel

It’s a trio of lesser-known films from the best horror decade ever–although you wouldn’t know that by watching these three movies.

FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND (1981)

I cannot process that this film was made in 1981 and not 1961, beginning with the hokey opening music and following through with the cheesy overall tone. There is a smorgasbord of so much silliness going on here that it’s hard to believe it could be so boring.

These guys in hot air balloons crash land on a tropical island. They meet some Amazonian babes in fur bikinis (who turn out to be aliens) as well as some pirates.

They are brought to meet Cameron Mitchell, who is locked in a cage and treated with injections to keep him tame—which seem to cause him to quote Edgar Allan Poe on a regular basis.

They meet Sheila Frankenstein, but that’s her married name. She is actually a Van Helsing. However, Dr. Frankenstein is still somehow around in the form of John Carradine as a hologram. This movie can’t even keep its classic horror literature straight.

Sheila has been doing lab work to keep some 200-year-old relative alive and needs the help of the men…and perhaps more. She has already created a load of zombified men that wear goggles due to sensitivity to light.

That’s just the setup. Then this movie goes on and on and on as Sheila F. tries to put her plans into place. Eventually, for reasons I don’t understand, the Frankenstein monster appears as well, and there’s a huge brawl in the lab involving like the entire cast—including the dog the men in the balloons brought with them.

As a GenXer who has made it his goal to have every horror movie from the 80s in his collection, I can safely say I will be making an exception with this film.

MURDER-ROCK (1984)

Stepping away from his streak of gory early 80s horror, Lucio Fulci perhaps marks another turning point in his filmography with Murder-Rock, which is like a giallo with Flashdance splash. It takes place at a dance school, where students begin getting killed off soon after it is announced that talent agents are coming to visit.

Right from the start we are treated to 80s dance music videos with women in leotards, leg warmers, and head bands. One girl even gets a wet solo dance number. Is it live, is it Memorex, or is it Jennifer Beals’ stand-in?

Hell, after the first murder, the dance teacher even goes for the Fame speech…with a dead friend twist. The dialogue might as well have been, “Fame costs, and here is where you start paying…in blood.”

As for the death scenes, it’s just a little prick and you’ll hardly feel it. Literally. Every kill is the same. The unseen killer chloroforms the female victim, whips out her boobs, and then slowly sticks a hairpin into her heart.

Adding to the fun is a tough detective who likes to slap around the guys he interrogates.

I guess the killer reveal has somewhat of a classic giallo element to it, but overall this feels like a pale imitation of Italian horror classics…and one that’s desperately trying to cash in on the American dance movie craze of the era. I won’t deny it’s that cheesiness that saves it for me!

HIGH DESERT KILL (1989)

This is one weird made-for-TV movie that also happens to be a good addition to the sausage fest scares page.

It opens with a possibility of a mystical Native American angle, but the intro scene ends up totally forgotten once we get to the meat of the movie.

A year after the loss of their friend, Luke of General Hospital Luke and Laura fame and Marc Singer bring a young hottie (nephew of their dead friend) on a yearly hunting trip with them.

They meet up with veteran actor Chuck Connors, who tells them the wilderness is mysteriously void of all wildlife.

Then things get really weird. The guys meet a couple of camping babes, they all seem to get entranced after a visitation by a paranormal force (signified by a negative effect applied to the film), they have a made-for-TV version of a lustful orgy around the campfire, people disappear, the dead friend makes appearances, animals are found slaughtered, the men turn on each other, there’s a sort of Stonehenge rock formation that seems to be the heart of the problem…

I really have no idea what this movie is about, but it definitely has a creepy vibe, and surprisingly the young dude gets shirtless a lot, but Marc Singer doesn’t.

The only horror money shot is a brief appearance of some sort of weird green alien life form near the end of the film.

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A double feature of gay horror for 2022

Posted on August 7, 2022 by Daniel

So glad to see two new queer films hit streaming in one month, neither of which shies away from queer sex content, but don’t go into these expecting fun midnight popcorn movies for your big gay sleepovers.

THEY/THEM (2022)

If you’re looking for a fun slasher starring queer people, look elsewhere. This is yet another commentary on the struggles of queer people that focuses on tortured young gay people being further tortured. Ugh.

I don’t know who the target audience is supposed to be for this movie. Gay audiences know about these real-life horrors and some might even be seriously triggered by them, straight audiences most likely don’t want to know and will be screaming, “woke woke woke!”, and lovers of slashers will be left wondering why the first of approximately only two major kill scenes doesn’t occur until an hour and 22 minutes into this hour and 44-minute movie.

After an opening kill, a diverse group of queer people is brought to a conversion camp, where they are warmly welcomed by the camp leader, Kevin Bacon, his counselors, and his wife, played by Arlene from True Blood. Bacon promises the camp is only for people who are unhappy and want to change, not conversion and not God based, but you can tell it’s just a matter of time before Bacon simply reprises his sadistic role from White Water Summer.

The problem with the film (aside from forgetting it’s supposed to be a horror movie for the majority of its runtime) is that scenes are drawn out in an effort to go deep and check every box of gender and orientation issues from both sides, including the hypocrisy of the converters. You end up sitting there praying someone will die soon, and that hopefully it will be one of the hateful counselors so you’ll feel some sense of vindication for having watched the film. I mean, you know a slasher is poorly paced when even the sex scenes bore you (there are two—pussy-eating girls, and ass-fucking guys).

Hell, there’s a “straight” sex scenes that’s more compelling than the queer sex scenes.

Some of the in-between filler includes a montage of the kids singing P!nk’s “Fuckin’ Perfect”, a forgettable red herring encounter that leads to one quick death early on, an excessively long shooting range scene that involves killing a dog, a reference to Friday the 13th (a necessity since Kevin Bacon was in the original), and an aversion therapy sequence.

Forget scares, suspense, chase scenes, or intense, violent and gory kills, because there’s not much of any of that—what few kills we get are super rushed. And to be honest, if you’re in it for a whodunit, you’ll probably be disappointed as well. I guessed who the killer was within the first 30-minutes.

If you want a slasher in which happily gay people get killed off by a masked killer, there are other options on the homo horror movies page…or you could also read my sexy scary campy gay Halloween novel Scream, Queen! in my book Wet Screams. Heh heh.

HYPOCHONDRIAC (2022)

Once again, it’s a movie you don’t go into if you’re looking for a gay horror romp. And once again, this is a deep dive—even deeper than They/Them—into the mental state of a troubled queer character that could very well bring down viewers who have had similar personal experiences in real life. It’s a wonderfully made film, and the lead actor is great, but this is some heavy content that tackles a whole lot of aspects of mental illness and how it affects both the person suffering with it and the people around that person.

As for the horror, this is all metaphorical, so don’t expect any concrete scares here. The shock moments are embedded in the main character’s delusions, hallucinations, dreams…in other words, it’s all faux scares created through blaring sounds and sudden flashes of fear on the screen—the kind of cheap scares tween horror of the last decade has relied on so heavily.

The main character even gets his own version of a Donnie Darko mascot, which is initially quite creepy, but knowing it’s not real and all in his mind just sucks the scares right out of it rather quickly.

It was kind of a bummer for me, because when we first meet our main man he seems happy and stable. He has a great relationship, a good job that he loves, and a cool boss, played by little Gracie from The Nanny.

Then he gets a package and audio recording from his mentally ill mother, and that unleashes all the issues whirling around in his mind.

The description of the film on IMDb suggests that he is haunted by physical manifestations of his past trauma, but that’s not correct; this is a tale about a man who is haunted by the darkness clouding his own mind.

In the past this might have been considered an art house film, but these days we have upgraded that label, and this one could easily be slapped with an “elevated horror” label. Definitely only go into this one if you’re in the right frame of mind for it and you know what you’re getting into.

Why does that monster butt munch scene seem so familiar? Oh, yeah…because I starred in a similar scene for the promo for my book Screams of Laughter and a Shock of Hair. Heh heh.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: 1970s horror makes its way to Blu-ray

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Daniel

It’s a trio of flicks from the 1970s that recently got the HD treatment for the physical market. But are these three titles worth the purchase?

HORROR HIGH (1973)

The sappy ballad that opens Horror High tells you immediately you’re in the early 1970s—as does the funky 70s score that ruins almost every damn horror scene by making you feel like Starsky & Hutch are going to pull up in their red and white car at any minute to save the day. Someone with a load of motivation should seriously start re-cutting old horror films that have shitty, dated, non-horror scores with new scores that complement the horror happening on screen so we could appreciate how effective the scenes could have been.

Anyway, back to Horror High. It all begins with some blatant foreshadowing—kids are watching Jekyll and Hyde in English class.

Then we meet the lead geek, who is working on a science experiment to genetically change life forms. Everyone torments this kid, including teachers, the janitor, and the students.

The geek ends up drinking his own potion. He immediately starts getting revenge on everyone who has wronged him. In other words, he gets revenge on everyone.

The kills are super gruesome and gory, and for some reason each victim conveniently ends up at school alone at night to be killed off. Great atmosphere…except that awful funk muzak.

However, there are two standout scenes. The first is the death of the gym teacher, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it inspired the coach scene in Elm Street 2.

And second, the main girl gets a chase scene, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it inspired Wendy’s chase scene in Prom Night. You know one thing these two scenes have in common that makes them so much better than every other kill scene? NO MUSIC.

SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED (1974)

The infamy of this title made it a no hesitation buy for me. I just love a movie with a reputation from name alone.

As I began watching, I was suspecting the reputation was undeserved, predominantly because the “Yeti” was just a guy in a ridiculous costume. But there is so much more going on here that elevates this to classic 1970s stoner horror.

For starters, college kids have a party and the song playing is the classic synth pop hit “Popcorn” by Hot Butter. Then, in a scene you’d never see coming, a drunk dude and his woman go home and kill each other in one of the most bizarre, way out there scenes ever.

As if that never even happened, the film just goes on. The college kids are invited by their teacher to hunt a Yeti at a cabin in the woods. This is when we’re subjected to the horrible Yeti costume, shrill screams from the girls, hunting and exploration scenes in the woods set to horrible 70s music, and an “Indian” house keeper dude lurking around the house making weird faces (the white dude who owns the place literally says “that’s my Indian”).

Yet despite the horrendous acting and one of the most disappointing slaps ever administered to an annoying hysterical chick, Shriek of the Mutilated is also packed with oodles of bright red bloody bodies popping up all over the place…but not for reasons you’d expect. It takes such a 1970s drug trip visual and narrative approach that when a bizarre turn comes in the final act, I realized this crazy shit is actually a precursor to a whole lot of “nothing is as it seems” hybrid subgenre horror to come after it. I’m almost convinced this movie may very well have been the inspiration for Monstrous, one of my favorite more recent Bigfoot films.

The macabre and freaky conclusion even makes me wonder if all the terrible reviews on IMDb whining about the shitty Yeti costume come from people that didn’t bother watching the movie to the end.

ANTS (1977)

Not to be overshadowed by the killer bees craze of the 70s, killer ants demanded their own feature film, and they got it in this made-for-TV movie that will definitely make your skin crawl.

The plot is simple enough. Construction is being done next to a hotel. The foreman, played by blue-eyed, bearded 70s hottie Robert Foxworth of Prophecy, is dating Linda Day George, who owns the hotel with her elderly mother.

A sleazy businessman and his woman, played by then overnight sensation Suzanne Somers thanks to Three’s Company, plan to lowball them on buying the place.

Unfortunately, all the digging on the construction site has angered a colony of attack ants.

People start turning up dead at the hotel. The foreman figures out the ants are the culprit. The authorities don’t believe him. People continue to die. When it’s just about too late, guests from the hotel are air lifted out by rescue helicopters…that unintentionally blow killer ants all over spectators. Awesome.

It’s typical killer bug stuff, but it definitely gives you the heebie-jeebies by the final act, when the stars of the film become trapped in the overrun hotel and are eventually covered in ants and breathing through tubes in an effort not to move. It’s the part that has stuck with me since I was a little kid and first saw it on television, not only because all I could think was that the ants were going to crawl through the straws and into their mouths, but also because these are no CGI ants…the actors are actually covered in real ants. Eek!

Important to note is the sexualization of the two blonde female stars, even in a 1970s made-for-TV movie. Somers is covered in ants while naked and holding a sheet over her boobs, and Lynda Day George is wearing a skirt, so the camera spends a great deal of time focusing on her sexy legs and the ants crawling towards the hem.

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