BOUGHT ON BLU: these people have serious issues…

Posted on December 12, 2022 by Daniel

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

THE BAD SEED (1956)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HANGING HEART (1983)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BLOOD DELIRIUM (1988)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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2 out of 3 from 2022 ain’t bad

Posted on December 9, 2022 by Daniel

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

INCARNATION (2022)

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

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

There weren’t.

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

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

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

SLASH/BACK (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TROLL (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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HALLOWEEN MOVIE ROUND-UP 2022 Part 2

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Daniel

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

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS VAMPIRES (2020)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HALLOWEEN JACK (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SHRIEKSHOW (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE SLEEP: SURVIVAL HORROR PART 1 (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE BARN PART II (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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DREAMCAST DAYS: revisiting survival horror game Blue Stinger

Posted on December 1, 2022 by Daniel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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TUBI TERRORS: did these vampire movies suck?

Posted on November 29, 2022 by Daniel

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

BITE NIGHT (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

CRYPTIC (2014)

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

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

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

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

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

LET THE WRONG ONE IN (2021)

 

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

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

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

He’s also adorable.

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on November 15, 2022 by Daniel

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

BRING ME A DREAM (2020)

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

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

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

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

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

But damn is Martin Kove’s son fine.

THE MANOR (2018)

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE BLOODY MAN (2020)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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The holidays at the Amityville House?

Posted on November 10, 2022 by Daniel

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

AMITYVILLE THANKSGIVING (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AMITYVILLE CHRISTMAS VACATION (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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STREAM QUEEN: Barbarian, Mummy Dearest, and Unhuman

Posted on November 8, 2022 by Daniel

Halloween is behind us, and it’s back to basic horror while I’m busily finding Christmas horror to cover for 2022 on the side. So let’s get into this trio I checked out on HBO Max and Prime.

BARBARIAN (2022)

Barbarian is as frustrating as it is fun.

It’s a pretty simple plot complicated by time jumps. It starts off with edge-of-your-seat tension. A young woman comes to an Airbnb she rented only to find there’s a guy already staying there (Bill Skarsgard).

The main girl seems very cautious and smart at first…and then proceeds to make every absolutely stupid decision a character possibly can in a horror movie. We’re talking discovering sleazy secret rooms behind hidden passages and then continuing to travel even farther into them rather than get the fuck out of there, which eventually lands her in a hellish underground lair.

Meanwhile, Justin Long also ends up at the Airbnb, and before long he’s in a similar predicament.

The upside of the film is that it is fast-paced, super suspenseful, and uses first person perspective in the dungeon-like basement, which gives the illusion of found footage even though it isn’t.

On the other hand, we are delivered one red herring after another, most of which not only disguise the most simple and obvious of explanations for what is going on in that basement, but which also end up leaving the film with some glaring plot holes.

But you just have to let that go, because the final act is a great, wacky denouement. The horror ends up on the streets of a forgotten town—a moment that felt reminiscent of playing a Silent Hill game.

MUMMY DEAREST (2021)

When I see names like Lou Ferrigno, Michael Pare, and Tara Reid as top billing on a horror movie, I’m so there…and so assuming they’re going to be in the movie for like five minutes.

Mummy Dearest proved me right.

Michael Pare appears briefly as a chiropractor at the beginning. He gives a woman an adjustment and paralyzes her in the process.

The woman goes to live with her daughter and the daughter’s weird, Jesus looking boyfriend, who seems to be on drugs.

But it’s the mother’s medication which causes hallucinations of a mummy woman around the house. This is mostly a movie about the mother rolling her way around in a wheelchair being paranoid.

There are also some weird insights into the boyfriend’s past as the mother, a hands-on healer, does sessions with him. Why can’t she just heal herself while she’s at it?

Actually, her touching therapy brings out all the boyfriend’s dark experiences as a child, which is where Ferrigno and Reid get their cameos—and where the weird story of the mummy that barely appears in the movie comes into play.

To be honest, this isn’t even much of a horror movie.

UNHUMAN (2022)

Brianne Tju (the I Know What You Did Last Summer series, the Light as a Feather series, the Scream TV series, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, The Crooked Man) is becoming quite the scream queen as she headlines yet another horror flick.

A good chunk of Unhuman is a kick ass zombie flick. Brianne and her high school friends (and enemies) are going on a field trip, and we get The Breakfast Club vibes on the bus as clique lines are drawn, the in crowd and out crowd are clearly defined, and the man chaperoning the students brings some humor as an inappropriate ass hole.

Then the bus crashes. A radio report warns of a chemical attack, and a zombie comes knocking on the bus window, kicking off a nonstop chase scene as the kids escape the bus, end up in an abandoned building, and are endlessly pursued by relentless zombies. These fuckers will just bust through walls and shit. Eek!

The movie sucks you in with its heart-pounding pacing, and then…takes a turn that ensures that it isn’t just another zombie flick.

And there lies the problem. The unexpected plot elements are so out there, leave a bunch of plot holes, and desperately try to help the audience make sense of it all with excessive exposition through dialogue that basically explains the whole purpose of the script—including all the social commentary about bullying that is blatantly presented from the start and needs no explanation whatsoever.

It was quite a disappointment to be so enamored with the horror journey this movie was taking me on and then having what could have been a distinctly refreshing take on the zombie genre get crushed by the weight of its effort to be unique. Even so, I would highly recommend checking it out, because when it’s good, it’s really good.

 

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When a Daymare turns into a nightmare

Posted on November 4, 2022 by Daniel

As far as I understand, Daymare 1998 started as a fan remake of Resident Evil 2, but then the Resident Evil 2 remake happened so no one else could steal Capcom’s thunder. Rather than scrap the project, the developers transformed Daymare into a love letter to old skool survival horror games.

By the time I got around to playing it, there had already been a number of updates. I should have done my research before starting the game, because one of the updates lets you choose between classic style or “modern take”. I mistakenly assumed classic style was the way to go. However, it features a game mechanic that is so fucking bad and was never an aspect of any survival horror game I ever played, so I can see why they ended up offering another option. Unfortunately for me, you can’t switch modes in settings once you’ve already started a game, and I was too deep into it to start over by the time I learned that I’d made a really bad choice.

So what is the awful game mechanic? Loading your gun. Remember how in Resident Evil you pick up bullets then load your gun by either hitting a button or doing it in your inventory screen, which pauses the game action? Well in classic style Daymare, your bullets don’t go in your gun. They go in clips, which you then have to load in your gun. That’s right. Two steps to reload. Oh, but there’s more. If you accidentally quick reload your gun with another clip (fast button press) instead of slow reload (hold the button down), you drop the old clip then have to pick it back up otherwise you lose a clip you desperately need to have on hand. You need to constantly make sure you’ve combined the clips in your inventory with bullets during quiet times so they are full, that way you can just swap out clips instead of having to both refill and change them during the thick of a battle. Also, you can’t combine bullets with a clip that is not fully depleted—you have to empty it first.

Do realize that holding onto clips and bullets means taking up more space in your inventory. On top of that, you have to carry clips and bullets for multiple types of guns in your inventory. Also fricking annoying? Although all your inventory slots are on one screen, they are in two separate blocks, and you have to hit a button to jump from one block to the other rather than just scrolling up or down from one to the other. Ridiculous, especially considering the game keeps playing while you are in your inventory. You don’t ever want to have to go into your inventory while fighting monsters.

Many people say the game is too easy in modern take, but all modern take does is load your bullets directly into your gun without clips…just like classic survival horror video games. Not to mention, you eventually get a shotgun, and even in classic mode bullets go directly into the gun. Once I got that baby I barely ever used my other guns. Modern take also does something that would definitely make the game easier; it lets you skip over puzzles. I would never, but I have to say, many of the puzzles in this game are infuriating because there are absolutely no clues as to how to solve them, and you are forced to look them up online. Perfect example—there’s a puzzle on a computer in which you have to answer a series of questions using the Greek alphabet. There is no note or file giving you the conversion chart for the alphabet, so you have no choice but to go online and look it up!

The map is not assigned to a quick key, so you have to enter your inventory then tab over to it, and it’s also not even very useful. There is, however, a quick button to see your health status on screen, because there’s no permanent HUD on screen. There are also D-pad quick keys for guns and health.

You can mix various forms of health in your inventory, and there are other stimulants and mind enhancers that allow you to see through walls temporarily, but chances are you’ll never use them, so it would be nice if more health was scattered around, because it’s hard to come by. There are, however, rooms you can get into that have extra items in them. Doing so requires having hacking cables in your inventory. The unlocking technique is the basic “hit the moving marker at the right time as it passes through a gap in a line” challenge, but there are varying difficulties. If you fail you lose the cable.

You’ll find files that are long and boring to read, and making it worse is that the writing is extremely small and the typeset is awful. There’s a whole screen available to fill with text, yet it’s all squished in the center, and often the white text has a light visual behind it, making it even harder to read. Makes no sense. Even on a 65-inch television I couldn’t read that shit.

Another frustrating game flaw? When you approach an object you can pick up, an arrow symbol points to it. That symbol isn’t a prompt to pick it up. That symbol is a prompt saying “keep poking around right in this exact spot until the X prompt appears so you can then pick up the item”. WTF? Seriously? A 2-step pickup prompt process???

The game offers basic old school movement, with an over-the-shoulder POV and semi-tank controls. You can shoot and move, strafe, run, and quick turn, so it should be quite familiar to survival horror veterans. But the downfall is the combo button run feature on PS4. You hold the L1 button to “jog”, but to run faster, you have to press straight down on the left thumb stick (L3). Unfortunately, it rarely registers, which is a problem during many of the most insane battles. Later in the game it is crucial for a one-hit death chase scene and simply will not come through. If you’re going to get past this particular boss, it will be by pure luck (more on that below).

Also be warned that the auto save feature failed several times, which became obvious when the symbol showed up on screen and didn’t go away after a few seconds as it should. It would just remain a spinning symbol in the corner, and each time it did, when I quit the game and started again all my progress was lost and I was brought back to the previous checkpoint.

The game is split into five chapters in which you play as several different characters, each with a very different feel.

Chapter 1

This takes place in a typical facility with labs. You play as a total douche bag who needs to clear the place out. Even so, the first time I encountered a wounded guy who offered up some information, it was followed by a weapons tutorial I couldn’t exit…because in no way did the game make it clear that part of my tutorial included fricking shooting the guy!

Aside from solving puzzles, you encounter several different types of pretty easy zombies in this chapter. However, at the end of it there’s a timed segment in which you have to stay alive until a door opens. If you are low on supplies at that point as I was, you don’t have to fight the zombies that attack. Simply keep away from them until you can make your escape.

Chapter 2

This chapter is much more nerve-racking and creepy than the first, and you also play as two different characters. First you have an oxygen mask on and must find a way into a building while running through a town full of zombies. You can enter open houses along the way to rejuvenate your mask capacity, but there are some zombies inside. Eek!

The other character you play is on medication that keeps wearing off, causing him to have frightening hallucinations. Oh joy. However, this is when you get the shotgun and don’t have to reload clips.

 

You spend most of the chapter in a creepy hospital, and there’s a new feature added—secret rooms that are noted when your wrist watch beeps by certain walls. You simply have to click until you find the secret door in the wall. Sometimes a secret room has a terminal that lets you exchange items for other items, do an old skool manual save in slots on your hard drive (wahoo!), and store items.

Chapter 3

This is perhaps the longest and also the most boring chapter. In essence it most closely resembles classic survival horror games, but the lack of any variation is what makes it so bland. You do get to explore the city a bit as in Resident Evil 3, but you also spend a lot of time in drab buildings that offer little visual distinctions. As a result, any sense of dread or fear is lost.

The good news is you score a magnum you’ll desperately need for a boss battle that’s only made easier if you realize there are more magnum bullets tucked away in the forest arena in which you fight. You are up against two mutated creatures, and the only way to kill them is to drop them to their knees with heavy firepower and then shoot them repeatedly in specific spots on their backs. They are always in hot pursuit, often split up, and there’s plenty of debris lying around on the ground for you to get stuck on as you run in terror from them.

Chapter 4

You’re back playing the guy suffering from hallucinations as you try to make your way through the city. The hallucinations are infuriating because it appears you’re just wasting bullets if you shoot the apparitions, yet it also seems your health takes a hit if they make contact with you! Double standard much?

The boss is just a single version of the duo from chapter 3, but there are annoying zombies thrown into the mix to get in your way and really trip you up.

Chapter 5

Back to the guy with the boring chapters. At least the first boss is rather entertaining—once you realize that blowing him away isn’t the answer. Instead of using up all your ammo, you actually have to lure him onto a platform in the middle of the room, avoid his swipe at you, which temporarily stuns him, and then press a button on a console nearby to electrocute him. This procedure needs to be done twice.

You’re near the end of the game, and this is when that combo button run feature destroys your whole game. The idea is to run down a corridor, opening doors using a sequence of button pushes as an invincible boss is pursuing you. At first he moves slowly, but once you open the third door, he begins running for you. This is also when zombies start blocking your route. There are only three of them on the way to your destination, but if you don’t shoot them they will grab you and the boss will catch up with you.

Meanwhile, because the run feature keeps failing, he catches up to you anyway and tears you apart. If you can get lucky enough to make it to the end of this corridor, you have to press a button to call the elevator then kill time avoiding the boss until it comes. The only way to do this is to run back the way you came, and there is no way to pass the boss in the hall without getting grabbed. Sooooo…you have to try to blow up one of the explosive tanks along the sides of the corridor just as he is near it. This will stun him, and that is when you can run by him. And guess what! You have to do it again to pass him in the other direction to return to the elevator once it opens. But of course there’s an issue. The hallway is so dark and murky as you wait for him to show up that even with the brightness cranked in settings a) you literally can’t see him until he’s right upon you, and b) you can’t see the damn tanks you need to shoot to stun him. Sigh. I came very close to doing the whole damn thing perfectly once, and just as I was nearing the open elevator, the run button completely failed. I finally got into the elevator, turned to hit the button to close the door, and found myself face to face with the monster…right before he ripped my face off, taking my whole head with it.

Well, fuck you game, because there is a glitch I found online that eventually worked in my favor thanks to my persistence (aka: doing it over and over and over until the glitch worked). Occasionally as the boss pursues you, somewhere way back in the hall he gets stuck on something. You won’t see it happen, but you will bask in the glory as you press the elevator button and then just stand looking down the dark corridor and realize the boss never materializes from around the corner. For good measure I remained absolutely still for fear my movement would unglitch him. After what felt like forever, the door opened, I ran right to it, and I left that horrible section behind me forever.

This brings us right to the final boss. The same boss. Now you have to fight him in a parking lot. He chases you relentlessly, he spits acid at you, zombies come out of nowhere to chase you as well, and…there’s another glitch. A nice pile of debris sits on one side of the lot, and if you circle it while the boss is following you, he will get stuck on it. You just stand on the other side of it and blast away until he’s dead. And if you need bullets, there’s literally a box with an unlimited supply right beside you. Kind of makes up for all the annoying aspects of the game you had to get through to arrive at this moment.

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STREAM QUEEN: jumping services for a triple feature

Posted on October 27, 2022 by Daniel

It was a smorgasbord of streaming services and subgenres with this trio of films I was looking forward to seeing, so let’s get right into them.

GRIMCUTTY (2022)

Throwback time! The retro early 2000s tween horror wave is growing, and Grimcutty goes in hard, with kids being terrorized by a supernatural entity after passing around a meme faster than you can get a friend to watch a video of a girl climbing from a well.

Grimcutty is a damn memorable name for this internet monster, and his look is unforgettable, too…because it’s as funny as it is freaky. His face is great, but his body when he’s running around chasing victims, well…my hubby, who was watching the movie with me, described it best: “He looks like Nightmare Before Christmas.”

Grimcutty has a big freaky head that kind of reminds me of Danny DeVito’s version of The Penguin, but his gawky body when he runs is this stick figure puppet looking thing reminiscent of the body of Jack Skellington. It’s just odd, which in a way works to make it weird and eerie.

The plot is typical of these films. One girl being terrorized by the meme is determined to break the chain, so she runs all over town trying to figure out the source of the horror and how she can stop it. I got a thrill out of the scenes in which he chases her through houses, especially since it’s one of those situations in which she can be at a party full of people who don’t see him, yet he’s still there and coming for her.

It might be just a cheesy, cheap joyride popcorn flick, but Grimcutty does manage to send us a little message about how easily influenced kids are by social media…and how addicted they are to their devices.

V/H/S/99 (2022)

When this retro 90s installment opened with some faux infomercials and an annoying stop motion toy soldier segment as a wraparound, I had a feeling this wasn’t exactly going to live up to previous entries in the series.

With the movie having a total running time nearing 110 minutes long, it’s disappointing to discover that in almost every case the setups take up the bulk of each tale, and all the exciting stuff is rushed in the last few minutes.

Here’s the breakdown of the stories:

1st story – a punk band sneaks into a building where another band was believed to have met a tragic end, and pretty soon that band makes a ghoulish appearance. If nothing else, at least the dead band rocks the rot.

2nd story – this one got under my skin because it involves sorority sisters burying their latest pledge alive in a coffin. Ugh. This shit gives me claustrophobia…especially when spiders, water, and fricking ghouls find their way into the coffin with her.

3rd story – I really hate sadistic game show stories, especially when they’re done in that flashy cartoonish style, and that’s how this one starts. It only gets worse from there when a family that was on the show decides to get revenge on the show’s host by subjecting him to some torture porn. And then it goes totally off the rails and I have no idea what the hell was going on…but it’s definitely monstrous.

4th story – this is the ultimate example of these stories being all build-up with brief payoff. It’s a whole lot of footage of teen boys spying on pretty girls and then a super quick conclusion of a hot girl next store showing up to really make them hard.

5th story – the only story that’s like one big money shot, this final tale also has a humorous edge to it as two guys attending a Y2K coven ritual get sucked into a hellish dimension and encounter numerous demonic creatures. Not much of a story but definitely the horror eye candy segment of the anthology.

Interestingly, as I was watching it I was having Deadstream flashbacks, particularly due to a nagging scream that was running through the action…little did I know until a friend called it to my attention that this was directed by the Deadstream guy and he’s in it. He really needs to start distancing himself from his own scream or he’s going to become a literal one note horror creator and character.

TORN HEARTS (2022)

Torn Hearts is a throwback to held against their will thrillers of the late 80s/early 90s like Dead of Winter, Misery, and Boxing Helena.

Naturally Katey Sagal is the highlight as a reclusive country singer who dropped out of the limelight after the death of her sister/partner.

Another duo of young women is trying to break into the business and one of them is Katey’s biggest fan. So they pay her a visit at her estate to convince her to come out of retirement and do a song with them.

It’s quite clear right away that Katey has issues, but the fangirl doesn’t see it…even as Katey starts pitting the two girls against each other using the tensions and jealousies that exist between them.

What makes this one frustrating is that the fangirl refuses to believe her idol can do any wrong. The legendary bitch is clearly a psycho and the other girl wants to get the fuck out of there, but no matter how extreme shit gets, the fangirl is like, “I wanna stay!” It’s one big commentary on the obsessions young people have with idolizing celebrity and wanting to be famous themselves.

If you’re familiar with these types of thrillers, there’s not much new here, so just watch it for the suspense and Katey’s performance…and an appearance by Josh from The Blair Witch Project if you’ve been missing him in horror.

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