BOUGHT ON BLU AND DVD: like father like son

The time came to fill in gaps in my collection once again, and this time it was any titles I was missing from Mario Bava and his son Lamberto Bava. So let’s get into four from each.

LIKE FATHER

HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON (1970)

Hatchet for the Honeymoon shows a very restrained, overly artistic side of Mario Bava before he chose to go for the gruesome gusto a year later with A Bay of Blood (below). There’s definitely substance here, but it’s overshadowed by the style. However, I definitely see it foreshadowing films of the 80s slasher boom like Maniac (the perspective is from that of a crazed killer) and He Knows You’re Alone (the killer’s victims are brides to be).

Our strikingly handsome psycho runs a bridal business filled with creepy mannequins and hacks up clients with a sparkly cleaver because he believes doing so will help him recall childhood trauma he blocked out. Sadly, we never see any of the kills or gore because they’re always awash in a distorted reflection in the weapon’s blade.

He burns the bodies up in his own personal incinerator and then buries them in his greenhouse. Even the arrogant rich woman he’s married to ends up as fertilizer.

This is where the film goes from slasher to supernatural. His dead wife starts haunting him, but there’s a catch—he doesn’t see her, yet everyone around him sees her and thinks it’s just…her. They don’t realize it’s a ghost! Weird movie.

One of the most disappointing aspects for me (aside from the lack of death scenes) is that there’s an opportunity to be 1970s subversive, but the film opts not to, perhaps for fear of ripping off Psycho.

Our killer at one point chases around his victim while wearing a bridal veil, and the whole concept of his kills revolves around brides, so it would have been logical for him to always dress in bridal drag to kill his female victims, but the film simply refuses to go for it. Bummer.

A BAY OF BLOOD (1971)

The eloquent and creative first kill of a countess in a wheelchair at her house as piano music plays is doubled with a second murder that makes this one of few horror films I’ve ever seen that opens with a twist.

Next, teens break into the house to party. It’s a Friday the 13th precursor as a killer with a machete hacks them up.

In fact, a couple of these deaths were recreated in Friday the 13th Part 2, so keep an eye out for them. This section is the highlight of the movie and it’s quite gory.

As if beginning a different movie, the countess’s family then descends on the house and plot to kill each other to get the inheritance. It’s an asinine kill or be killed situation in which everyone is a murderer and everyone is a victim.

I haven’t seen shit this pointless since that dumb ass season of Slasher in which all those despicable rich people play death games knowing their own relatives are going to die, yet get all emotional when a killer starts picking them off one by one instead.

The only interesting elements of all this literal backstabbing is a witchy woman who lives next door, a nasty scene involving an octopus, and a body reveal moment featuring all the dead kids from the first part of the movie.

BARON BLOOD (1972)

This kind of feels like Mario Bava’s attempt to cash in on the success of all the Hammer Films. I didn’t hate it, although I could have done without the terrible seventies muzak that serves as the score.

A young man exploring his family roots comes to a castle that belonged to his sadistic Baron ancestor, who was cursed by a witch. The young man does an incantation that is supposed to resurrect the Baron, and it works!

The Baron crawls from his grave looking all decayed, and for a while this feels like a slasher. Yay! As for the lurking Baron, he kind of gives off a Mr. Hyde vibe.

Eventually it’s up to the young man to send him back to the grave. The final act definitely has that Hammer Films horror melodrama vibe, and there’s a twist concerning the Baron that is rather predictable. Ramping up the horror, some zombies are tossed in at the end.

LISA AND THE DEVIL (aka: House of Exorcism) (1974)

This is an intriguing case of a Mario Bava movie that was “revised” and retitled in the wake of the popularity of The Exorcist. If I’m reading the original cut right, it is essentially way ahead of its time, serving as a template for that streak of films like ten years ago that were all about groups of people unable to escape a location, not realizing they’re actually dead and trapped in hell or purgatory. Problem is this movie gets so lost in its twists and turns that the strength of the main premise is obliterated.

Lisa is touring Spain when she sees a mural of the devil…who looks exactly like Telly Savalas.

She then sees Telly buying a realistic looking male mannequin in a store. She then ends up staying the night at a house in which Telly Savalas is the butler.

The house is owned by a handsome man and his creepy mother. Lisa is haunted by a real version of Savalas’s mannequin, the son seems to speak to a ghost, and Lisa soon learns she looks just like his ex-girlfriend…

As things get increasingly weirder, there’s a chain of people killing each other, giving me flashbacks to the loathsome family in A Bay Of Blood. This kind of murder and mayhem plot does absolutely nothing for me. Give me one psycho killer in a mask and a whole bunch of victims and I’m good. It’s just no fun when everyone is bad.

Speaking of victims, at least this film has a good old body reveal party near the end. But I guess the most intriguing aspect is the purpose of Savalas’s mannequin and the way Lisa just can’t seem to escape it.

So how does the House of Exorcism cut from 1975 differ? It’s like they took two different movies and alternated back and forth in showing clips from each. In the process, they gutted so much of the plot of Lisa and the Devil that the scenes used make absolutely no sense.

The actress playing Lisa was simply called back to film a bunch of scenes of her lying in bed in possessed mode, cursing up a storm and spitting green pea soup at a priest. More than Linda Blair in The Exorcist, she reminds me of Juliet Mills in Beyond the Door. She does do some pretty wild physical work with her body that neither of her predecessors did, though. She also morphs into a naked woman the priest knew at some point in a poor effort to give him a backstory, and she seems to either eat or spit out frogs.

Anyway, after we meet Lisa in the opening scene and she runs into Savalas and his mannequin, she now passes out in the street, and her friend and a priest (both newly written into the movie) take her to a hospital. So begin all the exorcism scenes in between clips from the original movie, with the crazed, demonic Lisa supposedly still having the wherewithal to recount what she went through while staying at a house with a crazy dude, his mother, and Telly Savalas.

In the end, I have no idea what story she’s trying to tell or how it’s supposed to have led to her possession.

LIKE SON

MIDNIGHT KILLER (aka: You’ll Die at Midnight) (1986)

In between making Demons movies in the mid-80s, Lamberto Bava moved away from his gorefests and mostly towards Italian giallos/80s slasher hybrids.

Midnight Killer is a perfect example, with giallo sensibilities, from the stylish kill scenes to a detective on a complex case, and pacing and chase scenes that give off some exciting 80s slasher vibes.

After an officer of the law has a vicious fight with his wife and then she is brutally murdered in the shower, he becomes the prime suspect in a series of murders. However, his psychologist begins to suspect that the murderer is actually a deceased serial killer!

There are several alluring death scenes of women targeted in unique locations, like an abandoned amphitheater and a clothes store, and what’s really creepy is that the psychologist and some of the people she’s close to catch sight of the dead serial killer’s face. Eek!

There’s a totally 80s moment when a guy spies on a girl doing aerobics in her best 80s exercise attire, a bogus death sequence that turns out to be a dream (why not just actually kill another person?), and the highlight of the film, several girls getting trapped in an empty hotel as the killer hunts them down in the final act.

Best of all, this killer doesn’t do the slow walk…there’s some major running going on. Yikes!

Strike that. Actual best of all? The girl who takes on the killer with an electric mixer.

BODY PUZZLE (1992)

Movies about a killer gathering pieces of people to create a full body were all the rage in the 80s and early 90s. However, by adding a giallo vibe, which means numerous confusing twists along the way, Lamberto Bava definitely injects some intrigue into what would otherwise just be a basic slasher.

A mad pianist goes around killing people to harvest the transplants they’ve received so he can put back together the person from which the parts came. Fantastic.

Meanwhile, he’s terrifying a widow, played by Joanna Pacula (Virus, The Kiss). He digs up her husband’s grave and takes the remains. He sneaks into her home and leaves body parts. And in true giallo fashion, he peeps through windows as she walks around a mansion that looks like a work of modern art while wearing a flowing nightgown.

It being the early 90s, the detective on the case becomes romantically involved with the widow.

But let’s get to the good stuff. In the English dubbed version, the death scenes are set to the classical music piece “Night on Bald Mountain” (the ominous composition used during the Devil segment of Fantasia).

Stand out moments include a fucked up scene of a teacher being killed right in front of her class of blind students, a pool scene that feels like Jaws with a knife, an almost comical tug-of-war between the killer and the detective with a woman stuck on a gurney trapped in elevator doors, a body in a freezer scene with an illogical but awesome pay-off, and a hilariously sped up car chase.

The twists concerning the killer’s identity are what really make Body Puzzle stand out from the usual body part collector slasher, and there’s even a gay subplot!

THE TORTURER (2005)

This one gets written off as Lamberto Bava’s desperate attempt to keep up with the times by going the torture porn route.

It feels like two different movies melded together because the main storyline is interspersed with gratuitous torture scenes, totally done in that sea green Saw tint, showing graphic depictions of women being mutilated (there’s a particularly nasty nipple scene). Despite feeling cheap and low budget, it’s much nastier than sleek, polished, Hollywood torture horror of the time.

The plot concerns a young woman who goes on an audition for an underground director, sleeps with him, discovers her missing friend’s earring during that encounter, and decides to sneak back into his house to find out what’s really going on.

If you pay attention, this is actually a commentary on the entire torture porn subgenre, making a statement about what kind of person you have to be to go as far as some directors do in presenting torture in their films.

GHOST SON (2007)

While this is a tame take on horror for a Lamberto Bava film, it has one icky fricking plot.

A straight couple living in Africa has a wonderful, loving relationship. Then he dies in a car accident and for no apparent reason returns as a sadistic incubus who just wants to hurt his wife. It makes no sense.

But what makes this movie worse? The wife seems to get pregnant after a sex session with the ghost and gives birth to a baby, which appears to be possessed by her husband.

It’s like Rosemary’s Baby with a sex drive. I really was dumbfounded by what I was watching. The baby sucks viciously on its mom’s tit while feeding, drawing blood.

Every time the wife has an encounter with her husband after that, the sex partner appears first as the baby then morphs into the husband. This includes a sex scene in the shower that begins with the baby’s hand feeling up the mom’s tit. WTF?

All this weird sexualization of a baby aside, the only part that gave me a chuckle was when the baby went full Linda Blair and projectile vomited all over the mother.

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SHUDDER: the home of grief porn?

We’re in the heat of my favorite genre being overrun by “elevated horror” where the goal isn’t to scare us, gross us out, make us cringe, make us scream with glee, or cause us to throw our popcorn in the air with giggling nervousness. Instead, the objective is to establish that grief is a metaphor for horror…and I’m so damn over it.

Shudder is leading the charge in saturating the market with these types of movies that aren’t scary, just depressing. Hereditary did it. Hereditary did it best. Just watch Hereditary.

But if you simply live for the depths of darkness and despair in horror, here are the three latest films I checked out on Shudder that all revolve around grief.

WOE (2020)

Woe is me for sitting through so much grief porn when I could have been watching horror. I honestly can’t even tell you what the ultimate point of Woe is beyond it being a profile in grief.

A man dies. His son, daughter, and her husband come to the house afterward. The son spends all his time fixing things.

The daughter plans to sell the car in which the dad died without telling him.

The dad’s brother is somehow involved.

Eventually there’s a coffin in the woods and there’s a moment involving a scary face to let us know this was a horror movie.

MARTYRS LANE (2021)

It’s another movie Shudder presented as horror that’s actually about grief with some minor supernatural elements.

A little girl has a religious father, a mother that can barely function as she seems to be suffering from depression, and an older sister that tends to torment her.

She begins having encounters with a ghostly little girl who wears angel wings and regularly sends her on scavenger hunts to find a variety of objects hidden around her house.

The ghost girl gets progressively more aggressive and eventually malevolent.

The final confrontation with the ghost girl after the mother explains her issues is kind of sad and tragic, but at least the ghost girl is pissed and starts tossing shit around with her supernatural ghost powers.

AN UNQUIET GRAVE (2020)

Once again, there’s nothing scary here, although there is morbidity. Of these three films, this is my favorite in terms of the plot, however, it’s a tale that could have been told in 30 minutes as part of an anthology. Hell, most grief porn could be handled that way. Grief porn anthologies could be the next thing.

Anyway, a man grieving the loss of his wife convinces her twin sister to help him do a ritual to bring her back.

They go out to the grave at night to work their magic.

Once the wife is resurrected, she has to cope with being alive again and the sacrifice that was made in order for her to be there. Can her husband convince her to stay with him instead of going back to the grave?

It’s definitely a tale about grief and selfishness with a moral lesson, and there’s some “visiting a grave at night” atmosphere…just don’t expect anything frightening to happen.

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SHUDDER AND SHRIEK: a glory hole, wicked witches, and a horror anthology

It’s a variety of horror subgenres in this trio of films I knocked off my Shudder watchlist.

GLORIOUS (2022)

Turning True Blood pretty boy Jason Stackhouse and a glory hole plot into a talkfest is a waste of a concept. If you want a glory hole movie that delivers on being as nasty as the title promises, just watch Hole in the Wall.

I guess the goal of Glorious is to go for the Lovecraft setup—one lone man enters an unthinkable predicament that both terrifies him and challenges everything he knows about life as he confronts something otherworldly that threatens all of humanity.

Jason Stackhouse is having an emotional breakdown after a breakup and ends up in a bathroom at an isolated rest stop, which leads me to say right up front that the movie Rest Stop does a way better job of being a whole movie featuring someone stuck in a bathroom that actually keeps you engaged and on the edge of your seat.

So Jason Stackhouse pukes in a bathroom stall and then begins having a conversation with a man in the stall next to his through a glory hole that is surrounded by a painting that looks like The Deadly Spawn.

As we are bombarded by nonstop talk, the “being” in the next stall inevitably tells Jason Stackhouse he’s an unearthly life form that needs Jason Stackhouse’s help to save the world from destruction.

Jason Stackhouse can’t escape the restroom, and so the being has to coerce him into giving him what he wants through the glory hole. If only it were as pervy as it sounds. In fact, the absolute funniest and most entertaining moment comes when Jason Stackhouse tries to give the being exactly what he thinks it’s hungry for through the glory hole. But I’m pretty sure any gay guy who watches this is going to feel as I did—appropriation with no pay-off!

On the bright side, we do eventually see a very Lovecraftian, tentacled monster.

HELLBENDER (2021)

This is a moody, melancholy flick about a family of witchcraft addicts…that doesn’t have much of a plot.

It’s beautifully shot and notable for having been created by an actual family that stars and even plays their own original songs during some rocker girl band scenes, however it simply doesn’t go much of anywhere.

The focus is entirely on a mother who practices witchcraft in and around her house in the woods while trying to raise her teen daughter to be a good witch…yet seems to have fallen off the black magic wagon herself.

They eat weird things, sacrifice animals, revel in blood, and even kill men now and then.

Not much else happens beyond them bonding and her daughter losing her grip on her powers while they frolic in the woods together.

But like I said, it’s visually compelling and atmospheric, so if you’re into the dark witchcraft thing, you might really appreciate it.

ALLEGORIA (2022)

A cool concept for an anthology, this film is summed up in its title if you’re into art and literature.

Running only 70 minutes long, Allegoria jumps right into its tales with no wraparound. Every story is fun and spooky, but the bones of each story are essentially the same; a creative person unleashes evil through their craft.

–a drama teacher pushes his acting students to be as terrifying as possible

–a handsome artist unleashes the darkness in his paintings

–a writer’s killer character is manifested in reality

–featuring two familiar horror faces—Scout Taylor-Compton and the geek Warren from Buffy—this is a tale of a photographer looking for a new subject to shoot

–a rocker’s music is a gateway to evil

It’s short, to the point, and a bit repetitive, but taking each tale on its own, this one features some quality production and is one of the more entertaining anthologies I’ve seen in a while.

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NETFLIX AND CHILLS: struggling to get through two originals

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

DAY SHIFT (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

OFFICE INVASION (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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TUBI TERRORS: women scorned

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

TEARDROP (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

HARLAND MANOR (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UNBORN (2022)

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

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

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

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

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Slash and crash

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

SKULL: THE MASK (2020)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE CANYONLANDS (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

—an awkward geek

—a Black guy who loves his pot

—a tough lesbian

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

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

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

TAILGATE (2019)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

SILENT SCREAM (2005)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE SHADOW WALKERS (2006)

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

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

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

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

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

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

FROSTBITTEN (aka: Frost Bite) (2006)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UNBOXED (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE DAY AFTER HALLOWEEN (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HELLBLAZERS (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Young and queer and trapped in a horror movie

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

CUTIES (2020)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SO VAM (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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TUBI TERRORS: a trio of Tubi originals

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

SHARK BAIT (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DEAD ZONE (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TOW (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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