Killers and creatures of the 60s and I got them on Blu-ray

Posted on August 4, 2022 by Daniel

This foursome of flicks I’ve just added to my library spans from 1959 to 1965 and delivers a masked killer, big creatures, and even vampire aliens.

CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (1959)

There’s some question as to whether horror master Mario Bava actually directed this black and white creature feature or just worked on cinematography. Considering this is just a rip-off of The Blob from a year before, I don’t know that he would willingly take credit for it.

If you love 50s sci-fi horror flicks, this one definitely fits the bill. An archaeological team exploring ruins in Mexico discover a statue of a Mayan deity with a pool of water in front of it. When a big blob pops out of the water, it attaches to the arm of one dude, who they manage to rescue before killing the blob. However, he still has a piece of blob attached to his arm.

As scientists study the specimen, they learn it thrives on radiation. Conveniently, a comet that releases radiation and passes earth like once every 1000 years is on its way.

It turns into a case of multiple big blobs! At the same time, the dude who had the blob stuck on his arm loses his shit and becomes homicidal, creating a secondary threat to our main characters.

There are plenty of mini models of buildings and such being invaded by blobs, but we only really get one scene of a blob devouring a human, and of course the military steps in, sucking the scary right out of the film.

BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964)

This is a Mario Bava film that you can’t help thinking was most likely the inspiration for much of Dario Argento’s work that was just around the corner.

Granted, this movie screams 1960s. While I hate the jazzy 60s score, I love the atmospheric horror sets, statues, architecture, and lighting colors Argento would exploit to great effect just a decade later.

Just as Argento loved a good house filled with pretty young women, Bava’s film takes place in a fashion house loaded with models.

They begin getting knocked off by a killer in a faceless mask, fedora, and trench coat, a detective investigates, everyone becomes obsessed with getting their hands on the first victim’s diary, and everyone seems like a suspect.

While most of the murders are fairly basic, there are a delicious number of body reveals, and there is one fantastically orchestrated chase and kill scene in an antique store that is most assuredly the one that motivated Argento to come up with some of his most visually stunning kill sequences ever. This whole movie is worth seeing for that scene alone if you are a fan of giallos.

THE FLESH EATERS (1964)

Despite its title, The Flesh Eaters will probably never get its recognition as a ground-breaker in the icky, flesh-eating bacteria horror subgenre.

The first few minutes immediately made me think of the Stephen King tale “The Raft”, adapted for Creepshow 2. A couple is swimming when a black cloud in the water surrounds them and starts devouring their flesh.

Although black and white, The Flesh Eaters dared to deliver more gore than most horror flicks of its time. It also shows a lot of flesh in a sexy, non-eaten way as well.

Next we meet an alcoholic actress and her female assistant, who hire a handsome pilot for a private flight. The plane is forced down onto a desolate island by bad weather. The group meets a scientist who offers them shelter, and they soon discover skeletons, both fish and human, are washing onto the shore. EEK!

Turns out there’s a flesh-eating bacteria in the water, and the small group will be trapped on the island if they can’t figure out a safe way off the island or how to kill the bacteria. Naturally, the bacteria starts…um…picking people off as drama ensues, and the more it eats the more it grows, until this turns into a giant creature feature by the end. It’s really a total classic.

Important to note is that the new Blu-ray release from Shout Factory includes an alternate cut of the film in standard definition in which a scene that has the scientist merely describing Nazi experiments in the original cut actually shows a sequence of the twisted experiments. It’s a shame it wasn’t spliced into a master HD extended cut instead, because it adds even more to the edginess of the film.

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (1965)

Ground-breaking horror director Bava is back, doing the kind of blatant cross-subgenre move here that wouldn’t become trendy until well into the 1990s. The title says it all.

Although some of the scenes on the ship may be reminiscent of Star Trek sets, the overall look of this film is quite striking for the time at which it was released.

It takes place on two separate ships and a planet on which they land after receiving a distress signal from it. The planet is covered with rocks, fog, and red sci-fi light. Awesome.

The crew of one ship discovers that the crew of the other ship has been slaughtered. They bury the dead on the planet…but the dead don’t stay dead.

I’m not usually spooked by spaceship movies because I just can’t relate to the idea of being on a spaceship to begin with, but Bava brings a genuine horror look and feel to outer space, from the creepy scene of the astronauts rising from their graves, to encounters with the somewhat grotesquely morphed victims who have become space vampires.

Due to limitations in budget and filmmaking techniques of the time, this definitely isn’t a high octane action/horror/sci-fi film, but if you appreciate the vibe of sci-fi films from the 1960s, this is a cut above the rest and a good precursor of horrors yet to come. There’s even a laser gun shootout at one point.

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SHUDDER AND SHRIEK: women in peril

Posted on August 3, 2022 by Daniel

It’s girls gone wild with sharks, demons, and aliens.

THE REEF: STALKED (2022)

A sequel to the 2010 film The Reef in name only, The Reef: Stalked is a reminder that the shark subgenre of movies started by the Open Water films years ago is running out of oxygen. There’s simply nothing new that can be done with the idea of a few people stranded on a tiny piece of something in the middle of the ocean while surrounded by a shark or sharks.

Making matters worse is the main character’s struggle in this one. Her sister was drowned in a bathtub, so now…SHE has PTSD consisting of visions of the drowning event even though she was not there when it happened.

The fact is, the shark is a metaphor for the main character finding the courage to stand up to her sister’s abuser.

I really can’t with this movie.

As she struggles to deal with her grief, she goes kayaking with four friends. The shark shows up. People fall off kayaks. Some die. The surprise here is that the girls get safely to an isolated island. But then they decide to take a tiny motorboat to another island. The boat has a leak. The motor dies. The girls have to fight the shark…with a fishing net and a machete.

Like seriously, how many times in one movie can you watch scenes of a shark nearly chomping on someone’s legs just as they’re pulled back on a boat and still feel a sense of dread?

REVEALER (2022)

It cracks me up that so many reviews on IMDb accuse this film of being a poor attempt at cashing in on the way Stranger Things captured the glory days of 80s horror. News flash—horror movies have been doing the retro 80s thing for like the past 20 years…the responsibility for that does not land solely on the shoulders of a show that had one good season before becoming an increasingly bloated, self-indulgent mess that mostly deserves credit for merely reigniting interest in a handful of cool 80s songs. I mean, when every episode in a season of your show is a 90 to 120 minute movie, you’ve really started to think way too highly of your creation.

As for Revealer, it is pleasantly understated in its immersion in the 80s. It takes place in the 80s, there are a few 80s style songs (including a track by Gun Ship), the movie CHUD is mentioned in passing, and there’s plenty of 80s horror lighting, but there is no over-the-top attempt at the 80s look that plagues many films that try to go for authenticity but end up coming across like a bad mockery of the decade.

Having said that, this is also an understated horror flick that focuses on just two female characters. In a way it reminds me of Night of the Comet, but it’s more about two girls from opposite ends of the morality spectrum coming together to fight a demonic presence while learning to respect each other.

One is a stripper, the other is a religious protestor who always harasses the stripper outside her place of business. When an apocalyptic event takes place, the two girls become trapped together in a peep booth, where they are terrorized mostly by demonic snakes, but occasionally by a big devilish looking dude that we barely get a glimpse of.

There are definitely some fun phallic snake moments here, but this is notably character driven as it explores the growth of these two characters and their eventual understanding of each other as they try to survive their horrific circumstances. It’s kind of like a chick flick with demons.

THE SEED (2021)

The Seed goes for a trendy girls vs. alien life forms horror comedy vibe. It’s entertaining enough, however, it isn’t a very original film, and it’s also incredibly slow in getting to the guts of the horror—54 minutes before things really take off.

Sticking to predictable stereotypes, we have three girls heading to a house in the desert to witness a meteor shower: two blonde bimbo social medial influencers and their geeky smart brunette friend. Another odd moment that’s either tone deaf or an intentional comment on just how tone deaf white people are is a dancing montage of these three white girls partying to a hip hop song that repeatedly drops the “n” word. If it was done to make a point, it failed miserably because it just ends up feeling really weird. Some sort of snarky comment about appropriation from the geek girl and oblivious offense at the accusation by the blondes may have made the point better…if there was a point trying to be made.

Is there some funny banter between the girls? Sure. Is it funny enough to carry us through 54 minutes without any true horror? Not quite. But at least we get some horror elements to help us along.

The meteor shower happens and a rock thing plops into their pool. Within a short time, a little baby creature pops out of it, but they can’t take advantage of their discovery and make themselves go viral because the meteor shower seems to have cut off their connection to the internet.

Eventually, the little baby creature starts telepathically controlling the girls one by one. With only three girls, it’s no wonder it took 54 minutes for this to happen in a 90-minute movie. The little baby creature runs out of girls to control fast considering it still needs to leave us with one final girl pretty.

There’s some gushy icky fluid stuff as the meaning of the title becomes clear (as if you couldn’t guess), and naturally the final girl has to make some major decisions concerning saving her friends and saving the world.

The Seed will keep you entertained, but you probably won’t feel the urge to revisit it.

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STREAM QUEEN: men in peril

Posted on August 2, 2022 by Daniel

It’s a gay stalker, alien possession, and man vs. psycho family.

THE GUEST HOUSE (2016)

Single White Female goes gay male in this low budget stalker flick  that lands a place on the homo horror movies page. It even features actress/Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Eileen Davis and her husband Vincent Van Patten in small roles.

The plot involves a kind of douchy dude who cheats on his wife, gets the boot, and moves into the guest house of a rich dude.

At first they bond and have a good time, drinking, watching ball games, and talking about girls. The landlord even gets close to the douche dude’s teenage daughter.

But then one night the douche comes home early and sees his landlord in the hot tub with another guy. Not surprisingly, the douche is a homophobe and immediately starts to distance himself from the landlord, which is of course where the trouble begins.

It’s about as predictable as these movies get if you grew up on erotic thrillers of the late 80s/early 90s, but it’s satisfying to see the plot involving two guys for a change—especially since it doesn’t play coy with the gay desire at all. Of course some might be offended that the gay dude is portrayed as a total psycho preying on a straight dude. For me, the only letdown is the fact that because only one man is gay, this film lacks any sense of sexual tension beyond a moment when the landlord grabs the douche from behind during a fight and says “this is what jail’s like”. Sigh.

There are two major problems with the film considering it’s molded after erotic thrillers of the past. First, the douche feels like too much of a racist/homophobic white asshole to be the object of anyone’s desire—the film could have upped the sexy factor if his much more likable Latin buddy had played the lead role.

On top of that, there are no good scares, and no good kill scenes…of humans. The most brutal scene is the killing of a dog! WTF?

The creepiest part of the film is actually the guy playing the landlord. He may not be the best actor, but his lack of emoting and blank expressions worked to great effect in making his character quite unnerving.

BLASTED (2022)

This Norwegian sci-fi/action/comedy feels like it’s going for the same vibe as the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost goodie The World’s End. It eventually hits its stride in that style, but it’s hindered for a while not only by a totally unnecessary, near 2-hour running time, but perhaps also by the comedic tone getting lost in translation a bit due to the dubbing.

A dude is having a bachelor party that is also, in part, a business trip, which is derailed by the arrival of his longtime slacker friend. Problem is that for quite a while all the talk between the group of guys lacks any charm or humor. The film really starts to drag until they begin playing laser-tag and encounter a dude with glowing green eyes in the woods.

From then on it’s totally action and thrills as the guys initially think they’ve got a zombie situation. However, it turns out that they’re instead dealing with people being possessed by green glowing blobs of alien life forms. Awesome.

It’s a fast-paced adventure as the guys use their laser guns to extract the green blobs and destroy them in bursts of green goo.

It morphs into buddy movie fun, with the guys eventually finding their way onto the alien ship to stop the madness…and take on an awesome final boss.

BLOODY HELL (2020)

It’s a backwoods comedy horror flick with violence, gore, and quirky time jumps reminiscent of Tarantino and Guy Ritchie films. To top it all off, hottie Ben O’Toole (Nekrotronic) carries the film in a dual role as his character and his character’s conscience…while bound and shirtless for a majority of the runtime (earning it a spot on the stud stalking page).

Ben takes a gamble when caught up in the middle of a bank robbery, which leads to him being a semi-celebrity for both good and bad reasons. To escape his unintended fame in the U.S., he escapes to Finland…and ends up in the basement of a psycho family from hell.

At first I was getting flashbacks to the 1989 classic Parents, but this film takes on a life of its own as our main man has to figure out a way to get out of his predicament. Luckily, he has his conscience by his side as his guide and cheerleader…and sometimes as the devil on his shoulder.

In between his banter with his conscience, he hopes to win over some members of the family to help him escape. Plus, we eventually get to see what really went on during that bank robbery to make him go down in infamy.

Naturally, the money shot is the final battle between our main man and the psycho family in the last act. If I have one gripe it’s that the sequence feels like it’s over way too fast…especially since there are some satisfying surprises thrown in that could have been milked a bit more to up the suspense, violence, and gore even more.

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TUBI TERRORS: a variety of home invasions

Posted on August 1, 2022 by Daniel

Don’t open the door, because you never know who or what you’re letting in with this satisfying trio of flicks I checked out on Tubi.

WHY? (2021)

This is a slasher/stalker film focused on suspense, the cat and mouse tension between the killer and the main girl, and unnerving body reveals.

It delivers on all counts, but based on IMDb reviews whining that there’s no plot, no killer motive, and no explanation as to who the killer is, I can safely say today’s audience would never have been able to make it through many of the best horror thrillers of the 70s and 80s. Hell, I don’t even know how they consider the infamous “because you were home” line in The Strangers acceptable if they’re so hung up on having everything explained to them in a horror movie.

Personally, this film that explains nothing (gee, you think maybe that’s the reason the title is Why?) was a total thrill ride for me from the opening kill scene to the final frame.

Here’s the story. A writer heads to a cabin in the woods to re-energize while suffering from writer’s block.

At the same time, a freaky killer that is leaving a trail of bodies behind (in some eerie aftermath setups) is heading her way.

Before long, this turns into a home invasion situation in the middle of the woods, and it is tight, with intense chase and fight scenes between the killer and main girl, and a brief appearance by Lance Henriksen.

TOOTH FAIRY: QUEEN OF PAIN (2022)

I just did a post featuring what I thought was the latest installment of Louisa Warren’s Tooth Fairy series, but here we are again!

It’s good to be back. And by that I mean this almost feels more like a reboot of the series than another sequel. The sequels were definitely growing stale, but this film gives the tooth fairy a freaky redesign and puts the focus back on her bashing her victims’ faces in with a hammer to collect their teeth. Awesome.

Louisa Warren demonstrates her usual keen ability to deliver great tension and atmosphere in classic slasher style. A group of people is staying at a house, and one of them seems to be the target of terror.

The tooth fairy keeps coming to the door at night to talk to her (eek!).

The door visits are so damn creepy, but the problem is the tooth fairy is so hard to understand when she speaks. It really takes away from the effectiveness of the situation.

About halfway through the film, the tooth fairy at last starts hunting down victims, and she sure is evil. She even uses the claw of her hammer to pry teeth out of victims’ mouths. And even worse, she runs during chases! Yikes!

On top of that, the unnerving visits at the door inevitably lead to the tooth fairy getting inside the house and turning this into somewhat of a home invasion scenario. I’d say this is definitely my favorite installment since the first one.

CRIMSON (2020)

Some YouTube personality named FaZe Rug (social media really is going to be the end of humanity) has made a found footage film in which he vlogs about his experience living next to terrifying clowns for his viewers.

I’m not going to deny I’m a fan of very few found footage style films and I’m a fan of no social media influencers, so I had absolutely no expectations going into this. And the first half of the film was living up to that bar.

FaZe moves out of his parents’ home into a mansion way too big for one person. He keeps seeing red balloons floating around his house, so there’s absolutely no effort to not look like this isn’t trying to cash in on the remake of Stephen King’s It. Ugh.

On top of that, he and his buddies spend forty minutes doing the same stupid shit you could watch obnoxious influencers doing by watching their channels online. There are pranks, setting fires, setting off rockets, spying with a drone, farting in each other’s faces. Double ugh.

But dammit if this doesn’t turn into a pretty good traditional found footage film loaded with freaky clown moments. It follows the basic template of found footage, but the clown elements definitely add something if freaky clowns mess you up. For instance, it was all over for me when a clown on stilts walks by the mansion’s big glass doors while chuckling. Fuck that noise.

The final act totally ramps things up and saves the FaZe character for me. The dude goes into the fricking clown house to save his dog! It is a clown horror house for sure. And in an absolutely brilliant move, this little indie flips a finger to the typical found footage ending…like…totally. So refreshing and unexpected.

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When the harvest season is a triple dark threat

Posted on July 28, 2022 by Daniel

It’s pretty telling that all three films in this “series” came out in the same year. In other words, the films were distributed and renamed to create the sense of a worthy first film deserving of sequels…

DARK HARVEST (2004)

The opening of this film establishes a history and does a really nice job of looking like it was shot in the early 1970s.


Authorities discover a freaky farmer has real dead humans hanging up in his field as scarecrows.

In current times, a young man learns he is inheriting a farm from a family he never knew because he was adopted. So he takes his friends along to see the place. There’s some commentary on his attitude about being a privileged white dude, notably in contrast to him having a Black buddy and a lesbian couple as friends.

Anyway, they get to the rundown house, he meets a spooky lady who warns him about his family’s past, and eventually he begins to believe her.

However, the scarecrows don’t come to life until 50 minutes into the movie. Ouch. The most thrilling thing that happens before that is that the group goes skinny-dipping.

However, once the murderous scarecrow rampage begins, this is simple, early-2000s direct-to-DVD fun.

There’s lots of hack ‘n’ slash action as the kids run around the farm and the fields, and the scarecrows are fast runners with a classic creepy look.

THE MAIZE: DARK HARVEST 2 (2004)

The director of The Maize, which was retitled Dark Harvest 2 in hopes of name recognition by the distributors, is also the star.

This is not a killer scarecrow film, but it is a Halloween themed film that takes place in a haunted maze attraction, so it does get a spot on the holiday horror page.

I had high hopes for it due to the trick or treating opening scene, which definitely sets a seasonal tone.

This movie is grueling. I can’t fathom why the director/star didn’t try to save it as much as possible by extracting all the excess and trimming it down to about 70 minutes from 100 minutes.

By excess I mean endless twirling, moving footage of a cornfield as a man travels through it in search of his two daughters.

When you hack through all the corn stalks, the film comes down to this. This dude has psychic powers. He foresaw the deaths of two young girls like a year before. Now he’s seeing the death of his daughters in the cornfield.

He rushes there as the attraction is closing to find them, but they are lost in the maze. Both he and the girls spend the whole film going in circles through this cornfield. Occasionally they encounter ghosts of the two girls that died a year before.

We get to see a couple of jack-o’-lanterns, there are a couple of stray haunters in masks, and eventually…like, late in the film…there’s a maskless killer with a lead pipe. But believe me, this film is predominantly comprised of footage of cornstalks.

DARK HARVEST 3: SCARECROW (2004)

After the second film, it was impossible for me to not find some things to like about this final release anointed with the Dark Harvest name.

For starters, it’s only 72 minutes long. Awesome. It’s also about a killer scarecrow again. Double awesome.

It begins in black and white in 1921 with a witch bringing a scarecrow to life to kill off a family that is trying to steal her home from her. The witch is my favorite part, and we even get to see the footage of her again in full color during a hypnotic flashback.

In current times, a group of friends is heading to a cabin in the woods that happens to be the home of the old lady, and one of the guys in the group happens to be a distant relative of the family that tried to steal it from her. Why do I feel like I’ve been to this cabin many times before?

Sure it’s low budget, but it also has a gritty look to it, which helps create the perfect cabin in the woods atmosphere for a killer scarecrow to take care of business.

We get gratuitous tits, a cellar scene, the scarecrow doing some pretty nasty killing with practical effects, and even a totally out of place, random scene of a family of freaks in a house nearby.

The plot is silly and the characters forgettable. Just watch it for the scarecrow kills and the funny moment when one girl channels the old witch to tell the main guy he’s getting what he deserves…right before the scarecrow kills her instead. So much for loyalty.

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Video games of death!

Posted on July 27, 2022 by Daniel

It’s a trio of films about video games that kill if you make one wrong decision.

DEADWARE (2021)

This film only runs 68-minute long, and it feels like another one of those lockdown projects from the COVID years. The entire film consists of two people in computer screen windows on a video chat.

However, here’s the catch. It’s supposed to be 1999, this guy and girl are long distance friends, and they are just experiencing the modern technology of webcams for the first time.

And then they decide to play an online point-and-click horror video game.

This is fun for video game fans and nostalgia freaks who were around back when survival horror, online gaming, and the internet just began booming, but as a horror movie there’s not much going on here. You mostly feel like you’re watching two people as they play a game that keeps spooking them.

Elements of the game they’re playing give winks to Resident Evil (the entrance hall to the mansion, the use of a typewriter), and there are live action video clips that most definitely pay homage to The Blair Witch Project, which happened to have come out in 1999, but overall, not a lot goes on here, and if you’ve been around the horror genre for any length of time, you know exactly where this is heading.

LIVESCREAM (2018)

Running only 70 minutes long, this film is strictly for gamers, and more specifically old school gamers. The premise is fun, but because it’s a low budget movie, it’s virtually free of any actors with almost all deaths being presented by a “has left the chat” notice.

The entire story is told through a guy who streams his video game screen (on the right) and streams his reactions while he’s playing (top left) as viewers comment in a scrolling chat (bottom left). This movie is not for the easily distracted.

Yet somehow I made it through…

I was definitely feeling the nostalgia. The dude’s icon for his stream is clearly a PS1 controller. His screams as he runs around scary locations totally echo mine when I play survival horror games. And the graphics in the games he plays go as far back as looking like they’re from the NES days in the late 80s.

I was sort of hyped during a moment when a grid of his viewers popped up on screen and one of them was actually killed off for us to see, but that was the only time. After that, it’s all a matter of usernames signed onto the chat board just “exiting” when the game player dies in the game. And that’s the plot. When the player dies in the game, one of his viewers does. And the catch is they can’t sign off.

Considering we don’t see any of the kills, this film becomes repetitive. It would have worked better as a shorter film…or a full-length if it featured on screen video chat kills. So you decide if you feel that it’s worth sitting through watching a guy play a horror game and anonymous viewers “leaving the chat” one by one.

CHOOSE OR DIE (2021)

A horror movie about a text-based “choose your own adventure” video game from the 80s? I’m so in.

It begins with an older man (oh shit, he’s my age) playing the game and discovering it not only turns on Gary Numan music to set the tone (awesome), it also makes you pick one of two horrible choices that comes to fruition in reality once you’ve made your selection.

Then we meet a young woman who scores a dusty old copy of the game from her buddy and gets sucked into its insanity. There are some great, suspenseful scenes of her getting loved ones into horrible predicaments in a game she can’t escape while being forced to make moral decisions.

Of course she and her buddy have to delve into how this video game came into being (very The Ring). Considering I recently popped in a Blu-ray I bought in 2011 and it no longer works, yet the VHS tape, TV, and VCR the friends in this movie find in a dusty old warehouse where the video game was made forty years ago all work, it was a harsh reminder that they just don’t make things the way they used to.

While the final act almost feels like it’s jumping the shark, it’s so fantastically whacked that it was kind of the perfect ending. My only gripe? The leading girl dares to say, “Fuck the eighties!” I was so rooting for the game to kill her by that point.

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I came for the kills!

Posted on July 26, 2022 by Daniel

It was time once again to scratch my slasher itch with a trio of films I found on Prime and cable, so let’s get right into them.

STUDENT BODY (2022)

This is one of the most agonizingly cliché teen films I’ve seen in years. I’m not sure if the creators didn’t realize they weren’t demonstrating even on ounce of originality or if they just figured there’s a whole bunch of kids who haven’t seen a whole lot of movies yet and therefore won’t realize they’re getting a total rehash of dozens of other movies.

Making matters worse, there isn’t a single well-developed or vaguely likable or memorable character here (other than the fact that one guy is from Love, Victor). Our main girl should be the upstanding moral one we want to root for at the end. She no longer connects with her childhood friend, who hangs with a bunch of privileged punks now, yet when they welcome her into their group under the condition that she help them destroy a teacher they feel is ruining their lazy lives, she doesn’t even hesitate to agree.

Worst of all, all their hangout time and simplistic, underwhelming take-down of the teacher drags on for 43 minutes before one of them is sledgehammered to death by someone in the school mascot mask…in a cutaway death scene.

The final act is where the slasher elements finally kick in, when the kids become locked inside the school. But other than the halls being saturated in horror light and some shots of the masked killer lurking in the background, this just totally fails to thrill, with very little in the way of slasher excitement. We get:

–that first cutaway kill

–a character who decides to bring a short crowbar to a long sledgehammer fight

–one dude getting clobbered in the head while kissing a girl

–one character dying not at the hands of the killer, but during a fight with a friend

–the most expected killer reveal ever

–the final girl going through the motions of a final battle with the killer

–a final victory walk that fails to capture the tone it’s going for (one that has been done successfully dozens of times before)

The performances of the cast were as low-energy as the writing and they seemed as bored as I was. The best thing about this movie would be a couple of now wave tracks used as the soundtrack.

GETAWAY (2020)

After a satisfying scene of killer POV as a girl is filmed leaving school and getting stabbed to death, I immediately worried that this film was going to feel like another Scream fan film as a bunch of students stood around name dropping horror movies and discussing their film projects.

The kids end up going to a cabin in the woods to film their movie for class, and this turns into a surprisingly straightforward, focused slasher that gives us nods to some classic slasher scenes while overall doing its own thing.

They make a pit stop on the way to the cabin and grab a mask off a scarecrow for their movie. They’re warned of impending doom by a crazy old person—this time a lady with a gun. There’s also a creepy caretaker at the cabin.

That doesn’t stop the kids from having sex, delving into their relationship tensions, getting into cat fights, and most importantly, getting killed.

The death scenes are the highlight. They’re evenly spaced between all the drama and fights, and while they’re not particularly gory, they are notably brutal, particularly scenes in which the killer slowly pushes the knife into the victim and you can feel every inch of it.

There’s some some diversity in the casting, including what I’m guessing is a gay guy considering he makes a Real Housewives reference. Damn right I’m stereotyping, but the film seems to go for coding the character instead of making him proudly gay so that it won’t be on the receiving end of the same old “woke” attack the straight white horror gatekeepers are using these days.

Having said all that, I wasn’t crazy about the final act, which does indeed go for the Scream style denouement, removing the survivors from the whole setting of the movie to accomplish it, which really ruins the general flow for me.

HELL TRIP (2018)

Based on the title and the IMDb description, Hell Trip gave me high hopes of a dark…well, not backwoods horror. Back jungle? It takes place in Africa where a group of vacationing Americans is forced to hike to their cabin after their van breaks down.

I am so used to and a fan of generic slashers as long as they deliver on the thrills and chills. Hell Trip offers some grisly and gory kills, body reveals, and a substantial chase scene, but there are no surprises here at all. Even the fact that the killer wears a mask is underplayed and shrouded in darkness to the point of not even mattering. I had to excessively lighten this photo just to make out the mask.

The guy they leave behind to fix the van is killed off screen, and then they encounter a raging native with a knife so that we are set up to assume this is the danger they will be encountering.

In response, their tour guide does something that tells us exactly how this movie is going to play out and drains it of any sense of mystery. By the time the survivors conveniently find a computer that holds all the answers to why they’re being killed off, I was rolling my eyes at this 21st century version of finding a bunch of newspaper articles pinned to a bulletin board.

And then we get to that ridiculous moment when for no explicable reason, the killer, who has been slicing and dicing people up without hesitation all along, suddenly decides it’s time to instead abduct a victim and give a complete motivation monologue first. Sigh.

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TUBI TERRORS: a shark, a werewolf, and giant maggots!

Posted on July 25, 2022 by Daniel

It’s killer creature time in my latest marathon on Tubi.

BLOOD BITE (2020)

This Asian shark film feels like a cheesy SyFy mashup of Jaws 3D and Deep Blue Sea. I couldn’t wait to type that sentence.

Unfortunately, the film doesn’t live up to that description. Or…maybe it does. This is just 76 minutes of terrible CGI shark that’s always glowing red while everything around it is blue, plus people who look like they are suspended in harnesses and pretending they’re swimming underwater, with the blue background added later. It’s so bad it had me and the hubby giggling.

Anyway, you’ve heard this plot before. An underwater aquarium with glass tunnels in the ocean is run by a hot, evil man who has a mad scientist creating a genetically mutated great white.

The great white totally snaps, shatters the glass window, floods the facility, and leaves our small cast gasping for air as they try to stay above water while dodging this maneater.

There’s plenty of shark action, but every moment is filled with such silly visuals that it’s impossible to enjoy Blood Bite even for camp value.

THE HUNTING (2021)

I love me some low budget werewolf action, so I was totally into this one, especially when the opening kill created stunning werewolf atmosphere with moonlit woods, and a fishermen getting killed by a good old cheesy wolf man in the style of Big Bad Wolf.

As for the other good stuff, this small town horror movie really has some beautiful fall settings, and although it’s not specifically Halloween, there are several shots of decorative pumpkins to add to the autumnal tone. I really love the vibe of the film, including the 80s-esque synth score interludes.

Another visual bonus is leading man Peyton Hillis, a former football player whose hunky muscle bod we immediately get to see shirtless. He plays a cop in the town working on a bunch of missing persons cases.

Now here’s the problem. This movie is bogged down by dialogue as Peyton, his cute bearded cub partner, a wolf expert, and a Native American man try to solve the case together. This all takes place in one day, which means after the opening werewolf attacks, there are absolutely no other werewolf attacks until the final act. This is a huge misstep in the writing.

Eventually the town is placed under curfew, but two girls and a gay guy who has a hard-on for Peyton’s ass sneak off into the woods. This setup should have come earlier, there should have been a larger group of friends, and we should have been treated to a long segment with them running through the woods being subjected to werewolf attacks.

Would you believe these three characters are killed within the course of two minutes…two of them at the same time? Sigh.

It’s unfortunate that the structure of the plot is so weak, because I have to say that the film takes a turn at the end that I totally didn’t see coming and is so fricking good it deserved to be attached to a much better paced film. I even like the setup for a sequel in the final frame.

MAGGOTS (2019)

Running only 76 minutes long, Maggots is the perfect throwback to nasty, slimy, giant critter flicks of the 90s like Ticks and Mosquito.

A college dude and his classmates go camping in the woods so he can research his belief that fracking pollution is causing wildlife mutations.

We’re immediately treated to some sex and titties, an obnoxious dude who is undeniably funny, and a tough chick with a taser who won’t take any shit from him. Taser girl fricking rox and is one of the best parts of the film as it progresses.

Once the group is settled into camp, the icky maggots strike. This is truly classic gross-out madness, with everyone screaming, maggots flying through the air and latching onto people, and of course, maggots being squished into gooey messes. These maggots with teeth are very reminiscent of the Killer Condom.

The cast lives up to the comedic craziness with the help of horror indie king Edward X Young. It’s astounding how he can be in so many movies, be so damn good in them, and still not be a household horror name.

The only odd thing for me is that Maggots seems to consist predominantly of practical effects (yay!), which makes it glaringly horrible when there’s a sudden shift to a daylight scene and we get a terrible CGI maggot moment. It feels so out of place in this otherwise traditional, old school creature feature.

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These wicked women are woke!

Posted on July 22, 2022 by Daniel

Yay! It’s four films to drive white straight male wingnuts even crazier—explorations of women’s issues, women’s feelings, and the way women are treated in a patriarchal society.

SOUND OF VIOLENCE (2021)

This is a trippy, almost psychedelic and artsy horror flick that delves into how a young woman’s past with violence as a child shapes her present…and her homicidal tendencies. Don’t expect a simple slasher flick. There are plenty of brutal kills along the way, but the focus is on this young woman awakening to the realization that the sound of pain brings her pleasure.

A young deaf girl witnessed her family being brutally murdered, and the incident somehow triggered her to regain her hearing.

As an adult, she now teaches music and explores the psychological effects sounds have on moving her mind and soul. She begins sampling sounds to create her own experimental music. It begins as recording sessions of people participating in S&M, but escalates from there.

Soon, the main girl is recording the agonizing screams of people as she kills them and turning those sounds into music in scenes that are presented like a DJ experiencing a good drug high at a club.

It’s weird and somewhat vicious, and the final act is quite tragic as her female roommate, who is actually in love with her, is drawn into her “music”.

The funny thing is that as with every film featuring people of color and/or queer characters these days, the white supremacists are all butt sore and can say nothing online about Sound of Violence beyond it being “woke”. I even saw it bashed for being a whole movie about a Black girl getting sexually aroused by killing white men. Hm. I lived through the eighties and never heard any white guys complaining that every slasher was about a white guy in a mask getting sexually aroused by killing half naked women. Not to mention that if white supremacists want to see a bright side to this “woke” movie, it’s actually the people they hate who should be complaining about it considering it depicts a Black gay female as a psycho killer. They’re so damn hateful they would prefer that people just like them are the psychos killing people just like them.

THE STYLIST (2020)

This is a brooding and depressing film that follows the life of a lonely, sociopathic hair stylist who lives her life vicariously through the stories she’s told by her clients.

Oh…she also imagines what it’s like to be them by killing them, scalping them, and wearing their hair as wigs.

While it’s a tragic character study, it’s also a major commentary on the pressures put on women—to get married, to look beautiful, to compete with other women, to support one another, to cope with being torn down by other women instead of lifted up by them.

It’s good to see horror exploring these issues, but for me the movie was too low energy and too long at 105 minutes, although that did manage to make me as a viewer feel as dragged down by life as the main girl.

The other problem was that this is as predictable a film as you can get when it comes to these “portrait of a serial killer” movies. Naturally she has a female friend who is open to embracing her, yet the friend also tends to be self-centered and uses her at times. She of course becomes drawn to the girl and increasingly psycho stalkerish. If you’ve seen these types of films before, you know exactly how it’s going to end. If you haven’t, then the finale might leave an impression.

What had me most intrigued was that she keeps killing these women to take their scalps, yet we never learn what becomes of the hairless bodies.

THE COLUMNIST (2019)

This is such a cathartic film for those of us who have just wanted to reach our hands through social media and choke all the anonymous fuckers that say awful, nasty things to hurt people.

Through a psycho killer lens, it explores online anonymity, how those anonymous people are or aren’t different when you actually meet them offline, why they bully online, and how online bullying deeply affects individuals, consuming their emotions and pushing them to take extreme actions.

A writer with an opinion column becomes obsessed with the negative attacks she receives in comments online. She starts spending every waking hour doom scrolling to see what new, awful things are being said about her to destroy her reputation.

And then she begins fighting back, tracking down those who attack her most, killing them, and keeping one of their fingers as a souvenir. These aren’t the most original kill scenes, but they are so damn satisfying. You really feel this woman’s emotional instability as her confidence and self-worth are eroded, and she becomes a weird kind of hero as she turns into a literal social justice warrior.

In an ironic contrast, her daughter, who is becoming controversial as a writer at school, is on a crusade defending free speech, so this isn’t totally a one-sided look at the problem of social media. And the final act is most definitely a reminder of how fucking tragic this whole phenomenon has become and the damage it has done to everyone entangled in it.

WITCH HUNT (2021)

This wingnut head-exploder makes you think about social issues plaguing the U.S., like suppression of women, government control, immigration, authoritarianism, and racism.

In current day U.S., witchcraft is illegal, and women are being burned at the stake for practicing it.

Conveniently, one of the stars of The Craft: Legacy plays a girl whose mother is keeping the daughters of a burned witch hidden in her home, echoing the realities of Anne Frank while establishing a concept of women taking their lives into their own hands and protecting each other.

The main girl begins to have frightening experiences in her house due to the practices of the two young witch refugees. She also befriends one of them and starts getting sucked into witchcraft herself. In terms of horror, Witch Hunt relies heavily on annoying orchestral stinger scares even when nothing scary is actually happening.

Think of this more as a frightening take on the horrors of The Crucible if played out in modern society. It explores illegally transporting witches across the border to Mexico to help them escape the tyrannical U.S. government. It incorporates elements of racial profiling and the terror Black men experience when pulled over by cops. And most importantly, it highlights the push to make women second class citizens and to portray them as the root of all evil.

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STREAM QUEEN: infected around the world

Posted on July 20, 2022 by Daniel

It’s a trio of infection films from three different countries—Argentina, Australia, and the U.S. So which one did I like the best?

WYRMWOOD: APOCALYPSE (2021)

Sequel time! The leading brother and sister from the first Wyrmwood are back as the Australian apocalypse continues.

However, the first part of the film focuses on a different hunky dude who spends his time catching and delivering zombies to the military to experiment on in hopes of finding a cure. At least that’s what he thinks they’re doing.

Instead there’s a nefarious underground plot, led by a big bald hottie. As compared to the first film, the good news here is that all the hotties don’t die off immediately.

On the other hand, while there’s some over-the-top gore and silliness as in the first film, this sequel just didn’t keep me engaged for a majority of its runtime. It’s was very run-of-the-mill, and the zombie action wasn’t fun enough to save it.

Only the final act, when the brother, his hybrid sister, who can telepathically control zombies, and the new main hunk hero team up and invade the underground lab that things get back to the wacky excitement of the first film, complete with a big mutant boss.

ERADICATION (2022)

This Tubi original made for like 5000 dollars is yet another film that highlights the lockdown era. Be warned that there are essentially two cast members…and two zombies. It’s still an interesting enough concept, but perhaps it would have been easier to sit through as a 70-minute movie instead of an unnecessary 90-minute film.

During some sort of outbreak, an infected dude without symptoms is in quarantine in a cabin in the woods. He speaks regularly with his wife, a scientist, who is helping research his blood to see if they can come up with a cure. Even though he is being monitored by modern day drones, for whatever reason their video calls look like they’re being done using dial-up modems on 1991 computers.

Anyway, the main guy eventually encounters one zombie in the wilderness and is saved by a person in a hazmat suit with a bow and arrow. The only real suspense is as we wait for him to eventually encounter this person and find out who it is.

Not surprisingly, this is a fatalistic film with no happy ending, and although it’s never referenced as a zombie film, the two infected he encounters look like zombies. However, they appear to lust after blood, fear daylight, and burn to a crisp in the sun. So I’m thinking this is more like a vampire infection situation.

VIRUS: 32 (2022)

We have a winner. I have such zombie burnout, and every new film is most definitely riddled with familiar situations, but it’s still possible to deliver a thrill ride if you do it right, and Virus: 32 is high intensity.

The opening establishing shots carry you along with sweeping camera work that gives the illusion of being a single take as it tours a town.

Then we meet a woman who works as the night security guard at a sports club and has no choice but to bring her young daughter to work with her.

Many have compared this film to 28 Days Later, but I’d have to disagree because I find that film to be a tedious mess and this one to be a superb cat and mouse zombie film that keeps limited characters confined within one building.

Okay, I will admit there’s a point when some of the score sounds like a total rip-off of the 28 Days Later music.

Anyway, by the time the mother realizes something unnatural has infiltrated the building, she has been separated from her daughter. Her goal is to weave her way through the rooms and halls to save her daughter before the zombies can get to her.

Like I said, as with most new zombie films, we are treated to predominantly predictable zombie situations, but they are presented with so much edge-of-your-seat suspense I was riveted. And the underplayed but notable difference here is the notion that the zombies periodically go into a temporary state of repose for 32-second intervals, which gives the characters brief chances to make a run for it. It also gives us a sequence that feels right out of the scene with the nurses in Silent Hill.

The highlight for me, however, is a nightmarish chase scene near the end when zombies start flooding into the gym from all sides. Holy shit!

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