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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Four horrors of the 1900s

Posted on August 25, 2020 by Daniel

Ha! Sounds like a long time ago, doesn’t it? In fact, the first film in this foursome is nearly 100 years old and its plot is still being ripped off to this day. So let’s see how the past has shaped the present in horror.

MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933)

I checked this one out because it’s included as a bonus on the Blu-ray of the Vincent Price 1953 movie House of Wax, which is actually a remake…and a very faithful one at that!

It’s amazing to see how well-formulated the macabre plot was back in 1933, even if there are no shock moments of people being turned to wax. Best of all—a strong female reporter is the lead character here.

No, wait. There’s something even better. She becomes suspicious of how incredibly real the figures are at a new wax museum where her friend’s fiancé works. And her friend is? Fay Wray! Amazing.

The film is more of a tame mystery than a horror, but there is a “Phantom of the Opera” vibe given off by the big baddie, and he’s as creepy as they came back then.

HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (1959)

While William Castle mastered the art of immersive theater gimmicks, with intros speaking directly to the audience, this film tries but fails miserably, with an emotionless narrator going on for 13 minutes about hypnosis before the movie even begins.

The film is from the director of Fiend Without a Face, one of my faves. Here he combines two plots into one with his take on the wax museum craze.

The owner of the wax museum in this film also happens to be a crime writer, so instead of killing people to create figures for his museum, he does it so he’ll have crimes to write about. What I’m saying is the museum is absolutely irrelevant here.

I do like the film’s willingness to go for the gruesome, especially in 1959. Despite there being no gore, the kills feature some unique weapons and concepts. However, they are few and far between. The film focuses on the writer’s state of mind and the way he makes his museum assistant into a ghoulish monster that commits the crimes.

Annoyingly, as with many of these old movies, one good kill is spoiled by a ridiculously misplaced, upbeat jazz number blaring (I assume to soften the severity of the kill), but the film saves itself with a near jump scare moment at the end that feels almost like a contemporary scene.

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE (1962)

I just love 1960s b-horror movies that pushed the envelope with sex and gore, and as campy as The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is by today’s standards, it definitely wasn’t for mainstream audiences of that time period.

A doctor doing transplant experiments steals his girlfriend’s severed head after a car accident and then goes on a hunt at seedy clubs for a hot chick to put the brain in. There are long dance scenes and even a cat fight! Ah, the sixties sleaze of it all.

Meanwhile, back at the lab the girlfriend’s head moans about wishing she had been allowed to die (pretty sadistic). She also learns from the doctor’s assistant that a hideous experiment gone wrong is locked behind a door in the room. She convinces the creature to do her bidding, but all we get to see for most of the movie is its hand reaching out a peek-a-boo window in the door.

It all comes to a head when the doctor brings a female specimen to the lab to do his operation. I have to say, this is a pretty satisfying monster when it’s revealed.

It even bites off and spits out flesh. Ew! Definitely a template for so many horror films that came after it.

THE CRAWLING EYE (1958)

I would almost guarantee that Carpenter’s The Fog and Stephen King’s The Mist were both inspired by this film (also known as The Trollenberg Terror), a definite goodie from my late brother’s stash of DVDs.

People at a mountain resort are terrorized when a) mountain climbers begin turning up headless, and b) creepy smoke can be seen encircling the mountain.

One girl has some sort of ESP and can communicate with the presence in the smoke. Meanwhile, there’s a crazed dude with a pick axe running around the mountain killing people. This little movie is packed with horror concepts.

The creature finally comes out of the smoke screen at the end to attack a whole building.  It’s a huge, squid-like creature with tentacles and one big eye! Awesome, and also super campy and funny at this point in time. Even the hubby was laughing with me.

 

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The weirdness of the 80s in four films

Posted on August 24, 2020 by Daniel

There’s so little left for me to cover from the 1980s, yet I keep scraping the bottom of the seemingly endless barrel from the golden age of video tapes. So let’s get into the four I’ve watched recently, two on Blu, two on Prime.

DEATH SHIP (1980)

This odd little supernatural flick from 1980 is such a convoluted mess it’s almost as fun as the Euro horror of the time.

George Kennedy and Richard Crenna run a huge ship that crashes and sinks. They and a small group of survivors on a lifeboat row up to a huge black ship that has no one aboard.

They move right into the rooms and get cozy, even watching old films on a projector they find…which seems to make one lady’s face turn zombie.

Meanwhile, the ship has a mind of its own and begins killing people on deck with chains and hooks and spilling blood from shower heads. It also possesses George Kennedy, and he kills people on the sly.

The film is actually rather boring beyond the scene in which one guy loses his mind after finding a torture dungeon of corpses and seeing a film clip of Hitler. Yes, it’s a Nazi themed ghost movie, but it does a mostly terrible job making that point gel with the insanity going on. I guess we’re to assume Nazi spirits are haunting the vessel.

There’s also a great death scene right at the end, but I won’t spoil it.

HELLHOLE (1985)

More a dark exploitation flick than straight up horror, Hellhole isn’t a particularly good movie, but it’s totally awesome for 80s whores.

Judy Landers (the Landers sister that wasn’t in A Chorus Line) sees a guy in leather choke her mother to death with his red silk scarf. Sure he was gay, I was amazed when he later takes a mud bath with two women.

Anyway, after a tragic “accident”, Landers is put in a mental institution and remembers nothing. But leather man thinks she does, so he gets a job as an orderly hoping to get from her what he was trying to get from her mother.

Speaking of guys in leather, a guy from Cruising plays an undercover cop working at the institution. Maniac Cop is a guard. The guy who battled giant rats in The Food of the Gods is a doctor. And b-queen Mary Woronov does what she does best—plays an evil doctor with lesbian tendencies that preys and experiments on the female patients in her all-girl institution.

Her liquid lobotomies put them into a zombie-like state, so they’re all kept locked up in an extra building on the facility called “Hellhole” that has a boiler room straight out of Elm Street. Of course the whole movie is about Landers and everyone else eventually ending up in Hellhole and the lobotomized women getting free. If only it were as good as its 80s atmosphere.

WHITE OF THE EYE (1987)

This film reminds me of Far From Home, another mystery thriller desert movie that came out a few years later.

The two—count them, two—kill scenes in this near 2-hour movie are quite original and weird, like something right out of the Argento playbook.

One comes right at the beginning of the film, and the other an hour in.

Other than that, this film makes you feel like you live in the slow moving world of a desert community where there’s nothing to do but watch the sand blowing. It’s soooooo boring despite its attempts to be avante-garde.

David Keith and Cathy Moriarty are a couple. They have sex, they talk, he becomes the prime suspect in a murder mystery. And we just sit there waiting for something, anything to happen. In the last half hour, Cathy and her daughter become trapped in her house by the killer, leading to a cat and mouse chase to an abandoned building in the desert.

1970s funk hit “You Sexy Thing” by Hot Chocolate is a running theme throughout the film, if that works as an incentive to watch.

TOUCH OF DEATH (1988)

It feels like Fulci was going for a Herschell Gordon Lewis throwback with this gorefest, in which all the female characters are disposable for the sake of a bloodbath.

It’s a pointless cycle—a crazy guy dates women who are mocked for laughs in each scene as he becomes grossed out by their flaws (one has facial hair, one likes to sing opera while being slapped around, etc.). His reactions are the best part of the film.

Then he kills them in a gruesomely graphic way—although much of the gore is over-the-top fake. It’s also implied he eats them.

In between, he watches the news to learn how close the authorities are to identifying him as the killer.

That’s it. That’s the movie. Yawn.

 

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The gay horror of director Matheus Marchetti

Posted on August 21, 2020 by Daniel

While many of the gay horror movie options on my homo horror movies page are campy, low budget romps, Brazilian director Matheus Marchetti is taking a much more refined and classic approach to the subgenre. His short films are available to watch on YouTube, but I would love to see these beautifully crafted films gathered together on a DVD or Blu-ray release.

Here is a brief rundown of each of the films with links to view them.

The Prince’s Kiss

Rich in the neon horror lighting made famous by Euro horror directors in the 1970s and 1980s and swelling with a score of classical music, this lush and artistic short film manages to deliver a quick take on Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein with a touch of understated gay camp.

Watch the film here. No dialogue, so there are no subtitles.

Garden of the Sleepwalkers

This sadistic gay fairy tale romance vampire rock opera goes from sexy and sweet to dark and ominous, with strong musical compositions.

If Burton’s The Corpse Bride were a live-action gay love story, this would be it.

Watch the film here. Hit the CC button to turn on English subtitles.

The Angel in the Pit

While maintaining that upscale feel of Marchetti’s other films, The Angel in the Pit offers a classic teen horror flick vibe with a gay twist.

Two geeks dream of being all powerful with the help of the Necronomicon—which might just be the key to ridding them of the undeniably sexy bully in their life.

As an added bonus, it’s also a Christmas horror flick!

Watch the film here. Don’t forget to hit the CC button to turn on English subtitles.

Nuptials of Dracula

Marchetti’s longest work is an art house re-imagining of Stoker’s original novel.

While the film is more overtly lesbian-focused, there are hints of gay male vampirism and an AIDS allegory embedded in the plot.

Rather than a grandiose presentation with elaborate sets, this an eloquent, intimate adaptation focused primarily on the characters.

Watch the film here. Once again, hit the CC button to turn on English subtitles.

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STREAM QUEEN: four films, one fave

Posted on August 20, 2020 by Daniel

I took a break from all the low budget indie stuff to indulge in some films with a little more polish. How did that work out for me? Let’s take a look.

WE SUMMON THE DARKNESS (2020)

Not even 1980s nostalgia can save this well-promoted, totally uninspired film about asshole teenagers. I fought to make it all the way through it because it was soooooo dull.

Three girls at the end of the eighties drive to a heavy metal concert. There they meet three boys (including the dickish friend from Love, Simon), they hang, they name drop metal bands from the eighties for a long time, they hang out at one girl’s house, and then we finally get to the point—satanism, religious extremism, and human sacrifice.

Sounds fun, right? Nope.

It is bland, attempts at humor are weak, there’s no suspense whatsoever, the girls are totally unlikable from the start, and the inclusion of a heavy metal theme is entirely irrelevant, barely touching upon the notion in the 80s that the genre of music would lead kids to Satanism—despite that point being the whole twist in the movie.

It’s just three kids chasing three other kids around a house, with Johnny Knoxville and a burly bear cop stopping by to up the body count.

Even the use of Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth” is a copycat cover instead of her version—and also a weird montage song choice in a movie about heavy metal. As is the use of T’Pau’s “Heart and Soul” for the closing credits. That also happens to be the best part of the film.

THE LODGE (2019)

The Shining meets The Others with a splash of that movie Barricade and becomes a grueling and tedious film about a woman trapped in a snowbound house for Christmas with the two kids that may soon be her stepchildren.

This is basically a film about PTSD and mental health, for the main woman is a survivor of a religious cult.

For that reason, religion, guilt, and sin play a big role in her mental state, making the eerie, unsettling atmosphere and creepy moments feel like exactly what they end up being….a letdown.

I can’t stand sitting through a slow burn that doesn’t burst into flames.

PAINKILLERS (2018)

In a cool opening scene that seems completely unrelated to anything else in this movie, Mischa Barton is attacked in an alley by the always witchy horror queen Maria Olsen. Neither of them is ever seen again.

This becomes a character study “vampire” movie starring cutie Adam Huss, who carries the whole film with his performance.

He is suffering from extreme emotional and physical pain after the death of his son. His wife, played by Madeline Zima (little Gracie from The Nanny) does her best to help him, but he ends up figuring out himself what he needs…

Blood.

He meets a man who convinces him he’s a vampire and only fresh human blood will ease his pain. Together they embark on a journey to get Huss some nourishment. Problem is, Huss can’t bring himself to harm another human being. Ever.

So what we have here is a non-horror vampire movie. There’s plenty of deep diving into the effects of grief, but ultimately I was let down by this one.

THE WRETCHED (2019)

For starters, The Wretched has two awesome modern wave songs that I’ll totally be playing on my Future Flashbacks show:

Joypopp – “Desire” (lueur verte mix)

 

and Qween M8 – “Apartment Song”

 

Aside from that, it’s just an awesome, sleek, modern take on the Fright Night concept, with a witch instead of a vampire.

With the onset of his parents’ divorce, a teenage boy comes to stay with his dad.

He isn’t exactly welcomed by the local kids, who make him the butt of jokes…

With nothing else to do, he soon notices his female neighbor is acting very strange. We notice, too, because if the film has one fault, it’s that it shows way too many scenes of the witch going through transformations. But it’s so creepy cool I can’t complain much.

Before long, the boy is in a battle of wits with the witch as she begins abducting children and dragging them to her underground lair.

Of course no one believes the boy, so he’s on his own. I just don’t know how kids are so brave in horror movies like this, especially when the witch is as freaky as this one.

The Wretched is most definitely the one film in this bunch that I’ll be adding to my personal collection.

 

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The Halloween horror for October 2020 begins with some home invasions

Posted on August 18, 2020 by Daniel

It’s only August, yet I’ve already scored a double feature of holiday home invasion horror, so let’s get right into Don’t Let Them In and The Good Things Devils Do, two new ones to go on the Halloween holiday horror movies page.

DON’T LET THEM IN (2020)

A few shots of Jack o’ lanterns and a couple of trick or treaters are the most you get in terms of visual Halloween spirit in this one.

However, the date relates specifically to the disappearance of children in the plot.

It’s not much of a Halloween film, but it is a home invasion film with a hint of an Evil Dead vibe.

Which is perhaps the problem. There is only a hint of a darkly humorous tone, which feels oddly of place in what is otherwise a serious and unevenly paced film.

The setup has a pair of social workers doing a wellness check of an extremely troubled man on Halloween. He’s acting aloof, anxious, and disturbingly odd. Before they can leave, he holds them at gunpoint. They may think he’s the biggest threat, but then masked figures show up and immediately start hacking and slashing.

It’s pretty thrilling, the main male social worker gets all the funny bits after being initially annoying, and there’s an unexpected turn when the masks come off as the battle between good and evil rages.

Really, what’s good about this film is quite good. It just feels like it needed more of its most thrilling moments.

THE GOOD THINGS DEVILS DO (2020)

I’ll start off by saying that if you want Halloween spirit in your holiday horror flick, The Good Things Devils Do delivers, from decor on houses and scenes of kids trick-or-treating to the classic “spooky” sounding score and the theme song “Good Things” by Neil Lee Griffin, which is perfect for a Halloween playlist.

 

The cast is also horror gold.

Linnea Quigley is a woman whose husband is creating a museum of the macabre—and gets a mysterious trunk delivered to his basement like something right out of Salem’s Lot.

Bill Oberst Jr. is a gangster about to retire after one more robbery job with his daughter and unwanted partner in crime Kane Hodder.

Naturally they invade the home of the man with the trunk, and of course a vampire is released from it. She proves to be the best part of the film.

She looks great and gory, releases a heinous, high-pitched squeal, and gets those trapped in the house to do some vicious things to themselves and each other. But even she can’t help the dip in pacing in the middle of the film before things pick up again for the final act.

The film just seems to have an inconsistently funny vibe. Rather than the whole cast delivering an evenly humorous tone throughout the film, the comedy sort of gets handed off from one character to another. Quigley’s grown daughter offers some campy bimbo humor at first, Kane Hodder gets all the over-the-top, exploitative lines once he appears, and then a kid that comes trick or treating to the house temporarily treats us to the funny lines.

And just when the film is finding its groove with Oberst and the museum man working as a vampire fighting comic duo, it comes to an end. Argh! Even so (or unevenly so), I still added this one to my Halloween horror movie collection.

 

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Four from the Christopher and Cushing era

Posted on August 17, 2020 by Daniel

My late brother was a big fan of the Hammer horror films and anything starring Christopher Lee and/or Peter Cushing, so he left me with a nice little collection of their films. Here’s my first dip into the selection, which I’ll be chipping away at over time.

THE MUMMY (1959)

While Hammer films are impressive and set a strong tone with their period design and costumes, The Mummy is a perfect example of how they were more about horror style and indulgent story-telling rather than actual scary substance, which is why this cheap thrills and chills seeker wasn’t a fan of many of them.

Peter Cushing and his team of archaeologists ignores the warnings of a man who tells them not to open the tomb of an ancient princess.

When they don’t listen, the dude resurrects the servant that was mummified and buried with her to protect her in death—Christopher Lee! Yes, Lee is the mummy in this film. Awesome.

He goes around committing a few low key revenge murders, there are agonizingly long and melodramatic flashbacks to the burial of the princess and resurrection of the mummy, and just when I thought I couldn’t be any more disappointed, the dude who resurrected the mummy goes on a killing spree, dragging the mummy along with him like a pet. Yawn.

THE GORGON (1964)

One of few Hammer films my brother made me watch that stuck with me, The Gorgon introduced me to the concept of “Medusa” (along with an episode of Popeye), and inevitably it’s what prompted me to write Snakehead, the latest installment of my Comfort Cove gay horror series.

And damn, this movie stills holds up for me, despite being a period piece. Peter Cushing plays a doctor that doesn’t believe the tale of Megaera, who supposedly haunts his small town. No idea why she’s not called Medusa—the film voted for the lesser known evil of two mythological sisters.

I also have no idea why the town doesn’t do something about her since she seems to reside in a castle in town that everyone avoids—until they hear her haunting siren singing, which draws individuals to go seek her out. Once they see her they turn to stone.

These scenes are quite eerie, and the setting is perfectly creepy. We only see the gorgon from afar under dramatic light for most of the film, and it is so spooky I can’t get enough of it.

Christopher Lee shows up to hunt down the gorgon and also helps to indulge us with more details of her mythology, including aspects involving the moon and mirrors.

And of course we get to see the gorgon’s “hideous” face and snakes up close at the end. Eek!

THE SKULL (1965)

Although it brings together Cushing and Lee (just a little), The Skull isn’t a Hammer film, and it shows. The atmosphere is there (for instance, it begins with a man digging up a grave), but it’s dumbfounding how slow it is with so little happening.

Cushing plays a man that collects occult and supernatural items. He scores a skull that’s supposed to be that of Marquis de Sade. His friend Christopher Lee warns him away from it. He keeps it.

There’s skull POV as this item begins to haunt Cushing.

It floats around a lot and gives him some unnerving visions for most of the movie! I know it was the 1960s, but if you’re going to delve into de Sade, someone’s face needs to fall victim to some scat action or something!

The most this skull does is take some lives on its own and then possess a couple of people to do the killing. Really nothing thrilling going on here. I dare say The Skull has no backbone.

HORROR EXPRESS (1972)

Even though it’s a period piece, Horror Express comes from 1972 and has a more contemporary feel in that there’s a pretty creepy monster and a whole lot of gore. It also has the dark, isolated, claustrophobic setting of a train. EEK!

There’s a very aristocratic set of passengers on board, and everyone seems to have a dirty secret, like Christopher Lee, an anthropologist transporting a frozen humanoid specimen he discovered.

Naturally, it escapes. Yay!

The creature lurks in the shadows and attacks passengers, causing their eyeballs to bulge out of their skulls at first, and then eventually possessing them.

It’s visually freaky, but the film lacks the extra oomph of jump scares—the monster’s presence is always announced with melodrama in the style of movie monsters of prior decades, as if to protect the faint of heart.

Meanwhile, Peter Cushing is a doctor who does some grisly autopsies of victims, and Telly Savalas makes an odd appearance late in the film, right when the monster action turns into totally satisfying chaos.

 

 

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