PRIME TIME: the queers and creatures of director Bruce Wemple

Posted on May 11, 2021 by Daniel

It is so rare for filmmakers to truly think outside of the box these days, so when I checked out The Retreat from director Bruce Wemple despite negative reviews on Amazon and discovered it had not only creatures but some queer content, I had to see what else he had going on. And that led me to Monstrous, which again had negative reviews, creatures, and queer content. As someone who has watched horror for five decades and welcomes an occasional break from the horror trends and clichés of the day, I’m happy to have flipped the haters the bird instead of missing out on these two. So let’s get into them.

THE RETREAT (2020)

From the very beginning of this film about two buddies that go hiking in the woods, which Wemple also wrote, I thought, “Something about this feels kind of gay.” By the end of the film, something about it was indeed kind of gay.

When they reach their 2-man bachelor party getaway, the buddies hang with a couple of other men at the timeshare cabin, where talk turns to the legend of the Wendigo, how it can possess people and even has cannibalistic tendencies.

Once the guys are out in the woods and set up camp, there’s some bonding time and they explore their feelings. Surprisingly, there’s a damn good monster attack early on that goes for a found footage vibe, complete with some effective jump scares.

The next morning, one guy wakes up to find himself alone. The film begins to explore his mental state as he tries to cope with his predicament and piece together what actually happened. Pretty soon we don’t know what’s real and what’s in his head as guilt begins to eat away at him.

As he dives deeper into remembering what occurred the night his friend disappeared, the monster action ramps up, and it is quite satisfying.

While the creature isn’t meant to be the focus of the film, which is more about the man’s own inner turmoil and relationship with his buddy, I think The Retreat does a much better job of delivering on standard horror elements (aka: frightening monster moments) than most psychological horror.

MONSTROUS (2020)

This is an oddly unique hybrid horror film that is also in essence a lesbian horror flick. The credit for that goes to Anna Shields, who is the writer and star. It gets bashed online for not delivering so much on its Bigfoot promise, but I actually found Monstrous quite clever in that Bigfoot is just incidental to a much more calculated threat in the woods. Should Bigfoot have been featured so prominently on the promo art? Perhaps not. But we do get to see a good shot of him before all is said and done, and he looks dang scary. He reminded somewhat of the creature from Exists, one of my favorite Bigfoot films of all time, as did some of the Bigfoot plot elements.

Meanwhile, the film also gets attacked for “shoving woke PC lesbian agenda shit down our throats”. When the fuck did horror fans become such a bunch of….dare I say it? Yes I dare. PUSSIES. Not to mention, when did straight dudes start hating lesbian sex scenes?

The opener is a short, suspenseful Bigfoot scene that lets us know there is most definitely a Bigfoot lurking in the woods.

Then we meet a guy (the leading man from The Retreat) who is not only into reports of Bigfoot attacks, but is concerned about a friend who disappeared after a planned trip into the Adirondacks. He asks a female friend to join him in trying to track her down, but then bails at the last minute, leaving the female friend to do it herself. She soon meets another girl, and they immediately pull a major lesbian stereotype move, shacking up together…in a cabin in the woods! But as she’s busy getting romantic with the stranger, the main girl is quietly searching for any signs of her missing friend. Soon, tension builds between the girls as trust issues come into play.

And that is the meat of this movie’s slow burn. There’s a creature lurking outside, but is there also something sinister going on inside? The dark truth comes out in the end, and Bigfoot, after making only some minor appearances throughout the course of the film, comes out to play in the final act, complicating matters even more for the girls and offering a pretty gnarly climax that is loaded with pretty wild twists.

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90s horror crawling onto Blu-ray

Posted on May 10, 2021 by Daniel

The indie movie companies keep digging up the obscurities and bringing them to high def, so let’s see what has been brought back from the 90s in recent months.

FATAL EXAM (1990)

This one has that totally 80s shot-on-video look…because it was actually shot in 1985, and the dude who directed it went on to co-write Bad Grandmas with Florence Henderson and Pam Grier!

2 hours is an inexcusable length for such a messy movie, but in between the excessive filler, there’s some fun to be had here.

A parapsychology teacher invites his students to a secluded haunted house with a dark history…a family was killed there by someone wielding an ancient weapon.

As soon as they got to the house, I was getting total Dead Dudes in the House vibes. This film is in no way as good as that classic, but the atmosphere is very similar.

They discuss the murders, explore the house, set up a tape recorder and cameras to capture ghostly action, find a dollhouse, find a portrait of the killer, deal with blinking lights, etc.


The closest thing to a sex scene in the whole movie…and I’ll take it.

It’s pretty typical stuff and it all drags on longer than it needs to, but the horror music is pretty darn good for a low budget film.

It’s when they finally find a hole in the basement that the horror really kicks in. There are some bloody murders, someone running around dressed like the grim reaper, and a cheap looking cult dungeon. Unfortunately, it begins to feel more and more amateur as the film progresses.

My absolute favorite part (aside from the guys in tight mid-80s clothes) is this one dude who sees a head in a coffee table while everyone is sleeping, and makes that his argument for getting out of the house for the rest of the film. “There’s a head in the coffee table!” Too funny.

ALL-AMERICAN MURDER (1991)

I cannot believe that Potsie from Happy Days directed an early 90s trash thriller starring Christopher Walken, yet here we are. And trash it is, until the final half hour. However, it is sooooo early 90s video rental, which makes it high on nostalgia feels.

The kid from 80s teen flick 18 Again! and the short-lived Ferris Bueller series stars as a college kid with a rich dad, troubling reputation, and a pet snake, because it’s an early 90s movie, so why not?

What I don’t get is why all the montage songs in this early 90s movie sound like Christopher Cross songs right out of 1980.

At first it feels like a bad late 80s teen romance. He starts at a new college, courts a girl he likes…but then she dies in a gruesome way and he becomes the main suspect!

Christopher Walken is the detective, introduced in a silly hostage standoff scene to show us how unconventional he is. Then he mostly just has meetings with the kid, who ends up doing all the investigative work trying to prove he didn’t do it.

This shit is boooooring.

Finally, an hour in, there’s a creepy scene when the kid enters what looks like the lair of a killer, complete with some jump scares. Soon after, people finally start getting killed off, and some of the deaths are nice and gruesome. If only the whole film had been that way.

WINTERBEAST (1992)

I don’t even know where to start with this movie, so I guess I’ll go right for the positive—it was actually shot in the late 80s. So…yay.

It’s only 76 minutes long, the main cop is hot in a gay 80s way, and we are thrust right into a totally bizarre and gory nightmare sequence. Then again, the whole movie seems like a bizarr-o dream.

He and a ranger hang out looking at nude pix of women as they worry about people going missing in their town.

There’s a totem pole that’s supposedly the Indian gateway to hell, zombie Native Americans, a totally queer lodge owner….and stop motion claymation monsters!

The claymation is so bad, and quite honestly, if they had rethought all that and removed those segments of the film, this could have been a rather creepy low budget indie.

The final act even has the guys fighting it out with a giant stop motion chicken. Sigh.

All the goofy claymation monster weirdness aside, as the movie wanders aimlessly, there’s a scene with the freaky queer lodge owner that should have had a whole separate movie built around it, because that movie would have become a cult classic on the level of Tourist Trap.

LAST GASP (1995)

The title of this silly erotic slasher thriller exemplifies exactly what it is—a last gasp at direct-to-video rental nostalgia. It’s sure to bring memories flooding back of Friday nights browsing the dusty shelves at the video store up the block and coming home with a bag of movies in hard plastic cases and a box of microwave popcorn then gathering around the VCR for the evening. And if you actually saw this film back then, you’ll probably remember more about that first part of the night you watched it than the actually movie.

T2 Robert Patrick stars as a real estate man who kills a bunch of Mexican tribal members after they leave some dead bodies at the construction site of a new hotel he’s building. Of course there’s a curse, so he’s possessed by the spirit of one of them.

Meanwhile, a woman is investigating her missing husband, who worked for Patrick. There’s even a bad 90s love song montage of her having sex with her pretty boy.

Before long, Patrick is running around in a loincloth and face paint hacking away at people’s Achilles heels as tribal drums beat in the background.

It’s really an absurd movie with a weak plot, but it all leads to a cat and mouse chase between tribal Robert Patrick and the leading lady. If you’ve seen the famous Zuni doll installment of Trilogy of Terror, you know exactly how this one is going to end.

Patrick getting a sex scene is the highlight, and keep an eye out for mean old Mrs. Claxton from The Golden Girls.

 

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DIRECT TO STREAMING: slashing and slaying with Louisa Warren

Posted on May 6, 2021 by Daniel

I’ve already covered several films from director Louisa Warren because I like her brand of low budget horror, which has a definite retro VHS days feel to it, but she’s so prolific that I suddenly had a bunch of catching up to do—5 films in total!

THE LEPRECHAUN’S GAME (2020)

If you need another movie about a killer leprechaun to fill up your St. Patrick’s Day, The Leprechaun’s Game clones the basics of the iconic series for this low budget slasher, so it lands on the holiday horror page.

Several people that really need money take a job from a rich guy who collects unusual things. This time around he wants a leprechaun’s gold.

Amazingly, the group finds it fairly quickly in the woods. They decide they’re better off keeping the gold than collecting a reward. Big mistake.

Here’s where things get disappointing. The leprechaun is a tall dude in a mask with a deep voice, so I don’t quite get a leprechaun vibe from him. You have to watch this more as a typical slasher film than a leprechaun film.

He systematically goes through the process of hunting down and killing the thieves in a variety of ways, often using magical powers presented with 1980s level computer special effects, so there’s that.

VIRTUAL DEATH MATCH (2020)

Movies in which a group of people is trapped in a controlled environment and has to take on a series of familiar psychos have become a subgenre of their own in the past decade or so, to the point that even Rob Zombie jumped on the bandwagon with his film 31.

This hack ‘n’ slash type horror is good for cheap thrills and delivers plenty of chaos, gore, and gritty grindhouse filters, but it’s just not one of my go-to subgenres because it simply doesn’t deliver on scares, atmosphere, or surprises.

Usually, there isn’t even much in the way of character development, but Louisa Warren tries to address that. This film is all about the characters—a group of individuals desperate for money for a variety of personal reasons. They are lured into a “virtual reality” horror game that turns out to not be virtual at all; die in the game and you die in real life. Delving into the feelings of each and every character actually makes the film too long, and it clocks in at about 110 minutes. Eek!

Even so, there is still plenty of running, screaming, and slashing, as the “players” face off against staples of the genre—scarecrow, evil nuns, clowns—and kudos to Warren for making one of the bad ass clowns a woman!

Much of the film takes place in daylight, and there’s a lot of CGI blood splash, but that tends to be standard for this type of film.

SCARECROW’S REVENGE (2019)

Despite already having a couple of modern day scarecrow films under her belt (Bride of Scarecrow, Curse of the Scarecrow), Warren decided to make another one with a title that sounds totally like a sequel for a movie that totally is not.

Scarecrow’s Revenge is a period piece—blech—about a man who does horrible things to a woman in a Viking town, is banished, then goes to a witch for help in seeking revenge. In exchange for his soul, she makes him into a killer scarecrow.

And so…this turns into a killer scarecrow slasher in a Viking town. That’s really all there is to it. If you like killer scarecrow movies and can cope with all the Viking drama, there’s a scarecrow and there are kills.

The film takes place entirely during daylight in the woods, so it’s not big on spooky atmosphere, and the witch is perhaps a little less witchy than I prefer, but she does ignite with some magical special effects right out of 80s horror.

THE MERMAID’S CURSE (2019)

Before going into this one, you have to come to terms with the fact that the title and promotional art are misleading. There are no mermaids. This is about sirens that roam the beach, singing their seductive songs to lure young men to their deaths.

For a low budget flick, it’s still pretty satisfying, with blood, plenty of kills, sex, and nudity. The opening kill even features a dude with a hot bod getting it.

The sirens have some gnarly face makeup, but they aren’t exceptionally creepy. However, they do essentially bite their victims like vampires.

The main character is a young man doing a story about the rash of male deaths on the beach. He comes upon a wounded siren, assumes she’s just an injured woman, and brings her home, inviting some major trouble into his life.

What was disappointing to me was that his relationship with his roommate is so intense that they really should have been gay together. That also would have given him more motivation for wanting to know why young men are being targeted and would have complicated matters for the siren.

A cool element of the film is that it gives a backstory to the existence of the sirens and ties it into women being accused of and treated as witches back in the day.

TOOTH FAIRY 2: THE ROOT OF EVIL (2020)

This sequel to Tooth Fairy takes place 15 years later.

The opening is a reminder of why I keep coming back for more Louisa Warren horror, with tight camera shots and eerie shadows and horror lighting as the tooth fairy makes her first appearance.

Then we meet our main guy, who was a kid in the first movie and now suffers some serious PTSD. He gets invited to a reunion with friends at a cabin in the woods, where he begins having flashbacks to the first movie and hears the tooth fairy calling to him.

Making matters worse, a couple of the guys really hate him, so they decide to fuck with him by having a séance to summon the tooth fairy. Needless to say…

The tooth fairy is back and just as creepy as the first time. But as the bodies pile up, the group begins to think their weird, delusional friend is behind the murders. It’s a pretty basic supernatural slasher that uses plenty of clichés, even moving much of the action to a cornfield, but as always, Warren makes the best of her limited budget and delivers on the retro vibes, so I had fun with this one.

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Time for a four course meal of my favorite comfort food…80s horror

Posted on May 4, 2021 by Daniel

I will devour 80s horror forever, but was this foursome filling enough? Let’s take a look.

BEYOND DREAMS DOOR (1989)

Clearly inspired by the huge popularity of the Elm Street series, this low budget direct-to-video movie is mostly a nonstop chain of bad dreams.

A college professor and her teacher’s assistant, who looks like he should be the teacher, try to help one of their students, a guy having recurring nightmares about being attacked by a hideous red monster.

That’s pretty much it—suburban nightmare horror taken to the extreme.

The main characters just weave in and out of trippy dream sequences drenched in 80s horror lighting for the entire film, often encountering the monster, and eventually ending up in…you’re never going to believe this…a boiler room.

BEYOND TERROR (1980)

The title Beyond Terror works in a weird way, because there’s absolutely no terror to be had here. This is like the worst of Euro horror of this era.

A small group of thieves on motorcycles robs a diner, shoots mostly everyone in it, and takes one couple hostage to make their escape.

They end up at a house with an old lady and a kid in it, rough up the old lady, kill her dog (not a pleasant scene), then burn the house down.

Next, they move to some sort of abandoned church.

The abducted woman has sex with one of the thieves

Another thief masturbates while mocking God. What a turn on.

Then they go to some little building.

Then they go back to the church.

Everyone keeps calling each other faggot.

This movie sucks.

Every once in a while they see the dog or kid that they killed back at the first house.

75 minutes into the movie, some skeletal corpses in a basement come to life for a few seconds. Also, one character’s head blows up when the old lady appears. That’s about all the horror you get in this shitty waste of time.

GRAVE SECRETS (1989)

For those of us who grew up on HBO in the 80s, actor Paul Le Mat is one of the staples of that horror era, appearing in Strange Invaders, Death Valley, Puppet Master, an episode of the HBO anthology series The Hitchhiker, and this one.

Grave Secrets begins with Amityville style theme music with children’s voices. Talk about high hopes.

Paul plays a college professor who covers supernatural phenomena. A woman comes to him for help because her B&B is haunted, so he goes to stay there.

For the first hour, the scariest things that happen are…an egg levitates and an axe goes kamikaze. Finally, a medium, played by David Warner, another 80s HBO horror king (Time After Time, The Company of Wolves, Waxwork, My Best Friend is a Vampire) shows up to hold a séance.

So does the college professor’s bubbly, totally 80s assistant, who should have been in the whole movie because she saves it temporarily.

The séance unleashes a ghost, momentary possession of the medium, and a silly apparition re-enactment of why the B&B is haunted, complete with a ghoulish corpse that should have joined the bubbly assistant in saving the film much earlier.

TRANSMUTATIONS (aka: Underworld) (1985)

This film was released to video under the title Transmutations during my days working at the video store in the 80s, but it’s also known as Underworld. Like Rawhead Rex, it’s another film by director George Pavlou with a screenplay by Clive Barker…that turned out to be a movie Barker hated.

Unlike Rawhead Rex, which is an 80s fave for me, I couldn’t even remember anything about this one, and now I see why. It really is horribly boring, a poor excuse for a horror movie, and is sort of like Barker dabbling in his own Nightbreed concept.

A crazy doctor has created a drug that turns humans into humanoids that now live underground. Turns out the key to reversing the damage lies with a hooker, so she’s kidnapped by the mutants.

Her ex-boyfriend is hired to rescue her and spends most of the movie trying to track her down while drenched in 80s horror lighting.

My favorite part is the sort of queer new wave dance number in a club.

The mutants are mostly as goofy as the ones in Nightbreed—but if you think that movie is a masterpiece like many do, you might just like this one.

The final sign for me that this is a pitiful excuse for a horror movie is the major gun battle at the end. Yawn.

 

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STREAM QUEEN: laughs, gore, and more in these four

Posted on April 29, 2021 by Daniel

Vampires, demons, exploding heads, and a cult with the hots for a pretty boy in the latest foursome of films I checked out. Let’s see what makes each one worth a watch.

BOYS FROM COUNTY HELL (2020)

I always find it weird when a movie is entertaining and fun, with playful humor, some scares, cool monster makeup, a dose of blood, likable characters…and yet is also a little boring. That’s the case with Irish film Boys From County Hell.

This charming vampire comedy has plenty of great moments, but it is really slow in its delivery following an intriguing opening scene.

The focus is on a group of friends living in a town known for its history with Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. They hang out at a bar named after the writer, and in a field nearby there’s a pile of stones that is believed to mark the burial plot of a legendary vampire.

Wouldn’t you know the friends are doing a construction job that involves knocking down the stack of stones?

The events that unfold leading up to that moment are notably somber and serious, so for a while I was thinking this film was either mismarketed as a horror comedy or was going to suddenly make a not so smooth transition, which is exactly what happened. As soon as the demolition takes place, the film totally shifts tone, the comedy kicks in, and the group suddenly faces the realization that they’ve brought the fictional concept of vampirism to…um…life. Not only do they have to fend off bloodthirsty versions of those they know and love, but they also have to take on the freaky master vampire they dug up.

Despite its slow pacing issues between the thrilling sequences, the film is still a satisfying horror comedy that it dares to add some unique concepts to the mix instead of relying solely on the traditional rules of vampirism. In a way, the final act sort of reminded me of the final act of the equally cool film The Shed.

SMILEY FACE KILLERS (2020)

Don’t go into Smiley Face Killers expecting a typical teen slasher, especially considering it’s written by American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis, and the chip that’s been steadily growing on his shoulder over the decades would never let him stoop to my level of 80s horror entertainment.

Instead, he gives us a “based on a true story” tale of…a gang of occult creeps in robes driving around in a white van with an erotic hard-on for a college pretty boy?

The general info we are given at the beginning is that there was a rash of drownings of young men across college campuses, and in each case, a smiley face marking was drawn nearby. This fictionalized movie appears to be based on a questionable theory crafted by two detectives that looked into the cases. Rather than being “based” on a true story, I get the sense it was is inspired by unfounded claims by some hacks.

Most of the movie comes across like a David DeCoteau film, with the camera making love to our main specimen as he swims, bike rides, hangs with friends, showers, has sex with his girlfriend, strips down to his tighty-whities, strips down to nothing, etc. So this one does land on the stud stalking page.

We learn he’s been on medication and seeing a therapist but is resistant to both. We also see someone stalking him and often watching him from his closet. Is this stalker living in there? I don’t know. Are we supposed to think he’s delusional because there’s a weak seed planted in our head that he’s messed in the head?

He believes someone is fucking with him, but that concept doesn’t quite translate to the most suspenseful slow burn. To keep us interested, there’s a gory kill at 53 minutes in, and then the final act delivers all the crazy cult shit, which is homoerotic, gory, and a rather disturbing, total fabrication not based on any evidence as far as I can tell. However, it does definitely give the film some horror cred at last.

BEAST MODE (2020)

This silly indie has plenty of bright spots, but it is often unfocused with way too many characters, so sticking with it for the good parts is a bit of a challenge.

The cast is loaded with horror veterans in both major roles and cameos, including Thomas Downey, Leslie Easterbrook, Ray Wise, and James Hong.

C. Thomas Howell is the leading man, a Hollywood agent who accidentally kills his big star, played by indie fave James Duval. Conveniently, Howell scores a special potion that will bring Duval back to life.

But there’s a side effect. The potion also turns those who consume it into demons. And Howell makes the mistake of leaving it somewhere accessible.

Considering the fun premise, it’s a bit of a disappointment that there aren’t more people in rubber demon masks running around throughout the course of the film. However, the demon moments we get are a lot of fun, and C. Thomas Howell reminds us why he was so popular in the 80s, because he is still quite charismatic and funny.

The cameos are fun, some of them are unnecessary and forced, and I was distracted by all the excess nonsense going on and taking us away from the main plot. If you’re going to toss loads of irrelevant characters at us, the point should be to kill them off and raise the body count, and that just doesn’t happen here. But the final act kind of makes up for it.

SPONTANEOUS (2020)

In the dark teen comedy tradition of edgy films like Heathers and Jawbreaker, Spontaneous is a story of a teen girl and boy finding love when their high school is struck by a bizarre epidemic…students are randomly exploding in a burst of blood and gore.

At times a lot of gooey fun, at other times this quirky film is a little too soft and romantic, and also tries way too hard to be what it’s going for–“philosophical”. It often gets too heavy and literal instead of getting its points across smartly through its twisted subject matter.

As a result, the film does drag at times while we wait for the next juicy explosion. The cast of kids is mostly likable and funny, but we only really get to know a few of them, namely the main girl, her best friend, and her boyfriend, which is unfortunate, because there are some other interesting characters teased, including a funny girl who will pretty much bang anyone and a gay guy we don’t even find out is gay until he’s dead. Sigh.

The main problem for me was that this was in large part a romance, and I simply wasn’t into the couple as a couple. I found their connection bland, and quite honestly, thought the guy was just boring. Sweet and pleasant just wasn’t cutting it, and he looked like a reject from 90s teen band Hanson. Not even his various references to the 80s, including dancing to the 1985 hit “And We Danced” by The Hooters with her in a barn, could win me over.

While the explosions are at first mostly off screen, that changes as the film progresses, and we get plenty of Scanners style gore and a couple of awesome death sequences, leading up to an ultimate, mind-blowing massacre in school that clearly gives some nods to Carrie.

The down side is that it isn’t the big climax, and the film keeps going after that for another fricking 40 minutes, offering very little beyond loads of “deep thought” in the form of dialogue. Blech.

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HULU HORRORS: four from 2020

Posted on April 23, 2021 by Daniel

I use the term Hulu Horror loosely in reference to most of the films in this bunch, but I sat through them, so now I shall share my thought about them. So let’s get into it.

SPREE (2020)

How far will kids go these days to be viral internet sensations? Kurt has been trying since he was a little kid, but his channel just isn’t getting the hits.

Then he comes up with an idea. He’s a rideshare driver, so he sets up cameras in his car and begins killing customers while filming.

There’s plenty of political and social commentary as he takes down certain types, like a white supremacist douche, womanizing douche, and a trio of shallow urbanites (Ariana Grande’s brother Frankie, Lala from Vanderpump Rules, and Mischa Barton). There are also some satisfyingly gruesome kills conceptually, but the death scenes are mostly implied with minimal gore.

Despite its dark, nihilistic perspective on social media and lust for fame, I felt the film just didn’t go edgy or shocking enough. Like this could have been 90s Tarantino violent but it wasn’t, and only a few scenes really stood out for me. On the bright side, that includes the final scene, which turns into a battle between Kurt and a passenger that turns out to be the final girl.

Also keep an eye out for David Arquette as his dad.

THE OWNERS (2020)

I don’t know what it is lately, but everything is feeling so derivative to me, and not even in the sense that at least they’re doing cliché good enough to give me familiar, satisfying thrills.

The Owners is about a bunch of kids breaking into a house to rob an old couple. They explore the house, ransack it a bit, and then the old couple comes home.

The kids tie up the old couple and then begin fighting over what to do with them. When things escalate badly, the kids have to turn to the old man for help because he’s a doctor.

And of course the couple seems a little off…

We get the sense they’re hiding something, it seems they’re hiding something in the basement, eventually we find out the truth, and when we do, it’s just dumbfounding that the whole movie was leading up to this. Seriously, this is as anticlimactic as this type of movie gets.

SAVE YOURSELVES! (2020)

Save Yourselves! seemed like a cute and funny play on Critters that I could watch with the hubby, and I even showed him the trailer first to get his approval…after which I warned him it looked like it would have some fun and funny moments but could definitely be a bit slow. I wasn’t wrong.

There is fun to be had for sure, however, the film is virtually carried by the male and female lead, who spend most of the time alone at a cabin in the woods after they decide they need a break from city and cyber life.

They’re charming together, with him delivering the goofy, geeky comedy while she provides the dry humor. But since this doesn’t have a massive budget, there aren’t hordes of the critters. Actually, there is only one scene in which there are several on screen at once. Other than that, there’s just one at a time.

The funniest part of this creature feature comedy is that the couple calls the little furballs poofs. No matter how many times they said it, the hubby and I laughed. Maybe it’s a gay thing.

The film is slow getting to the first poof attack, and once the poofs do attack, the poofs don’t have faces. The poofs are just furballs that move around by shooting a stick tentacle out of their poof bodies to attach to things.

Things pick up most in the final act when the couple tries to escape the cabin, leading to a curiously bizarre and trippy ending that allows you to draw your own conclusions.

ANTEBELLUM (2020)

This film started with some major slavery shit, with Janelle Monáe being abused by a white master. I was ready to turn it off, because I’m so not up for watching Black people being tortured (especially having just forced myself to sit through the entire Them show on Prime), but a friend told me the film wasn’t just 105 minutes of that, so I stuck with it.

Basically, Janelle seems to be living two existences, teleporting through time as a slave in the past and as an author in the present, and a cell phone appears to be the key to her jumps back and forth.

**SORT OF SPOILER** Honestly, this really is not a horror or sci-fi film. Instead, it uses a very cheap tactic to create a sense of mystery even though this isn’t even a mystery, which you only learn when the truth of what’s going on is revealed at the very end. The surprise twist is cool only because the film manipulated the context of the story completely to make it a twist, and that just pisses me off. It also creates a bizarre plot hole involving the appearance of what your made to believe is a ghost girl…which I now think wasn’t a ghost at all and therefore not a plot hole. Sigh.

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SHUDDER AND SHRIEK: witches, ghosts, a serial killer, and a home invader

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Daniel

It’s another movie marathon of horror flicks on Shudder, and for me, they’re all a matter of been there done that. But keep in mind that I’ve been watching horror flicks for five decades, so everything old is new again…except me.

THE PALE DOOR (2020)

Why even bother trying to make a movie about a bunch of robbers that become entangled with a coven of witches when the movie Witching & Bitching already exists? Especially if you’re going to make it so damn boring.

Even worse, it’s a period piece with cowboys. Ugh.

The concept of criminals on the run stumbling upon a house full of some sort of horrific threat isn’t a new one, and I actually really liked the general concept here—gang of robbers ends up at a whorehouse after a robbery attempt goes wrong, and soon finds out the whores are actually burned witches in disguise. Awesome.

Problem is there isn’t enough of the barbecued witch action, which doesn’t even begin until 50 minutes into the movie. And even while these Wild West witches are cool, the film lacks any suspense or scares.

The focus is on the relationship between the two brothers that run the gang. Ugh. Period piece character study.

THE DARK AND THE WICKED (2020)

The director of The Strangers, Mockingbird, and The Monster makes a movie that proves he can set up some really creepy scenes…and then insult our horror senses over and over for 90 minutes with one bogus scare after another.

Seriously, what the fuck with this movie? This is the kind of shit meant to get little tween girls at slumber parties squealing and giggling all night.

A family is gathered at an old farmhouse as the elder patriarch lies in bed dying. There are lots of atmospheric shots of farm animals, dark and moody setup shots of people being pensive, and a slow burn of a couple unraveling hints of religious paranoia by the matriarch of the family.

And then, there are the nonstop, sudden appearances of supernatural entities to give us a jump scare, only to be gone in the blink of an eye because they’re not really there. Again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. I could keep going, or you could just watch the movie for the same annoying as fuck effect.

OPEN 24 HOURS (2018)

The director of Rites of Spring and The Devil’s Dolls always manages to entertain and deliver on the horror, while bringing longtime fans of the genre back to familiar territory. For instance, Open 24 Hours reminds me of a cross between the first story in the anthology film Body Bags and the film Rest Stop.

Following time in prison for torching her serial killer boyfriend, a young woman takes a job covering the night shift at an isolated gas station convenience store. Suffering PTSD, she has paranoid delusions of being visited by him and his dead victims. Which begs the question—are the horrors she begins experiencing while working all alone real or imagined?

As various visitors to the store meet violent fates, the truth of what transpired between her and her boyfriend is revealed, and some twists and turns add some surprises to the plot.

The kills are juicy gory and the suspense is good, plus there’s a nice long cat and mouse chase in the final act, but the pacing does feel a little off for some inexplicable reason, and by the time things really pick up, it seems like it’s starting to drag on a little too long. However, overall it’s a satisfying watch.

LUCKY (2020)

Slightly similar to Happy Death Day in that a young woman has to keep facing off against the same masked killer, Lucky has a bit of a quirky tone, but isn’t as much of a comedy. It also reminds me of the indie film Salvage, which I find far superior.

This is essentially a movie about a young woman dealing with all life’s misogyny—from both men and women—in between being visited every night by a psycho in a mask.

Each time he invades her house, she’s better prepared for him and fights back even stronger, and their battles become more and more violent.

There’s really not much else to it beyond that. The pacing is good enough, the main girl is likable, there are some funny moments, and things change enough each time to keep you interested, but the premise began to grow stale for me personally as the movie progressed.

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It’s a reunion from hell for a group of LGBTQ+ folk

Posted on April 19, 2021 by Daniel

At a time when there’s a hunger for queer horror, many queer horror fans long to fulfill their lifelong dreams of being the final girl like the scream queens they worshipped growing up. And in this day and age of online crowdfunding to make a movie idea a reality, many aspiring creators are doing just that.

Therefore, as with most low budget indie horror films, don’t expect sleek style, high production value, or Hollywood caliber performances from the queer slasher Reunion from Hell. This is a passion project intended to bring more queer representation to the horror genre.

The opener delivers a well-crafted, low budget emulation of the first kill scenes from movies of the 1990s slasher revival. As is common with throwback indie slashers these days, the theme music during the intro credits is an homage to Carpenter’s Halloween theme, but smartly, just when it’s becoming too much of a clone, it takes on a retro 80s life of its own, and I was totally feeling it. It would be a perfect track to add to your Halloween party playlist.

This isn’t a high school reunion slasher as the title might lead you to believe. The film focuses on the main character, played by co-director/co-writer Hayden Newman, returning home after a tragedy and reconnecting with old friends and family members. Amazingly, Hayden’s mom is played by Cathy Podewell, main girl Judy in the original Night of the Demons. Awesome.

Notably, this film is as LGBTQ+ as it gets rather than pandering to a pretty boy crowd; these are supposed to be everyday people of varying orientations and gender identities from a small town, not gym bunnies from a fashion-forward metropolis. And Hayden takes full advantage of the narcissistic possibilities of playing the starring role in your own movie, portraying a character that is an absolute mess—smokes, pops pills, drinks, has panic attacks, is in therapy—yet is basically the center of every other character’s world. Heh heh.

As is often the case with these types of homebrewed indies, the film falters most in the way the plot unfolds. Rather than utilizing a variety of techniques or different approaches to the narrative to keep up the momentum and build suspense, the story is almost exclusively presented through weighted, dry dialogue delivered by characters sitting around a house talking. Taking even more of a toll on the pacing is the fact that there aren’t any traditional slasher elements to break things up: no sex scenes, no red herring to keep us guessing, no near encounters with the killer, no killer POV, no body reveals, no humorous moments, no particularly memorable characters to root for…although I’ll never forget the hot daddy sheriff and would totally have rooted for him if he’d gotten more screen time…

There are also very few kills during the course of the film—they are predominantly saved for a chaotic climax loaded with everyone running, screaming, and dying. It’s definitely the payoff we’ve been waiting for.

The killer’s mask is a goodie, the kills are impressively violent, and the gore is handled with practical effects, not CGI. And most importantly, it’s all about queer people and another movie to add to the complete homo horror movies page!

Follow the film on Facebook and Twitter to keep up on the latest news about when and where you can see it.

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3 flicks about teens in trouble, but were they terrifying?

Posted on April 15, 2021 by Daniel

I’m really itching for some satisfying teen horror flicks, but it’s starting to feel like those are becoming a thing of decades past. I dug up three newer titles between Netflix and Hulu, but were any of them worth the watch?

WHAT LIES BELOW (2020)

I’m always okay with a derivative horror thriller about a teenager that knows mom is dating a less than human hunk, and What Lies Below starts off fine. But just when the shit hits the fan—the part we’ve been waiting for—the movie falls apart.

Mena Suvari plays the mother of a teenage daughter, which is a harsh reminder that I’m old. She has a surprise for the daughter when they arrive at their summer house…a hot stud in a Speedo strutting out of the lake.

Yep, mom has a new boyfriend, and he’s not only as boring and weird as Denise Richards’s husband on the Beverly Hills Housewives, he’s also a dead ringer for just about every privileged white gay out there. So it’s hard to buy that both mom and daughter are getting all wet for him. And yet, his creepy performance proves to be the best part of the film (well, that and the Speedo).

Things get really fucking weird between him and the daughter and she quickly gets her hormones in check. There’s something seriously wrong with this freak, who is obsessed with the nastiest life forms the lake has to offer. Mom and daughter are about to get wetter than they could have imagined.

Just as it’s time to face off against the hunk to find out what he really is, the film gets drenched in Argento colors. But that can’t camouflage the absolute mess the final act becomes.

Despite sort of piecing it together, both the hubby and I had no fricking idea what was happening by the end thanks to a series of events that suffered from continuity and editing issues, such as a suddenly odd number of new, seemingly unspecified locations (for instance, there seemed to be several basements), the main girl’s friend just disappearing without any explanation (she walked upstairs, never to be seen or mentioned again), and an edit that made both the hubby and I laugh out loud in which it comes across as if the daughter just tosses the mother on the floor.

SEVEN IN HEAVEN (2018)

I avoided a load of Blumhouse movies that hit Prime when the pandemic first hit because friends warned me they weren’t really horror films. I didn’t realize Seven In Heaven on Netflix was a Blumhouse film until I began watching it. It also is not much of a horror movie, and by the end it’s just a confusing knot of alternate realities.

A kid goes to a house party of a friend whose family is about to move. In a mostly empty room there’s an empty closet and a deck of cards with images of sexy ladies on them. Soon, several kids are in the room playing a card game that leads to the main guy and the wickedly bad girl from the Hulu show Light as a Feather having to go into the closet for seven minutes.

When they come out, they are not exactly on the same plane of existence. A bunch of kids start violently beating up the main guy, his best friend is dead, his dead dad is alive, and one of his teachers is hunting him down in a car.

He and the girl have to try to get back to the closet and return to their original, more pleasant reality. If only the plot were that simple, because that’s about when this shit started making no sense. And considering it doesn’t deliver anything horror related beyond a darker existence for these two, those looking strictly for horror might not find it worth sitting through this one to try to decipher it.

SUPER DARK TIMES (2017)

Super Dark Times is a moody blend of various subgenres, and it even scores a spot on the holiday horror page because it takes place at Christmastime despite no one making any reference whatsoever to the holiday.

Focusing on two geeky teens that are best of friends and enjoy their bond and time together in a small town despite a lack of popularity, it immediately has the nostalgic throwback feel to simpler times that you get from the likes of Stranger Things and Super 8. However, based on some of the references, I think it’s supposed to take place in the 90s, not the 80s.

It’s when the boys are goofing off with a couple of other friends that there’s a terrible and fatal accident. It’s one of those setups that has been used in horror movies for years (kids do something awful, cover it up, and vow never to speak of it again), but because this isn’t a polished, mainstream movie starring the pretty people of the moment, there’s something disturbingly real about the way it plays out. You can truly feel how these innocent kids are suddenly thrust into a situation that changes their lives and relationships in an instant.

However, the horror here is in how one of the boys is haunted by what they did and the fear of the truth catching up with him (think Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”). He has frightening nightmares of the dead returning, hears voices, and eventually discovers the experience has affected his friend much worse.

This is not a conventional “I know what you did last Christmas” horror movie plot, but the gritty, raw feel really kept my interest.

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A trio of flicks starring horror cutie Dave Sheridan

Posted on April 13, 2021 by Daniel

Ever since playing Doofy in Scary Movie over two decades ago, funny man Dave Sheridan has packed his resume with horror comedies. I first really became a fan when he did this in the film The Walking Deceased…

…and I’ve been watching every movie he’s been in since hoping he’ll do something like it again (I’m actually hoping he’ll just do gay porn).

Anyway, here’s a look at the three most recent flicks he’s been in that I hadn’t yet seen, and one of them is a nasty blend of sex and horror. However, it’s not Dave up to his old tricks…it’s another horror cutie.

SCREAM TEST (2020)

The description for this film starring Dave and Felissa Rose of Sleepaway Camp fame sounded like a lot of fun, so I can’t even fathom how it could fail as both a horror film and a comedy.

The opener sets a great, campy tone, with Felissa in a black and white scene featuring a big baby man monster with his nipple hanging out. But when Felissa’s character opens her mouth to scream…nothing comes out.

Felissa plays a scream queen who loses her voice! She is sent to mend on a resort island, where she meets a handful of other people with their own issues.

The idea is supposed to be that people start dying off in ways that victims have been killed in Felissa’s films. Unfortunately, we see like two bodies…and absolutely no murders.

The characters just sit around and talk for most of the movie. And nothing they say or do is humorous or entertaining. What a missed opportunity.

As for Dave, he plays a detective who starts a romantic relationship with Felissa and then has to try to figure out whodunit when everyone begins suspecting the scream queen.

CAMP TWILIGHT (2020)

Yet another movie that finds an excuse to send Felissa Rose to a sleepaway camp situation because of her iconic horror past.

Unfortunately, this is a boring slasher that lacks a cohesive plot, tacks together a bunch of pointless, talky scenes with irrelevant characters, and doesn’t delivery in any way on atmosphere, kill scenes, gore, pacing, or scares.

The killer’s appearance is also not ominous or unique at all, and there’s an awkwardly drawn out killer motivation denouement. And while it appears this is supposed to also be a comedy, none of the actors can make the weak material work, not even Dave, who plays a goofy (not Doofy) park ranger.

There are a couple of hot guy bods, appearances by some familiar horror faces, and there is at last a burst of concentrated killer action all of a sudden in the final act, but none of it can save this one.

THE SPECIAL (2020)

Movies by the director of Death House, Camp Dread, and Zombie Killers: Elephant’s Graveyard are hit or miss with me, so I didn’t know what to expect from The Special. I’m also not a huge fan of body horror, but it’s always satisfying to have one that focuses on a guy. The Special reminded me of the short film Bug Chaser, only with a straight guy instead of a gay guy, and focusing on dick instead of asshole.

Horror cutie Davy Raphaely believes his wife is cheating on him, so his buddy, played by Dave Sheridan, convinces him to cheat on her for revenge. Personally, I would have taken the movie in a totally different direction and moved into Dave-on-Dave action. But Sheridan takes Raphaely to a whorehouse and orders him “the special”.

“The special” turns out to be a box you stick your dick in that brings you pleasure beyond your wildest wet dreams.

Davy becomes addicted to putting his dick in the box. Davy will do whatever it takes to get that dick in that box.

Davy doesn’t use any protection when he puts his dick in that box, so things eventually get really disgusting.

Davy is sexy, the nastiness is gross, the pacing is excellent, and knowing it’s all leading up to finding out what’s in the box is well worth the price of admission. And there’s actually something subversively gay about the whole movie when you put it all together, so I’m going to add it to the does the gay guy die? page. But I’m not going to tell you why. You’ll just have to watch until the end. EEK! And…EW!

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