PRIME TIME: slashing in different styles

Posted on June 6, 2022 by Daniel

My latest marathon on Prime was definitely an interesting selection, so let’s get right into them.

BURIAL GROUND MASSACRE (2021)

If you were around in 1996, you’ll remember there were loads of cheap, copycat slashers released in the wake of Scream. Burial Ground Massacre feels very much like one of those.

While focused entirely on a bunch of college kids partying in a house built on a Native American burial ground, this film flips the finger at contemporary verbiage, so the word Indian is used instead of Native American. On top of that, the whole film is based on appropriation more than an actual “Indian curse”. The killer runs around in a fricking tribal mask and a hoodie.

The kids become oddly interested in researching Indian legends while they should be partying and having sex. As a result, they end up in possession of an artifact the killer has been hunting for.

Therefore, the guy in the hoodie has to start killing them off. The film is way too long at 100 minutes, the kill scenes are bland, there’s little in the way of tension or scares, there’s too much filler of the kids just hanging out, the kids are not distinct or memorable (except the shirtless cutie below, of course), and the attempt at surprises and twists in the final act just weigh down the pacing with tons of exposition through dialogue.

And finally, considering horror veteran Michael Madsen is listed in the credits and we never see him throughout the film, the ending is essentially spoiled.

PSYCHOPATHS (2017)

There is very little I can say about this movie. It is horror eye candy with little in the way of a discernible plot.

I’ll put it to you this way. Imagine Dario Argento making The Purge, and you get Psychopaths.

It’s simply a series of stunningly shot and gruesome and violent death scenes as people in masks go nuts and torture and kill other people during the course of one particular night.

Footage goes from bright Argento neon to black and white, we get split screen, there’s some narration, there is a quirky musical performance, there are cringe-worthy visuals, and there’s no making sense of any of it.

EVIL EVERYWHERE (2019)

Running only 64 minutes long, this throwback film is more about getting the early 80s direct-to-video feel right than delivering a plot of any substance.

We are informed briefly that two years ago in 1985, members of a senior class were killed off alphabetically, and a young man and a mysterious girl tracked down the demonic killer then went into hiding.

Now the evil force is back and the main guy has to hunt it down once more. A grind house filter and several cool now wave tracks set the tone, and there are plenty of supernatural kills, as well as an occasional appearance of a demon in a hood, but there’s not much story or character development to speak of.

In the end the main kid and some friends have to go to an old mansion to exorcise the demon in an array of bad 80s-style special effects that look mostly like sparklers on the Fourth of July.

If you’re really itching for some throwback horror, you might as well check this one out, because it definitely gives you the vibes and is only an hour long.

 

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PRIME TIME: I really blew it when I added these three to my watchlist

Posted on June 3, 2022 by Daniel

Slashers, witches, Satanism, ghosts…I really thought there would be something to like here. But this triple feature was a disappointment.

SATAN’S SERVANT (2021)

This film is touted as being made by high school students, so if you’re going into it, keep that firmly in mind.

Overall it’s a silly little film filled with way too much exposition in the first hour. At least it finally pays off in the last half hour with some low budget slasher action…all wrapped up in a satanic ritual plot.

After a high school girl disappears in an opening home invasion scene, four friends become convinced she’s been kidnapped as part of a satanic sacrifice plot in their own neighborhood.

The whole film revolves around them trying to break her free from a house while being chased by a guy in a ski mask.

This definitely feels like an amateur production. You decide if it’s worth it for the fairly entertaining hack ‘n’ slash sequence at the end.

THE DEMENTED (2021)

This movie is just so not my thing. The general concept is interesting for a horror movie—women lured into a sex trafficking/snuff film ring get revenge from beyond the grave.

Unfortunately, a majority of this film involves one man in a mask tormenting one woman tied up and squirming in a bed while begging for her life.

Other elements of the film include horror queen Felissa Rose as a detective doing some interrogation, and the “ghosts” of the previous victims communicating with the current victim.

Problem for me was that the exploitation of the one woman by the man takes away all sense of this being a movie; it starts to feel like nothing more than jerk-off material for right wing incel nutbags.

A DEADLY LEGEND (2020)

This is how you top off a bad Prime marathon. Not even appearances by Judd Hirsch, Corbin Bernsen, and Lori Petty can help this sloppy mess of a witchcraft/ghost story/slasher mashup.

There’s land with a cursed past that has been sold. Judd Hirsch is the crazy old man warning everyone that developing on it is a mistake.

Corbin Bernsen runs a new age shop and also has a vested interest in what becomes of the land. Lori Petty works with a construction crew digging on the property.

Beyond that, I had no idea what was going on. There were a whole lot of people staying at a place on the land, but I wasn’t quite sure who they all were or how they all knew each other.

Apparently a bunch of girls unleash something by having a séance. The construction workers also seem to unleash something while digging. The ghost girl roams around trying to be scary. One of the main girls seems to get possessed by a warrior witch.

One of the construction workers gets possessed and stalks everyone with a pick axe.  This kind of disjointed nonsense works in 80s euro horror, but it didn’t work here. This is an uninspired, scare-free, gore-free disaster with no clear plot.

 

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It came to Blu-ray in 2022, and I bought it

Posted on June 2, 2022 by Daniel

It’s the three latest new releases I’ve added to my collection—a sequel forty years in the making, a new one from Ti West, and the Foo Fighters horror comedy.

DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW 2 (2022)

The writer of the original made-for-TV hit from October of 1981 has decided to treat us to a sequel over forty years later, which he both writes and directs. So, was it worth the wait…for those of us who’ve been around long enough to wait?

Here’s the bright side. The low-key death scenes have some good atmosphere and feel just as effective as something you would have seen in a 1981 made-for-TV movie, so it definitely captures the spirit of the original in that sense. There was even one jump scare that got me.

Also, it’s a supernatural slasher. Bubba has been resurrected in a scarecrow to kill again—there’s mention of the mysterious deaths years before, someone visits his grave, and a white flower is left behind several times (in the original film, Bubba was in a field picking white flowers with the little girl he was wrongly accused of killing).

While the 1981 film aired right before Halloween, it wasn’t a Halloween film. The sequel skirts the issue, too. No one mentions Halloween, yet one (and only one) character has her house adorned with Halloween decorations and jack-o’-lanterns. Weird.

Other than all that, it’s not a very good movie. The story is what I’d call desperate. A woman and her son move to town just as a farmer is murdered, and his farmhand goes on the run because the police think he did it (a plot that sort of mimics a key element of the original film).

But like I said, he didn’t do it. It’s the supernatural scarecrow. As we work our way through victims to find out who resurrected Bubba and why, there’s a silly side story involving the new woman in town being embroiled in testifying against someone who now wants revenge. Ugh. It makes for a goofy final act in the cornfield that feels like something from a soap opera. It’s most definitely not a worthy follow-up to the classic from 81, and there’s no one to blame but the very man who created the original story to begin with.

X (2022)

The wait is finally over for fans of Ti West and his throwback film-making style. This time he goes for the backwoods slasher subgenre, and while X may not be the best of his films, it most definitely manages to be a love letter to Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre while giving us a notably unique slasher motivation.

From the moment the cast and crew of a porno film gets in a van in 1979 and heads to an isolated farmhouse, to all the camera angles and perspectives of the location, there’s no doubt that TCM is being given a big hug here.

Hell, there are even a few random moments involving a gator that I’m guessing are a nod to Hooper’s follow-up film Eaten Alive, but West manages to make his gator a much more captivating on screen spectacle while somehow keeping it incredibly understated.

The porn makers include the likes of Kid Cudi as the studly star…

…and Jenna Ortega of Scream 5 as the main girl…

Martin Henderson of The Ring still looks good almost two decades later and runs around in tightly whities…

…and Brittany Snow plays the porn queen. “Titanium” may have been her lady jam in Pitch Perfect, but she is introduced with man jam on her back in X…Kid Cudi’s man jam to be exact. And not to forget her singing past, she does an acoustic cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” in the film.

And then there’s the plot. As with all West films, this is a slow burn, but once the shit hits the fan late in the film, it comes at you fast and furious. And it is a deliciously icky backwoods concept that also makes a statement about the sex drives and sex lives of aging couples.

See, the filmmakers are renting a guest space on the farm of an elderly couple, and the movie they’re making, which they’re trying to do in secret, doesn’t stay secret for long…and it really gets some rusty geriatric gears going. And we all know when they can’t get laid in slashers, killers gonna kill…

STUDIO 666 (2022)

The Foo Fighters enlisted the director of Hatchet 3 to bring us this demonic hard rock horror comedy that does the basic “rock band dabbles in Satanism” premise right.

Simply enough, the Foo Fighters are sent to an empty mansion to record a new album, but Dave Grohl is having songwriter’s block. That is until he finds signs of occult rituals in the basement, along with a reel-to-reel tape with a partially complete, kick ass rocker on it that he is obsessed with finishing.

Or should I say…possessed with finishing.

The band members manage to quite naturally act better than many “actors” in so many of the indie films made these days, which helps a lot. Adding to that, they get help from Jeff Garlin (recently given the boot from The Goldbergs) as their agent, and Whitney Cummings as the neighbor who is trying to warn them of the dangers of the mansion, along with other familiar faces.

Lionel Richie makes a comedic cameo, John Carpenter makes a brief appearance, and Jenna Ortega, who is building her horror resume mighty fast, gets the honor of appearing in the opening death scene.

And speaking of death scenes, as Dave turns demonic, the kills get increasingly gory, gooey, and satisfying—definitely reminiscent of Hatchet level mutilations, with a chainsaw kill being the highlight in terms of doing something deliciously different visually with a death scene involving a predictable weapon.

The guys are funny, it’s bittersweet seeing the late Taylor Hawkins having fun starring in a horror movie, and there’s even a quick notable comment on the state of rock music in this day and age. If I have any complaint about the movie, it’s merely that at an hour and 45 minutes, it does start to feel a little long before the final act is through, but luckily there’s plenty of horror action packed into that final act.

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PRIME TIME: home invasion horror and a Lovecraft creature

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Daniel

Yay! It was a triple feature marathon of movies from my Prime list, and I had a good time with all three of them…and one even features a gay couple.

BABYSITTER MUST DIE (2020)

The deceiving cover and title make this one seem like it’s going to be a low budget, hack ‘n’ slash horror comedy. Turns out it’s mostly a serious home invasion suspense flick with a nice deviation from the norms.

For starters, it takes place at Christmas time, so I’m adding it to the holiday horror page. Second, while it takes a while for the truth to come out, the reason for the invaders infiltrating this house actually has a paranormal angle to it. And finally, the coolest part of all is that the only one who can save the family that is being terrorized is their babysitter, who manages to hide before the home invaders can see her.

The home invasion elements offer pretty typical thriller sequences, but what kind of feels out of place here is that the babysitter uses her skills gained as a sort of girl scout when she was a kid to take on the invaders.

She wears all her merit badges as a belt, so every time she applies one of her acquired skills, that particular badge magnifies on screen for a temporary freeze frame of the babysitter in action. It’s a silly little novelty that doesn’t seem to fit the tone of the film.

Also important to note is that while I appreciate the paranormal plot device, the film doesn’t delve into it visually—I can only assume because they didn’t have the budget for it and it would just complicate matters. That said, the lack of any kind of supernatural special effects or focus on the supernatural threat didn’t hinder the overall flow of the film at all for me.

And finally, just note that the babysitter doesn’t look much like a teenager (if that’s what she’s supposed to be). In fact, she bears a striking resemblance to former White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

HP LOVECRAFT’s THE DEEP ONES (2020)

Chad Ferris has been making indie horror films for over two decades—Unspeakable, The Ghouls, Easter Bunny Kill Kill, Someone’s Knocking at the Door, Exorcism at 60,000 Feet, The Chair—and I have a majority of them in my collection. In fact, I immediately ordered The Deep Ones on DVD after watching it. It has that 80s-esque Lovecraftian adaptation vibe; it’s sexual, sleazy, drenched in red light, and even has classic, eerie whistling sci-fi style music.

After a recent miscarriage, a pretty couple comes to stay in a seaside community with a very welcoming and accommodating couple…that is also part of some sort of cult that basically wants to summon the Dagon so it can impregnate women.

It’s good old simple horror—how is this couple going to escape the clutches of this psychotic cult and avoid being fish fucked?

There are plenty of great scenes involving nasty tentacles coming out from between the legs of females, and the ridiculously handsome husband even gets deep throated by one. Sexy.

And the good news is it’s all practical effects, including the awesome creature that eventually rises from the surf for some sexy times. Plus, we get 80s horror fave Kelli Maroney of Night of the Comet in a fairly substantial role as the “crazy lady” trying to warn the couple of the danger they’re in.

Also of note is that one older woman is actually played by a man in drag.

I’ve seen plenty of Lovecraft adaptations in the past few years that are just dull and lifeless, and because they’re indies they don’t even deliver on any of the creature goodness we get here. Not to mention, director Chad Ferris doesn’t try to follow the rules of sterile, generic Hollywood horror films, so there’s always some fun subversion reminiscent of the nasties of the direct-to-VHS days.

KNIFECORP (2021)

While watching this film, I was astounded to see how many bad reviews it has on IMDb. Scratch that. I shouldn’t have been astounded, because everyone is a horrible horror critic these days. This shit is a little indie comedy horror treat.

A young man named Wally and his young coworkers head into a community to sell knives door to door. Wally is invited in by horror king Kane Hodder, who is so perfect in his role as a seemingly chill but stern dude…who turns out to be a psycho with some family issues.

When Wally leaves Kane’s house without selling a knife, he forgets the knife at the house. So, like an idiot, Wally and his friends decide to sneak into the house to get the knife back.

It’s reverse home invasion as the kids become trapped inside with crazy Kane stalking and killing them. The cast is fun and funny with great comic timing, the humor is subtle and successful, and there’s a notable gay couple who has a very natural exchange expressing their feelings for each other…including a kiss that lands this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

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A different kind of demon, a pandemic gone wild, and a bloodthirsty vigilante

Posted on May 31, 2022 by Daniel

It’s a trio of flicks featuring less-than-human terrors, with a demon, the infected, and an anti-hero.

DEMONIC (2021)

The director of District 9 goes a completely different route and gives us a possession movie that plays out like a horror video game, often looks like a video game, and features a demon that goes rogue instead of remaining strapped to a bed. Cool…and…weird.

For sure the plot is kind of out there. A woman is asked to be part of a sort of virtual reality experiment involving a coma patient…her mother! They want her to go inside the mother’s mind to see what’s up.

Seems mother and daughter became estranged when the mother killed a whole lot of people. But, like an idiot, the daughter agrees to go along with the research.

And that’s where we get into Silent Hill territory. Scenes inside her mom’s brain get a video game graphics filter, with the daughter exploring creepy locations and seeing frightening forms in the shadows.

What’s odd is that while there’s loads of atmosphere, this movie is never really scary…except one part, which totally kicks ass and doesn’t even take place in the mother’s mind. It’s a sequence that involves her friend coming over to visit her in the middle of the night to see how she’s doing, and it’s chilling.

I do think this is a refreshing break from the usual rip-off of The Exorcist, but the main girl’s infuriating choices to continuously run directly towards danger made this even more like a video game, because they are the kinds of decisions you’d only make in a horror video game. In other words, totally against your will just to finish the damn game if you’re anything like me.

THE SADNESS (2021)

You know you’re old and have seen way too many horror movies over the decades when a movie getting loads of buzz on social media for being mind-blowingly vicious and gory feels totally cliché to you…and even bores you at points.

Summing it up, I would say The Sadness from Taiwan is like I Am a Hero meets 28 Weeks Later with more gore and perversion…but still way less than the gross out levels of Dead Alive.

I will give it credit for having some visually arresting setup shots and several fantastic sequences, but overall, this is just extremely derivative. It’s also clearly a commentary on the whole societal response to COVID.

There was a pandemic, and now the country has decided to move past it despite scientists trying to warn that mutations are inevitable and it’s not just scare tactics because there’s an election coming up.

A cute young guy and his girlfriend venture out into the city and go their separate ways for the day. Before long, everyone around them is turning into The Crazies, gleefully smiling as they stab, beat, eat, and rape people.

The film starts off strong with plenty of horror action and blood gushing as we follow the two on their personal journeys through the insanity. Yet the most perverse and disgusting elements are very often implied rather than shown (for instance, a horny infected dude plucking out a girl’s eye then fucking the socket).

There is also major slowdown in the center of the film before the his and her stories eventually merge together as the couple comes closer to finding one another in the final act. Honestly, her horror adventure is more interesting, with her being chased by the horny infected dude, who is determined to make her his.

SHE NEVER DIED (2019)

This sequel to He Never Died comes from the director of Berkshire County, one of my Halloween horror faves, and it’s a standalone film that focuses on a totally different man-eating crime fighter…this time a Black woman instead of Henry Rollins.

She lives on the street and is in the midst of hunting down a brother/sister sex trafficking team when a detective that has gone rogue to capture them figures out She is following the same trail he is. So he enlists her “services” in killing people and getting rid of the bodies to help take down the sex traffickers.

To complicate matters, a feisty girl She rescues from the sex traffickers becomes enamored with her and serves as an unlikely and unwelcome sidekick (that She has urges to eat).

A basic vigilante film with some okay gore, a few good violent fight scenes, and some understated humor, this is fairly entertaining, but not enthralling enough for multiple viewings. A brief but action-packed massacre at a party near the end is most definitely the highlight.

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PRIME TIME: dabbling in the occult and bringing out the beasts

Posted on May 23, 2022 by Daniel

Despite being very different in plot and tone, these three films kind of worked together due to some common threads. They made for an absolutely unintentional, logical weekend triple feature–I was merely knocking off the next three flicks on my Prime watchlist.

THE BELIEVER (2021)

This is a film I probably should have walked away from the minute the philosophical and theological babble began—which was like, the first minute—but I didn’t. So I’ll just make this quick to warn away those who despise religious horror as much as I do.

A scientist believes his health is deteriorating. His wife aborted a baby without consulting him. They talk to each other like members of two different cults. They can’t have intimate relations. They shouldn’t even be together, let alone living in the same house.

Billy Zane has a small role as his therapist.

The husband thinks the wife believes she’s possessed. She thinks he’s possessed. He thinks she’s messing with him when he starts to hear noises related to a baby. He starts to have scary delusions.

Things eventually go into Misery territory.

I had only a vague idea of what was going on.

The final few minutes were kind of creepy and interesting even though I didn’t have a full grasp on what was unfolding. The ending did kind of give you that, “Oh, so that’s what was going on the whole time” light bulb turning on over your head feeling, though.

FLESH (2021)

Running a sweet 70 minutes long, this little indie doesn’t break new ground, but it does combine body horror and the occult and wrap them up in a practical effects feast for the eyes.

It’s all quite simple. It begins with a young woman tied up as part of some sort of ritual in the middle of the woods. She gets away from the man who abducted her, and as soon as she’s safe and in a shower, her body begins to fall apart.

As she struggles to figure out what’s wrong with her, she spends most of the film walking city streets drenched in red light while being followed by a horned demon shadow. She also has what she thinks at first are gruesome delusions or nightmares.

As her body continues to morph, her friend tries to track her down to help her.

The final act is definitely the money shot, with some delicious monster effects that gave me flashbacks to 80s horror.

THE MANOR (2021)

This Prime original runs only 81 minutes long, but considering it’s rather tame and there aren’t that many chills or thrills before stakes are raised in the final act, it easily could have been a short in an anthology and given us a more concise flow and better pacing.

The atmosphere and tone deliver the usual spooky house feel of typical Hollywood horror of the past decade, so don’t expect to be on the edge of your seat. Perfect example—the first “jump scare” is a loud orchestral stab because a worker at the nursing home Barbara Hershey has just been admitted to comes up behind her. Ugh.

What makes the film unnerving in a less manufactured way is the circumstances—when Hershey begins to see freaky things in the shadows at night, no one believes her, and staff, doctors, and her own family assume she’s showing signs of dementia.

Yes, it’s becoming a more common theme in horror movies as of late, so it’s probably no coincidence that none other than the leading lady from The Taking of Deborah Logan plays one of the residents of the home. In contrast to that film, this one is horror lite in its take on old age and how we treat the elderly.

While fairly predictable as it progresses, The Manor still manages to entertain and has a few creepy monster moments, but the final act gets downright goofy, and some very good actors seem to just lose control of their craft. I felt like I was suddenly watching a totally different movie. Weird.

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Time for some pseudo found footage flicks

Posted on May 19, 2022 by Daniel

It’s a triple feature with filmed footage, but the intent is to take different approaches to how and why the characters are filming the footage. Let’s see how that worked out for these horror flicks.

CURSE OF AURORE (2020)

If you love found footage films, you should probably check this one out. It sort of combines the long-winded storytelling style of The Blair Witch Project with the cult themes presented later in the Paranormal Activity franchise.

Curse of Aurore is book-ended with a dude who has an internet show in which he covers murder mysteries and such. It’s a pointless gimmick beyond perhaps trying to make the creators feel like they weren’t doing just another paint-by-numbers found footage film.

Anyway, this dude receives a USB drive in the mail, plugs it in, and then the found footage begins. Three young filmmakers—a girl and two guys—travel to her (uninhabited) family home to get inspiration for a script. Seems there’s a story of a young girl in the town who was tortured and murdered by her family, but no one was ever held accountable.

Thing is, the main girl’s house is haunted enough for them to never even have to go to the dead little girl’s house (which they eventually do). Therein lies the problem with this film. While there’s plenty of mystery unfolding along the way, none of it ever adds up or even logically links to what becomes of the trio by the end. Before they even delve into the past of the little girl, they’re being terrorized by something, and we never learn why.

The good news is there are definitely some creepy and chilling moments to keep us entertained, and the ending is a little more exciting than your average low budget found footage film (if not just as predictable).

And finally, as with most found footage films, a huge annoyance is that the guy with the camera never puts it down. It doesn’t even make sense because the characters are not shooting a film or hunting for ghosts or anything like that. So, for instance, when their car gets stuck in a ditch and they go to a stranger’s house for help, it is beyond disrespectful that this dude is welcomed inside and chooses to film the strangers and their home instead of turning off the camera. Ridiculous.

UNTITLED HORROR MOVIE (2021)

Horror movies that take place entirely through video conversations have become a thing in the past few years, in part thanks to COVID hitting. Some of them can be headache inducing, but Untitled Horror Movie is clean and simple, and I was pretty damn entertained.

It’s funny, it’s suspenseful, it has plenty of horror meta references, there are a few successful jump scares, the performances walk the perfect line between serious and campy, and it even features cameos by Kal Penn and Aisha Tyler.

Six actors get the heads-up that they are about to be fired from their television show. So they decide to make a low budget found footage film by simply filming their parts at home on their phones. Little do they know that when they each film an occult ritual scene, they actually conjure some sort of evil presence. Brilliant little concept.

Slowly but surely they begin to experience creepy situations, but no one is really sure if it’s real or if everyone is just acting. It has a found footage feel to it—you’re spooked by what you can’t see—but things ramp up in the last act, which really had me on the edge of my seat.

And the final scene pay-off is just silly plain horror fun.

SUPERHOST (2021)

This fun little movie is like a mashup of a found footage film, home invasion flick, and psycho stalker thriller of the early 1990s.

A straight couple has a travel vlogging channel online. They visit destinations then film videos of the experience, giving reviews of whether or not it’s worth vacationing there.

As they head to a villa in the woods, we learn that he secretly plans to propose to her on the show. As usual, it’s just irrelevant fluff added simply to make you feel something for the characters.

They can’t get into the villa once they arrive and have to call the owner of the place to help. She’s over-the-top, super enthusiastic, overbearing, has no filters, and quickly becomes a little intrusive. And when a woman shows up to give the couple a hard time because they gave her business a bad review (horror queen Barbara Crampton), the owner’s cheery demeanor turns frighteningly nasty in an instant.

In other words, she’s a psycho, and actress Gracie Gillam steals the show playing the part. She should be getting some major horror queen notice, with a long list of roles in TV shows like Z Nation, The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, and Scream Queens, plus movies like the Fright Night remake, Some Kind of Hate, Dark Summer, and Tales of Halloween.

Her manic, stalk and destroy performance in the final act definitely gives this one more life than similar films.

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Getting a head start on bad shark movies for the summer season

Posted on May 18, 2022 by Daniel

I couldn’t wait until Memorial Day weekend to kick off some summer style viewing, so I dived into a trio of goofy shark flicks. Let’s check them out.

TOXIC SHARK (2017)

This is how you do a cheesy CGI shark movie right. And even better? It’s a shark/zombie hybrid flick!

3 cute guys come to a resort island because one of them broke up with his girlfriend. 3 girls come to the resort island because one of them broke up with her boyfriend. You know what that means.

Meanwhile, the resort owner is tipped off that there might be something toxic in the water, but he ignores the warning. You know what that means….

The toxic shark starts attacking right away, and there is plenty of green goo spitting and over-the-top, full-body swallowing scenes. Eventually one girl is bit, survives…and becomes hungry for flesh. Teehee.

There’s not a ton of focus on people turning into zombies, but it’s just enough to complicate matters for the survivors trying to figure out how to get off the island.

This film has it all—silly kills, bad character choices, great underwater POV shots that are terrifying even in bad CGI shark movies, and a series of complications to make matters worse for the survivors (leading to even more bad decisions). And you gotta give props to a film that shows diversity…by featuring one lone Black guy on an entire island paradise filled with young people partying. Sigh.

AVALANCHE SHARKS (2014)

When I forced my hubby to make it a Saturday sharkathon, he warned me after Toxic Sharks that you can’t top the best bad shark movie ever and we should just call it quits. I pointed out that we’d never know if it was the best bad shark movie ever until we watched another one.

He was right, but I’m going to make sure he never reads this post and learns that he was right once in 29 years.

Avalanche Sharks has SyFy silliness written all over it. There’s not a lot to invest in the characters that come to a ski resort and get gulped down by CGI icicle sharks, which is fine, because the only reason to watch this film is for the gulps.

The sharks that swim through the snow came into being because they were summoned by a Native American man as part of a revenge plot. That’s all you really need to know. Just note that the kills and action are much more fun (and funnier) in the final act.

THE REQUIN (2022)

I heard this movie was bad, but I seriously can’t process what I watched. If my memory serves me correct, this would have to be the worst mainstream shark flick I’ve seen since The Shallows.

Alicia Silverstone and her man or on vacation and staying in a house on stilts. For incomprehensible reasons, they aren’t warned way in advance that a devastating storm is approaching that will assuredly wipe out all the houses on stilts near the water, so they are never ordered by authorities to evacuate.

Conveniently, theirs is the only house that is washed away.

Oddly, no search party is assembled to go look for it the next day.

Wouldn’t you know, Alicia’s man has a bleeding wound on his leg.

In order to get the attention of a far off ship, the couple decides to light a fire on what remains of their house. Needless to say, they accidentally burn their house down.

Just like Jack and Rose, they can’t both fit completely on the piece of driftwood, so when the sharks show up, the husband can no longer be all there for Alicia.

At this point I was convinced this is all a delusion that Alicia is having because she’s in shock, because it’s all so ridiculous. She makes it to a tiny piece of land, fights off a shark clamped to her leg with a piece of coral (this is after already killing another shark with a piece of wood), sees some drunk dude on a tiny fishing boat, goes back in the damn water to get on his boat, and is suddenly targeted by a mega shark that appears out of nowhere and is more determined to kill Alicia than the shark was to kill Ellen Brody in Jaws: The Revenge.

The action was so absurd at this point I was praying for either Alicia or myself to wake up from this nightmare. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all just a bad dream for either of us.

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Dog vs. monster: have you watched a Watchers movie recently?

Posted on May 16, 2022 by Daniel

Based on a Dean Koontz novel, Watchers spawned three sequels over a ten-year span, and it even featured various horror veterans throughout the decade. Let’s take a look at all four flicks.

WATCHERS (1988)

I haven’t seen Watchers in over 30 years, and all I really remembered about it was that Corey Haim becomes buddies with an awesome, super intelligent dog. The movie came out soon after I lost the pup I grew up with, so naturally the dog is what stuck with me.

Having never read the Koontz book, I can’t speak to how much it strays from the source material, but I can say that this is such a perfectly orchestrated creature feature from start to finish.

It doesn’t let excessive exposition get in the way of the whole point…a dog and a creature to which it is telepathically linked escape from a research facility, and the creature is set on hunting down and killing the dog and anyone that gets in its way.

A lot of people get in its way, including a young Jason Priestley in a wild bicycle chase scene in the woods. Another fantastic chase scene with a cop and the creature is more energetic than some of the best chase scenes out there.

This whole film is fast-paced and delivers creature POV, teaser glimpses of the creature throughout, classic horror camera angles, killer jump scares, and gory deaths galore. And I can’t forget to mention our dog’s ability to spell things out on a computer keyboard using a pencil.

Adding to the fun, sci-fi/horror icon Michael Ironside works for the research facility and is looking for the dog, too.

All the monstrous fun aside, there are some plot points that never get clarified or resolved, like why the creature plucks out the eyes of its victims. But who cares? The creature fricking plucks out the eyes of its victims.

WATCHERS II (1990)

Barely cracking into the next decade, and this sequel already can’t live up to its predecessor from the 80s. It fails in so many ways to deliver on the creature feature thrills of the first film despite showing way more of the creature.

We start in a lab, where the creature kills a few people in a red-drenched scene reminiscent of the Tasmanian devil tale in Creepshow.

The dog escapes, the creature escapes. They both stumble upon Marc Singer, who plays a delinquent military man being transported in an army jeep. The dog helps Marc escape the creature, and then this film just drags and drags. That’s why we needed a little of this to keep us watching…

The dog has been anointed with the name Einstein, which sticks with him for the rest of the series, and he once again shows off his typing skills with a pencil.

The Marc and dog scenes get annoyingly cutesy, and the creature kill scenes are drained of all excitement and tension. Not even the addition of the old infrared creature POV can intensify the horror.

The creature is also treated somewhat more sympathetically than in the original film, because clearly any monster that has an affection for teddy bears can’t be all bad.

WATCHERS III (1994)

This is actually a direct sequel to part 2, with Wings Hauser taking over the Marc Singer role. He is sent to the jungles of South America with a team of military criminals to capture another creature and coincidentally runs into his old buddy Einstein. What are the chances?

This is a perfect example of cheap milking of a franchise name for direct-to-VHS marketing in the 1990s. The team spends the whole movie running through the woods and plotting to capture the creature.

There’s some cheesy gore and a cheesy monster, and it’s all so bad I even laughed at both the creature and the reaction of a victim it was killing at one point.

Sadly, Einstein doesn’t get to show off his spelling talents, because there are no computers or pencils in the jungle.

Despite an ample number of attack scenes, this is still predominantly boring with nothing exciting happening. The infrared creature POV is ineffective once again, the dog isn’t as lovable as in the previous films, there’s a mute boy thrown into the mix to team up with Hauser to take on the creature at the end, and even though Hauser is the “good guy”, he still comes across as the type of psychopath he plays best.

WATCHER REBORN (1998)

It just seems so weird to see such a hokey franchise still clinging to life by the time the Scream franchise had already given the 90s horror scene a much needed reset, but here we are. I don’t know why part 4 goes by the Reborn title. It’s not like this is ten years after the previous sequel, plus the opening narrations and flashbacks directly reference the second and third films.

Once again the dog and creature escape a burning facility. Mark Hamill is a detective suffering PTSD due to several personal losses. When he first meets Einstein and talks to him, I felt like I was watching Luke chatting with R2, which was kind of trippy. I was waiting for a hologram of Leia to suddenly project from the dog’s mouth or something.

Lisa Wilcox of Elm Street 4 and 5 is a scientist from the lab, and she teams up with Mark to keep the dog from the creature.

The creature now looks like a 1980s werewolf…and it also talks. Sigh.

On the bright side, Einstein ups his game and uses his pencil skills to dial the phone, and even paw paints his name for Mark. There’s plenty of gnarly gore, and the infrared POV is gone, reminding us that standard creature POV is way better. And just for the hell of it, the creature hits up a strip club…but not during business hours. What’s the point of a strip club scene with no strippers in a movie from the 90s?

The filmmakers seem to be going for a film noire detective vibe, and a romance is ignited between Mark and Lisa, so there’s once again lots of boring talking between creature attacks. Nothing will ever beat the first film. Not to mention, after four films, it would have been nice to finally understand why the creature plucks out eyes and is attracted to teddy bears…

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PRIME TIME: the men behind the makeup

Posted on May 13, 2022 by Daniel

It’s a foursome of slashers I checked out on Prime, and it features crazed killers masked with makeup. Let’s get into them.

CLOWN MOTEL VACANCIES (2020)

I’m a fan of indie director Jason Mills. I own a couple his movies on DVD. Sadly, Clown Motel Vacancies is not going to be one of them.

Running a mere 71 minutes long, this one is as generic as a crazy clown movie gets, and it is heavy on the drama and light on the horror.

A pregnant woman tags along when her boyfriend goes on what is supposedly a business trip. They check into a place called Clown Motel that has a clown clerk, she isn’t comfortable about staying there, and yet her man decides to just leave her there while he goes to take care of business.

His “business” is a woman he’s been cheating with.

Other than that, the clown clerk and his crazy family of clowns start to terrorize the couple…at about 43 minutes into the movie. It’s all just so been there, done that—when there and that were done much better. I really was not feeling this soulless crazy clown flick at all.

DADDY: CLOWN MOTEL VACANCIES 2 (2021)

This sequel runs only 57 minutes long and picks up three years after the first one. I’ll say right up front that director Jason Mills should have edited both films down and combined them into one full-length feature that has one of those reset moments in the middle, taking the story in a whole new direction for the second half.

The pregnant woman from the first film is now living with her child and suffering from paranoia because an evil clown is on the loose and killing more people.

Naturally it’s the main clown from the first film, and he’s looking for her.

With a sleazy city setting replacing the backwoods location of the first film and just one clown instead of a family of them, this sequel has a different (and I’d say better) vibe than the first film.

The stalking clown plot is more focused, and the main girl gets a chance to really become an archetypal “final girl”. The only notable disappointment is the lack of a body count.

CHICKEN’S BLOOD (2019)

This is a redneck low budget horror flick trying to pass as a grindhouse film. It has some crass and nasty moments, gore, and a thin plot.

A wrestler and his friends are heading to an event when their vehicle breaks down… right after the old “missing reel” gimmick. Eye roll at this point.

A white trash gang abducts the group, but complicating matters for everyone, a killer in a hoodie and clown makeup is running around mutilating anyone who gets near him.

We get a corrupt sheriff that just wants to jerk off, a meth lab dude with a confederate flag, and between the two of them, a whole bunch of anti-gay rhetoric. There’s also a roadside sign spotted at one point with the ‘n’ word on it, but at least our redneck main gang of friends isn’t happy at the sight of it.

There’s also a really gross sodomy rape scene of a man by a woman with a razor-laced dildo, and since rednecks love sodomy so much, the clown killer also fucks a guy up the ass with a chainsaw. Sigh.

Other than that, the clown really goes to town on all the irrelevant characters running around the woods, so gore hounds should be totally satisfied.

THE RINGMASTER (2018)

This film manages to go from slow burn suspense thriller to torture fest before all is said and done. It revolves around two women working at a gas station on a slow night due to a major sporting event in Denmark.

They begin to notice weird occurrences, and a couple of creepy male customers come into the store…and then keep coming back.

It’s a super tense situation, and only one thing spoils it. Perhaps for fear of the slow burn boring the audience, the filmmakers have interspersed clips from the final half hour of the movie into the first hour to give us some “action”…which totally spoils what becomes of the main characters later in the film! Argh!

It robs the first part of the film of the sense of impending doom that it is being established so brilliantly.

As for that final half hour, this shit gets brutal—violence, gore, and torture abound as the girls are held captive by “the ringmaster”.

There is also a message here about how cameras are everywhere, watching our every move, and making everything that happens to us a possible slice of entertainment for the masses.

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