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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STREAM QUEEN: slashing, sucking, and summoning the supernatural for laughs

Posted on August 11, 2021 by Daniel

My latest streaming marathon consisted of four humorous horror flicks, so let’s see how that worked out for me.

KILLER CONCEPT (2021)

Killer Concept has an apropos title because it’s a clever idea, but it does get a little bogged down by dialogue, despite being a slim 80 minutes long.

The opening scene is old school slasher stalking POV perfection.

Then we meet two guys and a girl that decide to formulate a movie idea based on murders taking place in their town.

There is some humorous meta fun, especially from one guy who totally wants to go for an all-out slasher.

Now here’s the catch. One of the three is much closer to the murders than the other two realize and it begins to affect the working relationship, because the…um…guilty party starts to take suggestions about the killer in their movie very personally.

The letdown here is that we simply don’t get much of the killer in action or an unfolding of events that has the other two catching on slowly to the predicament they are actually in.

The film instead leans heavily on the trio hashing out their ideas, and then the truth simply coming out all at once in the final scene.

There is a nice twist, but just when the climax feels like it’s really going somewhere, the film ends.

HAWK & REV: VAMPIRE SLAYERS (2020)

If you’re a fan of loser buddies turned monster slayers horror comedies, chances are you’ll have some fun with this one even if it doesn’t make it to the top of your list of faves.

This is one of those cases in which the director, writer, and star are all one and the same. However, it’s not one of those situations in which he makes it all about him and doesn’t allow any other character in the film to have any fun (cough…The Wolf of Snow Hollow…cough).

So our leading man is obsessed with vampires being real, and is kicked out of the army and his parents’ house after trying to stake a fellow military man.

That doesn’t stop him from continuing his hunt for vampires…like a kind of queer, gothic, S&M trio he spots in an alley. He enlists the help of his only buddy who believes him, and together they meet a variety of oddball characters, make plenty of pop culture references, crack adolescent jokes, and naturally get themselves into situations that flirt with homosexual innuendo.

On top of that, there’s even some good blood and gore, especially closer to the end, even though it’s contained within the silly tone of the film.

MANDAO OF THE DEAD (2018)

Mandao of the Dead is a quirky little supernatural “buddy” comedy in which the buddies are a white guy and his Asian uncle, who look to be about the same age. I can’t explain it, so don’t ask. The Asian guy, Scott Dunn, is also the writer and director.

He allows his deadbeat nephew to come live with him and soon reveals that he has wild dreams in which he can see his own body. His nephew predicts that he’s actually astral projecting.

After a Halloween party, that ability comes in handy when the pair discovers a dead body and the ghost of the dead man starts communicating with the uncle.

The ghost wants him to use his astral ability to travel back in time to stop the murder.

It’s not a total laughfest, but it’s cute and enjoyable with a likable cast and a fun, spooky feel. Plus, its only 70 minutes long, it takes place at Halloween time, and it prepares us for the Christmas time sequel…

MANDAO RETURNS (2020)

The “series”, if that’s what it’s going to be, really finds its footing in the sequel. The characters are further developed, the actors are more on their game and in tune with each other, and the humor and horror elements are both stronger.

It’s now the Christmas season, and the pair’s landlord, who is also a bogus medium, asks the uncle to use his astral powers to bring some authenticity to psychic readings with clients.

Things take an unexpected turn when the guys find themselves drawn into what seems to be an accidental overdose of a famous actress….

In order to find out what really happened, the medium has a plan that involves nephew and uncle swapping bodies when they astral project into the past.

The twists and turns are more complex in this one, plus there’s a masked figure with a knife to spice up the slasher feel. This one totally had me hankering for another installment.

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Satanism and slashing in the 1960s and 1970s

Posted on August 9, 2021 by Daniel

I can never have enough of either in my horror collection, so here’s a look at four flicks I’ve recently added to my shelves that come from back in the day.

CHAMBER OF HORRORS (1966)

House of Wax is the movie concept that just goes on and on. Chamber of Horrors, recently released on Blu-ray, was originally intended as a pilot for a House of Wax television series, but it was considered too disturbing for home viewing, so it was released to theaters instead. They even added a William Castle gimmick…a narrator at the beginning informs viewers there will be a Fear Flasher and Horror Horn warnings right before anything terrifying happens so you can look away.

You know what you see if you don’t look away? NOTHING. The gruesome scenes are literally cutaways. For instance, killer raises a cleaver to chop up victim aaaaand…cut away. Yawn.

However, there are what could be considered some pretty damn disturbing concepts for the time, beginning with a man marrying a dead woman and then keeping her body in his bed for the rest of the movie. Sure, everything is implied, and she doesn’t rot for us (he even sees her as beautiful and alive), but it’s still implying necrophilia back in 1966.

The killer is caught with the help of wannabe detectives that run the House of Wax in town. The killer escapes his handcuffs by hacking off his hand, replaces it with a hook, and then comes back for revenge.

Most of the time, he lurks in alleys like Jack the Ripper, and he occasionally kills someone.

The wax bust of him made for the museum also bears an uncanny resemblance to Vincent Price, which I can only assume is a wink to Price having starred in the 1953 version of House of Wax.

The absolute best scene of the film involves the killer faking out one of the detectives with his hook hand. The absolute oddest thing about the film is that it has little to do with the wax museum…until the final frame, which feels very much like it’s a cliffhanger setting us up for the TV show that never happened.

THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN (1971)

This one is like Rosemary’s Baby meets Children of the Corn right from the opening scene of children behaving badly, complete with some good scary kid music.

A man, woman, and child passing through a town become trapped there with a few locals—sheriff, doctor, priest—that are trying to figure out why there have been a series of murders and where all the missing children have gone.

Meanwhile, all the old people in town are in a cult and drawing the children their way. This movie really should have been called Adulthood vs. Childhood of Satan…

In true drug trippy 1970s horror fashion, this is one bizarre movie with creepy but often illogical scenes (like a knight on a horse suddenly galloping into the picture to behead someone).

The priest is the first to predict that witchcraft and the supernatural are to blame, and he’s also kind of pretty.

It’s not super suspenseful or gory, but The Brotherhood of Satan is unnerving and unsettling, with some genuinely eerie atmosphere and disturbing occult aspects.

SATAN’S CHEERLEADERS (1977)

Greydon Clark, director of Wacko, Uninvited, and Without Warning, took his first stab at horror with this goofy film in the 1970s. I admire him for not calling it quits after this disaster, which can at least be enjoyed now as the campy mess that it is.

It all begins with cheerleaders practicing on a beach to horrendous disco music. Don’t get me wrong, I was already a little disco queen when this film came out the same year as Saturday Night Fever, but this is horrendous disco.

They then take a shower and do a ridiculous dance and slap their asses while a bearish janitor peeps at them. After they leave, he goes and sniffs around their lockers. And when the girls have car trouble, wouldn’t you know the janitor shows up, throws them all in his truck, cops a few feels, drives them into the woods, and tries to sacrifice one to…the door knocker from Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol?

Before you know it, the cheerleaders are being chased through the woods by a zany cult, including the janitor, the sheriff, a farmer with a pitchfork, and a satanic monk, who is by far the funniest, most campy part of the film (and I think it’s actually intentional). Yet what’s funnier is when the sheriff rips open one girl’s blouse as he prepares to rape her, and her response is, “I’ll tell your wife.”

Lilly Munster is the sheriff’s wife, and she spends some time sitting around looking stunned at how bad the dialogue is and how bad the girls’ acting is before siccing her dogs on them.

While running away, one of the girls even has a run-in with John Carradine as a self-proclaimed crazy old bum.

Yes, Yvonne De Carlo and John Carradine both got suckered into doing this film. For a film called Satan’s Cheerleaders featuring two big names forever tied to the horror genre, it’s astounding that there’s no gore, little nudity, and no exploitation. That rape never even happens, so I guess the “I’ll tell your wife” line worked like a charm.

In the end, the cult is in for a big surprise, because one of the cheerleaders has some magic tricks up her sleeve.

KILLER’S DELIGHT (aka: The Sport Killer) (1978)

I sort of got bamboozled into buying this one because it was part of one of Vinegar Syndrome’s new release packaged deals. I could have sworn when I preordered I opted not to take the whole package because this one didn’t strike me as horror, but when my order eventually arrived, there it was.

This isn’t really much of a horror movie. However, there are some scenes that sure do leave an impression, including the opener of a man throwing a woman’s naked body off a cliff, and another woman’s body being found with her crying dog snuggled up against it.

The few kills are okay, and very disturbing in a 1970s vulnerable female panic way (you had to be there), and there is a pretty sadistic scene of the killer snapping limbs of a woman he’s holding captive. We know who the killer is all along (John Karlen of Dark Shadows), and he wears disguises so cheesy that a guy even rags on one of his looks to the main detective. This is definitely not about scares or suspense. Much of the film focuses on the detective following up after each body is found. Yawn.

Then the film just veers in a new direction, with Susan Sullivan, who only lasted one season on It’s a Living, stepping in to help out the detective and becoming the focus of the killer. There’s even a forced, cliché profiling of the killer tossed in during the final scene…by the killer! The killer literally self-diagnosis himself as a mamma’s boy. Ugh.

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NEW ACQUISITIONS: from 88 through 07

Posted on August 6, 2021 by Daniel

My collection just keeps growing, and my Dan cave just seems to keep getting smaller as a result. But the good news is it gives me more movies to blog about, so let’s get into these four.

THROUGH THE FIRE (1988)

Also known as The Gates of Hell Part II: Dead Awakening in order to be considered the sequel to Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead wherever it was known as The Gates of Hell (confused yet?), this film deserves a life of its own, because it is as perfectly U.S. 80s as a low budget horror movie can get.

After her sister goes missing, a woman gets drunk, gets kicked out of a bar, gets picked up by a hot cop, and then asks him the next morning to help her find her sister.

I’m convinced the director of this film had the hots for the cop, because the camera sure makes love to him.

Anyway, there’s this seedy cult trying to conjure a beast, the cop and the main woman enlist the help of a professor who knows about this kind of thing, the cult pursues them, they pursue the cult right back, there’s a funny scene involving a cat in a freezer (the reactions of the characters are funny, not the cat in the freezer), and then the main characters track the cult to their secret hideaway, where they seem to turn into some sort of zombies or demons.

In other words, most of the horror is packed into the last half hour, and it is so totally 80s VHS rental material.

THE SANDMAN (1995)

J.R. Bookwalter, the director of The Dead Next Door and Witchouse 2 and 3, brings us a low budget, direct-to-video trailer park horror film that feels like an 80s film, and therefore has a quite a bit of charm.

Gary is a romance writer who can’t sleep at night, He’s also an everyday kind of dude, which makes him a really likable character. He starts to see red flashing eyes at his window at night, and becomes convinced there’s something coming for the residence of the trailer park…especially after the first death.

A bunch of oddball characters add to the fun, including his weird cousin, who is written into the film as crashing in his trailer at the beginning and then quickly forgotten completely for the rest of it. But at least he sticks around long enough to call someone an ass wipe. Ah, those were the days.

There’s also a crazy Vietnam vet, who babbles on and on about “The Sandman”…which of course proves to be real. The Sandman looks like a cross between the Grim Reaper and a big Jawa surrounded by fog machines, and has a demonic voice. Cheesy awesome. He sneaks into the trailers of sleeping people, sticks a tentacle with a suction cup to their heads, and makes them have horrible nightmares before killing them with his scythe.

I don’t know that younger horror fans would like this one, but it gave me all the feels because it’s so old school. What it did need was a bit more humor throughout, because there are some funny moments at the end, including the entire battle, in which Gary and the Vietnam vet have a shootout with The Sandman in a trailer home.

SKINNED DEEP (2004)

There are plenty of enticing horror elements in this backwoods horror indie that should appeal to fans of Texas Chainsaw and House of 1000 Corpses (that would be me), but there’s also so much messy absurdity that it could also really spoil the horror for the same fans (that would also be me).

The opener feels like this is going to be a genuine throwback to disturbing 80s direct-to-video horror, with an old redneck being terrorized by a masked killer driving next to him on a truck at night…with a hook on a chain. Eek!

What makes things a little odd are the flashes of a flexing muscle man body in between the horror sequence…

Then we are introduced to a family on a road trip. They meet a couple of strange locals, have car trouble, accept an invite for dinner from a creepy old lady working at a diner, go to her house, which is more of a freak show than the Texas Chainsaw family’s humble abode…and yet don’t seem to bat an eye until the masked killer pops out and starts hacking them up.

The teen daughter ends up in an underground lair right out of House of 1000 Corpses and spends the rest of the movie trying to escape the psycho family as we are subjected to trippy footage and edits, disorienting muted sound, and gory practical effects just for the hell of it. I was particularly offended when the daughter stumbled upon her father’s body and puked. I would never puke at the sight of a dad bod.

It really feels like there’s no actual script or plot, just a director filming a bunch of random ideas, editing them together, and calling it a movie.

There are a lot of weird characters, particularly the family. The masked killer could be so damn scary if it wasn’t for the rest of them. The maternal head of household is the funniest and quite creepy thanks to her odd performance. Another guy has a big deformed brain on his head and daydreams about running naked through New York City (kudos to him for going full Monty when they filmed it).

And Warwick Davis’s character is obsessed with throwing plates, yet he seems to keep forgetting he’s not actually starring in yet another Leprechaun sequel.

And finally, there’s the hunky, muscle bod flexing in the underground lab…without a head.

I don’t get this movie. I don’t get it at all. And I dare you to try to sit through the closing credits, which are accompanied by continuous, irritating, agonizing screams.

CLOSURE (aka: Straightheads) (2007)

This rape/revenge flick isn’t the type of film I’d usually watch or blog about, but it was included on a triple feature Blu-ray I purchased and stars horror cutie Danny Dyer, so I’m having a go at it.

Gillian Anderson of The X-files is a successful businesswoman who needs a date to a party…so she asks Danny Dyer, the guy installing her security system in her home that day.

They go, they have sex in the car after, they have a run-in with a vehicle on a dark, desolate road, they hit a deer, and then the vehicle catches up with them…

This isn’t one of those exploitative rape scenes that goes on way too long, and it’s not graphic. More disturbing is what becomes of Dyer and Anderson after. He is totally emasculated and can’t perform sexually, and she becomes hyper aggressive and hell-bent on revenge.

The film mostly explores how the two of them deal with PTSD, until they finally close in on getting their revenge on the men who victimized them. They focus mainly on one man, and there are some very disturbing elements here, including a dog killing and them focusing on the man’s daughter, which causes great conflict in their minds.

There are some unexpected twists at the end, and the most brutal part involves their revenge on the main guy. Let’s just say his hole will never be the same.

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Dinosaurs, aliens, and presidential zombies

Posted on July 28, 2021 by Daniel

It’s another mish-mosh of subgenres in my latest movie marathon. Let’s see if any of these flicks is worth a watch.

TRIASSIC HUNT (2021)

If only SyFy were half the bad monster movie channel it used to be, this dinosaur flick would constantly be part of an all-day Saturday dinosaur marathon. But since SyFy has no fun anymore, you have to search out these types of films on streaming.

Are you really trying to pull a Chris Pratt?

A small team is brought in by Linnea Quigley to hunt down lab-created Allosauruses that have escaped from a military facility, while Michael Pare monitors what’s going on from off site because they needed a scream queen for horror fans and a name that would appeal to GenXers…

These are some of the better looking CGI dinos you’re likely to see in an indie Jurassic craze cash-in, but it’s still all basic cheesy monster movie action, with the usual stereotypical characters and evil villains.

And of course the well-meaning good guys do their best to make everything right as they get chomped down by smart dinos genetically modified for war.

In the end it’s all about a dinosaur egg, and it’s all hokey, laughable fun.

COSMIC SIN (2021)

The writer of Breach, a zombies in space movie starring Bruce Willis that I just blogged about recently, writes and directs a movie that almost seems like it’s going to be the same exact movie…also starring Bruce Willis.

In hindsight, I kind of wish it had been, because this movie is a cosmic mess.

Some sort of “first encounter” is made on a military base, so a team comes to investigate, and it appears the people at the base have been turned into zombies or have been possessed or something.

So it’s decided an alien force is trying to attack earth and the only way to preempt the strike is to go to their planet and take them down first.

Bruce and team slip into big spacesuits…that let them just rocket through space like superheroes. Seriously, it looks like they’re flying right through the battle to destroy the Death Star. I can’t with this movie.

Then they land on a planet…that looks oddly like the woods of earth…or Endor.

And then…I don’t even know. I couldn’t focus on this film at all. If it helps, there were a lot of laser gun battles with baddies in Battlestar Galactica uniforms, along with some deeper meaning behind the invasion.

RE-ELECTED (2020)

Here’s a zomcom to add to your annual Independence Day watchlist, and naturally it’s being added to the holiday horror page here on my site.

The film is about a group of friends that goes to a cabin in the woods to celebrate the Fourth of July and has to do battle with the resurrected versions of former presidents.

If it sounds familiar, well, that’s because the zomcom Presidents Day exists, and I blogged about it ages ago.

While the two films are similar, one thing Re-elected is missing that Presidents Day had is a major gay storyline. No gay stuff here at all, but the main guy sure is a cutie.

If you check this one out, I highly suggested you stick with it. The beginning of the film feels like it’s really not going to work. The humor as written is not funny, the actors try too hard to make it work, and it often feels like they’re just spouting one-liners in hopes of hitting a good joke rather than the humor naturally flowing with the action.

However…

It’s almost like the movie was filmed in sequence—as if the actors just needed time to warm up and get into their grooves, because all of a sudden when they get their first taste of zombie president attacks in the woods, the comedy just totally clicks. The actors deliver lines and reactions with perfect timing, and the writing just feels more natural. Very odd.

The film pokes fun at false patriotism and ignorance about the actual specifics of American history, and it does a good job of remaining fairly neutral with the humor, never really taking political sides—unless you consider a jab at slavery to be divisive or liberal propaganda, in which case a) It’s obvious how you vote, and b) you’re what’s wrong with this country. See, that an example of humor that’s not impartial at all, and you don’t really find any of that in Re-elected.

This is goofy, slapstick horror comedy, with campy patriotic music and talking president zombies that bicker with the characters, so don’t expect anything frightening or for the zombie makeup to be gnarly. This film is purely for the fun of it.

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Three trips to the Witchouse

Posted on July 27, 2021 by Daniel

I’m so desperate to be anywhere but in this moment in history that now it’s not just the 80s that serve as a getaway. So when I saw the Witchouse DVDs on sale on the Full Moon website, I immediately made an impulse buy, happy to go back to the innocent days of the post-Scream era with some low budget Full Moon movies. They were just what I needed.

WITCHOUSE (1999)

While David DeCoteau was making his transition to soft core homoerotic horror, he was still spitting out some silly fun video rental flicks, and Witchouse is a perfect example.

Essentially a Night of the Demons knock-off, it has a goth chick assemble all her college friends in her creepy old family house to celebrate Mayday, which includes sitting around a pentagram and reminiscing about her family’s past with witchcraft.

The kids split up to explore the house, a classic decrepit witch is conjured, she levitates vertically like Angela in Night of the Demons, and the kids start turning into sexy demons, especially the guy in his undies. Classic DeCoteau.

It’s not scary, but it has perfect Full Moon horror atmosphere, a pretty cast, a nice short running time of 72 minutes, and a satisfying traditional witch.

WITCHOUSE II: BLOOD COVEN (2000)

The director of The Dead Next Door steps in for the two sequels, and starts things off by jumping on The Blair Witch Project bandwagon, the big horror hit at the turn of the millennium.

After an initial bloody found footage kill in the woods where legend has it that witches were buried, we meet a college professor assigned to go investigate the area with her students…and she’s the evil resurrected witch from the first movie!

They do their research at a creepy witch house that I assume is supposed to be the same one from the first movie, they interview locals about the witches on camera (some funny stuff), and eventually, the professor goes all witchy and starts making demon minions again.

There’s some campy fun here. She tries to seduce one dude, who breaks it to her that he’s gay, but that doesn’t stop her.

She has a catty bitch fest with the main girl, whose character name is Stephanie Zinone! There is no way this isn’t an intentional nod to Michelle Pfeiffer in Grease 2.

And the final battle features more found footage POV, red-eyed demons, shadowy lighting, mist machines, and the witch going totally gnarly faced.

WITCHOUSE 3: DEMON FIRE (2001)

Getting b-movie scream queens Debbie Rochon, Tina Krause, and Brinke Stevens to appear in the third film in the trilogy was the nail in its coffin.

This movie feels like a cheap direct-to-video release and lacks the Full Moon feel of the first two.

An abused woman goes to hang with her two friends at a beach house, and they dabble in witchcraft using a book supposedly 300 years old. They get spooked by some occurrences during the ritual and throw the book in the ocean.

The next morning, one of the women says Bloody Mary into a mirror for the hell of it. Little does she know Brinke Stevens has taken over the role of the witch from the first two films, and although her name is Lilith, calling Bloody Mary works. Ugh.

The three women run around the house acting scared when there’s really not enough to be scared of. The lighting is old school creepy, and Brinke’s witch makeup is cool, but she’s not in the film enough, she’s usually cloaked behind shadows, glass, or veils, and she doesn’t call upon any minion demons. She’s more of an influence than the actual threat in this plot.

But at least we get a glimpse of some furry man ta-tas.

 

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PRIME TIME: taking a bite out of some zombie flicks

Posted on July 26, 2021 by Daniel

It felt like I hadn’t done a zombie marathon in a while, so I dug through my Prime list and plucked out all the zombie films to bring you a zomblog of five flicks to feast on. I even added one of them to my own horror film collection after watching it.

WORMWOOD’S END: DEAD LIFE (2021)

This film appears to have gone through title changes and perhaps different versions and been rereleased over the past decade, but this is the iteration in which I’ve seen it.

It’s a low budget, semi-comedy take on The Walking Dead zombie apocalypse plot, and while it’s fairly cliché and has its indie movie issues, there’s something oddly charming about it.

Specifically, the main characters work quite well off each other and are likable and funny.

The zombie makeup is silly fun. It’s perhaps a little over the top, in part because the film predominantly takes place in bright daylight, but the exaggerated hideousness of the faces works perfectly with the tone of the film.

The events that unfold are perhaps a little meandering, and there’s nothing suspenseful or frightening here. The three main characters are just trying to survive in the apocalypse when they are drawn into a less than moral group community.

They basically spend the film trying to figure out how to get away from the larger group while dealing with zombie encounters. The pacing plods along a bit, but the final act packs in plenty of action, gut-munching gore, and even a fisting scene!

THE DAY OF THE LIVING DEAD (2014)

This is such an odd and quirky little zombie indie, and I couldn’t get into the overarching plot, but I was totally into its unique aspects.

It takes place in 1957 Hollywood and is basically making a statement about the evils of capitalism. A bunch of employees from a big cigarette company get sick, get fired, and go missing…and so does the insurance investigator on the case.

Rather than making sense of the convoluted storytelling, it’s easier to see this as a series of really cool zombie vignettes showing us what happened to each of the players in the plot.

The scenes are presented in black and white to capture the spirit of old 1950s movies, but they switch to full color for the really gory moments, which is very cool.

The zombie makeup and gore use practical effects, there are several indie horror actors, including James Duval, Jeff Dylan Graham, and Fright Night‘s Stephen Geoffreys, and I found some of the short zombie segments to be deliciously creepy nods to the original Night of the Living Dead.

INMATE ZERO (2020)

This is the film in the bunch that immediately got added to my personal collection as soon as it ended, and even the hubby was totally into it.

I’ve seen my fair share of zombie prison outbreak films, but this is one of my faves so far…even though it takes place in a women’s prison. Heh heh.

The female inmate lead is fantastic, and the script manages to clearly define each character (inmates and prison staff) without trying too hard and without slowing down the pace.

Our main woman is offered the opportunity to escape death row if she agrees to permit herself to be used for medical experiments.

When she lands in the infirmary after a fight, it becomes clear pretty fast that it’s a good thing she didn’t agree to the offer.

A phenomenal first zombie scene sets a frightening tone, creates an unnerving, dark and shadowy atmosphere, and presents us with freaky zombies that jitter, shake, and contort. Eek!

The action kicks in immediately, forcing inmates and staff to team up to stay alive and find their way out of the prison. And don’t you know the most likable characters are the prisoners. There’s even a gay guy, which we know because he first appears wearing a wig and lipstick and he’s called a faggot by some prisoner dyke (hey, she started it by calling us faggot first). He lands this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

The performances are quite good, and there are plenty of great scenes, including one reminiscent of the nurses from Silent Hill and several involving an electric chair.

And you just know that all the characters that deserve payback are going to get it good. There is a surprising lull suddenly in the middle of the film, but it picks right back up for the final act.

REPUBLIC Z (2018)

The least run-of-the-mill thing about this zombie film is that it appears to be a Russian film starring Asian actors.

It has a cold, bleak color palette, and the settings are bland and rundown to give us the sense that it’s the zombie apocalypse. The zombies at first seem gruesome and gnarly, but that effect wears off when you soon realize they all kind of look alike because it appears that the makeup is mostly similar prosthetic masks.

We meet two dudes just trying to survive a zombie apocalypse by staying in cabins they come across. One guy is a bit of a geek and brings slapstick humor to the film, including some odd fart and shit sound humor early on. None of it seems to fit the overall tone of the film, which isn’t a zomcom.

Then a girl joins them, and pretty soon the three are on a journey to find a guy who supposedly has the vaccine. That’s pretty much it.

There are the usual zombie encounters, shootouts, people getting bitten, and the added element of zombies freezing temporarily in the cold weather, and it mostly takes place during the day.

There aren’t loads of zombies, so this is definitely a predictable and low key zombie excursion that you might watch just because you’ve seen all the other zombie flicks out there.

ZOMBLIES (2010)

This little bonus is just a zombie action quickie running 47 minutes long.

It’s a simple military rescue mission in the woods, so there’s a lot of running, shooting, and fast zombies that look pretty gnarly and make squealing noises.

It feels like watching a video game, so if you’re just in the mood for a brief zombie fix, this should do.

It has a gritty look and feel, some CGI blood splatter, a cool first-person POV zombie transformation, and a kick ass zombie chase scene on a motorcycle.

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