Getting Bit By Day’s End will send you into a Spiral of queer horror

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Daniel

It’s unusual for me to find a handful of gay male horror all at once to blog about, yet alone a more diverse selection that includes gay male, lesbian, and trans horror and gives me something new to add to the complete homo horror movies page. This trio of films worked on all counts, so let’s get right into Spiral, By Day’s End, and Bit.

SPIRAL (2019)

Shudder film Spiral does a pretty damn good job of giving us a gay film in the style of timely and socially aware horror that is reinvigorating the genre these days thanks in large part to Jordan Peele. This film even approaches its gay theme with an interracial relationship.

Before I get into why this film is so good, here are just a few aspects I feel the need to call out so that I don’t seem to be overpraising it simply because of its niche importance.

  1. a) Some viewers may find certain parts a little preachy due to the activist mindset of the characters experiencing oppression. It should be recognized, however, that it is included to present a case of understanding to straight audiences, because otherwise this film is just preaching to the gay choir.

 

  1. b) On a similar note, because it has a social messaging purpose, this isn’t a “gay horror film” for everyone. For instance, if the opening gay bashing in It Chapter Two triggered you, there are plenty of scenes here that will probably do the same. This isn’t simply a horror movie with gay leads encountering the same sinister threats as straight people do in horror movies; their gay identity is the springboard for the whole plot, with evil heterosexuality as the big looming threat.

  1. c) There are some blatantly stereotypical aspects to the gay characters that might annoy some viewers who prefer homogeneous humans that just “happen to be gay”. However, stereotypical or not, they’re realistic and help define the time from which these characters come (the movie takes place in 1995, when major strides were being made by a vocal queer community).

 

  1. d) There’s actually a little too much going on here. In an undeniably successful effort to keep the pace going, the film throws numerous horror tropes at us, yet most of them are just touched upon and don’t actually come together to create a cohesive, significant plot thread. I’m talking to you, ghost girl returning her video tapes way late.

The story focuses on a gay couple moving into a new home: a Black man and his white partner, who has a teenage daughter from a previous marriage to a woman.

The proud gay Black guy suffers from PTSD due to a bashing incident when he was younger. Therefore, he’s very suspect of everyone around them, including their new neighbors.

When he begins to experience frightening situations in the new home, we are put in the position of wondering if it’s really happening or if it’s all due to his mental state. He’s quite sensitive to everything to the point of paranoia, but it sure does suck us in.

A good part of the film feels like one of those classic 1990s thrillers about suspicious behaving neighbors, with the main character doing the kinds of dumb, risky things while investigating that make you shout in frustration at the screen.

As the story unfolds, it incorporates some random supernatural aspects, but it does deliver a few surprises at the end that are dark, ominous, and horrortastic and also frighteningly address the current state of our nation.

BY DAY’S END (2020)

Amazon Prime selection By Day’s End makes the most of a low budget, minimal cast and single setting, and even navigates found footage better than many of the excessive indies that attempt the subgenre. All this while serving up unnervingly cognizant zombies and an intimate lesbian love story.

We’re dropped right into the middle of a rough patch for a lesbian couple. Rina has lost her job as an attorney and has emotional issues, and Carly is estranged from her family and has an interest in getting into photography and filmography. They’ve temporarily moved into a motel until they can get back on their feet.

We meet a couple of neighboring motel guests, including a woman and her under the weather husband, and a quirky survivalist who has been following a story of a mysterious outbreak in Europe. Uh-oh.

The story is told through Carly’s videos and security camera footage. The fixed camera POV and very limited number of zombies roaming the property really create an isolated atmosphere, so we’re always anticipating what’s around every corner. I dare to say it reminded me of the vibe I got the first time I played the original Resident Evil: Nemesis.

There are a variety of creepy, random zombie encounters, including a cameo by horror queen Maria Olsen, who wonderfully hogs the screen as a freaky zombie. Plus, you feel like you’re in the lowbrow, sleazy motel with them due to tight shots in confined spaces like the balcony walkway and the couple’s room.

But most important is how perfectly the film weaves in the troubled yet genuine relationship between Carly and Rina, even touching upon the issues that seem glossed over earlier before the zombie action begins. By the time things gets really bad at the end, the dilemmas they’re going through become very real and heartbreaking.

BIT (2019)

Bit can be rented on Prime, but is also currently available to watch free on Tubi. Be warned, Tubi is owned by big conservative media, so they run anti-Democrat political attack ads. Ironic, considering the film is about a clan of queer feminist vampire women that targets conservative men.

It’s labeled as a horror comedy on iMDB, but while it’s quirky and edgy due to its content and focus on a bunch of trendy teens, it’s not a humorous film at all to me. In fact, despite its hip chicks, cool and contemporary soundtrack, and smoky club settings, this is the preachiest film in this trio.

The catch—the preachy subject matter is the feminism, not the trans issue. This film makes the main character’s queer identity incidental. In fact, it’s never implicitly stated that she’s trans, so you have to pay attention to the dialogue. How that sits with you depends on how you feel about trans visibility in movies. Important to note is that Nicole Maines, the actress playing the lead, is trans (she’s already made her mark playing trans superhero Dreamer on Supergirl).

She goes to visit her brother in LA for the summer and becomes drawn in by the nightlife of these night creatures. Now she must navigate her new identity as a vampire that must focus her feeding on killing scummy men. Awesome.

There is a fun queer vampire clan story here, and the girls, including their fierce leader, do some good gory damage to their victims. Even the dialogue provides some smart social commentary, however the talking becomes a bit excessive to the point of slowing the pace down.

I enjoyed the film, but I was initially a bit disappointed that a heavy-handed vampire film about identity with a trans lead focused more on feminism than her gender identity. Then again, that is perhaps the whole point of the film…she is a woman, so feminism is a major part of her identity. Pretty sneaky, sis!

 

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Another zomblog—four times the gut-munching fun

Posted on September 17, 2020 by Daniel

If you’re craving some zombie flicks you haven’t seen yet, here are four options I indulged in. Let’s find out which are the best of the bunch.

DEAD IN THE WATER (2006)

Running a short 75 minutes long, Dead in the Water combines cabin in the woods horror with a Night of the Living Dead siege story…but then muddies the waters, so to speak, by trying to be more than Night of the Living Dead at a cabin in the woods. Grrr…argh.

The first kill encompasses all the backstory we need…a Christian summer camp closed down after a boat capsized and dozens of bodies were never recovered from the water.

Next, two sisters and their male friends come to stay at a cabin in the woods. They quickly make a gruesome discovery in the water, but they’re kind of stranded.

When one guy says, “Looks like we’re stuck in here for a night of horror and mayhem”, my immediate thought was that no one says things like that. My second thought was that it is exactly what I would say, although my delivery would have been dripping with gay melodrama.

This Randy of the movie makes meta references galore and tries to warn them of the impending zombie threat, but no one believes him. He’s also the best actor in the bunch, so for me he carried and saved the movie.

There are some classic zombie situations and the atmosphere is quite good, with much of the movie shot at night. But like I said, there’s a whole expansion of the backstory right near the end that I didn’t find necessary.

THEATRE OF THE DEAD (2013)

Theatre of the Dead is a good way to get a satisfying zombie fix if you just need some cool gore and freaky looking zombies. Using a virtually paint-by-numbers, classic zombie movie formula, this is Night of the Living Dead in a theater.

After a fun dance number during a rehearsal, the theater group calls it a night. Things go bad in the alley behind the theater right away, and the group becomes trapped inside…with some of their people already bitten.

There’s infighting as they consider pulling a Cabin Fever on their infected friends, the theater director is an embarrassing caricature whose only concern is his show being derailed, news reports on television tell them how to deal with the zombies, and there are numerous zombie encounters as the cast is whittled down to nothing.

There’s definitely entertaining zombie action and good practical effects, plus the film goes for realism by ensuring there are gay characters, but the already derivative situations become repetitive to the point of getting a little boring and causing some slowdown before the big final chase at the end.

THE HIDEOUT (2014)

I have to give props to directors that just want to make a zombie film, no matter how derivative, how little money they have, and how lacking it is in zombie makeup.

Everyone involved with The Hideout seems dedicated to telling this simple little story, which is smartly only about 75 minutes long.

A small band of thieves commits a robbery for a mob boss and is then forced to hide out in a cabin in the woods. What I really like here is that while they’re in the urban jungle, they’re so distracted doing their thing that they don’t notice hints of zombie trouble brewing around them.

Once the setting shifts to the woods, there are a few random campers attacked by zombies to keep our interest, and eventually the thieves are under siege in the cabin.

It’s a good thing the guys are cute, because there’s nothing new here at all, and one of the best scenes that builds tension for a jump scare just completely blows the jump scare. I was gobsmacked…but I’m also giddy that it gave me a reason to write gobsmacked.

There’s a little twist at the end that wasn’t totally clear to me and also wasn’t enough for me to argue that this is worth seeing, especially if you’ve pretty much seen it all when it comes to zombie films.

#ALIVE (2020)

There is nothing much original about Alive, but that’s quite alright with me when there’s loads of suspenseful fun to be had.

A cute young man wakes up in his apartment to discover the world outside is overrun with fast-moving zombies, plenty of them quite freaky looking.

These zombies are also smart—to the point of ridiculous at times. They can open doors, track noises, climb on ropes, etc. Silly or not, it makes for some exciting action.

The young man soon connects with a young woman trapped in an apartment across the way.

All I’m going to say is that these two have better vision than any human I’ve ever known.

The goal becomes to stay alive and eventually to unite to survive, and it’s the perfect way for zombie lovers to get mostly all the zombie thrills they need with few surprises.

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The 80s obscurities keep on coming

Posted on September 15, 2020 by Daniel

The 80s never really end for me, so here’s yet another blog covering four more lost horror movies of the decade.

FIEND (1980)

Fiend comes from the director of Nightbeast, and to me it’s like unofficial Night of the Living Dead spin-off Flesh Eater meets Fright Night meets…Xanadu?

This is as low budget as they come and looks like it was filmed in a few houses and surrounding woods of a middle class cul-de-sac in 1980.

The opening scene is definitely inspired by NOTLD, with a couple getting attacked by a corpse in a cemetery. Difference is this corpse comes to life when an evil orange aura sweeps into the ground and possesses it. Have to believe we are magic.

What is a corpse to do? It moves into a vacant house and starts to live life. It regularly chokes women to death in the woods with its orange glowing hands to steal their life forces, which help make it look less dead.

Meanwhile, a next door neighbor becomes convinced the corpse guy is a murderer as the bodies begin piling up in the woods behind their houses. It’s only a matter of time before the two battle to the death…and re-death.

The low budget gives Fiend that gritty, direct-to-video feel we 80s horror kids love, which is good, because nostalgia is most of what it has going for it since the cheesy corpse makeup loses its impact rather fast and the kills are repetitive.

DEADLY LESSONS (1983)

There were some great made-for-TV horror films in the 1970s and 1980s, but Deadly Lessons is not one of them.

A bland thriller that pretends to be a slasher, it features 80s darling Diane Franklin coming to an all-girl private school, befriending the likes of Ally Sheedy and Nancy Cartwright of Bart Simpson fame, getting flirty with Bill Paxton…and finding dead bodies around every corner.

Sure, there are girls being stalked and killed on campus, but we never see any of that, and there’s no masked killer. The bodies just turn up. Yawn. Adding to the melodrama (including the bad made-for-TV score), Donna Reed is the headmaster having an affair with a staff member, while the CHiPs guy who isn’t Erik Estrada is the detective on the case.

At least the film delivers a few twists near the end.

Ally Sheedy suddenly seems to be the star instead of Franklin, but it’s Franklin who gets the chase scene at the end, delivering the best few moments of the movie.

RAZORBACK (1984)

Razorback is one of those creature feature goodies from back in the days when HBO played everything. And now that I finally scored a copy on Blu and can blog about it, I’m surprised to discover the director went on to direct episodes of Queer as Folk and Teen Wolf, plus an installment of Resident Evil.

This is one odd little film. Set in the Australian outback, it’s about a “town”(?) being terrorized by a giant monster boar! Awesome.

What makes the film so frightening is that right from the very first scene, this monster just plows through houses (shacks?) and tears people right out of their homes. There’s literally no place to hide. My worst nightmare (along with sinkholes, shark attacks, falling from a high place, admitting it’s not the 80s anymore, etc.).

After a few gory kills, always drenched in blue light at night, Gregory Harrison comes to town looking for his reporter wife, who went missing…while listening to “New Moon on Monday” by Duran Duran. Awesome.

Gregory has crazy encounters with pigs, some locals that think they’re in a Mad Max movie, and eventually a female researcher. He also has a dehydration hallucination session that’s freakier than the giant boar.

The denouement features a battle between Harrison and the boar in a factory, and Harrison is an absolutely beautiful bumbling hero.

Also keep an eye out for a major plumber crack moment…sadly, it’s not Harrison’s.

NIGHT TERROR (1989)

If ever a direct-to-video horror movie encapsulated the look and feel of the late 80s, Night Terror is it. It’s like watching three even lower budget episodes of Tales from the Darkside with a wraparound about a patient suffering from night terrors in a mental institution.

1st story – While pulling a Cyrano de Bergerac for his awkward buddy at work, a dude with an amazing 80s pornstache decides to steal the girl for himself.

After handing out some trick or treat candy (yes, it’s a Halloween tale and scores a spot on the holiday horror page), he goes to meet her for a date…at a weird, sexually charged party.

There’s fabulous 80s music and fashions, plus horny guests of all orientations, including a gay guy who comes on strong (landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page as well). But the faggot (that’s what pornstache guy calls him) is the least of pornstache guy’s worries once the horror starts…

2nd story – a powerful man preparing to tear down a beloved roller coaster to put up a mall is terrorized by a carnival barker.

3rd story – this is the same formula as the killer Native American statue story from Creepshow 2. After a trio of thugs causes chaos at a toy store, a Teddy bear comes to life to get revenge. This is the goriest installment in the film, and it’s just plain stupid midnight movie fun, and the perfect way to end this indie anthology strong.

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Indulging in four contemporary horror flicks

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Daniel

An Amityville remake, a new film from a director who always keeps me coming back for more, a sequel to a popular streaming horror comedy, and Danielle Harris at a killer camp. Let’s get into my thoughts on these four.

THE AMITYVILLE MURDERS (2018)

The director of The Haunting of Sharon Tate and The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson is making a career out of transforming true crime stories into horror movies, so it must have been a no-brainer to a) take on the infamous DeFeo family murders that triggered the Amityville craze, and b) in the process, essentially remake the original Amityville II movie, even going as far as to cast two of the same actors. Awesome.

The eldest sister in Amityville II, 80s sweetheart Diane Franklin is now the mother, while Burt Young, who played the father, now has a brief role as the grandfather, along with icon Lanie Kazan as the grandmother.

Completely immersed in the pop culture references of the 1970s, this version focuses on Ronald Jr., his sister, and their friends having a sort of séance in the red room down in the basement, which triggers the release of dark shadowy entities that begin tormenting Ronald.

The film also focuses heavily on what an abusive shit the father was, mostly to Ronald. He’s so hateful you can’t wait for Ronald to get the shotgun and blow his brains out.

This version skips the incest angle with the brother and sister, but there really are numerous scenes lifted right from Amityville II. The supernatural scenes are updated to be more in keeping with the shadowy flashes of specters in modern ghost films like The Conjuring (aka: it’s not nearly as effective as the 1982 film). The best sequence is the build-up to Ronald murdering everyone at the end. There’s even a nod to a Poltergeist just for fun.

As thunder crashes and lighting strobes in the dark house while Ronald goes from room to room, there’s only one CGI flash over his face implying he’s possessed as he chases his sister down.

Considering the film stuck with the supernatural angle rather than just serve as a docudrama, it definitely could have used more traditional haunting moments, like a fantastic opening scene that was cut and appears as a deleted scene in the extras on the Blu-ray. It’s a great introduction to the kids of the family and also a reminder of just how creepy the View Master 3D slideshow system for kids was back then.

THE DEAD ONES (2020)

As a huge fan of director Jeremy Kasten’s horror films (The Attic Expeditions, The Thirst, All Souls Day, The Wizard of Gore remake), I was thrilled when The Dead Ones landed in my mailbox.

As usual, Kasten doesn’t disappoint, delivering both traditional scares and a surreal and thought-provoking concept.

Things start off feeling like See No Evil mixed with a dash of The Strangers. Clare Kramer of Buffy fame is a teacher who drops delinquent students off at an old building to do the cleaning after the janitor is murdered.

Meanwhile, figures in black don creepy masks and begin infiltrating the building.

And that’s when the film deviates from the expected. This isn’t a simple building invasion slasher. These kids are forced to face their own demons—the very behaviors and troubled pasts that brought on their punishments to begin with.

There are creepy, supernatural style figures to contend with, but the film also delivers a disturbing look at the kind of school violence that has made headlines in the last few decades with chilling detail.

THE BABYSITTER: KILLER QUEEN (2020)

I’d suggest fans of the first film watch this one just to get it out of their system and then go watch the first one again to wash off the stink of this mess.

Bringing back the whole cast isn’t enough to elevate this sequel, which is so self-aware of its effort to be edgy, quirky, and meta that it eats itself alive.

The main kid is now a teen, it’s two years later, and he still has nightmares about the incident with the babysitter and friends.

So he gets together with his friends and…they get drawn into another occult ritual, which brings back all the kids from the first movie, most importantly the perpetually shirtless hunk.

In an effort to not just be a rehash, the sequel has the kids running all over the woods at night instead of around a house as they try to avoid being the new blood sacrifices.

Frenetic, shrill, and slapstick to the point of annoying, this one can’t even be saved by the buckets of blood and over the top kills.

CAMP COLD BROOK (2018)

The director of The Funhouse Massacre, Alien Strain, and Find Me brings us a movie that should be free on Prime, but like an idiot I paid to rent it because Danielle Harris is in it.

It’s a trip to cliché land as Chad Michael Murray, Danielle, and two other ghost hunters go to a summer camp where tragedy occurred, hoping to save their reality show, which is about to be cancelled by their boss—Courtney Gains of Children of the Corn fame.

As they arrive at the camp a girl runs across the road and disappears, and then…a whole lot of nothing happens for most of the movie. I don’t even understand how it got green lit. It doesn’t commit to being found footage because the group rarely has a camera rolling. Do they want to make a show to save or not?

It’s cool to see Danielle Harris as the scared girl for a change. There’s a story of a girl at the camp who used witchcraft to get all the other kids at camp to attack each other in a bloody massacre. That flashback is as exciting as this gets.

Each character walks around experiencing weak faux scares. With 15 minutes left, they finally encounter a few ghosts and we learn exactly what the ghosts want, and it’s as derivative as everything else in this borefest. At least I can say I once again have seen every single Danielle Harris horror movie ever. Yay me.

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Gay horror fantasy gets graphic in STITCH by Tommy Kovac

Posted on September 10, 2020 by Daniel

This dark little graphic novel is like a child’s nightmare scenario that tackles sexual orientation, gender identity, adolescent angst, and even fear of aging at the same time.

A young “boy” wakes up in a playroom with no idea how he got there, what his name is, or how he turned into a doll. However, he does reunite with his sister and cousins, who have also been transformed into dolls.

While his sister becomes obsessed with “making babies” (she crafts baby dolls), he becomes friends with a monkey puppet. He is also terrorized by a pair of gender-bending dolls that incessantly mock his sexuality, call him fancy boy, and threaten to abduct him and dress him in feminine clothing.

Meanwhile, his grandmother occasionally pops in to check on him and entertain him and his friends with stories of witches and dragons.

And most importantly, he starts to form a crush on another boy rag doll. As much as he wants to get out of the frightening playroom and back to reality to discover who he really is, he finds incredible comfort and safety with his rag doll friend.

Stitch comes to an oddly dark yet gay positive conclusion. It’s creepy and quirky and accompanied by excellent artwork. You can get a copy on Amazon.

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Dark, twisted, and goofy horror foursome

Posted on September 8, 2020 by Daniel

Vampires, serial killers, deadly fantasies, and even some gay guys, which lands them on my does the gay guy die? page. Let’s get into what you can expect from these four films.

FANTASY ISLAND (2020)

Much like the original series from the 1970s, Fantasy Island is essentially an anthology film with a wraparound about a handful of people that comes to the island to live out some wild or unthinkable fantasy. And just like the show, a majority of these stories are flat, and only one truly feels like horror.

Mr. Roarke welcomes them after they meet…a Black female Tattoo? Okay, she’s not named Tattoo, which will irk purists, but stick around until the end and you’ll get your Tattoo fix.

The stories include:

  • two brothers, one straight and white the other gay and Asian, who want to just “live the life”, partying in style with sexy women/hunky men, respectively

  • a woman who wants to go back and live the life she was meant to live with the man that got away

  • a dude who wants to play army
  • a young woman who wants to torture the girl that tormented her in high school

Most of the stories end up having a whole lot of gun shootouts, and only the bullied girl story turns into a scary psycho killer chase. The good news for the rest of the stories is that eventually they all overlap and everyone is chased by the psycho killer. There’s a sort of silly turn of events that ties all the tales together, but the merging of the stories definitely saves the whole viewing experience.

OTIS (2008)

Kind of weird to make a story about a pedophile/killer into a dark horror comedy, but that’s exactly what you get here, set to an awesome part 1960s psychedelic rock/part 1980s new wave soundtrack.

This big slovenly dude abducts teenage girls, chains them up in a bedroom, and then uses a webcam system to live out sexual fantasies with them from another room.

When he abducts a teen played by Ashley Johnson, who to me will always be DJ’s overbearing little girlfriend on an episode of Roseanne, she amuses him by acting out his fantasies, like the football player and cheerleader scenario and the high school prom date scenario.

Meanwhile, her parents and brother don’t feel like the police are doing enough to find her, so they take matters into their own hands…they plan to find him and get closure using any torture necessary.

It’s entertaining, with lots of gore and torture, plenty of quirky and edgy humor, and a great cast. Whether you’ll like it just depends on your feelings about the subject matter.

FANGED UP (2017)

I barely ever find movies I actually want to add to my collection these days after I see them, but I’m on a roll in the past few weeks. First The Wretched, then The Shed, and now Fanged Up.

This prison vampire comedy comes from Christian James, the director of Stalled and Freak Out, both of which I have in my collection, so apparently I’m a fan. And with this midnight movie I’d say he just keeps getting better.

A bad boy is transported to a prison, is befriended by a big Russian inmate, also befriends a sweet Black inmate, and discovers that his ex-girlfriend is the in-house doctor!

They learn pretty soon that the prison is being overrun by vampires. It’s time to make a serious prison break…if they can survive the night.

This is pure campy fun, with plenty of humor, buckets of blood, a lovable gay character, and goofy cool vampires that are as wacky as Evil Ed from Fright Night—especially the big boss bitch in the final battle.

A SERIAL KILLER’S GUIDE TO LIFE (2019)

These “portrait of a serial killer” dark comedy movies just never work out for me, and I should really just stop watching them and blogging about them, because I’m obviously not the right audience.

Therefore, I’ll make this one short. A doormat woman goes to a life coach for help. They become close, they go on a nature therapy retreat, and eventually the doormat discovers the life coach is a serial killer.

So she starts helping with the murders…50 minutes into this 80-minute movie! Ugh. And if you don’t assume the killer eventually turns on her apprentice, then you need to watch more movies. I really did not find this one funny or entertaining at all.

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STREAM QUEEN: random acts of horror…and one that was definitely my fave

Posted on September 3, 2020 by Daniel

For my latest streaming binge, I turned to Hulu, Netflix, and Shudder, for some “refined” horror…which usually doesn’t work out for me. However, nearly half of these four films brought me some horror joy.

1BR (2019)

Blech. I’ll get 1BR out of the way first because I don’t even consider it a horror movie. It’s a brainwashing and torturing cult movie—a horrifying situation for sure, but not my idea of a good horror time. On the bright side, it’s shorter than Midsommar and isn’t just hours of people standing in a field.

A young woman lands herself in the middle of a mini-Scientology nightmare when she moves into a new complex loaded with seemingly nice neighbors.

Then she’s abducted and forced to endure cruel punishments to condition her to be a better human and better member of her community.

Obviously it’s all going to eventually lead to her making an escape attempt. If it weren’t for the chaos that ensues in the final few minutes, this movie would have been a total letdown.

SEA FEVER (2019)

Sea Fever is slooooooooow with little in the way of action, thrills, chills, gore, or scares.

It’s mostly just people sitting around on a boat talking for a majority of its run time. You know…like Alien on a boat.

Anyway, it turns out there’s a parasite in the water, one guy finger fucks the gooey thing through a hole in a wall at one point, there’s a dive underwater that reveals the parasites look like giant day glow sperm, and someone has a bunch of little parasites shoot out of their eyes.

Also, everyone starts distrusting everyone else like…sort of like The Thing on a boat.

That’s about it. Those are the highlights.

RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE (2020)

Jay Baruchel, known for his nerdy roles in early 2000s flicks and his friendship with Seth Rogen, brings us a road trip slasher that feels to me like a mashup of The Hitcher, Bloody Knuckles, and High Tension. Jay is also under attack on social because of some negative comments he made about the state of horror today, but I’m not going to jump on a “let’s destroy him!” bandwagon and trash his film, considering I make at least one negative comment about horror every time I post a blog. That doesn’t mean I don’t still love the shit I trash (see some examples above).

Anyway, always gorgeous Jesse Williams (Cabin in the Woods, Jacob’s Ladder remake) plays a creator of a gruesome comic book series about a highway serial killer.

When he needs inspiration, he hops in a vehicle with his girlfriend (Jordana Brewster, who wears distractingly geeky glasses), and another couple (Baruchel and Niamh Wilson, who appeared in the Saw series when she was younger).

As their journey progresses, they seem to be leaving behind a string of new murders exactly like the kill scenes in Jesse’s comic books. Would you believe the killer eventually targets them?

The horror tone and style are excellent here, the killer wearing a welding mask is plenty ominous, and the kills and the aftermath are brutal and gory, so it’s quite satisfying in terms of horror thrills. However, the story doesn’t offer anything new, which would be fine if it didn’t attempt to make itself more complicated than it needs to be, delving into Jesse’s psyche and how he may be contributing to violence in society (the comic book made me do it!) with convoluted flashbacks that distract and confuse. However, they do revolve around the Christmas holiday, so this one lands a spot on the holiday horror page.

THE SHED (2019)

Start a film with a Salem’s Lot style vampire attacking a guy in the woods and you’re going to grab my attention. And if the movie is The Shed, I’m going to order the Blu-ray before I’m even finished streaming it. I’d say this is the perfect double feature with The Wretched, which I just blogged about (then bought on Blu) the other day.

The film focuses on a troubled young man, living with his asshole grandfather, in and out of juvy, bullied at school—who discovers there’s something evil living in his shed. And despite his moral compass telling him not to feed his enemies to his hungry creature, everything and everyone seems to be working against his best efforts to do what’s right.

Fast-paced and suspenseful, The Shed isn’t as predictable as it at first seems. It’s quite a fun film that doesn’t get overburdened by its dark themes. If I have any minor complaint, it would be a few too many unnecessary dream sequence scares, but I’m all about the growing pains story enveloped in a vampire film.

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STREAM QUEEN: four killer creature films

Posted on September 2, 2020 by Daniel

Although I may not have loved every film in this foursome, I sure enjoyed the variety of styles and tones. Let’s get right into them.

DEAD STOP (2011)

Overall, Dead Stop is worth a watch for some gore and cheap thrills.

A group of friends on a road trip gets stuck in a desert. After 37 minutes of silly soap opera sex and romance stuff, a guy goes out to pee at night, gets chased by red monster POV, and then the cycle of attacks on the group’s van begin.

And it is a cycle. At night they get attacked with quick flashes of creature, choppy editing of gore, and people screaming. During the day they get out of the van, they stay out too long, and the attacks begin all over again once night falls.

The ending is fun, if not a little out of left field.

IT CAME FROM THE DESERT (2017)

This would make a perfect midnight movie double feature with Dead Ant, another creature feature comedy about giant killer ants in the desert.

While It Came From the Desert features motorcycle racing competitors having a huge party in the sandy hills, it focuses mostly on two main guys and a girl saving everyone from a colony of giant ants.

Almost like a less dumb Bill & Ted comedy duo, the lead guys are a pair of the most likable dudes I’ve seen in a horror movie in a long time. They’re not full of machismo—they’re actually kind of geeky, and they scream in terror when they encounter the crazy critters. They’re as funny as the ants, which have personalities as well.

There’s plenty of humor and gore, plus an oddly overdramatic score that doesn’t actually fit the tone of the film yet helps enhance the quirky ambience.

This film is a blast, and Gen-Xers should note that it’s actually based on a text-based video game of the 1980s!

ROTTENTAIL (2018)

Killer bunny movies have become a subgenre of their own in the past few years—enough for an all-day Easter marathon, so check my full list of them on the holiday horror page. This one is a mix of campy grindhouse 80s throwback schlock, so if you’re looking for more serious bunny man movie, well, try the Bunnyman movies.

Drenched in neon lights of the horror rainbow throughout, Rottentail is about a geeky scientist bitten by a deformed lab bunny, which causes him to transform into…Rottentail!

The timing couldn’t be better, because it’s right before his high school reunion, when he gets to confront all the bullies from his teen years and give them a big Easter surprise. To get around, he even hops…on a moped…

That could have made for the perfect creature feature slasher, but this is one whacky wabbit. While the movie is fun and funny, I found the character of Rottentail too obnoxious and grating to be a likable comic baddie—and the film runs a little too long to sustain the humor.

I also wasn’t a fan of the side story that derails the simple revenge slasher formula—a rival scientist makes his own creature to go after Rottentail. Blah.

HALF MOON (2010)

I’ll warn you right from the start—this film is all talk between two characters until the last seven minutes, when there’s finally a werewolf transformation.

That doesn’t leave me much to say. A handsome guy hires a prostitute, but when she gets to his hotel room, he just wants to talk and eat dinner.

Even her sexy lap dance doesn’t interest him…and gives her an excuse to call him a faggot. Sigh.

Slowly but surely she draws his tragic past and truths out of him…he’s a werewolf and wants her help. Trapped in a hotel room with him, I would have been coughing up furballs before he even told me he was a werewolf.

Sooooo, with seven minutes left, there’s a cheap and cartoonish CGI transformation, a quick, vicious attack that’s kind of fun, and then it’s pretty much all over.

 

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Round-up of six 1990s oddities

Posted on August 28, 2020 by Daniel

Ghost nuns, a weird Poe adaptation, a killer kid, druggy zombies, and solo work for a little 1980s critter in the 90s. Time to go back to the most disastrous decade of horror once again to see if there are any standouts in the latest bunch I take on.

DEMONIA (1990)

The story of an archaeologist terrorized by visions of nuns crucified in medieval times in the ruins she’s exploring, Demonia has its moment but is a far cry from Lucio Fulci’s strongest film in the early 80s.

There are plenty of nonsensical scenes strung along and odd characters popping in and out to be murdered by the nun ghosts, but overall this is a slow mover. The kills are the highlights and include:

– a naked ghost killing a guy with a harpoon gun

– a gruesome next stab during sex

– not one, but two guys going all Lemmings and falling into a spike trap one right after the other

– an awesomely gory death by cat attack

– a nasty meat freezer murder

It all culminates in the main characters being chased around the catacombs by nuns with knives years before The Conjuring’s nun spin-off was even a thing.

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1991)

Stuart Gordon directs this Full Moon feature that is barely an adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story.

It takes place in the 1400s during the Spanish Inquisition. Period piece. Blech.

The good news is it stars a bevy of horror names, including Oliver Reed, Jeffrey Combs, Stephen Lee, and Lance Henriksen. These were the days when Lance still took his roles seriously, so he’s oddly stiff in this otherwise cheesy torture film.

And that’s all it is—a torture film. Lance is the leading holy man accusing everyone of being witches. One pretty young woman begs him to show mercy to another woman…and so she’s accused of witchcraft, too. She’s perversely strip-searched then tossed in prison with an old lady who actually is a witch.

Meanwhile, Lance is absolutely lusting after the young woman, and has one of his men whip him as punishment for his perverted thoughts. He seems to like that, too.

The young woman’s boyfriend is trying to bust her out of prison.

The over-the-top pendulum scene, loaded with pendulum dodging during a sword fight, is the best part.

MIKEY (1992)

While Macaulay Culkin was busy making Home Alone movies, little Andy from Family Ties was a killer kid a year before The Good Son even existed.

In the first five minutes of Mikey he brutally kills his entire family!

The cute kid with the angelic face is now orphaned and everyone feels bad for him. He becomes his aunt’s problem…she just doesn’t know it.

In true campy fashion, he kills people off in inventive ways while dropping one-liners. At a time when the Internet didn’t exist, I don’t know how he learned how to do things like make Molotov cocktails and safely remove bullets from a gun.

But this isn’t just a killer kid. He’s also a psycho stalker. He becomes obsessed with his older female neighbor. Poor little orphan just needs someone to love him.

The best part of the film comes at the end, with the kid knocking them down like bowling pins, Ashley Laurence of Hellraiser fame making it to final girl status, and this tiny little kid managing to place all his victims around the dining room table for a classic corpse party.

OZONE (1995)

The director of the 1989 zombie film The Dead Next Door makes a shot-on-video movie in the 90s that’s even higher on the schlock scale. Okay, it’s just plain terrible.

The best thing about it is the beefy, pretty detective…

…and this guy’s pits…

While working on a case in the seedy drug dealing area of the city after his partner disappears, he’s injected with a drug by a baddie and spends the rest of the movie having trippy hallucinations and being chased by mutant humans of all varieties.

There are plenty of zombie-esque baddies and icky special effects—some of them poor CGI–but the film feels like it has no cohesive plot. The Dead Next Door is better.

MUNCHIE (1992)

Directed by Jim Wynorski, who has been a prolific horror director since the 1980s, this goofy family comedy changes the concept of the original 1987 movie Munchies completely, and I’m only covering this and its sequel so that you know what to expect.

If you’re hoping for another onslaught of dastardly, comical little creatures, forget it. There’s one Munchie, voiced by Dom DeLuise. He has magic powers, and he comes into the life of a young boy being bullied at school and causes Gremlin-like chaos on his behalf.

The film has a notable cast, including a young Jennifer Love Hewitt as a classmate, Loni Anderson as the mom, Andrew Stevens as her dick boyfriend, Arte Johnson as a science teacher, and even Angus Scrimm of Phantasm fame as…what else? A funeral director.

The film is cute and funny for tweens, but the kids are kind of young for some of the oddly derogatory references to gays made throughout the film. Funny how straight society always thinks kids are too young to hear about homosexuality in movies and TV…unless it’s in a negative light.

MUNCHIE STRIKES BACK (1994)

Wynorski is back with another Munchie family movie. I can’t imagine why Shout Factory didn’t just throw this in with their release of the first two movies and make it a complete collection.

This time Munchie is voiced by Howard Hesseman of WKRP in Cincinnati fame (even though there probably aren’t many that even know the show at all these days).

Although we lost Dom DeLuise as the voice, a whole bunch of actors return from the previous film—most of them as different characters!

Only the little boy from the first film returns as the same character, in a very brief cameo at the beginning of the film.

This time, Munchie is warned by a celestial jury that he will be sent to a galaxy far, far away if he doesn’t behave himself. He’s sent to hang with a boy who is rather geeky but wants to play baseball. So munchie uses his powers to rig the baseball games in the boy’s favor. Ah, good family values cheating fun message. This should have been a Trump era film.

There are way too many baseball montages, but I do like that this film actually has several nods to horror. For instance, Munchie makes a lawnmower attack a neighbor, a band at the school dance sings an “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” song (which sounds more early 80s than mid-90s), and there’s a talking raven squawking “Nevermore.”

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Stephen King’s killing machine and a giant rat creature

Posted on August 27, 2020 by Daniel

I was a huge Stephen King reader in my early teens, which coincided with his rise to mass popularity and numerous movie adaptations within a matter of years. Of course once the movie studios had tapped some of his best (Salem’s Lot, Carrie, Cujo, The Shining, Pet Sematary), they became desperate, even stretching short stories into full-length movies. Which is basically how we ended up with this motley duo, both of which focus on the horrors of working in a factory.

GRAVEYARD SHIFT (1990)

This Stephen King short story is turned into a full-length feature you watch just to see unlikable characters torn apart with super gory practical effects by a nasty, deformed, giant bat/rat hybrid.

These characters are a bunch of mentally ill lowlifes working down in a rat-infested textile mill. A new guy comes onboard and quickly creates bad blood with the boss.

As a sort of punishment, the boss makes him and a bunch of other workers clean the place over the Fourth of July weekend. And that’s when this one kicks into high gear as a gory splatterfest in the slimiest possible underground caverns.

Not much depth or dimension here, just a good old creature feature starring the likes of Andrew Divoff and Brad Dourif. And in the best product placement ever, a certain soda saves the day.

THE MANGLER (1995)

Tobe Hooper seems to have realized just how ridiculous horror had become in the first half of the 1990s, so he adapted a rather goofy Stephen King story into a shitty movie. The only downside of this piece of crap is that it runs too long at 105 minutes. If it had been trimmed to 90 minutes it would have been a camp classic!

Hobbling around on crutches with artificial legs, Robert Englund looks and sounds like a pirate version of Popeye as the crabby owner of laundry factory.

The major machine in his facility doesn’t hesitate in gobbling someone down after it gets a taste of an employee’s blood following a minor accident.

A detective steps in to solve the case of multiple murders once the machine continues to devour workers. His comic sidekick believes the machine is possessed and is obsessed with finding out if its victims are virgins.

This is where the film really begins to drag. There are kills thrown in every now and then (why are people still allowed near the machine?), and it all culminates in an exorcism…and a chase through the factory by the machine, which breaks free and becomes a mobile monster.

And would you believe the reason it comes to life is directly related to some old lady’s antacid pills?

I can see now why Hooper’s next film was the campy croc film Crocodile.

 

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