Give me a B! Give me a C! Give me a D!

Posted on September 3, 2024 by Daniel

The three flicks I chose from my streaming watchlists for my latest movie marathon begin with B, C, and D, a coincidence that never fails to tickle me. But did the movies tickle my fancy? Let’s find out.

BED REST (2022)


Melissa Barrera’s Scream days might be behind her, but she found her way back into horror with this cliché but fun little supernatural chiller. There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before, but the creepy moments are highly effective, so it never gets boring.

Melissa is pregnant when she and her husband move into their new home. She begins seeing a little boy running around their home at just about the time she is forced to stay in bed for the duration of her pregnancy. This gives the boy ghost plenty of chances to freak her out.

In true old school ghost story fashion, the husband doesn’t believe her! But the family cat sure does—and even makes good on a classic cheap pussy scare.

Some spooky spirit highlights include a window encounter, a video monitor appearance, footprints on a wall and ceiling, and an under the bed scene. EEK!

While the film keeps up the tension and suspense, it does actually turn into somewhat of a hokey, sentimental Ghost type of situation in the final act, but it’s an interesting detour from the usual haunted house movie.

CHOMPY & THE GIRLS (2021)


This is the most fun the hubby and I have had watching a quirky horror comedy in a long time. The main girl, actress Christy St. John, is reason enough to watch it, because she’s a great, likable character.

She plays an emotionally struggling twenty-something who reaches out to the father she never knew.

He agrees to meet her in the park, and within minutes of them having an awkward conversation, they witness a creepy man walk up to a young girl and just swallow her whole with a giant mouth.

You’ll get total It Follows vibes as father and his newly found daughter are stalked by the big mouth man!

As frightening as it is funny at first, the film takes some major turns midway through that give it a life of its own, heading into campy, cosmic horror territory, and the chemistry between father and daughter is absolutely endearing.

DON’T SUCK (2023)

The hardest thing for me about watching this movie is that Jamie Kennedy shows no concerns about his appearance these days (which just happens to benefit the character he’s playing), and Matt Rife is on the opposite end of the spectrum, looking like he cares so much about his appearance that he’s turning into a Real Housewife.

I liked the concept of Don’t Suck as well as the first half, but the movie begins with a scene that takes place later in the story solely for the purpose of hooking viewers with vampire acti0n.

This moment also spoils the whole point—Jamie is a washed-up comedian and Rife is a newbie that wants Jamie to be his mentor, but he also happens to be a vampire. Fact is, this opening scene is one of few vampire attack scenes in the entire movie.

Instead, the movie is all about Jamie coming to terms with his fading star as the pair hits the road for a lowbrow comedy tour in a bunch of redneck dives. I’m not saying the movie is political, but there are some subtle comments that could be read as such—mention of storming the capitol, references to the struggle of being a white, cisgender, straight male comedian, a Let’s Go Brandon comment, a gender-neutral bathroom “joke”…. For a horror comedy, the movie is only occasionally funny. It’s mostly moody.

Some notable cameos include JJ Walker, Carrot Top, and Lisa Wilcox of Elm Street 4 & 5, and there are pop culture references to vampire movies, including Dracula: Dead and Loving It (fresh) and a jab at the Twilight movies (tired).

I wish the movie had focused more on the vampire elements, because love him or hate him, Rife really works as a mysterious, pretty boy vampire.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: Devil Times Five and Hell’s Trap

Posted on August 28, 2024 by Daniel

It’s one from the 1970s and one from the 1980s, neither of which I’d ever seen before. Were they worth the blind buy?

DEVIL TIMES FIVE (1974)

Another entry in the evil children subgenre, this movie is so 1970s….especially the cheesy music cues that make it feel like you’re watching a whimsical episode of The Brady Bunch. I would love to see a recut with a genuine horror soundtrack that lends itself to the tone of the proceedings—a nun and four mentally ill children that escaped a van accident take refuge in a snowbound resort then begin killing off the guests.

Cast highlights include Leif Garrett of “I Was Made for Dancin’” fame as one of the kids, Rosario from Will & Grace as one of the guests, and Boss Hogg as one of the guests.

This mess of guests includes an alcoholic, a sleazy real estate mogul, a mentally challenged dude, a slutty woman, our main straight couple, and more. There are love-making scenes, a cat fight in which tits pop out, and one of the boys in drag. It’s definitely 1970s weird. As a bonus, we get a sexy blond dude with a 70s mustache, furry chest, and a great tan line, even though they are in the middle of a snowstorm.

As for the kills, there’s a great slow motion scene in which all the kids and nun brutally beat a man to death, an axe murder, piranhas dumped in a tub, a swing booby trap, a victim lit on fire, bear traps, and my favorite kill of them all with a spear.

There’s even a great body reveal party right at the end. If only it weren’t for that horribly hokey soundtrack, this would be a winner.

HELL’S TRAP (Trampa Infernal) (1989)

This Mexican backwoods slasher was giving me The Final Terror vibes.

Two rivals decide to settle their differences with a challenge—they and their friends agree to go into the woods where people have been found dead to kill the bear authorities believe is responsible.

We get the classic trope of the old weirdo who tries to warn them away in the form of a guy selling weapons and ammo in a trailer home. The killer is a dude in a creepy mask who wears saw blade finger knives that are clearly made of a soft material that bends every once in a while. But the mask sure is fierce and oddly pretty…

Soon after arriving in the woods, the kids find human remains and a trap and realize they have to track the nut down and kill him or die.

At first they seem to do the smart thing and stick together, but pretty soon they leave one girl behind in their vehicle while they go hunt the killer. Idiots.

The kills are fun, but this is definitely more of a survival horror action flick than straight up horror considering all the kids have guns. I have to admit I was disappointed that no bear ever showed up to complicate matters for the kids, which would have been awesome.

The killer is finally unmasked briefly at the end so we can see what exactly he’s hiding under there. He’s no Jason, that’s for sure.

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A queer double feature!

Posted on August 26, 2024 by Daniel

It’s slasher and infected chaos with gay and trans characters as I take a look at two indie flicks by queer filmmakers.

INHERITANCE (2021)

Michael Kenneth Fahr, director/writer/star of the gay film Victimized, is back with a second film, and it’s a slasher meets Clue with a dose of queer camp so perfectly understated that it makes for a good midnight movie.

The tension-building opener has a wealthy couple being terrorized by a masked intruder wielding a knife and an axe. Awesome.

Next we meet Fahr’s character and his brother, who have gathered together family and friends for the reading of their parents’ will. Everyone thinks they deserve a piece of the pie, which means everyone could be the killer…or the next victim.

Before long, people are getting killed off so fast and furiously that I was convinced the runtime was going to run out of victims too soon. But Fahr has tricks up his sleeve to keep the pace going right up to a grand finale.

Despite the bitchy attitudes being thrown around by all the catty characters, I was at first thinking this one wasn’t going to offer any genuine queer aspects. But twists and red herring that would make Agatha Christie envious provide plenty of queer elements, along with an interracial gay couple that shows up for the gathering, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

The camp and killings kick into high gear for a big party massacre at the end, and there’s just the right balance of overacting, underacting, and even acting to make this one a goodie for a gay horror watch party.

T BLOCKERS (2023)

Queer horror filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay (So Vam, Bad Girl Boogey) makes a trans positive, in-your-face commentary on the anti-trans movement taking place in UK politics with this 74-minute horror flick drenched in 80s neon light. It also highlights the intersection between trans rights and feminism (the closing punk track “Dead Men Don’t Rape” says it all) and is both a therapeutic and cathartic exploration of trying to find love and success as a trans person.

Drag queer Etcetera Etcetera plays hostess in black and white in a movie within the movie. Our trans lead Joni, a wannabe filmmaker, is watching a lost horror movie of the 90s that plays an important role in dictating the events that occur within the movie.

After a date that doesn’t work out as planned, Joni begins having an extra sensory perception when near guys who have somehow been infected and have vicious, cannibalistic tendencies. Joni and friends at a local queer bar decide they must become vigilantes and take out these zombie-like incels and skinheads since the government isn’t going to protect them.

It’s a great plot and there’s some gooey gore and a retro horror vibe, but the film actually falls short in the horror aspects. A great percentage of the runtime focuses on the main character navigating life as a trans woman, and there’s a lot of dialogue.

With only 18 minutes remaining, they finally locate the “nest” of the infection, and even that battle with a bunch of the infected has very few infected for them to contend with.

I’m sure budget constraints had a lot to do with not delivering hordes of infected incels, but the plot really lends itself to a whole lot of action featuring queer folk taking down monstrous, hateful bigots.

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Ghosts, masked killers, aliens, and infected

Posted on August 23, 2024 by Daniel

My latest triple feature was a buffet of subgenres, and while there was nothing outstanding here, there was some fun to be had with each one.

LAST NIGHT AT TERRACE LANES (2024)

Running only 75 minutes long, this quirky film is a mix between a slasher and a home invasion flick…in a bowling alley.

The basic premise is that four friends—two guys and two girls—go to a bowling alley the night before it is due to close for good and are soon trapped in the alley with other patrons as masked cultists bust in to slaughter everyone.

While there’s lots of mayhem, good kills, and some funny moments, this definitely isn’t humorous enough to reach the level of cult classic material.

The really odd thing about the film is that it virtually sets things up so that one guy friend is gay for the other guy friend (he literally licks him behind the ear at one point) and that the main girl is into the other girl (the ear licker even tells his friend that she is), but these queer plants are never fully explored. WTF? What was the purpose of even including them?

Another glaring issue is that there weren’t many extras hired to fill the alley. There being barely any patrons would make sense for a place that’s going out of business, however the moment the masked killers show up, there are suddenly a bunch of people running around being killed off.

 

For me, the cast of characters was a letdown because of the refusal to delve into the queer stuff, but the cult members had some notable moments, like when they first enter the bowling alley…through the bowling pin racks. Awesome.

FOR SALE (2024)

This film falls short in that the attempts at comedy only end up being a little quirky. It falls long in that it’s an hour and fifty-five fricking minutes. This is inexcusable, and I don’t understand how anyone and everyone involved in the film didn’t tell the filmmaker that the movie should have been trimmed down to about 90 minutes long. All the good stuff is spread too far apart, and every segment of the story goes on too long, making what could have been a fun viewing a tedious experience at times.

A dude gets a job as a real estate agent assigned to sell a particular house. He immediately experiences a few odd things, plus some truly creepy elements including a freaky apparition. In fact, the ghosts in this film are spooky enough for this to have been a scary movie instead of a horror “comedy” if the more whimsical moments had been dropped completely.

Anyway, the real estate agent runs into one set of ghosts after another throughout the course of the movie, tries to do some ghost busting, and eventually has to face off against the ghosts and come to terms with his own shortcomings.

If you want to see a real estate horror comedy done right, watch The Selling of Scarry Manor.

SENTINEL (2024)

This combination of infected people, alien, and time travel subgenres would have been pure SyFy network original perfection back in the day. It even features b-movie king Michael Pare as the President of the United States…which is actually just a moon base now.

See, it’s the future, and the earth was ravaged by an alien invasion. So this team of three people from the moon base decides to head to earth…with a time travel machine! Yep. They’re going to save survivors from the past. Huh? Yet each member of the trio ends up in a different time period! Double huh?

It doesn’t even matter, because they encounter infected, zombie-esque humans (eek!), as well as the big sentinel monster that is controlling the infected. Awesome. This is old school costume monster, not CGI.

There are also some suspenseful scenes and some exciting action sequences, making this a perfect piece of mindless, cheesy, rainy Sunday sci-fi/horror.

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Back to the days of survival horror inspired by J-horror movies

Posted on August 20, 2024 by Daniel

Kuon is reminiscent of Fatal Frame, with a female character wandering Asian architectural structures while being attacked by ghosts and other creepy, angry entities, but instead of fighting with a camera, you use magic and a melee weapon. The game is also a bit more cartoonish looking, and therefore more reminiscent of games from the PS1 era.

Most notable is that you play through the entire game by completing three different phases, each with a different character, with none of your inventory carrying over to the next character, and with only slightly different experiences. For the most part it’s pretty typical survival horror—fight enemies, collect items, read notes, solve puzzles, run back and forth a lot, etc.

YIN PHASE

The magic adds something a little different, with magic cards you gather serving as your “ammo”, and the different cards providing unique attacks. Some of the magic options are animals you conjure and just unleash on your enemies instead of fighting them yourself. Such an odd game. You also have the option of using melee weapons for one button and cards for the other. During the Yin phase you have various knife options for melee. Unfortunately, the magic combat is not very responsive and it doesn’t auto aim. You’ll find yourself throwing weapons such as fireballs in what you assume is a targeted line only to see the fire pass right by the enemy, plus each magic spell usage is prefaced with animation of your character igniting the magic, so instead of instantaneous attacks, there’s a delay when you try strike the enemy!

There are healing items, but you also can simply meditate by pressing R1, which totally chills you out. Note this also takes a moment of action from the character and you can be struck by enemies while in the process of meditating. You collect little boats to use for saves, which are a sort of stone/fire conglomeration by the edge of the water—it’s very calming when you watch your save boat float away. You actually can gather more of these save boats as well as health when you fight the most common enemy—an annoying little bald bugger that gloms onto you in between you taking swipes at him. If you kill any enemies with a final blow (hit them melee style while they’re down on the ground), they leave behind a little bonus item. Yay!

While not as atmospheric and suspenseful as Fatal Frame, the game does deliver some great jump scares, including hot spots of dark energy that give you a jolt. You can’t avoid them because you can’t see them, and they can also lead you to getting “vertigo”, causing everything to go fuzzy. You can’t use magic when you’re experiencing vertigo, but you can shake it off by meditating.

Opening doors requires using cloths designated with the symbols on those doors, which means tracking down the clothes before you can enter certain places to progress.

The problem with the enemies in this game is that most of them are just an annoyance, not scary. Whereas the ghosts in Fatal Frame are unique and freaky, these enemies are cheaply designed and have obnoxious attack patterns. As for bosses, they take tons of magic cards to kill.

Once you get to the underground tunnels in the later part of this phase, the game becomes more creepy and atmospheric. There’s even a frustrating segment in which you are plagued by a hallucinatory state, and everything is blurry and shaky.

After doing some other exploring and fighting back above ground, including a boss, you end up down below again in a maze of tunnels. And get this. You’d have no way of knowing this without a walkthrough, but while you’re busy following bloodstained floors on purpose, which are intended to steer you in the right direction, at one point you enter a room with a tiny puddle of blood in the middle, and if you step on it you get sucked in and it’s game over. WTF?

Soon after a little more exploring, there’s a very anti-climactic ending to this first part, with no boss battle. Just the way I like it.

YANG PHASE

Once you finish the first phase, it’s not as if you continue the game automatically. You completely finish the game and can then choose to play the Yang Phase as a new game.

With the second character, instead of knives, you have a hand fan as your melee weapon. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it does slice and dice enemies like the knife.

However, while this second playthrough is different in the order in which you do things, much of it features the same exact scenarios and puzzles in the same locations, mostly with only unique cut scenes as the major difference in the storyline for this phase. Even so, you seriously have to use a walkthrough, because there is rarely any clue as to what you’re supposed to do next. Many times you’ll be running from one end of the map to another even with the walkthrough.

There is one cool but really hard centipede lady boss in the Yang phase that isn’t in the Yin phase, and late in the game you encounter both an invincible ghost woman you just have to run away from and a gorilla creature that is very strong.

Soon after that there’s a terrifying moment when you have to look through the window of a hut, watch a huge Yeti beast until he leaves it, then run inside quickly and grab three items before he comes back. Unfortunately, seconds later he chases you in the woods! Eek! It is ridiculous how hard this game suddenly gets. He’s fast, he kicks your ass in seconds, and there’s limited space to run around him. You’ll need lots of health and lots of magic cards to take him down.

You end up underground again, and if you walk too far into one of the final rooms, which has a save in a door just to the right, you trigger a cutscene and then can’t access the save after it anymore! WTF? Moments later you encounter the invincible ghost again and must get around her to reach a door that ends this phase.

KUON PHASE

This is an extremely short phase just to tie up the loose ends of the story. With this character you simply cover some old sites again and eventually get to the tough final boss. Only thing I’ll say about this phase is that you get very few of those save boats, so make sure to hold onto one for the final save before the boss…which you’ll only find if you follow a walkthrough.

 

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Supernatural slayers

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a Jack in the box, the Djinn, and the boogeyman in this trio of indie horror flicks that had some cool killers.

THE JACK IN THE BOX RISES (2024)

Jack is back in this third installment of the Jack in the Box movies. He’s as creepy as ever and there are satisfying kills, and isn’t that all that really matters by the third film in an indie franchise?

This time around a young woman owes a lot of money and is offered a chance to make that debt go away in exchange for one thing…she has to find the Jack in the box.

Turns out it’s in an estate that has been turned into an all-girls school. So she goes undercover as a student so she can go on a Jack hunt in between classes. She immediately makes friends…and bullies.

It’s a pretty predictable plot as students and staff begin encountering Jack and getting killed.

Eventually the girls figure out what’s going on and have to come up with a plan to stop Jack. There’s a bit of a twist at the end to change things up rather than just have old Jack stalking everyone in another generic sequel. In general, this isn’t a series that needs to continue, but with such a cool killer I’d always come back for more.

STUPID GAMES (2024)

This simple little film is sort of predictable yet keeps you intrigued, has a spooky entity that creeps in slowly and promises some real scares later on, and even has a fresh, unique looking cast that stands out in the crowd of forgettable faces in the endless stream forgettable indie horror flicks that are pumped out these day. It definitely kept my interest, and it almost works. Almost.

Three girls invite three guys over for a dinner gathering. The girls insist there must be three guy, but one can’t make it, so the other two guys bring along the geeky handyman from their apartment building.

There are weird tensions between those in the group, and it quickly becomes obvious that something is up, so we watch events unfold in hopes of understanding why the girls invited these guys over. There are even a few early signs of something ominous in the apartment. Eek!

Then the group starts to play a board game that is a mix of all different games, from Truth or Dare to Fuck, Marry, Kill. This is where the movie slows down. The board game goes on and on until the evil is finally unleashed an hour in! Eventually it’s referred to as the Djinn in passing, almost like an afterthought.

And then comes the part in which a looooong video supernaturally plays on the television exposing what led up to this party in order to give viewers an understanding of the plot. It’s unrealistic how long the group just stands there watching the video without having any reaction to what is taking place on screen. A very awkward sequence.

Finally the creepy entity begins lurking in the shadows and coming for the characters as they are forced to continue the game, and it is briefly accompanied by a fantastic 80s style synth score. That should have been the vibe of the whole movie, which just ends up slightly missing the mark—and concludes with a very odd final moment that is not in keeping with the tone of the rest of the film at all. It felt to me like the plan was to make the geeky handyman the unlikely hero, sort of like an Evil Dead Bruce Campbell character, but that idea was scratched…except in that final frame.

BEWARE THE BOOGEYMAN (2024)

Despite running 110 minutes long, this film went by pretty fast, in part because the main entity in every story is the same ghoulish boogeyman, and he’s always surrounded by very 80s horror lighting and fog machines.

The wraparound features a doctor at a psychiatric hospital learning of the shared delusion of five patients. That delusion is the boogeyman, and it’s a good thing he’s creepy, because essentially each story is simple and similar.

The first story probably should have been the third story in order to break up the cookie cutter concept, because there’s a bit of a twist when the main girl brings a guy home to sleep with her because she’s afraid of the boogeyman in her closet.

The second story should have been the first story, because it’s basically just a warm-up and is also a shorter tale. A woman starts taking a new medication, and soon the boogeyman is haunting her paintings and her house.

The third story has a good horror vibe. After a robbery gone wrong, two brothers hide out in their deceased father’s house, and the one that feels really guilty about what they did is terrorized by the boogeyman.

The fourth story is my absolute favorite. A young woman meets up with a guy thinking they’re are going to be doing a ghost hunting show. Instead, he takes her to his home, where he wants to find proof that the boogeyman killed his wife. This is the longest tale, and if it had been a standalone story without us having been introduced to the boogeyman three times already, it would have made even more of an impact. If the filmmakers had opted to just do a full-length feature rather than an anthology, this story would have worked perfectly.

In the fifth story, a struggling drug addict is told by his mother that if he’s not good the boogeyman will get him. She should have kept her mouth shut. This was another goodie.

And finally, the wraparound offers a little twist of its own. I had fun with all three of these films, but I’d say this was my fave.

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PRIME TIME: I’ve been down these horror roads before

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Daniel

There was nothing new or original to see with my latest movie marathon, but there is some popcorn movie fun plus cheap thrills to be had with this trio.

DESERT SHADOWS (2022)

This odd little film is a creature feature with a hint of mystery, plenty of icky humanoid monster action, and an odd touch of campy horror now and then. If SyFy was still in the business of branding films as originals for its network, this could have been one of the better flicks in its roster.

A man in a desert wilderness enters a cave and is attacked by a giant creature that looks half alien and half praying mantis. Sure, it’s CGI, but it’s still also pretty cool.

That, however, is what makes this movie kind of confusing. This insectoid creature isn’t really the focus of the horror, gets very little screen time, and convolutes the actual plot.

The man from the desert gets away from the creature and believes it is what took his missing brother. He enlists the help of a college professor, who offers all kinds of conspiracy theories as to what the creature is.

As they investigate the mystery of the missing brother, they soon become embroiled with some freaky humanoid monsters.

Despite the film attempting to keep the truth of the matter mysterious and intriguing, this is a very predictable story. That doesn’t matter much, because the creatures, the kills, and the camp make this a good one for movie night with some friends.

BAG OF LIES (2024)

Despite being totally derivative, this is a fun little creepier if you just need some cheap horror filler between bigger titles.

This cute dude’s wife is dying, so he consults some witch doctor guy who tells him how to save her…using a ritual involving a big bag with something in it. But…you can’t look in, talk to, or touch the bag after the ritual is done. Eek!

The cute dude has a hot friend, and I so wished the wife would just die and that the guys would get together. Unfortunately, I didn’t write the script.

Instead, the hot friend kind of screws up because he doesn’t know the rules.

Pretty soon our husband is being terrorized by young women that just keep appearing around his house and going all Smile on his ass. Creepy. You could say the movie brings a whole new meaning to the term bag lady.

Much of the running time involves the husband being terrorized by these women. It sort of becomes a cat and mouse game. Cheap scares are high, body count is low.

Meanwhile, the sick wife starts getting weird, and this becomes somewhat of a metaphor for the struggle of caring for the dying and how death permeates every corner of your life, which is kind of sad.

As in all these types of movies, the main goal becomes for the husband to figure out how to stop these hauntings once and for all.

SÉANCE GAMES: METAXU (2024)

I liked the nostalgic feel of this one—it gives off 2001-2002 direct-to-DVD horror vibes. It feels like one of those cheap supernatural knockoffs of wider theatrical releases of the time.

Several social medial influencers are part of an online contest—they have to go to a haunted location and live stream a séance.

They arrive at an old hotel and discover the only person there is some hippie chick manager who doesn’t even know what the internet is.

A combination of geometric video graphics and black smoke serve as hints of a supernatural presence as they explore the place, telling you exactly the level of special effects you’re getting here.

They do a séance and a holographic ghost woman rises from the table. Then one of the girls sees the ghost of a friend who claims she was murdered and the murderer is in the hotel.

So this becomes a mystery ghost story with a little possession element thrown in for good measure. Eric Roberts appears in a flashback story about the ghosts, which should also tell you the level of quality you’re in for.

With 20 minutes left, the group has another séance, which is when the cheap, made-for-TV ghostly madness goes full throttle. Silly fun, but nothing you haven’t seen before.

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Lesbian, trans, and gay horror, oh my!

Posted on August 12, 2024 by Daniel

I’m always excited to stumble upon enough queer horror movies to fill one post, and it appeared I’d hit the lottery this time around. However, by the time I finished this triple feature, I was reminded that horror is in the eye of the beholder.

A SAVANNAH HAUNTING (2021)

Somehow, a movie touted as being based on a haunting the writer/director experienced in his own home in Savannah, Georgia turns partially into a lesbian teen sexual romance ghost story, so I’m guessing there were major liberties taken in telling the true story. Delicious.

Anyway, the writer/director also plays a sleazy sexy bigoted redneck handyman in the film, and the guy playing the husband of the main straight couple is a cutie too, so bonus for gay guys watching the film.

The couple and their teen daughter and pre-adolescent son move into a new home in Georgia. The mother is not coping well with the drowning of their younger daughter. She soon begins to experience classic signs of a haunting…things falling down stairs, a creepy doll that just won’t stay in the trash, her young son talking to an imaginary friend, etc.

Meanwhile, the troubled teen daughter begins having sexual encounters with a lesbian ghost who I believe is from the past but dresses like a modern day slut and uses cellphones.

And of course there’s a character who tries to warn the couple that they are in danger—a Black voodoo priestess who informs them the land was once a plantation and something dark and sinister happened involving slaves.

There’s a lot to work with there, but all we get is the slutty lesbian ghost and the ghost of the dead daughter. It’s like there are all these elements presented to tell a richer story, but they never pan out—or come together.

Even so, the film captures the feeling of everything from 1970s and 1980s haunted house movies to more modern ghost movies like The Conjuring and Paranormal Activity, so I was entertained. I just wish filmmakers would stop defaulting to “Mockingbird” as the song mothers sing to their children. No modern day mother sings “Mockingbird” to their children. Hell, even 30 years ago, Ross and Rachel sang “Baby Got Back” to Emma, not “Mockingbird”.

I SAW THE TV GLOW (2024)

As much promotion as this was getting as a trans horror film, I personally found it to be merely a horror adjacent film and more an allegory on trans identity. One of the main characters is trans in real life, but their trans identity is never discussed in the movie.

Artsy and beautifully drenched in vibrant neon colors, the film is about a young teen boy named Owen who meets a slightly older teen girl named Maddy (she is addressed with female pronouns in the movie) who is totally into this supernatural show called The Pink Opaque. Maddy begins to draw Owen into the show.

Weird horror visuals are presented through the characters’ viewings of the show—there are no horror elements in the actual movie.

There are also some nods to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, including one of the characters in the TV show being named Tara, and Amber Benson, who played lesbian character Tara on Buffy, in a fleeting cameo. Pretty clever.

The whole concept of The Pink Opaque show is about two girls discovering an underworld of monsters. Maddy often talks about reality and the show becoming blurred for her. Owen more than once runs away from her when she tries to invite him into the underworld, in essence her other world. See where this is going? She questions his sexuality (not gender identity), and he admits that he doesn’t really know, that he’s only into the TV show. It seems as if Owen is fascinated by, confused by, and scared of Maddy trying to show him who she really is—perhaps because he sees himself in her and what she’s going through. But again, this is all metaphorical, never a gender identity story that proudly comes out of the closet.

References on The Pink Opaque show include the line “they can’t hurt you, don’t think about them”, and the idea of being buried alive and suffocating, both quite applicable, I imagine, to feelings trans people experience.

The mere fact that Maddy gets lost in a TV show to escape her reality is something many queer people admit to, and very often in the horror/sci-fi/fantasy realms. In the end, I Saw the TV Glow comes across as a rather tragic story about how Maddy finds herself and tries to assist Owen in finding himself as well, but he simply can’t accept who he is.

GANYMEDE (2024)

As I Saw the TV Glow reminds us, for many queer people horror is a form of escape. And as I’ve said in recent times in movies I’ve covered in this age of trauma porn horror films, there’s a subset of queer trauma porn horror films that explore the horrors of being gay, and for many viewers it’s anything but an escape and hits too close to home. In other words, those types of horror movies, and this is one of them, need trigger warnings for queers because they are disturbing and upsetting. It’s the very reason my Comfort Cove horror series is about the joys of being gay in an all-gay city in which the monsters are actual supernatural entities.

Ganymede, which lands on the homo horror movies page, is about a star high school wrestler from a conservative Christian family who starts to fall for an openly gay kid.

As he starts to recognize his feelings, he is haunted by his own demons because his parents and reverend force hatred of queers on him.

The metaphorical demon parts are spooky and fleeting moments in what is otherwise an unsettling family drama. It’s beautifully written and acted, but this is not the kind of movie you watch for frightening fun. Also, if you’re queer, chances are you know how this story goes and/or have lived it. And if you’re not gay and/or anti-gay, it’s likely a story you won’t want to see. Be warned—there’s familial and religious abuse, self-loathing, and gay bashing.

The demon terrorizing the main kid is so awesome I wish it had been real, and I have to give it up for the fabulous gay ghost corpse that appears late in the film—in an odd segment that clashes with the tone of the rest of the film. It’s sort of that moment of levity we need in the midst of all the sadness and also a pivotal tool to segue away from the extremely heavy journey we’ve been on. There is a revelatory outcome if you watch the film to the end, and for some it should be very cathartic.

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Holiday horror in August!

Posted on August 9, 2024 by Daniel

It’s never too early to start preparing for the holiday horror season, and I’ll be adding most of these to the holiday horror page, but should they be added to your must-see list? Let’s find out.

SANTASTEIN (2023)

Much like Lisa Frankenstein, Santastein is a really well-made, light teen horror flick that somehow felt to me like it was lacking something.

I love the plot. As a young boy, our main kid set up a booby trap to catch Santa to prove he was real. Unfortunately, things went horribly wrong and he killed Santa instead.

As a teenager, he’s a science geek and manages to bring a rat back to life while doing a school project, so he decides to right his wrong by resurrecting Santa.

He plants Santa’s brain into another man’s corpse and uses the classic streak of lightning technique to bring him to life. Of course Santa isn’t exactly the jolly old man he used to be and sets off on a killing spree.

The movie attempts to be quirky and humorous, but the tone doesn’t quite hit the mark. Plus, despite much of the movie revolving around a teen party, which just begs for a major massacre of teens by Santastein, he instead sort of goes off and kills a whole bunch of other people instead. Huh?

There also happens to be a closeted gay character, and when he is caught in bed with another guy, not only is the moment cloaked in darkness like something dirty that dare not be seen, but the character that catches them has a rather homophobic reaction, laughing mockingly and relishing the chance to run and tell everyone what she’s seen. Even though her reaction is in part because the closeted dude was a douche to her previously, the idea that she has the power to ruin his life by revealing he’s gay seems quite dated. Even so, the gay dude’s sexuality is never addressed again, and he does become part of the final group of survivors that must stop Santastein once and for all, therefore, I’m adding this one to the does the gay guy die? page.

There are some meta moments as well. For instance, Santastein says “naughty!” before killing his victims, as Santa does in Silent Night, Deadly Night. Plus, the best kill in an otherwise lackluster series of death scenes is a nod to the tongue to the pole scene from A Christmas Story. Awesome.

CHRISTMAS CRAFT FAIR MASSACRE (2022)

It’s not often I say this, but I would advise avoiding this one. It’s just not worth the time. The acting and dialogue together are a recipe for low budget disaster, because the whole story is told through the characters in a cult discussing their plans to sacrifice a pure soul at a Christmas craft fair at a local high school.

The movie runs 71 minutes, yet there isn’t a sign of Christmas until 40 minutes in.

There are kills by a masked goon that works for the cult leader, but there’s no gore, just blood splashes and cheap plastic and rubber body parts you’d find in a Halloween shop.

I will give the creators props for somehow managing to insert a few flashes of genuinely effective horror visuals that, when used as screen grabs, make it look like you might actually be getting something worthwhile here. Don’t be fooled. Just skip it.

GRANNY KRAMPUS (2024)

Another one to add to the list of indie Krampus movies that have followed in the wake of the main Krampus movie from 2015. It’s been nearly a decade, and I think Krampus’s day has come and gone, but we’re still getting Krampus films. This time around it’s Granny Krampus!

Granny Krampus looks pretty cool despite clearly being a mask, which might explain why we rarely ever get to see her in this film. Personally, I’d rather have had more low budget Granny Krampus face than barely any face at all, because with barely any Granny Krampus face, there’s barely any horror action.

She even gets a great characteristic…she walks with a cane, so her boots and cane clunk on the floor as she stalks victims. If only that highlight hadn’t been presented just one damn time in the whole movie.

Instead of oodles of horror, we become entrenched in the melodrama of a family that has been estranged and is coming together for the holidays at granny’s house (real granny, not Granny Krampus).

The heavy focus on family relations drags on too much, but the whole point of it all is to amaze us with the twist at the end. I feel we still could have been shocked by the twist with more Granny Krampus and less gabbing.

Strangely enough, while this isn’t in any way connected to any of the other low budget Krampus movies, it actually uses some footage from Mother Krampus (2017) as part of its Granny Krampus lore. What the hell?

FINAL GIRL: HALLOWEEN (2024)

I have a feeling this movie added two minor references to Halloween into the final edit so the holiday could be included in the title to drum up more interest. It really is not a holiday horror movie, and therefore I won’t be adding it to the holiday horror page.

The opener is a goodie, with a masked, hooded killer taking out a bunch of kids at a cabin in the woods at a rapid pace. It’s like a whole slasher jammed into ten minutes.

The final girl survives, there’s talk of Johnny Baxter, a guy who went on a rampage in the 70s when his girlfriend cheated on him, and everyone at school starts mocking and taunting the main girl, even dressing up like the killer and terrorizing her in school. It’s all very Scream.

So, what are the hints that it’s Halloween? There’s a voiceover news report mentioning it’s Halloween, and then we see a few Halloween decorations in the office of the final girl’s therapist. The holiday is never mentioned again, and the next time she goes to the therapist the Halloween decor is gone.

People start getting killed off and…well…that’s about it. It’s a pretty simple, traditional slasher. It’s not the most memorable one you’ll ever see, but it does a pretty decent job of ticking off all the right slasher boxes. The conclusion even takes place at a “Johnny Baxter stabathon”. The weakest part of the movie is the killer motivation.

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Three times the rust!

Posted on August 6, 2024 by Daniel

I’ve covered several of director Joe Lujan’s films, so I thought I’d check out a trilogy of slashers he has made over the course of ten years. Even though he clearly had a good sense of horror right from the first film, it’s cool to see how he tightened up his talent as the series progressed.

RUST (2014)

There are apparently several cuts of the first Rust movie, including longer and shorter edits. The one I watched is somewhere in the middle, running 53 minutes long, which is just long enough to get to the point, especially when you’re dealing with an indie slasher.

It begins with a kid who appears to work in his abusive father’s haunted attraction from what I can tell. Perhaps inspired by what his father is selling, he reaches a breaking point and makes daddy’s face into a mask. Eek!

Years later the haunted attraction has been abandoned, and we can only assume the boy never left and has grown into an adult killer. His name in the series is Travis, but I prefer to call him Rust considering that’s the name of the franchise.

Naturally a few friends decide to check out the old place and begin getting killed off rather quickly thanks to the short run time. It’s a fairly cliché and simple slasher, so you won’t hear me complaining!

The style and vibe of classic slashers is definitely there as Rust hunts his prey, so I found this to be a satisfying quickie.

RUST 2 (2016)

This 67-minute long sequel could easily (and more logically) have been edited down along with the first film to make one longer movie instead of two installments.

This time around, the cops take one of the final girls from the first film back to the haunted attraction because she believes her other friend is still alive.

That’s the plot. It’s as basic as it gets, and as usual, demands that you just go with the absurd idea that a survivor from a previous film would agree to return to the scene of the horror. Of note is that while the killer is Black in this series and all his victims are white girls, race is never mentioned.

Rust is surprisingly maskless in the opening scene, and he’s sexy scary. He’s also holding a bunch of girls hostage and even sexually assaults them. Yeah, this one adds some old school, sadistic misogyny to the mix.

The characters spend the whole time searching the haunted attraction and getting killed off one by one. Rust’s presence is much more effective this time around, but the film takes a weird turn at the end, and it’s not Rust but a feral woman who chases our main girls.

Despite this odd decision to veer away from the ominous killer he created, Lujan doesn’t pretend it never happened for the next film, making sure to address the feral woman’s presence very briefly.

RUST 3 (2024)

Eek! From hour long installments to a 108-minute full-length feature? It might seem like a bad idea, but the good news is that this one looks much more like a major motion picture, reminding us that the first two films were clearly low budget productions.

It’s years later, and the attraction is reopening, but Rust was never captured. The final girl has written a book about her experience, and she’s doing the ribbon cutting ceremony at the opening. Really? She hasn’t learned?

This one really delivers on the atmosphere, suspense, and kill scenes, and even includes a gay couple sneaking off for some sex instead of a straight couple. Awesome, and it lands this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

As well-crafted as the film is, it still runs too long, in part because it doesn’t take place all in one night. That really causes the pacing to stumble at times.

Even so, there are a lot of classic horror elements here. There are fun faux scares since this takes place at a haunted attraction. There’s a mini found footage style segment. There’s one scene between the two main girls from the previous installments that delivers more character development than the first two movies combined. Rust solidifies himself as a pretty terrifying and iconic presence. There’s a slow mo kill scene reminiscent of Annie’s tragic death in Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2. And there’s a satisfying final chase scene.

Although I welcome another sequel, the last scene promising one is kind of ridiculous—big, burly mass murderer Rust is being transported in a basic squad car with no partition glass. Escaping has never been so easy. Such a lazy setup.

 

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