From stardom to SyFy

Posted on September 3, 2021 by Daniel

It’s back to the late 00s for a bunch of direct-to-SyFy flicks starring a variety of familiar faces. Let’s just get this over with.

EYE OF THE BEAST (2007)

This is generally a more polished outing than the usual SyFy creature features…mostly because you barely see the creature, so there’s little chance for it to suffer from bad CGI.

In other words, this shit is boring.

In the first scene, a couple making out in a boat at night is attacked by tentacles. Cool.

Then James Van Der Beek comes to town as a scientist. He hooks up with the pretty sheriff. They clash with the local fishermen. There are racial tensions. A few more people die.

Eventually they go out on a boat to hunt the creature…a big squid. At last we get to see the squid face up close. Looks cool. Reminds of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. They kill it. The end.

VIPERS (2008)

It’s another generic, nature gone mad SyFy original. Original is really the wrong word for these films since there’s nothing original about the cookie cutter plots.

Snakes have been genetically enhanced in a lab by Corbin Bernsen. They escape. They end up in a small town. They kill a variety of people, You know it’s bad when the gore looks cool, but the CGI snakes overlaid on top of it ruins it.

Then a bunch of different locals band together to stop the snakes while running all over town. Tara Reid leads the charge. I was hoping Mercedes McNab, Harmony of Buffy fame, who usually brings a load of fun to any horror movie she’s in, would do the same here.

Instead, she literally comes in for a sex scene and gets killed while the guy is showering after. What a waste of a Buffy alum.

RISE OF THE GARGOYLES (2009)

Hottie Eric Balfour has a rather impressive horror film and television resume, but SyFy original Rise of the Gargoyles is the bottom of the barrel. Not because it’s a SyFy original, but because it is beyond uninspired.

I can’t imagine a script this bland and cliché with the most flat characters being picked up for production, but here it is. Balfour plays a teacher who wrote a failed book about gargoyles. Imagine his luck when he and his girl sneak into a church to explore and accidentally release a gargoyle locked in the basement.

The CGI gargoyle isn’t even that bad, but we just don’t get enough of it, and there are barely any kills.

The plot goes nowhere, and basically comes down to Balfour and his small team of gargoyle hunters, including a priest, needing to send the gargoyle back to where it came from. There’s simply nothing here for me to talk about. Balfour doesn’t even take his shirt off.

HOUSE OF BONES (2010)

House of Bones is cheesy SyFy original silliness and I’m so here for it. Going for the trends of its time, it enlists Charisma Carpenter of Angel and Buffy fame as its star, and it’s about a ghost hunting show that explores an infamous haunted house.

The first scene is the perfect cliché–a kid’s ball goes into the house and he goes in after it. Yay!

Then we meet all our ghost hunters–a bunch of guys and Charisma, the psychic. Hey, I love me some Charisma, and she’s the reason I bought this one, but man is she phoning this one in.

Typical shit happens early on, mostly involving the crew setting up and exploring, as well as bugs appearing in unexpected places that are totally expected to horror veterans.

There are a couple of kills and disappearances that are entertaining enough, but nothing all that spooky happens as a series of sloppy events unfolds just to fill time. However, the premise is fun despite being unoriginal–the house is alive! And that’s because someone buried bodies in the walls for occult reasons in the past. Awesome.

Oozing holes, people getting pulled into and crawling out of them, and other enjoyable horror elements take place in the final act, when the pace at last picks up as the crew goes on a hunt for the blueprints of the house.

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A harvest of fear and a path of evil

Posted on September 2, 2021 by Daniel

I’m always up for a turn-of-the-millennium, post-Scream indie slasher from the early 00s, so when I watched Harvest of Fear thanks to a 2-on-1 Blu-ray I purchased for the other movie, I immediately ordered the sequel The Path of Evil (because why would they ever consider putting a movie and its sequel together on the same Blu-ray instead?).

HARVEST OF FEAR (2004)

Clearly an indie labor of slasher love, this one is a little heavy-handed on the red herring and the silly main character clashes, but it does the most crucial thing right—evenly spaced, well-executed kill scenes.

The premise is also classic slasher simplicity. 20 years ago there were a bunch of murders during Harvest Fest in a small town. Now it seems like the murders are starting up again.

The kills deliver blood, chases, tits, and atmosphere. The killer, wearing a mask and a hoodie, looks strikingly like one of the scary figures I crafted for the front lawn of my property for Halloween years ago that finally bit the dust just last season after weathering the weather for so long.

We even get a main group of friends. They talk about the original murders taking place in the eighties, reference hair bands, and have what appears to be a Halloween costume party even though the holiday is never mentioned.

There’s also soap opera drama between the main girl, the new guy in town, and the douche bag deputy she used to date.

It’s the climax and killer motivation that are a bit messy—sort of like the denouement of a Scream sequel.

THE PATH OF EVIL (2005)

For a sequel to a low budget indie slasher, this is a lofty undertaking, but even though it’s nearly two hours long, it scores some major points from me for delivering fantastic old school kills.

Director Brad Goodman gets much of his cast back to continue the story and actually expands on the back stories of the characters. For that reason, there is a lot of drama in between the great kill scenes, but honestly, I was never bored with it.

The only real problem is that at the end of the first film we find out who the killer is, and that character returns for the sequel, sooooo…despite the killer hiding behind a disguise that is notably going for a Michael Myers vibe instead of a ScareBearDan’s Halloween lawn décor vibe this time around, we know for the entire time who the killer is! No surprises here. Of course, there also aren’t any when the killer is Michael, or Jason, or Freddy, Chucky, or…well, you get the picture.

The love triangle from the first film is still in full effect, and a couple of new characters are introduced, but what shines here are the kill sequences. It’s a shame Brad Goodman never added another horror movie to his filmography, because he does everything right in terms of fear factor.

The death scenes are perfectly paced, suspenseful, scary, atmospheric, gory, violent, and even deliver some T & A, plus there are chase scenes. The film even sets us up for another sequel, but it never happened.

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A found footage triple feature

Posted on September 1, 2021 by Daniel

For someone who isn’t even a huge fan of the subgenre, I somehow ended up watching three found footage films in a row, and each one is a subgenre within the subgenre, including possession horror, a comedy creature feature, and some torture porn.

STAY (2021)

If you need a found footage fix with some of the cliché elements that make the better films of the subgenre fun, this little indie is a good choice.

It goes right for the rip-off from the start with an oscillating camera right out of Paranormal Activity 3. It also has an inspiring model/influencer and her boyfriend moving into a new place, in this case a city apartment building.

There is a creepy mannequin left behind in the living space that delivers plenty of cheap scares over the course of the film. The couple immediately begins to experience plumbing problems. Of course they keep a camera rolling at all times because they are influencers. Not sure why that includes having one focused on their bed at night, but at least it lets us see a scary situation unfold…

The model basically morphs into an Asian horror flick ghost girl, all in white with her long black hair down over her face.

She spends a lot of time passing by the camera in the shadows to freak us out, and eventually we get to the running and screaming climax when the boyfriend brings in some friends to help him cleanse the house. As derivative as it all is, it totally delivers on the cheap thrills.

THE LEGEND OF SIX FINGERS (2013)

This silly little found footage horror comedy doesn’t try too hard to be anything more than a cute and somewhat entertaining film. It has funny moments, but no one went out of their way to write a comedy masterpiece.

In true Blair Witch mode, film students head into the woods to do a documentary. They interview the likes of Debbie Rochon and Lynn Lowry–total horror veteran stunt casting considering the actresses don’t get a chance to shine with what little material they’re given.

In fact, the standouts of the film would be these two funny guys, but sadly they’re just passing by…

The monster first appears 30 minutes in, and the confrontations are all quite casual. There’s really no aggressive horror action here, and the monster clearly doesn’t want to be bothered, and just looks bored by the filmmakers’ taunts.

There’s a tent scene to add to the Blair Witch nods, and things finally get physical, leading to a totally unexpected, out of place, and always welcome gory scene at the end. Yay!

HACKSAW (2020)

 

This hybrid found footage film runs just over an hour, which is fine, because it gets straight to the point. There’s very little plot and it’s not a high end production, but damn! If you’re just looking for some seriously nasty practical gore effects and some gritty, grisly atmosphere, this movie nails it.

I have to warn you, the gore is gory and repulsive. I don’t know what the powers that be are trying to tell me, but after I just watched a film from the 80s featuring a horrifically explicit vaginal impalement with a poker (Patrick Still Lives), the first few minutes of this film subjected me to an unapologetic in your face drilling of a vagina with a power tool.

In order to establish the back story of murders at a derelict hospital, clips of some guy with his own sensationalism show talking about the building and its horrible history are interspersed between the setup of the main couple’s story.

So what’s the couple’s story?

They are on a road trip. They take a detour. The guy is filming their trip and wants to go to check out the old hospital building.

It is when they enter the building that the film is at its roughest as it poorly transitions from found footage to standard third person during a switch from an exterior shoot to an interior shoot. It’s bright daylight outside, but when the perspective cuts to a fixed camera inside showing the guy enter the building, the set is drenched in gloomy horror tinting and there is no daylight pouring in through the door. Then we jump back to the guy’s camera perspective, and he points it down a stairway inside the building and there is bright daylight at the bottom of the steps! WTF? Some bad editing here for sure.

But it’s easy to look past that, because in just a matter of minutes, all hell breaks loose. There is some brutal slicing and dicing, flashbacks to the killer’s raping ways from years before, some sort of masked slave lurking in the darkness, a psycho in a creepy red mask and hoodie, a chase scene, and a battle to the death.

And that’s it. That’s the whole movie. It’s like so many movies we’ve seen compressed into a quickie that simply cuts outs all the excess victims.

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Double doses of the 1970s and the 1980s

Posted on August 30, 2021 by Daniel

I’m always filling in the gaps in my horror collection, especially any holes that show in the decades of my younger years. So here is a look at four I’ve recently added to my collection from the 70s and 80s.

DUEL (1971)

When you realize that Spielberg’s first film was a made-for-TV movie that was then released to theaters after the studio requested he extended it in length, it’s no surprise now that he had a big future ahead of him. Heck, Jaws was only four years away.

Duel is written by horror master Richard Matheson. If you don’t know the name, look it up, because this fiction and screenplay writer has written many of the classics.

The plot is simple. Dennis Weaver of Gunsmoke and McCloud TV fame is on a business road trip on a desolate strip when he gets dragged into a long, drawn out case of road rage with a mysterious driver in an oil truck.

The opening scene, which was added for the theatrical release, is pure perfection, with a car POV as it backs out of a driveway and begins its journey. This goes on for five minutes while the credits role and various news stories play on the radio before we finally see Weaver driving the car.

What’s quite interesting is that this scene feels very much like something from the 1977 film The Car, which was like Jaws on wheels. So actually, The Car was more like Duel on wheels again.

Duel also feels like it could have been the inspiration for numerous road terror films over the decades, including The Hitcher, Road Games, and even Jeepers Creepers. Just look at the front of this truck.

Weaver really carries the film, for we never see the driver of the truck, and there’s very little interaction with other characters. While the road rage sequences could easily get repetitive, there are some great pit stops along the way, like one in which Weaver is at a diner playing out the possible scenarios if the driver walked in, and one in which the truck goes after Weaver when he’s in this old school thing called a phone booth.

And naturally, the final battle is just…explosive.

THE DARK (1979)

 

Tobe Hooper started directing this film, but was supposedly replaced quite quickly. So basically he didn’t direct it. And according to IMDb, the killer was originally an autistic guy locked in an attic since childhood who escapes when the house burns down, and then goes on a killing spree in which he knocks the head right off his victims’ bodies.

But after Alien became a success, it was decided that some alterations would be made to the film so that the killer would be an alien instead…so they added cheesy laser beam eye effects and explosion kills.

It is those effects that make an otherwise freaky humanoid monster into a disaster. His stalking scenes are really the only creepy good part of this messy film.

The whispering monster effects that accompany every death scene are the bomb.

We have Cathy Lee Crosby of 1980s TV show That’s Incredible as a reporter. William Devane of Knots Landing is her love interest and father of one of the victims.

There’s a detective. There’s a psychic. And there are so many details about the murders left in place that aren’t about an alien making people burst with his laser eyes that it’s not even worth trying to follow the plot. Just watch it for all the kill scenes that always start off eerie and end up hilarious thanks not only to the awful special effects added in later but also the way this alien just tosses men around.

IMPULSE (1984)

This is an odd little film from the director of the Omen installment The Final Conflict and Alien Nation.

A small town experiences a minor quake. Soon after, Meg Tilly and her man—Tim Matheson, one of my many adolescent crushes—are forced to come to the town because Meg’s mother called her ranting like a lunatic before doing something awful to herself.

With mom in the hospital, Meg and Tim stay with Meg’s father and weird brother, played by the one and only Bill Paxton. And every time they go out on the town, people act out, stealing, fighting, inflicting harm on themselves, and inflicting harm on others.

It’s just a mild case of the crazies, so it’s not exactly the most suspenseful or fast-paced film, but it does keep you wondering what’s going on, and there is a definitive sense of isolation in the small town.

The final act, involving Meg and Tim being directly affected by the weirdness just as they’re learning what may be causing it, is somewhat of a gloom and doom scenario. What’s really funny is that in this day and age when all the “woke” hating horror fans bitch about any horror flick that has a message, this little film is a reminder that horror films big and small have always been woke. The message in this film is that we’re fucking up the environment, and if we do, we’re all going to go nuts and start turning on each other out of desperation. Silly horror movies from 40 years ago thinking they could predict the future….

MASK OF MURDER (1988)

Mask of Murder definitely has all the sleaze and slashing necessary to get a bad 80s video rental reputation, but it tries too hard to be a serious detective story to be much fun as a horror movie. And Christopher Lee feels bizarrely out of place, which may explain why his detective character gets shot at the beginning and spends most of the film in a hospital bed just giving out advice, leaving the starring detective role to hottie Rod Taylor of The Birds.

Opening on a cold snowy day in a small town, the film notifies us on screen of two kills within a couple of hours of each other as we see two different women get their throats sliced by a killer in a mask that’s practically a paper bag. And I’m not talking strong brown grocery bag. This is more like cheap, thin white fast food paper bag.

After a dinner party in which we learn Rod Taylor’s wife is played by Valerie Perrine, known for her role in the Village People classic Can’t Stop the Music, our detectives go on a man hunt that goes horribly wrong when law enforcement gets trigger happy.

Then for most of the movie Rod walks around talking to himself as he follows clues while we get more of the same uninspired kills. The most intriguing death scene has the killer going home with a stripper after she performs a whole dance number onscreen, and then after he kills her, he just walks casually by her young son on the way out the door.

That one scene leads to a very bizarre finale involving the detective nonchalantly exposing the kid to some fucked up shit in his effort to stop the killer. This movie is just weird and fails on every level, from not delivering any true thrills, suspense, or scares, to poorly attempting to create a profile of a sexually inadequate killer.

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Seven starring sexy Saxon

Posted on August 27, 2021 by Daniel

It suddenly hit me that I needed to make sure I had every horror flick John Saxon starred in. The missing tally came to seven, I got them, so let’s get into him.

THE EVIL EYE (aka: The Girl Who Knew Too Much) (1963)

 

This film is not only sexy Saxon’s first dip into murder and mayhem, but it also acknowledges director Mario Bava for creating a template for the giallo subgenre.

A young woman who loves mystery novels comes to Italy to visit her aging aunt, meets her aunt’s sexy doctor (guess who) and is then left alone for the horror to start. Bava’s mastery is apparent immediately as thunder crashes, the house is enveloped in shadows, the aunt drops dead, and an irritated cat brings even more tension to the atmosphere.

It only gets worse from there in a fantastically eerie scene on the street. Our main girl runs from the house only to face another horrific event, and then witnesses a murder through bleary eyes, complete with the killer wrestling a knife out of the victim’s back.

Her account of what happened is doubted the next morning, so she teams up with sexy Saxon to uncover the truth…which seems to point to an “alphabet killer” from a decade ago that may be after her now.

Someone seems to be messing with her mind as she gets closer to the truth, but this film doesn’t pile on the kills. It’s mostly about the budding romance between her and sexy Saxon as they investigate. In a way too short scene on the beach that shows way too little of sexy Saxon in tight, skimpy swimming trunks, he still manages to make me feel like I just watched the best porn ever.

And in a curiously familiar sequence, the main girl is so spooked by the possibility of being stalked by a killer that she sets booby traps much like the ones Nancy sets for Freddy in the original Elm Street. Considering sexy Saxon plays Nancy’s father in that film, you have to wonder if this was a little wink-wink from Wes Craven.

While the film doesn’t quite ever live up to the creepy first scene of death and murder, there is a spooky segment in the final act right before the killer is revealed.

NIGHT CALLER FROM OUTER SPACE (aka: Blood Beast from Outer Space) (1965)

This film gets a lot of praise online, but personally I thought it was mostly a boring mess, with a plot and tone that go in two totally different directions.

A round globe about the size of a medicine ball hits the earth. Sexy Saxon is among the scientists that show up on the scene to whisk it away to a lab.

The amount of technical scientific mumbo jumbo that follows is absolutely agonizing, and it pervades this entire film. What were they thinking?

We at least get a good scene of a woman left alone in the lab and being terrified by a (rubber) monster hand that reaches through a door.

After a while, they determine something humanesque is in the lab…but it escapes.

Then women start disappearing after answering an ad in a bikini magazine. Yes, the horny alien is luring women by promising them a career modeling bikinis. Yet there’s nothing sexy or campy about this movie at all.

The only good scene is when the woman from the lab decides to serve as the bait and answer the ad so they can catch the alien. That goes terribly wrong.

In the end, the alien stands in a burning building and explains its whole evil plot to the scientists as they stand in the street nearby. It then reveals its face, and I got major flashbacks to the woman in drag in Homicidal.

It almost felt like this movie was trying to imply that this alien is gender fluid or non-binary without saying it. If that’s the case, that would have been the coolest most progressive thing about it, adding a whole new dimension to the plot about a horny alien luring women in bikinis to bring to its planet.

QUEEN OF BLOOD (1966)

It’s a futuristic movie that takes place in 1990…doh!

Sexy Saxon works at the space technology institute. when aliens make contact, a team of astronauts is assembled to go to Mars, including Dennis Hopper and Saxon’s woman.

The outer space footage is all apparently taken from another movie, and it’s kind of obvious. The sound effects are like something out of an Atari game circa 1982, but the planet Mars shots are hot.

They find what they think is a dead female alien, but she eventually comes to life aboard their ship. She looks longingly at the men and glares at the woman. And leave it to Dennis Hopper to teach her how to suck.

However, all the fun doesn’t start until 40 minutes into this 78-minute movie, when the alien starts sucking the blood of the men when they sleep.

Not only is she fricking creepy (her smile is so sinister), but there are some classic sci-fi horror elements, like a buzzing sound whenever she’s about to attack, suggesting she’s some sort of bug, and a bunch of gooey eggs found around the ship.

THE BEES (1978)

I thought I’d seen every killer bees movie of the 1970s, but somehow I missed this one, which I have to assume is intentionally supposed to be somewhat of a comedy. Otherwise it’s a disaster. Actually, even as a comedy it’s a disaster. But damn, Saxon is at his sexiest.

A white privileged beekeeper in South America is killed by the locals and then his wife comes to the U.S. with some of his bees to meet with her father, played by John Carradine, and fellow scientist John Saxon.

We are then treated to one hilarious bee kill scene after another, along with Saxon, the woman, and Carradine just acting goofy as they attempt to figure out how to stop the bees.

What do I mean by goofy? Like, Saxon and the woman at one point barely escape the bees with their life by jumping in a vehicle…and then smile at each other and begin passionately making out.

What had me smiling is a moment that has sexy Saxon starring right at the camera and throwing kissy lips over Carradine’s shoulder. Swoon.

And dare I mention they learn how to talk to the bees?

CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE (1980)

My history with this film goes all the way back to 1982 when I was just 13. My mother took me to the theater two blocks away from our home to see The Sword and The Sorcerer because she assumed it was going to be a fun fantasy movie. It was a rated R film with gore and nudity, and before it started, a very gory trailer was shown for Cannibal Apocalypse, and my mother was mortified. And yet…we stayed for the whole movie. I love my mother.

So having said all that, would you believe purchasing the Blu-ray to complete my John Saxon horror collection made it the first time I ever saw this film?

The good news is this is classic trashy Euro horror from 1980, filled with bad leftover sounds of generic disco serving as the score.

The letdown is that this isn’t much of a flesh-eater film. It’s literally just cannibal behavior by regular people. No zombies or crazies. Sexy Saxon and his military team rescue some prisoners of war in the jungle only to find them pigging out on human flesh…including Saxon’s. I don’t blame them.

Back home, he has nightmares about that day, which means waking up shirtless and sweaty. Yay!

Turns out his fellow military men are now snapping and biting people. There’s plenty of gory nibbling around the city, and eventually the chaos brings the infected individuals together. These  mild-mannered cannibals simply plot to escape any repercussions for their eating actions, which leads to a battle with guns and flamethrowers in a sewer.

This is about as silly as Euro horror of that time period gets, but it has a delicious zinger ending.

BLOOD SALVAGE (1990)

Someone has taken their love of Tobe Hooper films too far. This trashy little film actually has a few surprises. Along with John Saxon (who virtually makes a cameo), even Mr. Hand from Fast Times at Ridgemont High makes an appearance.

So the story goes like this. There’s some sort of redneck talent show in which Saxon’s daughter performs. Then the family jumps in an RV, gets a flat, and gets towed by a redneck to…Leatherface’s house?

The young son wanders off, sees a crocodile wandering around, probably wonders if he’s in Tobe Hooper’s movie Eaten Alive, and then gets abducted by members of the redneck family.

Saxon goes to look for him. He gets abducted.

The wife goes to look for them both. Guess what happens to her.

The rest of the movie features the daughter trying to outsmart the all-male family of weirdos, who are merely organ harvesters selling body parts to Mr. Hand.

It’s a pretty bad movie, and I wish like hell it would get a Blu-ray release, because the DVD release is virtually a bootleg sourced from a VHS tape.

THE ARRIVAL (1991)

David Schmoeller, the director of Tourist Trap, Crawlspace, Catacombs, Puppet Master, and Netherworld, scores sexy Saxon for this odd, oh so 90s alien/horror hybrid. And Saxon plays a detective, naturally.

The first part of the film is genuinely creepy. During an older man’s birthday party, a comet hits the earth. The man ends up in the hospital with a strange blood issue that magically reverses itself, and he ends up feeling better than ever.

Once home with his family, he has haunting nightmares, fixates on the other members of the family, and sleepwalks at night. But he begins to suspect something is not right with him and believes he is a killer, so he runs away.

When bodies start turning up with their blood drained, Saxon steps in as the detective and follows leads to the older man. Damn. He it’s even hot as hell when he leans over other another man’s shoulder.

However, while the old man is on the run killing victims, he grows youthful.

The movie simply doesn’t stay scary, because the alien vampire is painted as a sympathetic and tragic character, so we don’t even feel any remorse for the random victims, and the kills are very tame.

Eventually the alien vampire man gets into a relationship with a young woman…just as Saxon closes in on him. The Arrival really started off thrilling and intriguing, but it turned a little hokey for me.

 

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Killer in a coma, I know, I know, it’s serious

Posted on August 26, 2021 by Daniel

A while back I blogged about the remake of Patrick with Sharni Vinson, which I described as Carrie in a coma. I can now add that it’s a fresh update that also retains plenty of aspects from the original, because I just watched a double feature of Patrick 1978 and the skanky Euro “sequel” Patrick Still Lives. So let’s get into them.

PATRICK (1978)

Patrick comes from Richard Franklin, director of Psycho II, Cloak & Dagger, Road Games, and Link, so it’s safe to say he definitely brought me a lot of entertainment on cable throughout the 80s.

However, this one is soooo 1970s. It starts out quite intriguing and creepy, but then it just drags on and on and gets way out there.

The bizarre opening scene sure does set the tone. While a sleazy looking couple is sexing it up in a tub, Patrick, who already looks like he’s in a coma, walks into the room and tosses some sort of heating lamp at them, leaving them with a lot to contend with.

Several years later, a young woman comes to work at a clinic, gets a nasty introductory speech from the head nun at the place, and then meets Patrick, who is now in a coma…yet somehow manages to spit on her!

We next meet the creepy head doctor, who does something awful to a frog to teach the main girl a little something about being in a coma. He also philosophizes about life, death, and the spirit.

As the plot unfolds, we learn that Patrick has telekinesis and can make shit move with his mind even while in a coma. We also learn he’s becoming very possessive of the main girl, communicates with her through her typewriter, and will use his powers to take out anyone who gets in between them.

And for a guy in a coma, he sure does have a lot of people who want him dead. So he takes care of them, too.

Highlights include a strange homage to Jaws in a pool, an evil looking statue on the nun’s desk, the main girl touching Patrick’s naughty part to see if he has any sense of feeling, a major experiment performed on Patrick without anyone in charge knowing, an awesome body removal scene from an electric panel, and a rather hokey and laughable final scene. And when it all comes down to it, I didn’t learn anything about the comatose character of Patrick at all.

PATRICK STILL LIVES (1980)

Leave it to Italian horror to take a film with some already pervy moments and make it a disgusting piece of exploitative trash.

This guy isn’t the same Patrick, so this isn’t really a sequel, but it’s also not quite a remake.

I still don’t understand why the first Patrick fell into a coma, but this Patrick is struck in the face by something thrown from a car while he’s stranded on the side of the road. I have no idea what is thrown at him, and I still have no idea why Patrick falls into a coma, because he’s quite awake and screaming in agony when it happens.

Next, several people gather at a wellness resort. Little do they know, comatose Patrick is there, and his father is a mad scientist doing some sort of experiments in a room drenched in Euro horror lights.

Patrick is mostly forgotten in this film. Instead it focuses on all the shitty people that have come to the resort, including the mother who lets her zombie son bite off her tit in Burial Ground. The minute I saw her I knew I was in for some nasty shit.

This is some nasty shit. Women get brutally slapped around by men, they get into catfights, they walk around with their tits out, they walk around with their hairy pussies out, and one of them rubs her pussy all over Patrick’s bedpost then totally spreads herself to give herself some finger action. And that’s not even the woman from Burial Ground. This movie must be the reason she got the Burial Ground role, because here she gets pursued by a floating metal poker, but instead of just running away from it, she climbs up on a table and spreads her legs. Believe me when I tell you nothing is left to the imagination as she is vaginally impaled close up. WTF?

Although Patrick isn’t a scary looking fucker like he is in the first film, aside from the disgusting death by pussy poking, the kills are better in this film. However, every time someone is about to get killed, a big overlay of Patrick’s eyes comes on screen. This is like some 1958 horror technique.

Most notable is that Patrick Still Lives plays out more like a slasher (in which the killer never even has to get out of bed). Not only is there a body count as people behave badly then get killed off, there also proves to be a motivation and reason behind the killing of these particular people.

Even so, there are still so many plot points presented that didn’t make much sense to me when all was said and done.

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NETFLIX AND CHILLS: ghosts, vampires, witches, and alien life forms

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Daniel

There was a lot going on in the four flicks I chose to watch in my latest weekend horrorthon, and I stuck to my Netflix watchlist for this batch.

BLOOD RED SKY (2021)

As a huge fan of the movie Flight of the Living Dead, I have to say that Blood Red Sky actually tops that film in terms of horror fun. But this time it’s vampires on a plane.

A young boy getting ready to board a plane befriends a doctor also on the flight. Meanwhile, the boy’s mother is in the restroom trying to control her “affliction” before she gets on the plane…

It’s not long after everyone settles in for the flight that the trouble starts…psycho terrorists! Among them is hottie Dominic Purcell. And these terrorists—at least one of them—gets brutally violent right away.

That makes mommy very angry…

Would you believe it’s a movie in which a woman trying to suppress her monstrous vampire side is forced to unleash it to save a plane full of people from terrorists?

Along with the modern hideous style of vampire monster, we get a lead terrorist who is a relentless monster as well, plenty of vicious battles, flashbacks to how the mom became a vampire, and eventually a whole vamp outbreak on the plane. Awesome. Definitely a film that will be making its way onto my shelves if it gets a physical release.

DON’T LISTEN (2020)

This Spanish film has been in my watchlist for ages because it looks like just another supernatural ghost movie in the style of The Conjuring, Insidious, and the conveyor belt of tween jump scare copycats that have come out since.

It’s kind of like the original Poltergeist, but instead of contacting the parents through the television, the kid just calls them on the phone. Yet despite a pretty cliché plot, it has some really impressive atmosphere and suspenseful sequences.

This couple’s kid hears voices and draws disturbing pictures the voices tell him to draw. After he’s taken by the other side, the dad enlists the help of an author on the subject of hauntings. The man moves into the house with his adult daughter to investigate.

Between the mostly predictable events that unfold, the handful of truly eerie situations really satisfy. For instance, there’s disturbing imagery involving cats, and there is an under the bed scene that had me on the edge of my seat.

And when the investigators figure out what really went on in the house, some good old creepy witches come into play for the final act. It’s not a film I’d add to my collection, but it definitely made my horror taste buds tingle.

THINGS HEARD & SEEN (2021)

It’s not often that a 2-hour film can hold my attention, especially one about a family moving into a haunted house, but Things Heard & Seen had a whole lot of other shit going on that compelled me to continue watching.

I was so damn let down in the end.

When Amanda Seyfried and her family move into a new home, she immediately starts to act spooked by little things that are a lot scarier to her than they are to us. At least her daughter keeps mentioning being afraid of some lady.

What comes as a surprise here is that Amanda’s relationship with her husband absolutely sucks and he’s a fucking douche bag. He’s such a horrible character it was hard to continue watching, but I did in hopes that whatever was in the house would make him pay in the end.

This isn’t about the ghostly presence. This is about Amanda being miserable, her husband being a dick, Amanda’s research into what happened in her house in the past, and her husband’s efforts to keep the truth from her…

The scariest part of the whole film is a gory dream.

The sexiest part of the film is the douche beating his meat.

Even so, as a thriller it really ramps up, because the husband starts to lose his shit. That kept me engrossed during the second part of the film. There are some really unexpected twists, but this ghost seriously let both me and Amanda down. And honestly, the conclusion was bizarre and abstract.

I will note that sexual orientation comes up a couple of times. Someone gets accused of being a lesbian, and also someone makes nasty remarks about a dead gay man, so Amanda angrily calls him out on it.

THE BLOCK ISLAND SOUND (2020)

This is a spooky little film that I’m going to guess is strongly inspired by Lovecraft. There is a sense of dread and isolation as an inexplicable threat from the sea slowly creeps up on a family.

Their small fishing village is being plagued by mysterious occurrences, like tons of fish washing up on shore and the main fisherman character’s father sleepwalking, getting strange marks on his face, and acting odd.

When tragedy befalls the father on the water, the fisherman is determined to find out what happened exactly. So he hops in his boat and goes to investigate. When he returns, he just isn’t the same anymore…

This really is an unnerving little film with some otherworldly and underwater themes, but it’s not a big budget film, so don’t expect any special effects or some sort of monstrous payoff at the end, because there’s none of that.

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The rest of Robert Englund

Posted on August 20, 2021 by Daniel

At this point I’ve covered and own just about every horror movie in which icon Robert Englund starred, short of the Elm Street films (except part 2, which I took on recently). That list includes:

Eaten Alive

Dead & Buried

Galaxy of Terror

The Phantom of the Opera

Night Terrors

The Mangler

Killer Tongue

Wishmaster

Urban Legend

Strangeland

2001 Maniacs

Hatchet

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer

Zombie Strippers!

The Moleman of Belmont Avenue

Inkubus

Lake Placid: The Final Chapter

The Last Showing

Fear Clinic

Lake Placid vs. Anaconda

The Funhouse Massacre

The Midnight Man

Nightworld: Door of Hell

And now onto the seven remaining films I didn’t yet have in my collection…until now.

DANCE MACABRE (1992)

The director of Wacko, Without Warning, and Satan’s Cheerleaders definitely has a diverse horror filmography.

Here he enlists Robert Englund to sort of reprise his The Phantom of the Opera role in drag in a giallo-inspired flick reminiscent of Suspiria that takes place at a ballet school.

After an artsy/eerie opener at a ballet performance, Englund welcomes a bunch of American girls to a Russian ballet school. We meet our main girl, who reminded me of a blonde Betsy Russell. She’s somewhat of a rebel and way more into injecting ballet into modern pop music, which means we get a couple of cheesy dance sequences inspired by music videos of the time. I was in heaven.

As she’s busy trying to impress the wheelchair bound woman who runs the school—who looks an awful lot like Robert Englund in drag—fellow students are being killed off in tame but stylish ways while drenched in Argento lighting.

There are no surprises considering we know exactly where this is all heading and who the killer is going to be, but it is a fun, cheesy mashup of Euro horror and 80s slasher for the early 90s.

PYTHON (2000)

Python is like the Sharknado of 20 years ago. SyFy loaded this film with tons of familiar faces…and a horrendous CGI snake, of course.

It all starts with a snake off a plane. That’s right. A huge python is being transported on a plane and pops right out the side, conveniently causing the plane to crash near two lesbians eating out in the woods before becoming the first to be eaten.

Them we get hit by one fun cast member after another. The deputy is Johnny from The Karate Kid/Cobra Kai. Robert Englund is a scientist. Casper Van Dien is a special agent with a horrible mustache and worse fake accent.

We get Jenny McCarthy as a horny bitch screwing a real estate agent, as well as appearances by Roach from The People Under the Stairs and Isaac from Children of the Corn.

Even Wil Wheaton appears with purple hair and a nipple ring.

The cast, the silliness, and the hot leading boy save the film, because it’s kind of slow, plus the snake is awful.

At times it looks like a cartoon, at others it looks like they inserted overblown footage of a snake into a scene.

And some of the situations are absurd, like the snake seemingly scaring a girl out of the shower at night, chasing her from the house in her towel, then pursuing her as she races away in her pickup truck until morning comes.

Having said that, the kills are a blast, and when the snake spits its cartoon acid on victims, the aftermath is gory good. Plus, if this is really what it looks like after two guys get into a fistfight, now I get why guys get into fistfights…

BLACK SWARM (2007)

Sure, it has very pretty CGI wasps, but Black Swarm is a movie about killer wasps turning people into zombies and stars Robert Englund. That’s enough for me. The rest is just the usual dumb SyFy original drama, and man does it make me nostalgic for the 00s, when life and horror were just simpler.

A widowed woman comes back to her small hometown with her daughter to serve as the new sheriff. Of course she has a past, of course it’s a hot guy, and of course she’ll have to team up with him to get the horror under control, considering he’s an exterminator.

Meanwhile, Robert Englund is a mysterious beekeeper who befriends the little daughter when she’s not being babysat by a blind lady.

Locals slowly turning a bit gnarly with wasp stings as they stroll through town is definitely a highlight of this simple little film, and the zombie makeup is icky good.

There are a few cool wasp attacks, but they take a back seat to the aftermath of those they’ve stung. However, there is a nice big hive scene at the end.

SINNER (2009)

Damn. This movie goes in hard with a gruesome torture and murder scene opening that announces quite clearly that this is an Italian horror flick.

It then turns into what felt to me very much like a story inspired by Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca. The main character is even fricking named Rebecca.

She’s an insurance agent who comes to evaluate the contents of an estate. The maid oversees the house and keeps the family secrets.

The butcher is domineering and sleazy. The twenty-something son is socially stunted and doesn’t speak.

The main girl reads journals that begin to unravel the details of what happened to the lady of the house (in flashbacks). 35 minutes in, Robert Englund shows up as the master of the house, and the craziness begins to spin out of control.

There’s murder and mayhem, and the backstory gets a bit complicated, but if you stick with it, there are some good twists, and the gory horror finally returns for an encore.

STRIPPERS VS. WEREWOLVES (2012)

Strippers vs. any kind of monsters has the opportunity to be a trashy piece of fun, and there have been plenty of tries since Zombie Strippers. Strippers vs. Werewolves even enlisted Robert Englund once again. So where does it go wrong?

A club exploding to “Hungry Like the Wolf” is a good way to start. A stripper killing a guy who turns into a werewolf during a lap dance next is a good follow-up. A dude being eaten by a pack of werewolves after that is a third bright side.

Of course, these are hokey Wolfman type werewolves, so don’t go into this expecting to see bodacious naked babes battling The Howling. However, the goofy werewolves work with the campy tone this film deserves but barely ever delivers.

It’s kind of boring with way too much talk. The people at the strip club try to hide the body of the dead patron. The werewolf pack wants to kill the strippers for killing one of their own. One of the girls starts a romance with a cute guy. And Robert Englund appears for less than five minutes an hour into the movie in a pointless role as a werewolf the pack has locked away in a cage. You also get an extra few seconds of him in a tag after the closing credits.

One punk werewolf is a hottie before his transformation (and hairy cute after), the girls don’t really flash much T&A in this stripper flick, and the final battle in the strip club is disappointingly low key. Just go watch Zombie Strippers! again.

SANITARIUM (2013)

Well, it’s an anthology about the horrors of being mentally ill, so that should tell you right away if you want to see a horror movie that dwells on the topic.

Malcolm McDowell is the narrating doctor serving as the wraparound at a mental institution as he discusses three cases…

1st story – John Glover plays an insane artist who takes direction from his creepy dolls…and of course they end up directing him to kill.

Robert Englund is the curator at the art gallery, and there’s a pretty boy buddy (sadly straight), plus an unexpected turn of events.

2nd story – This is creepy and disturbing. A young boy being molested on a regular basis begins to imagine his abuser as a frightening monster.

Or is there an actual monster? His concerned teacher, played by Lacey Chabert, is determined to find out.

3rd story – Naturally the most abstract story in the bunch had to be the longest. Lou Diamond Phillips plays a man convinced that aliens are out there…and coming for him.

Slowly but surely, he begins to remember what drove him to the insane asylum. Lou’s performance is excellent, the story, not so much. The tag scene after the credits doesn’t even help clarify it.

KANTEMIR (aka: Transylvania Curse) (2015)

 

Perhaps it’s just trying too hard to be a sophisticated horror film, but Kantemir doesn’t quite deliver considering all the goodness it has swirling around it.

There’s a lot I liked about this film. For starters, Robert Englund is teamed up once again with Diane Cary, who played human Harmony to his alien Willie in the original 80s classic miniseries V.

They’re a divorced couple of thespians that ends up at a secluded mansion where a mysterious director has gathered a small group of actors together to rehearse a play.

As a perfect balance to the older couple, the younger cast members bring a more mainstream horror vibe to the film, and include a traditional good girl, a total bitch, an overbearing goofball guy, and a creepy guy.

The rural setting is stunning, and the autumn surroundings establish a perfect tone for an eerie horror movie. So…do we get one?

Because Englund’s character is the only actor there with any clout, the director character challenges him and taunts him for always playing the bad guy (awesome). He uses Englund’s failings—namely a drinking problem—against him, particularly when Englund witnesses a murder but no one believes him.

Englund is soon convinced the director is somehow mesmerizing everyone and that they are becoming the characters in the play. This leaves the audience wondering if it’s all in Englund’s head as the lines between fantasy and reality are blurred.

It’s a cool concept and there are a few gothic horror moments, but it’s ultimately underwhelming, with little in the way of scares or suspense before there’s suddenly a burst of violence in the final act. Even plot points feel disjointed and irrelevant, from a notable mention of numerous missing dogs at the beginning to a mysterious book that keeps coming into play. And the twist at the end isn’t much of a twist considering it was pretty inevitable what the outcome was going to be.

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SHUDDER AND SHRIEK: a werewolf, a phone, a punk invasion, and holes in the walls

Posted on August 19, 2021 by Daniel

It’s time for four random flicks from my Shudder watchlist, although three of them are from directors whose work I’ve enjoyed before.

THE CALL (2020)

The director of Gnome Alone and The Final Wish gives us a film that stars Lin Shaye and Tobin Bell acting exactly how you’d expect Lin Shaye and Tobin Bell to act in a horror movie. In other words, she screams like a crazy old lady, and he offers a bunch of young people a life or death ultimatum in a calm and controlled voice.

Meanwhile, a new kid moves to town in 1987 and immediately hooks up with the local bad kids to go torment reclusive Lin Shaye, who dies soon after.

Then her husband brings the kids to his house to let them know she’s left her money to them in her will. But there’s a catch. They each need to go use a phone upstairs and talk to the person on the other end. I was intrigued. Plus there was some faux 80s music and one kid wearing a George Michael crucifix earring, and he was almost as pretty as I was when I rocked one in 1987.

The first few trips up to the phone deliver some really creepy thrills, which would be even more frightening if they didn’t make me feel like I was back in Freddy Krueger’s boiler room 40 years ago.

Also, the first two kids are brothers, so it’s a bit of a cop out, because they both face off against the same dark memory from their past. On the bright side, the dark memory is pretty hot.

There are more Freddy-like sequences as the main boy and main girl take their turns (only four kids in total), but the film just falls flat in the end. Not to mention, it feels like it falls short, because it ends abruptly…as if the screenplay hadn’t been completed yet.

STRAIGHT EDGE KEGGER (2019)

Jason Zink, co-director of Night Terrors, a horror anthology I had fun with several years ago, brings us an indie home invasion flick with a punk rock twist. Just note that this film runs 78 minutes long, and the home invasion doesn’t start until 43 minutes in.

Before that we meet our main man and his friends (all quite cute in a variety of ways) and get plenty of footage of punk band performances to establish the feel of the group’s punk lifestyle.

The main guy is questioning his entire existence in the culture, what it means, and what his purpose in life is, which leads to various conversations and arguments with his friends. This is most definitely a timely look at indoctrination of youth into extremism in our society and whether or not they even understand what they’re angry about.

Eventually the friends go to a house party, the main guy spend time chatting up a girl…and then the home invasion just starts out of nowhere because there was simply no tension buildup towards it–not even a home invader’s shadow of foreshadowing.

This isn’t a polished flick, so it’s got a gritty look and feel as partygoers are killed off quickly in a variety of ways. It totally delivers on the home invasion goods at this point. Even the director’s Night Terrors co-director Alex Lukens makes a cameo as a victim, along with his magnificent beard.

Eventually it’s up to the main guy to fight back and take on the home invaders. It’s not particularly original, but it should give home invasion horror lovers enough of what they’re looking for to satisfy.

CAVEAT (2020)

Several years ago a friend and I were scarred for life at the horror film festival in New York City by a short film called “How Olin Lost His Eye”…so when we got home we looked up the director and ruined ourselves with more of his short films.

 

At last he has made a full-length feature, and his unnerving style shines through…as does his obsession with horror glory holes.

The bizarre setup alone had me twitching in my seat. Our main guy is asked to take care of his landlord’s mentally disturbed niece in an isolated house. The catch is she’s terrified of being attacked by a man, so they can’t cross paths in the house. Sooooo…the landlord fricking chains the dude up to limit his access around the house. WTF? Oh…and the chain is connected somewhere down in the dark basement. W…T…F?

The house is dingy and dark. The halls made me feel like I was back in the original Resident Evil game from over two decades ago. There are mysterious glory holes in walls. The niece comes out of hiding and tells a strange story of what went on in the basement of her house.

And something starts pulling on his chain.

Caveat is definitely a slow burn, and the strange storyline might not be for everyone, but if you like films that inch their way under your skin, this is one to watch.

And I would even suggest you warm up with a few of director Damian McCarthy’s shorts to really get a feel for his style, because it haunts this whole film. And the final act had me by the throat.

TEDDY (2020)

This is an odd little teen angst werewolf film from France (Teddy Snaps?). It’s sort of a comedy, but it’s also dreary, melancholy, and depressing. Not to mention, there is essentially no werewolf makeup or werewolf action, yet there are several icky gross out scenes.

The story is about a rebellious teen that works at a salon/massage parlor. He gets bit by a werewolf and begins going through a very slow transformation process.

In the meantime, he hangs out with his girlfriend and gets sexually harassed by his boss.

There’s plenty of exploration of male adolescent insecurities, from sexual awakenings to body changes, but the subject matter is handled with just about as much insecurity as boys actually experience concerning these issues, which is rather disappointing—especially when the promise of a butt crack waxing doesn’t come with a happy ending.

That’s about it. The final act is a little thrilling. He transforms during a bingo game at the high school, yet literally all we see is werewolf feet pop out of his sneakers.

Then he goes on a murderous rampage…after turning out all the lights. Seriously, we see nothing because it all happens in the dark. Sigh.

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The blog that Betty White built

Posted on August 17, 2021 by Daniel

At the end of the 1990s, movies like Anaconda, Deep Blue Sea, and Lake Placid launched a resurgence of nature strikes back flicks in the form of snake, shark, and crocodile movies. They’ve lived on for over two decades, many of them in the form of endless franchises on the SyFy channel. So, it was time to dig out the Lake Placid sequel DVDs and do a summer weekend marathon.

LAKE PLACID 2 (2007)

Despite the horrible CGI crocs (sometimes they look like they’re actually walking on water), I find the sequel to the original theatrical film to be much funnier and more fun.

It all begins with the good old underwater POV before a guy from the Environmental Protection Agency gets gobbled down.

Betty White’s sister, played by Cloris Leachman, has taken over the croc feeding responsibilities. Only instead of cows, she’s just pushing humans off the dock. Too bad she isn’t in the film more, because she’s a blast for the three or four minutes total screen time she gets.

John Schneider is the sheriff, and his rebellious teen son has come to stay with him.

Naturally, the son finds a bunch of pretty people to sneak off into the woods with for some swimming by the lake. And naturally, natural selection will make croc food of all the douche bags in the group before the film is done.

Meanwhile, Schneider and a funny team go searching for answers to the missing EPA guy (well…the rest of the EPA guy).

They spend the film encountering and battling the crocs (yes, there’s more than one this time), and even have a hottie with them who can kill crocs with a knife.

LAKE PLACID 3 (2010)

The third installment totally goes for it, starting with some skinny dipping featuring man butt and a hilarious sexual kill scene.

Colin Ferguson, who has been in loads of stuff but I can only picture as the Maytag man, is a zoologist who is somehow related to Betty White and Cloris Leachman.

When he moves into their cabin with his family, it’s his young son who starts feeding the crocodiles…until they eat a dog.

Then the screaming starts.

Michael Ironside is the sheriff, and he’s as perfectly dry and casually domineering as we expect from Michael Ironside.

And sci-fi/horror tough girl Yancy Butler is on hand as a poacher who unintentionally lures other victims into the woods, while bringing the campy fun aspects to the film.

The croc spends most of its time trying to infiltrate Ferguson’s cabin, and that eventually transitions over to a grocery store.

Oddly, this family angle is more serious, but the ridiculous battles with CGI crocs at least make it laughable.

LAKE PLACID: THE FINAL CHAPTER (2012)

This is how you start a sequel. Yancy Butler picks herself up off the floor of the grocery store in which the last film ends and returns to the lake to fight another day.

Only now the lake is fenced off as a croc sanctuary. But the gate is accidentally left open. The new sheriff looks a whole lot like Kate Hudson, and her teen daughter’s field trip school bus ends up on the wrong side of the fence.

After a lot of hanging around with the kids in the woods at night, a guy pees in the water while watching two naked girls swimming…and gets his dick bit off. I needed that.

Indeed, this is the first entry in the series that turns into a good old teens being led to the slaughter flick, and it all kicks off with a total Piranha rip-off scene of a guy being torn to pieces by a school of baby crocs.

The sheriff’s daughter even ends up in the croc’s lair fishing a ringing phone from a croc’s mouth.

Yeah, this installment really jumps the…um…croc.

Even Robert Englund is forced into the plot, mostly for the final act, as yet another relative of Betty White, angry that he didn’t inherit the cabin.

LAKE PLACID VS. ANACONDA (2015)

Robert Englund is back, and ***previous film SPOILER*** despite having been chomped through the middle of his body in his final scene of The Final Chapter, he now has a hook for a hand, a patch over an eye, and a fake leg. Not to mention, he’s also a pretty unnecessary character after he delivers a croc to a company that wants to crossbreed them with anacondas.

However, snake and croc escape the facility, and it’s back to the lake.

Yancy Butler is now the sheriff, and while she has some great lines again, she seems kind of tired of fighting crocs.

As is always the case in SyFy horror that takes place in the wilderness, there are way too many separate groups roaming the woods, and although this is a creature feature crossover, there are barely enough of either snakes of crocs for a majority of the film.

The saving grace is a bunch of sorority girls soaking up the sun by the lake. It takes 45 minutes, but finally the crocs attack all these bitches in bikinis, and the girls absolutely steal the show with some fantastic campy horror comedy reactions to their predicament…although a croc tossing a snake up into helicopter blades to kill two birds with one stone is another highlight.

LAKE PLACID: LEGACY (2018)

I think this is considered a reboot or an origins story or something like that, but it just feels like another sequel to me, considering a group of young environmental activists breaks into a fenced off facility in the middle of the lake and is soon being attacked by giant crocs.

Because it takes itself seriously, Legacy is definitely a shift away from the hokey fun we’ve grown accustomed to with this franchise. I guess it’s a little more suspenseful, but it’s not exactly a terrifying experience and is as generic as a creature feature gets.

After first encountering the croc while on their boat, the group spends the film exploring the facility while trying to figure out how to escape the island safely.

That at least makes this a much darker outing than previous installments, and the murky settings definitely up the atmosphere.

There’s a tunnel attack that gave me flashbacks to the giant alligator boss battle from Resident Evil 2, and the place eventually gets flooded, requiring some underwater escape scenarios. Gotta be honest—I was kind of living for the shots of the CGI croc swimming directly towards the camera.

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