Drama and romance in this trio of slashers

Posted on February 12, 2024 by Daniel

It’s one from 1990 and two modern slashers, all of which deliver some slasher fun and plenty of theatrics, while falling short in the end.

BLOODMOON (1990)

With this one hitting Blu-ray, I was so psyched to once again get a physical release of a flick I had never seen from the end of the glory days of slashers. Unfortunately, the slasher elements of this 100-minute movie are overshadowed by the tacky love story of the main couple.

There’s a girls school and a boys school, and in between them is a plot of forest where students hook up. It’s like…a straight Meat Rack!

The slasher aspect of the film is awesome—someone uses barbed wire (which was giving me Crown of Thorns religious vibes) to strangle horny kids to death. The kills are always at night in misty woods, and the victims are always kids having sex. Boobs abound, there’s female bush in a locker, and we even get a man butt moment.

The heavy-handed motivation is clearly about the moral issue of sex—just like in real life today, the adults in this movie are disturbingly obsessed with what teens are doing with their bodies.

There are also plenty of red herring. Anyone could be the killer, including school staff, students, parents, and even a nun! Notable is a chilling voice calling the name of the first victim as she’s chased in the woods. This could have been the unique angle of this slasher, but it never happens again.

Unfortunately, the film drags, with the hokey romance between the leads killing the tone in between death scenes. There is, however, a mandatory school dance scene with a glam band playing pop rock that sounds more like it’s from 1985 than 1990. Awesome.

Finally at the 65-minute mark there’s a great fight and chase scene with the killer…who does not wear a mask. Therefore, the killer identity is known to us for the final 35 minutes! Yet despite that, all the action is packed into the final act and relieves us of the boredom we were feeling for the first 65 minutes.

THE FINALE (2023)

As is often the case, the weakness in this slasher is its running length…112 minutes long. Argh! If it had been shaved down to about 90 minutes, the numerous highlights would have made this one a total winner.

The story revolves around a theater group participating in a theater camp. And where there are drama geeks, there’s loads of drama…and several queens. In fact, I was convinced the love interest of the main girl was gay until he became her love interest.

The phenomenal killer costume alone had me invested, not to mention the great chase and death scenes.

The film is even pretentious at times, with classical music, singing segments, dancing segments—but damn if it isn’t all lovely and artistic. There’s just something haunting about a theater setting for a horror movie.

The gory and violent kills are very reminiscent of giallo style, and adding to that feel is the presence of two detectives investigating as the theater geeks begin disappearing. The detective duo even adds a little humor to the mix, but their side story is one of the main reasons the pacing slows down.

The final act definitely delivers some great chaos, so the movie ends on a high note for sure, but I did find the Scream-esque motivation monologue a bit much. I was way more enthralled by the death scenes and atmosphere than I was with the plot.

DEPARTING SENIORS (2024)

This one is getting added to the homo horror movies page, because the whole plot centers around an openly gay, bullied teenager who scores a kiss from not one, but two guys by the time the film is done.

And despite being bullied, he’s not a helpless victim, making him perhaps one of my favorite gay horror movie characters yet.

In fact, most of the characters are likable, the teen horror vibe is on point, and there’s some good humor, but the film is lacking in a body count. If you don’t count the opening death scene, there are only two kills in the whole movie! This is because there are very few characters. Essentially we have our gay main kid, his best female friend, another gay guy who is interested in the main kid, and three bullies–a bitchy girl, her football player boyfriend, and his best friend.

The basic premise is that the main kid gets into an accident that leads to him gaining a psychic ability—when he touches people or their possessions, he can see their murders. Ironic considering he sees way more visions than there are actual kills. And that’s where the film loses steam. It’s so focused on his visions that the kills are virtually an afterthought. Not to mention we get to see them before they happen, so there are no surprises or scares when they actually happen.

The film gets a major high score for its gay content, but as a slasher it’s a huge letdown. There’s even a missed opportunity for a great chase scene and one more kill during the climax that would have left the last deserving character dead and given us one final jolt of thrills. It’s quite a weird missed opportunity, because the series of events unfold as if they are intended specifically for the chase scene to happen.

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Some humorous vampire flicks to sink your teeth into

Posted on February 1, 2024 by Daniel

It feels like ages since I watched any vampire films, so this trio was a treat. They were all pretty lighthearted and enjoyable for the most part, so let’s get into them.

A VAMPIRE IN THE FAMILY (2023)

Harkening back to all the My (Human Relation) is a (Monster) movies from the 80s, this dubbed Brazilian horror comedy has the distinction of featuring a bearish daddy as the family member that begins to suspect his relative is a vampire.

Due to the dubbing, the dialogue delivery feels a little hokey, but it still works based on the type of movie this is. And there are moments that made me laugh out loud.

The main man invites his brother-in-law into his house, and pretty soon he begins to see classic signs that his in-law is cursed with vampirism. He then has to convince his family that they need to go vampire hunting.

The guy playing the vampire is a hottie and gets a tight bathing suit scene, and he’s not the only vampire, so vamp clan action ramps up as the movie progresses. And best of all, the final battle comes during a Halloween party, complete with a little dance montage.

The vampire makeup is cool and perhaps a little scary for kids, but the movie definitely has a PG-13 vibe in general, with no nudity and not much in the way of cursing. And it wouldn’t be this type of movie without an animated sequence during the credits.

Count Dracula himself makes an appearance, and he has some awesome henchman modeled after the original Nosferatu/Salem’s Lot vampire design. Plus the final act totally rocks, with a cool final boss. Plus, there’s an opening for a sequel , and I’m totally there for it.

THE VAMPIRE NEXT DOOR (2024)

This light vampire teen dramedy is like Fright Night meets Let The Right One In. I was so pumped when it began—our geeky leading man is cute and likable, the hot girl he’s loved all through school is likable, and the seductive vampiress that moves in next door gives off a Megan Fox in Jennifer’s Body vibe.

The vampire was the last thing our main guy needed. He’s still harassed by his high school bully, his dad is pressuring him to do something with his life, he hates his job, and he’s trying to hatch a plan to win the girl he loves by using his best friend for a mind game.

But once the vampire makes her presence known to him, it isn’t long before she makes him her driver, chauffeuring him around so she can claim victims on her hit list.

If only the film was shorter. It runs 110 minutes long, and while the frequent conversations help us connect with the characters, the sexy teen horror comedy feel is never fully realized.

There are just minor moments of vamp action and sexy action, so the film falls a bit flat, offering only hints of the kinds of 80s teen movies it’s emulating. Even the inevitable final battle is very low energy. Bummer.

VAMPIRE CLEANUP DEPARTMENT (2017)

It’s always fascinating how a certain subgenre of Asian horror can be gory with gnarly monsters yet also romantic and cutesy, which is exactly what Vampire Cleanup Department is. It kind of reminded me a little of Cemetery Man if it was a morbid teen romance rather than a sleazy, macabre, adult sex romp.

A young man gets bit by a vampire but is not affected, which makes his uncle realize he’d be perfect for a secret, family-run vampire hunting service.

On his first hunt, the young man has a freaky encounter in a lake. I don’t know exactly why the corpse in the water returns to its normal, cute young girl form—was it the cellphone she accidentally eats or a lip-lock with the main boy? Either way, she becomes mostly human again, just without the ability to speak.

So begins a slow bonding between the young man and the revived corpse, complete with whimsical music and humor. Does it get a little too sappy after a while? Yes.

However, hanging like a dark cloud over the romanticizing is the coming of an intense boss vampire that terrorizes the town and eventually does battle with the vampire cleanup team.

I’d say the final act saves the film from being nothing more than a cheesy tween vampire romance.

 

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You’ll have to pry the PS2 controller from my cold, dead hands

Posted on January 30, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a double feature video game marathon of survival horror titles for PS2 that take place in the snow. Brrrrr! Was revisiting these games fun for me?

EXTERMINATION

Bringing the survival horror genre into the bitter, snowy cold before the video game adaptation of The Thing, Extermination is a great looking game for the PS2 that really makes you shiver as you run through icy terrain and frigid hallways in a large, empty facility. If only the game wasn’t a pain in the ass to play. There are so many aspects that make it way too hard, with no difficulty options available.

For starters, since it’s just as much an action game as it is survival horror, it completely drops the puzzle solving tropes of Resident Evil. It also does away with tank controls, which should be advantageous, but instead causes major character control issues. Moving with the thumbstick lacks any kind of precision, leading to out of control running and wonky camera work. Right from the start this is a problem because…brace yourself…there are fricking platforming elements. Yep, jumps over cavernous pits are required to move through the game, but trying to neatly make an accurate jump from one platform to the other becomes a terrifying task when your straight run suddenly veers to the side mid-jump. Argh. And these inconvenient leaps usually occur when there hasn’t been a save room in ages. It’s enough to make you want to throw your controller at the television, but TVs now cost 1000 bux or more, so that would be the worst possible response. The ultra-sensitive controls also cause issues when trying to walk across narrow pipes to get to the other side of caverns. Your character simply won’t walk in a straight line! There are also times when you can shimmy across pipes along the wall to get from one place to another, but the camera angle is locked, so you can’t actually see when it’s safe to let go and drop onto floor beneath you instead of down a hole. You also get hurt if you drop from too high onto solid ground. There’s even a part where you slide down into a plane to get a bomb you need, only to find the only way back up is to jump across suspended crates, using crappy angles and overly sensitive movement that either sends you off to the side of the crate you’re aiming for or right over it! The most streamlined travel is through vents (ugh!), but even then, when you reach the end of a vent it cuts to you dangling from the edge of the vent into a new space, and the camera angle doesn’t let you see what you’re jumping down into. Eek!

There are some bright sides to the controls. You can press a button to reset the camera over your shoulder, but that only helps so much. Also, the mapped controls are basic and intuitive for the most part.

You have only one gun, but if you find the right parts as you explore, it is customizable to be a shotgun, grenade launcher, flamethrower, and more (which means having to switch parts to use different weapons). You also get a sniper scope, but I rarely used it because it is very disorienting and makes you vulnerable to attack. You can also hook a flashlight up to the gun for dark zones, but here’s the catch. When you use the flashlight, you can’t walk! So you have to stand still, check the space ahead with your flashlight, then turn it off and move forward a bit after shooting blindly and hopefully clearing out enemies in the dark before turning on the flashlight again to check ahead a little farther. Ugh.

Inventory is basically unlimited—which would be even better if ammo pickups weren’t so scarce. There are however, a few unlimited ammo depots to replenish your stock throughout the facility. Items you can pick up are clear as day, so you won’t miss anything you come across—although you might miss entire tucked away sections if you don’t use a walkthrough to thoroughly cover all ground.

There’s also a battery aspect. You need the battery to open certain locks and to save! Argh! There are some battery rechargers around, and you do upgrade how many battery units you can store as the game progresses, but it’s fucking devastating if you get to a save only to discover you don’t have any battery units left. Because recharge stations and ammo depots are few and far between, there’s a lot of running back and forth to stay fully stocked.

Then there’s your health. Actually your health and your infection rate. I hate games that force you to monitor two different health issues. Your health bar is pretty basic, but just about every enemy in this game spits infectious acid at you, and as your infection rate goes up, your health goes down. Not only do you have to find health items to patch yourself up, you have to find antidotes for infections. But you can’t just take them on the spot. You have to make it to rejuvenation machines sprinkled throughout the facility to heal up, which means more running back and forth…while half dead and battling enemies, which even tend to respawn in most areas. WTF?

So about enemies. There are tons of them, and they take loads of ammo to kill. First there are these slugs that are everywhere, spit acid at you, fly, jump on you and fill you with infection as you button mash to shake them off, are hard to aim at, and even burst out of crates you can break with your knife in hopes of finding goodies inside. They are also generated by gooey globs on the floor that you can at least shoot and kill to stop some of the spawning of the slugs.

There are flying creatures that fuck you up when you’re trying to jump over caverns, shimmy across pipes, or climb ladders, and they are even harder to aim at and shoot. There are mutated dogs. There are giant monsters with vulnerable spots you have to aim for to kill them. They take tons of bullets before dying and they shoot back at you! Argh!

There are automatic sentry guns that shoot anything that’s moving…including you. You can deactivate them by cutting the cable under them with your knife. There are also trip wire bombs that you can supposedly deactivate with your knife, but every time I tried they blew up. There are fire patches that will fry you, and there are ground puddles that jab you with infected spikes whenever you run over them. Eventually, a big snake-like thing starts coming out of the puddles, too.

There are two encounters with semi-invisible lion creatures, and you have to use a flamethrower attachment to kill them. Chances are you won’t have enough fuel to accomplish that. The second time you fight them, it’s right after you’ve climbed an ice wall outside, and if they hit you, they can knock you all the way down the mountain and you have to climb back up to continue the fight.

With so much space between save points, unexpected elements of the game you couldn’t possibly prepare for without a walkthrough are infuriating. For instance, you see a button you can push, when you do, there’s a cutscene and then a train is barreling toward you. The only way to escape it is to run to a ladder behind you and climb up it or it’s instance death. Same thing happens later on when you blow up a tower that can then fall on you if you don’t hurriedly run away from it after the cutscene.

With a constant barrage of enemies to fight, boss battles are never welcome, but we get them. For starters, after a battle through a tunnel against those damn shooting monsters, you just stumble upon a boss battle when you innocently drop off a train platform into a pit. It’s a huge tentacle arm in the wall and takes forever to kill, even if you’ve collected enough grenades to use against it.

The next boss is in the center of an arena while you stand on a platform surrounding it, and you have to aim at his hot spots while it is constantly shooting at you. Good luck with that one.

And now we get to confession time. The final boss in Extermination is what led to me discovering the magic of Game Shark and Codebreaker when I first played the game back in 2001. I fought my way desperately through this game, and by the time I reached the final battle I barely had any health left, I was slightly infected, and I didn’t have anywhere near enough ammo to take on the giant boss. I was getting my ass destroyed during the battle and there was no way I was ever going to complete the game, so I searched for cheats online (we were asking Jeeves back then because there was no Google yet), and found codes for something called Codebreaker. It was only after buying a Codebreaker disc that I was able to complete the game.

So what’s so bad about the boss? First of all, without the 3 missile launcher parts to connect to your gun, you’d never beat this boss. And without a walkthrough, you’d never find the three missile launcher parts, which are hidden throughout the game. In fact, the final part is hidden in a room that requires 24 battery units to open…the exact amount of units you can hold at any given time, so you can forget about saving one more time if at all before the boss unless you track down one of those battery charging stations first.

You end up on a boat, and the boss is at first in the water, periodically jumping out on either side. I’ll admit it does look fricking awesome. There’s an army vehicle on the boat that you can climb on to use the turret on back…if you can pinpoint the leaping boss to shoot him. The gun moves slow, so just trying to locate him on one side or the other before targeting him and then shooting is going to be a chore. On top of that, he spits balls of infection at you that knock you out of the turret, requiring you to run back up to the compartment it’s in and pressing X to get back in and start all over. And you know what happens if you press X and you aren’t exactly lined up with the compartment door? You JUMP. You jump right off the boat and die. WTF? Oh, and when the boss’s infection balls hit, they explode and release loads of slugs, which now start attaching to you and spitting infection at you. And you have to hit the boss approximately 15 times while it’s in the water before you can even move on to the next part of the battle.

There is another option for fighting him while he’s in the water, but it’s just as bad. You have to climb a ladder to a higher level of the boat, grab a zip line to zip across to another platform, and then use a Gatling gun, which overheats after a short time, requiring you to wait for it to cool down before you can use it again. Fuck this game.

In its second form, the boss morphs into a giant land monster and climbs on the boat. There is nowhere for you to run because the arena is quite small, and he’s still dropping loads of slugs on the deck to spit at you. You have to nail the boss on the vulnerable spot on his chest numerous times to kill him. You’ll so want to use the few rockets you have to beat him faster, but that would be a mistake, because…

He morphs again, this time into a human size boss that you now have to hit in the chest numerous times to kill, all while he’s firing a machine gun at you incessantly and hurling more slugs your way. Fuck this game. I’m selling it on eBay if you want a copy.

THE THING

Ugh. This game tested my last nerve. Just like the movie, it requires you to keep your team working cooperatively so they don’t lose trust in you and assume you’re actually infected. How do you do this? You have to keep them supplied with precious weapons, ammo, and health. You can also find blood tests to take to prove to them you’re not sick. You can accidentally shoot them, which not only loses their trust but the trust of other nearby members. Argh. Worse part of this? In this game you don’t hold a shoulder button and then press the X button to shoot like in most games…you simply press X. You know, the button you instinctively press to do most actions or pick up items, neither of which is the function of the X button in this game. As a result, you will accidentally shoot your teammates numerous times, especially while panicking when little spider critters come crawling after you. And you know what happens if you just stand by and let your teammates shoot them so you won’t accidentally shoot your teammates? The teammates lose trust in you for not helping to fight! Argh! As a result, I often told my team to stay (you can tell them to stay or come in a squad menu), ran ahead and killed enemies while alone, then went back to pick up my team.

So what’s the bright side of having a team? You need them. You can get the medic to heal members. You can get the engineer to fix junction boxes to open doors. And you can have all members help in those fights if you think you can avoid shooting them. You can go into first person mode for better aim, but you can’t move and shoot in that mode.

The health issue is a pain in the ass. Not only do you and your team lose health when you get hurt, but if you stay out in the cold too long, you and your members will start to lose health. Ugh. And when you’re running around in the windy snowy weather in the dark, it’s easy to lose your way and run in circles when you really need to just get inside. Aside from enemy danger, there’s also fire to watch out for (you can use a fire extinguisher to put out flames), as well as electrocuted fences to beware of.

The d-pad allows you to quick cycle through weapons or other items, but it’s not fast enough once you have to start shooting enemies until their life bars turn red and then switch to a flamethrower to burn them the rest of the way, which causes the little spider creatures to pop out of them, which then requires you to hastily switch back to a gun. Oh…and don’t expect any of your teammates to come out of these battles alive, because if the monsters don’t get them, your manic shooting just to survive will kill them. And you know what happens if you lose technicians you need to perform some sort of action to continue forward? It’s game over and you have to start again from your last save point.

Stretches get much longer where you need to keep technicians alive otherwise you die. They are needed to open doors right to the end of levels with more monsters and fricking men shooting at you. Argh!

The fact is that this is more an action game than survival horror…but lacks the ammo necessary to survive swarms of enemies. There are no puzzles here. It’s just running from one place to another to fetch keys or gather items for other team members. The game becomes incredibly repetitive.

The bosses generally all look and behave the same, but they do get progressively bigger and harder, and there are variations in how you defeat them. Visually, the final boss outside is pretty epic, and there’s a helicopter aspect thrown in just for fun.

There are also timed segments where you’ll press a button and then have to get to a certain door in a short period of time, otherwise, kaboom! And finally there’s the part that made me give up on the game this time around. I guess 20 years makes a difference in how sharp a shooter you are and how much patience you have for bullshit tasks. You have to zoom in with a sniper gun and shoot the bombs on planes in four different hangars outside. The catch is, you have to do it from windows in two different rooms, and…the hangar doors start closing after you blow out the first bomb. You have to shoot two bombs from one set of windows, run around this big console in the middle of the room, push through the door, run down the hall, push through another door into another room, run around another console, then aim at two more bombs from there. And if the doors to the hangars close, you die. Fuck this game. You can find it on sale as a bundle with Extermination on eBay.

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TUBI TERRORS: a demon house, found footage, and a horror anthology

Posted on January 26, 2024 by Daniel

Surprisingly, the longest of these three selections from my watchlist was the most interesting of the bunch. Let’s find out why.

SITE 13 (2023)

This film didn’t do it for me, but I respect the variations in plot points as the story unfolds.

A college professor studying supposed devil’s circle portals takes his students on a field trip…to a field.

Ten years later he awakes with no memory of what happened. The woman working his case begins watching (found) footage of the day all his students disappeared and he was discovered unconscious in the field.

We spend a good chunk of time just waiting to see what eventually happened to all the students, as is typical with found footage movies. The most exciting part for me was a dude with a big booty mooning the camera.

In between, the newly awakened professor begins acting possessed. I wasn’t enthralled, but it was nice to see the film attempt to go big with no budget.

For the grand finale, the patients in the hospital get “possessed” briefly, and a giant CGI portal eye floats around outside the hospital. Awesome.

NIGHT OF THE CAREGIVER (2023)

Another cliché film, this one offers a slow burn buildup and a fun demon in a creepy house, so I enjoyed it.

It pointlessly begins with a scene from later in the film in order to deliver immediate demon action.

It also starts with Eric Roberts in unneeded cameo—the whole purpose of his career at this point. He’s a parapsychologist who gives a tip to a detective chasing down an urban legend.

Next we meet our main girl, a lipstick lesbian who takes a one night caregiver job at an isolated house for an elderly woman. The woman is very sweet but also very elusive about the status of her health.

The main girl begins to see unusual things around the house and becomes convinced someone is there with them. Some suspense carries us through until the demon finally makes its presence known about 45 minutes in. This is the meat of the film, with all the fast-paced horror packed into the last half hour. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before and you’ll most likely sense where it’s all going right from the start, but it’s still worth watching for the cheap thrills.

TWISTED FICTION (2023)

Although this anthology of three stories with no wraparound runs almost two hours long, each one was well made and intriguing enough to hold my attention….plus they all revolve around sex! Wahoo!

1st tale – this one becomes a total mind fuck, literally. A straight couple goes to a performance by a hypnotist who claims he can give people hypnorgasms. After the show, the guy in the couple becomes convinced his girlfriend is still under the hypnotist’s power. This shit enters weird 80s sci-fi horror territory and turns sexually depraved, demented, and gory.

2nd tale – this is a clever but slow-paced, dialogue-heavy story about a motel manager who collects souls of unfortunate people that indulge in debauchery in their rooms.

Not a scary tale, but definitely a good conclusion.

3rd tale – a film producer invites women to come audition at his home and then rapes them. Little does he know the latest actress he sexually assaults is a member of a vengeful witch coven. The revenge is quite satisfying and twisted, but this is an excessively long tale, so it takes a while to get there.

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TUBI TERRORS: three from 2023

Posted on January 24, 2024 by Daniel

It’s two supernatural/demon themed flicks and one slasher…and I had fun with two of the three.

THE HOLY TRINITY (2023)

This low budget attempt at an Evil Dead setup is cheesy with hokey 80s style and lightning bolt magic effects (not even SyFy original level), but I was totally charmed by the two cute male leads. And what’s great about them is that they are two completely different types—one lean and muscular, the other thick and beefy.

So the two guys and their girls go to a cabin in the woods with a medium friend and immediately have a séance. In doing so, they unleash a holy trinity of evil—three ancient women that plan to bring on the apocalypse. Lofty plot goals for a low budget flick.

Of course a variety of cheap demons—one of which is quite freaky looking in a Halloween costume shop way—terrorizes the group at the cabin. The highlight for me was a demon face in a toilet bowl, but overall this is just silly and amateurish. But damn, the boys have charisma and kept me watching thanks to their dry delivery.

If you ask me, the film should have focused on the freaky Halloween mask demon and just exploited the fuck out of it to give us some genuine scares. Instead, we end up with a goofy battle in the woods during the day with three babes that look like Xena The Princess Warrior rejects.

What’s really odd is that there’s a “music video” at the end performed by the beefy guy, and it is a visual horror treat that is way more stimulating than anything that occurs in the movie.

THE NEW HANDS (2023)

Perhaps it’s because I’m in the midst of binge watching the entire Tales from the Crypt series for a “best episodes” post, but I feel like the almost tongue-in-cheek vibe of this movie would have made this a perfect 30-minute installment of an anthology series like that.

After a dude loses use of his hands in a tragic situation at a lab, he begins to believe he can get them back if he takes the hands of others.

He wraps himself up in bandages and goes on a killing spree at the lab, taking all the hands he can get his hands on (literally the type of puns used in the movie).

The death and chase scenes are pretty damn good, with some bloody moments. The main dude looks cool as a killer, but it’s not your standard slasher scenario since the movie is from his perspective, not that of his victims. The story of him spiraling out of control is okay, but nothing spectacular. And finally, Felissa Rose has a small role as his doctor.

THE DEVIL’S LEFT HAND (2023)

With a plot that takes place predominantly in one house, this 98-minute movie desperately needed to be trimmed by at least twenty minutes to save us from endless slow, dialogue-heavy scenes. For instance, the same exact backstory of how one main character saved his mother from his homicidal father by killing the father is retold no less than three times. Argh.

Anyway, a straight couple has a psychic medium at their party. Pretty soon they, their friends, the husband’s mother (who is in a mental institution), and the medium are all being haunted by bumps in the night.

For no apparent reason, a psychic partner is written into the story to help the medium try to cleanse the couple’s family of the demon that was unleashed by the séance. I guess his messed up eye was meant to add some horror intrigue…?

First, the entity appears as the husband’s dead father. It soon becomes clear that it can morph, for it shows up at the house as the mental mother. Eventually it takes on the form of a good old ghost girl. Cliché as it is, at least she starts killing people.

When all else fails, the medium whips out a Ouija board for the final battle. If you can still stick with this movie after that, more power to you. And if you do, I can guarantee the lackluster denouement will have you kicking yourself for watching all the way through.

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TUBI TERRORS: body snatchers, CHUD, and a slasher

Posted on January 22, 2024 by Daniel

There’s nothing original about the latest trio of films I checked out from various horror subgenres, but do they deliver and chills and thrills nonetheless?

THE CHANGED (2021)

I’m guessing a decision was made to distribute this movie only if the poster art made it appear that it is a zombie film—Tony Todd with zombie eyes, bluish hands reaching towards a main character. Nothing indicative of what occurs in the film.

This is more like Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets They Live…without the pods, the glasses, or the excitement. We are tossed right into the gist of the plot, with our main guy telling his neighbor (played by Tony Todd) that everyone everywhere has been acting weird lately, and he’s convinced it’s some government conspiracy. Tony Todd’s response is…weird.

Very quickly we learn that people are indeed “changing” after other people forcefully kiss them. There are definitely metaphors for sexual assault and STDs in there. Unfortunately we don’t get to see a man-on-man conversion, but we do almost get girl-on-girl kissing action, but there’s a cutaway before it can happen. Yay!

Anyway, after some fleeting glimpses of figures running by the camera, which sets this up to be scary, the entire movie becomes about our leading man, his wife, and their teen neighbor holding Tony Todd hostage in an effort to get him to confess why he and others are changing. I imagine the reason there are no special effect is because they had to pay Tony Todd most of their budget to get him to stay strapped to a chair for a whole movie.

Todd’s big monologue is straight out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers—just give in and you’ll never have to worry about feeling anything again. There are other “changed” people that lurk outside the house, but there’s simply no tension or suspense here. You’ve seen it all before, done better.

THE LURKING FEAR (2023)

This is an incredibly derivative film and has a slow start, but if you like these kinds of movies and haven’t seen one in a while, you might just find it satisfying.

So what kind of movie is it? It’s not found footage, but it is about a TV crew filming a documentary at an abandoned mental institution where a mad scientist experimented on patients. There are just a few flashback sequences to establish that backstory, then there’s a bunch of blah blah blah in the present day to cement the story. Highlight? The host dude is hot.

About 40 minutes into this 80-minute movie, we get to the point—there are slightly mutated human cannibals still living in the basement of the mental institution, and our main characters are trapped inside with them. CHUD!

There’s some suspense and plenty of gore and torture, but I’m just a bit too numbed to this subgenre to be impacted by any movie that doesn’t make things super terrifying. On top of that, I have to wonder if twists are really twists when you’ve seen those exact twists dozens of times before….

HAPPY BIRTHDAY (2023)

This film seems to be trying too hard to rise above the simplicity of slashers…by overthinking how to present the basics of slashers, resulting in totally diluting the slasher aspects. This could have been called Happy Birthday to Me (the killer literally writes that on a wall in blood), but that title is a staple of the slasher genre so they didn’t dare go there.

There are two stories going on here. One has a group of friends heading to a house in the woods for a birthday celebration.

The other story, presented sporadically in flashbacks with muted gray tones so we know it’s flashbacks, takes place in the same house, where the treatment by a sleazy stepdad causes a mentally ill teen to unravel when she comes home from a mental institution to celebrate her birthday.

In the present day we get some classic 80s slasher elements—couple goes off to have sex, killer tears off the main girl’s blouse so she’s running around in her bra, dude gets attacked while on the shitter.

The killer doesn’t wear a mask, however he did escape from a mental institution and uses sharp weapons to kill victims. The kills just aren’t very suspenseful. In fact, the absolute best death scene is when the crazy girl in the flashback finally snaps.

If there’s one unique element here, it’s that the killer didn’t escape the mental institution to start killing for his own selfish reasons. it’s a six degrees of slasher!

 

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TUBI TERRORS: a horror triple feature with gays!

Posted on January 16, 2024 by Daniel

This was a treat. Not only was it a triple feature of flicks in various subgenres, but each one also included gay male characters…including one that was a total gay horror romance, landing these films on the does the gay guy die? page and the homo horror movies page.

CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT (2023)

Despite this being a period piece, I really hope this hidden gay horror romance gets a physical media release, because it’s something different and has some cool vampire monsters.

I’ll just note that in this negative and nasty age we live in, I noticed keyboard warriors on IMDb criticizing the film because the characters are wearing modern T-shirts. Seriously, this is where we are at as a horror viewing community. And who knows? As someone who mostly loathes period pieces, maybe I liked this film because the dudes were wearing modern T-shirts…

But seriously, I don’t give a crap if dudes are wearing contemporary T-shirts when there’s a much bigger picture here…partially because I’m just waiting for them to take the shirts off, but more importantly because this film dares to create a totally gay love story set during World War II with a good vampire vibe moving the story forward. Sure, the movie has its moments of feeling like there were budget constraints, but overall I felt it did a fine job of creating its universe, capturing the essence of the time period and offering up some impressive sets.

The story is simple and straightforward. After a mysterious encounter with a red-robed figure on the battlefield, two soldiers get away from the explosions and encounter a pretty boy who offers to bring them to his father’s home for shelter.

Once at the house, we quickly learn it’s the son’s job to bring home “food” for him and the dad. Problem is he falls in love with one of the two young soldiers.

The film touches upon the effects of religion on young gay men and brings forth the parallels between vampires and gays both being considered monsters in society. Personally, I was drawn to the look and style of the film. It’s sexy, it’s romantic, it has some ominous atmosphere, and there’s a satisfying vampire battle in the final act.

There was only one scene that didn’t work for me and made me giggle, and it involved two German soldiers shooting at the main characters, with one guy behind the other and shooting a machine gun willy-nilly, which definitely would have hit the guy in front.

RAGE (2020)

It’s not often that one of the movies I watch proves to be more interesting than all the fun to be had on my iPad, but this drug trippy film starts strong and kept me fixated for a while. It feels sort of like backwoods horror sprinkled with a dash of folk horror.

A group of friends of varying gender identities and orientations vacations in a beachside house to party and have sex. After attending a rave, they begin to experience some very odd situations. An old lady at a shop they stop in appears to be pregnant (very freaky scene).

A weird plumber dude fishes things out of their toilet with his hands.

And then, while the group is doing drugs on the beach, one of them sees some sort of fireside occult ritual.

An intense buildup, a warped sense of reality thanks to the recreational drug use (or have they been roofied?), and sexual indulgences all establish the onset of something frightening and intriguing, but somehow the film fails to take advantage of the very elements it introduces. There’s so much that could have been explored, but the plot simply doesn’t commit to fully realizing the horrors at its disposal.

For instance, there’s a sort of backwoods vibe, in large part due to the fact that after the rave there seems to be no one else in the town but the old pregnant lady and the plumber. Where did everyone go? A cult aspect comes into play, but the few cult members only show up as needed to satisfy suspense scenes—the old lady and the plumber are the predominant threats. What the hell happened to the rest of the cult?

Even as the friends get abducted and gruesomely prodded in a secret lair for an extraction of sorts, the details of what is going on are fuzzy—the “cult” (of two) is only in need of one virgin for some sort of fertility ritual. And it’s not even a thrilling ritual, making for a very anticlimactic finale.

THE SLAUGHTER (2022)

In the wake of Scream back in 1996, we were inundated with loads of copycat slashers, and it was awesome! Even Euro horror took the sleek modern slasher route. Italian film The Slaughter, which is actually an English language movie, very much feels like a throwback to that era.

Imagine my surprise when the movie begins with an interracial gay male couple. They even share a quick kiss. I had high hopes for them.

Well, those homo hopes were dashed pretty fast. The white dude has no interest in hanging with the Black guy’s friends, so he’s immediately written out of the film. And once the slasher action starts, the gay Black guy, who is a hardcore horror fan and should recognize all the slasher signals in his reality as soon as they appear, somehow manages to be the first one to die. Sigh. Meanwhile, a lesbian couple gets a nude sex scene. No fair.

Anyway, the friends sneak into an abandoned movie studio and are welcomed by a creepy caretaker dude. As in Rage, this group offers a range of sexualities, and they’re looking to have sex, which is amplified after they each pop a pill.

The eerie, empty building set is great, and the slasher elements are classic if not cliché. It’s very American in style, with only one death scene that felt like an homage to old school Italian death scenes.

The killer wears a baby face mask reminiscent of masks from movies like Valentine and Happy Death Day. There are several good chase scenes, and the killer uses a variety of murder techniques—electrocution, acid bath, stabbing, etc.

While it’s mostly straightforward, the film seems to allude to other elements that are simply never expanded upon. The group finds and watches what appears to be a snuff film, but there’s never any concrete explanation as to its relevance to the current kills. There is some security camera POV that seems to imply there are supernatural elements. At one point, one characters flashes demon eyes and I seriously thought we were heading into Demons territory rather than slasher mode (that would have been awesome). And brace yourself. Near the end of the film the killer suddenly begins to make a Grudge sound! WTF? Did the filmmakers just assume everyone who watches the movie would know what that signifies so we could draw our own conclusions as to why the kills were happening? But if it’s a supernatural situation, why was the killer wearing a mask? Sigh.

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TUBI TERRORS: found footage, a lake zombie, and a creature in a bar

Posted on January 12, 2024 by Daniel

Even if I didn’t love all the films in this trio, each one had some scary elements that satisfied my horror appetite. Let’s take a look.

MISTER CREEP (2022)

Running only a little over an hour, this one brings nothing new to the found footage subgenre, and it’s fairly disjointed, but if you are a diehard fan of found footage films, you’ll probably feel right at home.

A small group of college students plans to make a film about a family that disappeared from their house without a trace. They get sidetracked by a bigger story…a serial killer in a clown mask who would bring people to his farmhouse and film their murders while broadcasting them.

We get footage of the clown being interrogated, the kids taking a trip to the abandoned police station where he was held, and visiting a woman with some knowledge of the events. Eventually they somehow end up just running around screaming in the woods, because isn’t that how every found footage film has to end?

Despite the messy presentation, there are several creepy sequences, along with a freaky looking doll, as well as a few jump scares. But overall, I would really only recommend this one to found footage lovers. Then again, it’s only like an hour long, so you don’t have much to lose for some cheap thrills in return.

NIX (2022)

The director of all the Sharknado movies and numerous other cheesy fun SyFy originals makes an attempt at elevated horror, which (like most elevated horror) is essentially trauma porn. On top of that, the script tries so hard to be complex and deep that it ends up turning in on itself.

On the bright side, an awesome zombie monster rises from a lake to terrorize a family. It’s definitely the highlight of this heavy-handed family drama. Sadly, we spend the whole movie wondering if it’s real or just a metaphorical monster.

The opening scene shows us how the family tragedy began, and because the monster is questionably real, the sequence plays out quite oddly. Basically, a husband, wife, and their young daughter and sons go camping in the woods, the daughter vanishes in the water, and the father fails to save her. We see the zombie monster come out of the water and have to assume it killed the father because…

…flash to the future, and the mother (played by Dee Walllace) and her grown sons are still struggling with the inexplicable absence of the daughter and father years before.

There’s plenty of creepy and sometimes odd stuff going on, the zombie monster lurks in shadows, and people die. The family starts to unravel, and it doesn’t help that Dee is so lost in her grief that she decides they need to go back to the location where she last had her family together. Sigh.

It sucks that this movie just gets so damn confusing. I don’t know what they were going for, because there are so many unanswered questions that pile up as the plot continues to derail and go in circles. I honestly couldn’t determine whether the monster was real or metaphorical when all was said and done. Perhaps the point was to leave the decision up to viewers, but it fricking pissed me off.

CRAVING (2023)

 

An awesome monster mouth on the poster art made me put this one in my watchlist. Plus, Felissa Rose was at the top of the cast list.

Well, Felissa doesn’t even last twenty minutes, and the monster doesn’t come in until the last twenty minutes. Argh.

You’d think a movie with a plot similar to that of Feast (patrons in a bar terrorized by a creature) would go all out with the monster madness. Instead, this film goes all out with the irrelevant backstories of all the characters, who are all junkies. So many characters to care about I didn’t know what to do with myself. Okay, yes I did. I just focused on the bearded hottie…

Anyway. There is a group in the bar. Then another group crashes and holds them at gunpoint. In the meantime, a third group keeps all those in the bar trapped inside and warns that one of them is a monster, and they will be trapped inside until they let the monster out to be dealt with.

What can I say? It could have been cool. Instead, there’s lots of talk, fights, flashbacks, lesbians, and red horror lighting while we wait impatiently for a monster reveal.

I can’t believe they could deliver such an awesome practical effects monster and then choose to only feature it for about fifteen minutes. But dang, it sure does kick ass for those fifteen minutes, with plenty of gore. Is it worth sitting through the rest of the film to get to this part? In this case I’d say yes.

As if to make up for an hour of no action, there’s another monster massacre sequence during the closing credits, and it’s even better than the monster attacks during the final act. However, it’s a totally different vibe than the serious tone of the rest of the movie, with a grindhouse filter as whimsical hillbilly music plays and the monster goes on an exploitative killing spree. Awesome.

 

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PRIME TIME: hotel ghosts, a summer camp slasher, and a mad mommy demon

Posted on January 11, 2024 by Daniel

All three of these flicks brought to mind movies of past decades, so I did get some retro satisfaction out of at least two of them. Let’s take a look.

THE OVERNIGHT (2022)

I guess it doesn’t matter to newer generations of horror fans, but for me, if you’re going to make a movie along the lines of The Shining, you have to rise to the occasion, and this film just didn’t for me.

A straight couple on a road trip has to make an emergency stop at a creepy hotel. The manager and owner are odd, so it’s no surprise the couple begins seeing ghosts everywhere.

There are plenty of great hack n slash murders here, but they are all simply residual hauntings giving us flashbacks to the hotel’s history.

The dudes running the place know about the ghosts eternally trapped in the building, so they clearly have a plan for our main couple.

Unfortunately, the scariest thing that happens besides the couple spotting the ghosts is black gunk splattering all over the guy while he’s showering. I wasn’t exactly mesmerized by this one. Ghost movies just don’t give me the willies like they used to back in the Poltergeist era…when I was 13.

FINAL SUMMER (2023)

If you are in the mood for a totally derivative summer camp slasher, this one definitely checks off all the right boxes. There’s a paper thin, predictable storyline, but it doesn’t really matter, because it’s all about the masked killer with an axe chasing counselors through the woods.

It begins with a faux scare campfire story, then we meet forgettable counselors—including the final girl, which is the downside here. It’s not the actress’s fault. She simply doesn’t have any material to work with to make her a sympathetic character or hero we’re rooting for.

Along with really great, blue-hued moon lighting, what worked for me is the fact that instead of victims being picked off one by one because they’re unaware of the threat, the whole camp of counselors almost immediately learns of the killer’s presence during a chaotic massacre.

The survivors spend the rest of the movie either huddled in a cabin while the killer lurks outside, or being chased through the woods by the killer.

That is about it. There’s not much more to it. There are standard levels of violence and blood (PG-13 level, I’d say), and you will most likely guess who the killer is, but if you love those summer camp slashers from the eighties, I’d say Final Summer is an okay time killer. My favorite part is when the killer runs full speed after one victim. Eek!

THE NAMELESS DAYS (2022)

Maybe I’m just in a nostalgic mood, because the old school feel of these flicks is bringing me comfort compared to the more mainstream modern horror coming out these days.

This one reminds me of the vengeful female specter PG-13 movies of the 00s. The timely take here is that the film focuses on a teenage girl and her father whose property is on the edge of the Mexican border, where migrants are trying to get into the U.S.


Let him in!

When a new mother and her brother try to sneak through a tunnel to cross the border, one of their travel companions is attacked.

What’s refreshing is that this isn’t a heavy-handed commentary on illegal immigrants. Instead, our main girl tries to help the migrants when a vengeful demon begins pursuing them to get its gnarly hands on the baby.

The creature is awesome, and even if this is a fairly average horror flick, there are several really effective moments when the demon is chasing the main characters. On top of that, the main girl is very likable, and her dad’s friend is a cutie.

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PRIME TIME: demons, cults, and home invaders

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Daniel

Time to look at an odd triple feature I selected from my Prime watchlist. One of the movies even has a queer aspect…briefly.

SAVING GRACE (2023)

Argh! This movie has its moments and some clever aspects, but it all gets negated by the execution. It feels like the writing throws all these loose ends our way just to make the narrative twist a success.

We meet Sarah, who cares for invalids for a living. She heads to a secluded home by a lake to care for Grace, a woman who became an unresponsive mute after her twin sister dived into the water and just disappeared.

This is a slow burn that has Sarah struggling to keep her cool when it feels like someone else is in the house with them. Is it the ghost of Grace’s sister? Is the sister actually still alive? Is Grace just sleepwalking around the property? Is the caretaker who lives on the grounds really a nice a guy, or is there something he’s not telling Sarah? Has Sarah been brought to the property for a bigger, more sinister reason?

It’s hard to tell, mostly because this is yet another film made by creators convinced that the only way to deliver scares is to make every scene so dark we can’t see anything, and to ensure the main character, no matter how terrified she is, never turns on a fucking light. It’s infuriating.

The film is vaguely suspenseful, but it does recognize that it needs to keep things interesting, so it throws in a scary sequence that is actually a nightmare sequence (sigh).

On top of that, while the final twist is a goodie, there is no effort to explain all the other shady situations that made Sarah’s spidey senses tingle—what became of Grace’s sister’s body; what was up with the Lucifer book in the office of the woman who hired her; the suggestion that the caretaker had a secret hobby; the passing reference to a childhood trauma Sarah experienced; Sarah choking up a hairball…. none of it matters enough to be addressed by the script.

THE DEVIL COMES AT NIGHT (2023)

Not only does the title sound cliché, but the movie itself builds on familiar concepts in other occult-oriented home invasion flicks. Despite that, the Devil is in the details, and there are some unique details here. Unfortunately, the film fails to tap into what makes the best home invasion horror work.

So what’s unique here? A Black man comes to the home of his recently deceased, estranged father looking for his inheritance. This soon leads to a Black man vs. white supremacists angle.

We slowly learn of the Black man’s family history and how it relates directly with the motivation of the white cult that is surrounding his father’s house but unable to come in. And best of all…the specific goal of this cult is for their leader to eat the Black dude.

Setting the scene is intense, but only briefly, for with several odd characters dropping by too quickly to build momentum, the plot gets right to the point—bad cult wants in. We’re left with way too much time that needs to sustain suspense, and it just doesn’t happen. On top of that, so many extremely dark scenes cloak the action. Argh! The only thing worse than sitting through one film that is too darkly lit is to sit through two in a row!

PARABLE (2023)

The constantly changing plots and tonal shifts in this South African film will have your head spinning faster than Regan’s in The Exorcist. I say that because, well, this is partially a possession film.

That’s not how it starts. It begins with a teenage girl getting caught kissing another girl. Her father sends her to a reverend for “conversion therapy”.

But is this a film about the horrors of conversion therapy? I’m not sure. The reverend concludes that lesbianism isn’t the main problem here. He believes the girl is possessed! So he straps her down to a bed and calls in some other dude to help him cleanse her.

Meanwhile, there’s this group of friends. One dude smokes pot, and all his friends are afraid he may have done something awful to his ex-girlfriend, which he denies.

And yet, the possessed lesbian begins visiting him in his nightmares. She also likes to bite people. At this point, I was like the only one who cared that she’s a lesbian.

When the group of friends eventually has a party, the possessed lesbian summons all the guests to come to her, and they basically turn into zombies that prey on the reverend, his sidekick, and the main group of friends.

Whiplash, I tell you.

Perhaps the film is trying to imply that sinful homosexuality is a plague that will take everyone down with it? I don’t know. I usually like these weird films that jump subgenres from one scene to the next with no rhyme or reason, but I found this one to be too mild and horror lite to pull off the bizarre vibe it was going for.

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