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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These buff boys are the ones to call if you’re having problems with the big D

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Daniel

Demons, that is. It’s Demonhntr, a queer horror comedy web series from director/writer Tim O’Leary. If you loved Buffy and always wished for something similar, but with the sexy gayness of Dante’s Cove and The Lair, Demonhntr will make you feel all kinds of satisfied and nostalgic. The rockin’ guitar intro sequence alone is like a fun little homage to the Buffy opening…and then we jump right into the flirty sexiness of the supernatural gay episodes.

Season 1 features 5 short episodes:

Episode 1

This is our introduction to our demon hunters, a straight Black guy and a gay Asian guy. The show is notable for its diverse casting. Even so, it does lean towards white, hairless pretty boys (what do you expect? they’re everywhere) without much variation in terms of body types or ages.

The series doesn’t yet tap into any “bear” subcultures. Perhaps that will come to fruition in later seasons, but that just might not be what the creator is going for, and that’s okay (if you’re into burlier, more mature guys facing off against the supernatural, you can stick to my Comfort Cove novels for now).

The plot of the first episode sets the tone for the series, delivering wiener shots, sex demons, and a touch of camp as our two demon hunters break out their martial arts techniques.

Episode 2

The guys expand their business when they team up with a lesbian witch, and the trio takes on a straight ghost couple. The man ghost is a perfect example of the variation in body types I hope to see more of in the series. He’s a cutie with a cute booty.

Episode 3

In the sexiest, steamiest episode yet, the team tries to help a go-go boy being haunted by an incubus.

Episode 4

In perhaps the campiest episode of the bunch, an ancient female genie is under the impression that the demon hunters want to vanquish her.

Episode 5

You’re sure to be hooked just as the season comes to a close. The most serious episode, the finale has the gay demon hunter cozying up with his ex-boyfriend, a goth medium.

But a literal demon from his past comes to terrorize them, giving this episode a darker, creepier edge than all the rest.

However, totally bringing back the fun at the end of the episode is beautiful Darryl Stephens of Noah’s Arc as a future foil for the demon hunting gang.

And he has a hunky minion of color with him.

Yummy and wahoo! I can’t wait for next season.

Meanwhile, the show earns a spot on the homo hell-evision page.

The full season of Demonhntr is available on Here TV. Learn more about the show on Twitter, and watch the first episode on YouTube.

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Vincent Price takes on fish men and a movie of the week gets a sequel

Posted on May 10, 2022 by Daniel

It’s back to the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s in search of some old school horror thrills. But not even horror faves Vincent Price or Lynda Day George did much to make these more enjoyable.

WAR-GODS OF THE DEEP (aka: City in the Sea) (1965)

I had high hopes for a Vincent Price film that starts with underwater POV made famous later by Jaws.

It shows even more promise early on. A dead body is found on the shore.

Tab Hunter is a mining engineer staying at a hotel where he befriends a quirky artist with a pet chicken—and then a fish man sneaks in at night and abducts a young woman who is very interested in Tab. Little does she know he’s going to spend much of the movie buddying up to the artist…

Anyway, Tab and the artist find a secret entrance to a cave that leads them to an underwater city.

Vincent Price is the evil leader of a gang of smugglers that has lived there for ages thanks to a special oxygen that keeps them young. Vincent has also made those fish men his Creature from the Black Lagoon minions.

Unfortunately, this movie is all talk as Vincent spends much of the time explaining the origins of his city. There are a few near escapes for our heroes, but they keep getting recaptured. And only in the final act is there finally action involving the fish men. There’s a lot of it, it’s all underwater, and it’s all rather chaotic and doesn’t quite deliver any chills or thrills. Great footage though.

FEAR NO EVIL (1969)

Fear No Evil is the first of two made-for-TV movies focusing on the same supernatural investigator, and has a notable cast including Carroll O’Connor, Bradford Dillman, and most importantly, horror queen Lynda Day George—the reason I purchased this double feature disc.

This is one long and bland supernatural mystery movie. Lynda’s man purchases a mirror from a store after seeing a vision in it. He brings it home. He sees a vision in his rear view mirror while out for a drive with Lynda. They crash, she is thrown from the car, he dies.

Lynda is invited to stay at his mother’s house to grieve…and the mirror is brought along and placed in her room. Lynda begins to see visions of her man in the reflection and wants to die and go join him.

Their friend, a detective of the unexplained, begins investigating to find out what led to the purchase of the mirror. He slowly discovers it concerns a cult, a demon resurrection, and eventually, the car crash.

There are plenty of twists along the way that were probably much more surprising when the film came out. In this day and age, this feels very paint-by-numbers and I didn’t find it at all eerie or suspenseful. However, Lynda gets a pretty good chase scene.

RITUAL OF EVIL (1970)

The supernatural investigator from Fear No Evil is back for this sequel, investigating the death of a rich young heiress who was a member of a cult.

This follow-up is even duller than the first film. We have a family of dysfunctional elites, a Black guy who found the body and makes it very clear from the start that he feared for his life because he found a white woman dead (50 years later and it’s still the same), and a pretty blonde witch the investigator falls for who worships Satan.

Once again we get talk talk talk for a majority of the film, there’s an anticlimactic ritual scene at the end, and then the witch disappears from the investigator’s life.

It definitely seems to set this one up for another movie, but that never transpired. Instead, Kolchak took over with his much more thrilling horror investigations that scored him two movies of the week and a series.

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1970s horror: killer animals, a Mardi Gras murderer, and another nod to Ed Gein

Posted on May 9, 2022 by Daniel

I recently added this mish-mosh of bad movies from the 1970s to my collection, so let’s just get this over with.

THREE ON A MEATHOOK (1972)

Such a great nasty name for a totally disappointing film inspired by the Ed Gein story. If you’re expecting Texas Chainsaw Massacre level horror, forget about it. This movie is bogged down by filler montages drowning in bad early 70s muzak that ruins any chance of capturing the essence of its gritty look.

A group of girls goes on a road trip. Their car breaks down. A nice guy offers to let them stay at his farmhouse with him and his dad. When they arrive, the father makes it very clear to his son that it’s a bad idea.

In less than ten minutes, all the girls are murdered. The killer POV and heavy breathing shots are perfect foreshadowing of slashers to come, but two of four murders are by gunshot. Blah. Although quick, the other two murders are with sharp weapons and offer some serviceable gore for the time.

And then…the son leaves home so his dad can clean up the mess. There’s a huge chunk of the middle of the movie in which he walks around a city, watches a band play at a bar, then gets romantically involved with a waitress.

Eventually he brings her home to meet his dad, and she brings along a friend. They all frolic in a field, eat dinner with the dad, the girls reference the mysterious cut of meat he cooked for them (uh-oh), and then the final, brief murderous act begins.

It’s all pretty disappointing, totally predictable and doesn’t make much logical sense when the big twist is revealed. We also learn that the movie title spoils the big shocker moment of the film.

This is most definitely an unintentional segue film between Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre considering it shares elements of both due to extracting details from the Ed Gein true crime story.

DAY OF THE ANIMALS (1977)

The director of Three On a Meathook gives us a “nature strikes back” movie that’s as ecologically aware as horror of the seventies gets.

The opening title card literally explains that hairspray is burning a hole in the ozone layer and this movie depicts what the possible results could be.

By the way, what the hell ever happened to that hole? It’s taking as long to open as the killer bees are to get here from Africa.

So the deal is the environmental damage is making things quite wonky, especially in high altitudes. A group going out hiking is warned about the dangers but goes anyway.

And then the animals start attacking.

The cast includes 1970s horror power couple Christopher George and Lynda Day George, young Andrew Stevens, and Leslie Nielsen as a man who is the only one in the group that starts to go batty as a result of the sun’s rays.

Our cast is subjected to angry birds, mountain lions, wolves, dogs, and rats, plus crazy Leslie Nielsen infamously wrestles a bear while shirtless.

It’s definitely a cheesy film, but the attacks are notably gruesome and vicious, and I actually found some of them quite unsettling because it felt like real animals were being roughed up for the footage.

MARDI GRAS MASSACRE (1978)

I can’t believe I waited so long for this one to come back into print thinking I’d missed out on some crucial gem to add to my collection. I’m now so glad I didn’t spend a fortune buying it on eBay while it was out of print.

I won’t drag this out. This movie is atrocious. Forget any sense of atmosphere, tension, fear, or mystery. This is a painfully repetitive film about a dude who picks up prostitutes in a bar, takes them back to his place, straps them to a leather table, and then hacks out their hearts while wearing an Aztec mask.

Oh, and the entire time, generic 1970s disco plays. They couldn’t even spring for some Donna Summer or Village People.

The only side story in this disaster sees one of the cops on the case dating one of the prostitutes. He also ends up smacking her around. Women’s rights have come a long way…it’s scary how quickly conservatives are rolling them back and this will be seen as normal treatment of women again in movies soon.

 

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It came from the early 80s and I just bought it on Blu-ray

Posted on May 6, 2022 by Daniel

Bette Davis leads the charge as we enter the eighties with this trio of films I’ve finally added to my collection. Let’s have a look.

THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS (1980)

The most frightening scenes of this Disney supernatural film are the kick ass alternative opening in the Blu-ray extras consisting of POV approaching a little girl playing with her doll in the woods, and an alternate ending with a giant bug thing coming down to take away one of the main characters.

Thanks to what was left on the cutting room floor, we end up with a boring, repetitive film about a teenager trying to figure out what became of a girl who went missing years before.

A family, including a young Kyle Richards as one of the kids, comes to live in a home with Bette Davis. The older teen daughter immediately begins to get visions of a young woman wearing a blindfold.

As the story unfolds and is repeated over and over, we learn Bette’s daughter disappeared years before.

So the main teen starts to pick apart the puzzle pieces of what could have happened to her.

With the same info and same spooky gimmicks happening constantly, this short, 83-minute movie feels like it’s two hours long—and leads to a convoluted final act that’s painfully anti-climactic despite dabbling in witchcraft, the occult, aliens, and a secret supernatural society.

DEADLY GAMES (1982)

I’ve seen a lot of pseudo-slashers from the 80s, but this is perhaps one of the weirdest.

It begins with a woman being chased through her home by an intruder all in black and then dying without the intruder actually even touching her. Every decision this woman makes in this scene sets the women’s rights movement back like twenty years. And the way things are going in this country right now, that would put it at about 1930.

Her sister comes back to town and spends much of the movie getting reacquainted with old friends. She also starts a relationship with the hot detective on the case…who gets her to warm up to his odd friend, played by Steve Railsback, who runs a local theater.

The kills are few and far between, but this killer goes to some serious lengths to murder victims, like getting into a pool in full killer costume to tie a woman’s leg to a filter vent. WTF?

What makes this film so weak is that it glosses over the actual themes that are supposed to give it life. It’s basically about the psychological trauma of war, as well as bonds bordering on homosexual desire that can form between men who went through such life-altering experiences together.

The two male leads regularly play a horror board game together, and as the film progresses, they get into a weird sort of throuple relationship with the main girl, complete with a hokey montage set to a cheesy ballad. The problem is it is so obvious who the killer is and who the red herring is right from the start. It’s insulting if the film’s creators think they’re tricking us.

As dull as the film is, at least it ends with a chase scene, body reveal, and shocker final frame (that is not very shocking).

REVENGE OF THE DEAD (aka: Zeder) (1983)

The news is out that this movie is not a living dead zombie film despite the alternate title. So what kind of movie is it? It is an overly long Euro horror film that offers very little in the way of horror as the main man investigates some supernatural studies of the past.

A young journalist buys a used typewriter, and some words are still written on the ribbon. He learns they are about experiments in which the mad scientist believed there’s a non-plane of existence where death doesn’t exist and the dead can therefore return from it.

He spends almost 90 minutes meeting with various people to learn more about the experiments. The most exciting part of all this would be his swimsuit.

He eventually sneaks onto property surrounded by a fence and sees a video of a dude who sacrificed himself to prove the theory is true.

The dead dude suddenly pops up through some floorboards and the idiot main guy runs right over them in his attempt to escape. Does he get away? Hey, if you really want to sit through this yawnfest, I’m not going to spoil it by telling you the end.

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I saw it on cable: a dead mom, a dead husband, and a killer dress

Posted on May 5, 2022 by Daniel

I can basically just elevate my horror viewing experience by watching horror films on the cable channels rather than picking them off my watchlist on Prime, so here’s my latest excursion into the selection on Showtime and HBO.

THE DJINN (2021)

The directing duo of The Boy Behind the Door is clearly heavily influenced by 80s horror revolving around kids. In fact, this film takes place in 1989, has a synth score modeled after 80s horror movie music, and focuses on a mute boy trapped in his house with an evil entity.

In short, his mother committed suicide, his father leaves him alone for the night, and he then uses some magic to wish for his voice back. In doing so, he unleashes the Djinn, which first comes in a form that gave me flashbacks to The Ring.

Then to confuse matters, it takes on the forms of people unrelated to the boy who seem to have been past victims of the djinn.

Finally it starts showing as a demon version of his deceased mother, and he spends most of the time trying to avoid her. She’s cool in that big teeth/demon eyes kind of way, so that was satisfying.

Yet overall, just like The Boy Behind the Door, this one may seem more frightening and suspenseful to those who haven’t been around the horror block for five decades. I wasn’t bored, but it didn’t blow me away or terrify me at all.

IN FABRIC (2018)

Just because your film is visually beautiful and artsy doesn’t always mean it’s a masterpiece. And quiet honestly, if you’re going to make a movie about a killer dress, it might be better not to go for visually beautiful and artsy or even attempt to make a masterpiece.

This agonizing 2-hour long movie is basically two separate stories in one. First, a lonely middle-aged Black woman scores the dress from the weird clerk in a store, hopes it’s going to help her with her dating opportunities, and then becomes convinced it’s coming to life at night.

There’s plenty of weird stuff going on, including the store workers having a gang bang with a mannequin, the dress making a washing machine go haywire, and the Black woman spying on her son eating out his girlfriend (ew). Plus, the score is quite reminiscent of Mike Oldfield’s classic 1973 album Tubular Bells.

Eventually the dress ends up in the hands of some dude during a bachelor party. His friends make him wear it, he brings it home, and his woman becomes obsessed with the dress and the store. This segment is even weirder than the first…and just as lacking in pacing. If you really love high end horror, definitely check it out, especially if you’re into visual metaphors for feminine hygiene and monthly cycle issues, because this one is loaded with them. It was just way too focused on quality over thrilling horror content for my tastes.

THE NIGHT HOUSE (2020)

The director of The Signal and The Ritual likes the word “the”, so he now brings us The Night House.

This is a dark and heavy-handed tale of grief and depression wrapped around a supernatural mystery.

After her husband’s death at their lake house, a woman comes to the house to cope with the confusing reality of her loss—she was the one suffering from depression, yet he committed suicide.

She immediately becomes haunted by signs of him still being around…or are those just nightmares? Or is she sleepwalking? Or did he have a whole other life she didn’t know about?

As she forges ahead and digs through his belongings, she finds signs that he was dealing with his own demons, which only deepens her own anguish and makes her more determined to unravel the truth of what he was going through before his death.

Plenty of atmosphere and occult aspects make this one creepy, but it also has a bit of a pacing issue, so it starts to lose steam about halfway through. But the premise is intriguing and it’s worth sticking around, especially if you prefer emotional and psychological driven horror over cheap horror thrills.

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It’s a non-canon Friday the 13th double feature

Posted on May 4, 2022 by Daniel

Jason fans rejoice. A lot of what you’ve been waiting for becomes a reality in these two films about the iconic horror franchise.

13 FANBOY (2021)

This film has such a fantastic meta premise, brings together loads of horror veterans of the Friday the 13th movies playing themselves, indulges in its own fanboy premise, and is directed by Deborah Voorhees, one of the actresses from Friday the 13: A New Beginning.

The opening kill scene sets a classic 80s slasher tone with a killer, a barn, the woods, a chase, and killer POV.

As a bonus, I created a little ScareBearDan POV…

The film then focuses several years later on the (fictional) daughter of actress/director Deborah Voorhees, now an adult and starring in horror films herself. She’s also very tight with Dee Wallace, who seems oddly out of place in a sea full of lesser-known Friday the 13th cast members.

However, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that this film is a nod to and acknowledgment of Dee’s elevated status as a horror icon, so how could she possibly say no to taking the lead role as herself?

Dee and the main girl are most specifically being stalked by a psycho fan while they’re doing the Monsterpalooza horror con, but the body count comes in as the masked killer starts brutally offing Friday the 13th actors one by one. Unfortunately, the kills don’t happen at the con, so the film tends to lose focus and feels like it’s throwing in random characters left and right.

Most surprising is that Lar Park Lincoln, the queen of Friday the 13th Part 7, is disappointingly underutilized, and spends most of what little time she gets onscreen stuck in the killer’s lair. Perhaps she didn’t want to have a major role in the film? I don’t know, but Friday fandom alone dictates that she should have been one of the leads in the film.

Also odd is that Corey Feldman has a role…but not as himself! WTF? Such a recognizable face of the horror genre and the Friday the 13th franchise should not have been cast in a role as anyone other than himself.

He is relegated to being tossed into the mix briefly as a red herring. He’s just one of several background characters presented as weird and possible killers…then vanishing from the film almost as quickly as they appear, rendering their inclusion pointless.

Giving a fun meta twist to the situation, appearing as himself is filmmaker Vincent DiSanti, known for the highly regarded Friday the 13th fanboy film Never Hike Alone. Because no matter how you slice it, this is a fan film about talent involved with the Friday the 13th films facing off against a masked killer for real. And that includes two of the actors who actually played Jason through the decades. Yahoo!

The novelty of that premise is also what ironically makes the whole film feel disjointed and padded to about 20 minutes too long. With the main girl and Dee Wallace being the main targets, all the excessive kill cameos fail to glue the plot together, as would, say a group of counselors working together to open a camp in a Friday the 13th movie.

It’s the final act that saves the day, with the reveal of  the killer’s true motive. And for Dee Wallace fans, it’s extra special. Even so, the last few minutes of the film are just awkward and the conclusion feels incomplete.

ROSE BLOOD: A FRIDAY THE 13th FAN FILM (2021)

While 13 Fanboy is a meta film about Friday the 13th, Rose Blood is a true fanboy film that is a direct sequel to Friday the 13th Part 7. Just ignore the cheesy narrator at the beginning—very out of tone for a Jason flick—and sit back for the fun first scene.

It goes right for the fanboy points in the modern day with none other than Lar Park Lincoln reprising her role as Tina. She is now in a mental institution and she hears voices…and sees them, in the form of Terry Kiser, her doctor from the original film. Major kudos to both actors for feeding the hunger of fans and making appearances in this project.

However, Lar once again isn’t the star, for this film takes us to 1989, about a year after the events of Part 7. Hardcore fans are really going to have to suspend disbelief, because the role of Tina has been recast by a young woman who looks nothing like Lar.

Slasher fans are also going to have to be very patient about getting to the “guts” of the film. Approximately the first hour focuses on young Tina being held captive in a facility, where the intent of the military and scientists is to use her powers to conquer Jason.

There is a lot of talk. I mean a lot. There are a few too many authority figures and experts in their fields that weigh the film down with their perspectives on the situation while bringing no thrills or excitement. There’s also a young girl with powers of her own brought in to help with the proposed takedown of Jason, but she’s considered dangerous and is strapped up like Hannibal Lecter.

With all the talk, there are some very forced efforts to go for the nostalgia, as characters have conversations about video games, video game systems, and graphics of the time. On the bright side, there’s plenty of hunky man meat to appreciate on the military team. They really help dress up the bland, generic scenery.

Finally, there’s a semi-exciting scene involving the new girl with powers (that happens off screen), and I began to fear this whole film was going nowhere.

And then…it happens. Over an hour into the movie, Jason is released from the lake once again, infiltrates the facility, and wreaks fricking havoc.

The massacre is a bloody blast, and the low budget amateur feel of all the dialogue-driven scenes is exchanged for what feels like a genuine Jason slaughter fest.

And this shit is violent and gory!

I loved it and could see this film being added as an extra to a future Friday the 13th physical release if it doesn’t get its own release.

While the story isn’t mind-blowing, Jason delivers what we’re really here for, plus we jump forward in time to Lar at the end so she can take Jason on once again with a little help from the always sexy Kevin Spirtas, her boyfriend from the original movie!

Finally, there’s a major spoiler in the final still shot below, so don’t scroll down if you don’t want the final act ruined for you…

HOLY CRAP!

Seriously, super spoiler photo below…

It’s another dream come true for fans of some of the biggest slasher franchises of all time. Question is, will there be a full-length “vs.” movie spawned from this brief scene?

Brace yourself…

We do get a “to be continued” tag scene after the credits, so stick around for it. Time will tell if this will be continued.

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A horror anthology triple feature

Posted on May 3, 2022 by Daniel

I marathoned two low budget indies and the latest installment of a well-known found footage franchise, so let’s get right to this trio.

OCTAGON (2021)

This is an anthology in which all the stories are essentially tied together by what might be the birth of a devil baby. I say “might” because there’s a lot going on here as the wraparound interweaves itself into the stories and the stories interweave into each other, leading to nothing ever being totally quite clear.

The wraparound has a guy in the woods telling his girlfriend he has the same dream every night of strangers crying, pleading, and running in circles.

1st story – a young pregnant woman gets a frightening visit in her bedroom at night that lays the groundwork for the stories to come, explaining to her why she can’t abort her baby. I was quickly turned off by the subject matter challenging a woman’s right to choose, and it’s worse after what transpired just as I’m working on this post.

2nd story – another tale about a woman wishing to kill her child in the womb, approached from a totally different angle. This movie is starting to feel like religious horror to me.

3rd story – I’m really not feeling these “scary” stories. This is a tale about a sleazy father sexually abusing his son using a monkey mask and a razor, and the son’s plot for revenge when he becomes an adult.

4th story – a mid-movie tie-together of the first three tales, this one has a woman holding a boy captive in her hunt for something evil that comes disguised as a boy.

5th story – a magician uses a deformed man monster as part of his act.

6th story – a female jogger is terrorized by an eye plucking psycho in the park.

7th story – a couple’s game involving campfire tales gets dark fast.

8th story – like the fourth story, this one begins to sum up all the stories, seems to bleed into the wraparound, returns to the story, then back to the wraparound…yeah. I really didn’t understand the overall point of the tie-in. Even so, a few of the stories were kind of creepy on their own.

THE BLACK BOOK (2021)

Ari Lehman, the original young drowning Jason in Friday the 13th, is the clerk at a bookstore in the wraparound. A man comes in and buys a particular book, but Ari warns him never to open it or read it. Lucky for us, the dude goes home and delves right in.

1st story – I felt like I was watching the opening scene of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. This short tale is in black and white and takes place in the 1950s. A couple is parked in their car in the woods and things get very hairy.

2nd story – this short is filled with excess just to get to its point. Three young girls sneak into an abandoned warehouse and witness a bunch of men torturing another man while demanding to know more about “the sorcerer”. It’s mostly torture, minimal plot.

3rd story – this is how not to do a backwoods horror story. A mother and her daughter move into a house, we get some uninspired atmosphere, and then the mother sees the daughter disappear into the woods. I rolled my eyes when the mom ran outside and encountered a “scary” redneck.

4th story – this tale has been done before. A dude gets dangerously drawn into a snuff website.

5th story – this is a short alien/zombie hybrid tale that doesn’t cover any new ground.

The wraparound conclusion story is kind of dumbfounding. Basically it’s the Candyman/Bloody Mary concept, but a) you have to say a sentence so long that it needs to be written on the mirror for anyone to get it right, and b) when you say the sentence into the mirror, you conjure a college professor.

No, I’m not kidding. I guess that could be terrifying if you’re afraid he’s going to teach your kid CRT or say gay, but to the rest of us, it’s as dull as sitting through a classroom lecture.

V/H/S 94 (2021)

The popular found footage anthology franchise is back. This time a SWAT team infiltrates a warehouse and finds dead cult members…and videos, of course. Roll the tape.

1st story – this is perhaps my favorite story in the bunch in terms of establishing atmosphere and delivering a few jump scares from hell. A reporter and her cameraman enter an underground tunnel in search of the local legend known as the rat man. EEK!

2nd story – more great atmosphere is established in this tale of a young woman hosting a wake all on her own at a funeral home at night during a thunderstorm. No one shows, the closed casket starts banging, the lights go out, and the truth of what happened to the body inside comes out. DOUBLE EEK!

3rd story – this feels like the longest story in the bunch. It also looks like a super gory first person shooter video game. Busting into a lab where a crazy scientist is fusing humans and machines, a military team quickly realizes one has gotten away.

4th story – an extremist “take back America” militia group plans to blow up a government building…using explosive vampire blood. But the vampire they have imprisoned gets loose in their compound and things gets nice and gory.

The wraparound conclusion about the fate of the SWAT team is the weakest part of the entire movie, especially compared to some of the wraparounds in previous installments.

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Digging into my Stephen King movie collection part 6

Posted on May 2, 2022 by Daniel

Sometimes I come back to bring my series of Stephen King posts to a close, and this is one of those sometimes, so let’s get right into three from the 2000s.

HEARTS IN ATLANTIS (2001)

Hearts in Atlantis combines King’s nostalgia narrative style with his penchant for characters with psychic powers, and in its film form it is a relatively mellow experience.

A widowed woman rents a room to an older man, played by Anthony Hopkins. Soon her young son builds a strong bond with Hopkins. They spend a lot of time together, and Hopkins admits to the boy that men in dark clothes and hats are hunting for him.

Meanwhile, the mother is constantly suspicious that Hopkins might be looking to go pedo on her son. Not the case. The boy is actually falling for his little female friend and Hopkins is nurturing that relationship.

Amazing how straight tweens always fall madly in love in Stephen King novels, yet you don’t see crazy conservatives banning this type of grooming material from libraries…

The film is fairly disappointing. The men coming for Hopkins barely pose any threat or add any suspense to the story. Hopkins rarely uses his mind-reading powers. And when he does, it’s to shame the main kid’s bully, who regularly hurls gay slurs at the kid.

Hopkins calls him out on it because he can see that the bully likes to go home and dress in his mother’s clothes. This weird sort of defense against a homophobic riddled attack by use of another anti-gay attack is basically revisited later when the main kid gets his revenge on the bully, who we now know is queer, by beating him with a baseball bat. WTF?

Anyway, the film tries to go into heartstring pulling territory, with Hopkins unjustly being ripped from the boy’s life, but I wasn’t filled with emotion when all was said and done. I just think these kinds of films worked best in the 1980s…when Spielberg made them…and John Williams orchestrated…

FIRESTARTER 2: REKINDLED (2002)

This made-for-TV sequel that King had nothing to do with was a miniseries, so it suffers from the usual problem…too drawn out into 3 hours when 2 hours would have been fine.

The first half of the film is heavily filled with flashbacks retelling and often rewriting the events of the first movie with different actors. These are presented mostly as dreams that haunt Charlie (no longer played by Drew Barrymore).

Cutie Danny Nucci plays a worker at a research firm who is unknowingly hunting down Charlie for the character Rainbird, originally played by George C. Scott, but now portrayed by Malcom McDowell.

Unknowingly, while doing his job and getting closer to Charlie (so close that we get to see him shirtless and get a glimpse of his upper butt), Nucci is actually leading Rainbird right to her.

Meanwhile, Rainbird is gathering together a bunch of little boys who also have a variety of unique powers.

Seriously, the fun doesn’t begin until halfway into the film when Charlie has her first battle of the psychic powers with these boys.

After that, Dennis Hopper also joins the cast as someone from her dad’s past—a pretty unnecessary inclusion that is also one of the alterations in the plot from the first movie. There are plenty of chase scenes and also plenty of chat scenes (yawn), but the final battle, when both the boys and Charlie pretty much wipe out an entire town, is good cheap sequel fun.

DOLAN’S CADILLAC (2009)

This movie is based on a story from the King collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes, and it’s quite clear this should have been a short film in an anthology and not a movie. It was agonizing to sit through.

Wes Bentley is a teacher married to horror veteran Emmanuelle Vaugier. While out horseback riding, she witnesses sleazoid Christian Slater kill drivers of a truck transporting immigrant refugee women.

While those women are sold into sex trafficking by Slater, he also has Vaugier hunted down, despite she and Wes being put into witness protection. The only horror moment comes when they find a corpse in their house.

Vaugier is killed and then Wes decides he must get revenge. This is where it’s all downhill. First of all, I have no idea how he figures out Slater’s identity or how to track him, but he begins following him. He gets a gun. He becomes a construction worker. And it’s all part of his plan of vengeance.

Nothing happens beyond one encounter between Slater and Wes in a public restroom, which makes it confusing that they suddenly seem like lifelong enemies in the final act. At this point Wes creates a huge booby trap in a desert road. Once Slater and his car are both in it, they spend a chunk of time in a verbal battle that makes you question why they were ever considered A-list actors. The performances are eye-rolling, and there’s no good reason for Wes to keep Slater alive for so long when the ultimate torture (and the plan) is to just bury him alive…. An awful execution of a typical revenge flick plot.

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