TUBI TERRORS: a trio of Tubi originals

Posted on August 10, 2022 by Daniel

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

SHARK BAIT (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DEAD ZONE (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TOW (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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80s oddities: beginning, middle, and end

Posted on August 9, 2022 by Daniel

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

FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND (1981)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MURDER-ROCK (1984)

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

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

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

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

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

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

HIGH DESERT KILL (1989)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A double feature of gay horror for 2022

Posted on August 7, 2022 by Daniel

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

THEY/THEM (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HYPOCHONDRIAC (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Daniel

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

HORROR HIGH (1973)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED (1974)

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

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

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

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

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

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

ANTS (1977)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on August 4, 2022 by Daniel

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

CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (1959)

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

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

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

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

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

BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964)

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

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

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

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

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

THE FLESH EATERS (1964)

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

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

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

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

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

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

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (1965)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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SHUDDER AND SHRIEK: women in peril

Posted on August 3, 2022 by Daniel

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

THE REEF: STALKED (2022)

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

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

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

I really can’t with this movie.

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

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

REVEALER (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

THE SEED (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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STREAM QUEEN: men in peril

Posted on August 2, 2022 by Daniel

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

THE GUEST HOUSE (2016)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BLASTED (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

BLOODY HELL (2020)

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

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

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

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

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

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TUBI TERRORS: a variety of home invasions

Posted on August 1, 2022 by Daniel

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

WHY? (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

TOOTH FAIRY: QUEEN OF PAIN (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CRIMSON (2020)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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When the harvest season is a triple dark threat

Posted on July 28, 2022 by Daniel

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

DARK HARVEST (2004)

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

THE MAIZE: DARK HARVEST 2 (2004)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DARK HARVEST 3: SCARECROW (2004)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Video games of death!

Posted on July 27, 2022 by Daniel

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

DEADWARE (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

LIVESCREAM (2018)

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

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

Yet somehow I made it through…

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

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

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

CHOOSE OR DIE (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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