Kicking off another holiday horror movie season

Posted on September 23, 2024 by Daniel

It’s four flicks for the holiday horror page, covering Halloween, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s Eve.

A HALLOWEEN FEAST (2024)


This is a dark comedy with horror queen Lynn Lowry as the psycho matriarch of a dysfunctional family (mostly due to her).

It starts 8 months before Halloween with exposition showing the mom’s descent into madness…beginning with her killing little animals. She also happens to be a dominatrix on the side.

Things quickly shift to two months before Halloween, and Lynn inflicts her insanity on the family. This is where you really need to suspend disbelief. She’s sent away for a short time, even though what she did was crazy as fuck, and when she returns home the family just goes on walking on eggshells around her.

Characters include a creepy grandmother (scariest part of the movie), a father mixed up with a mob, a goth girl who runs a magic shop (and who probably wishes she had been cast as Wednesday instead of Jenna Ortega), and some pretty normal offspring, but Lynn is really the focus of the film.

As her big Halloween feast nears, she goes all Serial Mom on anyone who tries to hurt her family, but she doesn’t stop there. The feast turns into a massacre as well. There’s sex, murder, and gore, but the macabre campiness does eventually turn sad and tragic.

For me, it’s two little girl trick or treaters that steal the show in the last few minutes of the movie.

HAYRIDE TO HELL (2022)

 

Although it’s a Halloween horror flick and not an anthology, the vibe, tone, and style of this one reminds me very much of the original Creepshow, right down to scene transitions. And it comes to us from Dan Lantz, director of the gay horror flick Into the Lion’s Den!

Bill Moseley is perfect as a farmer being hounded to sell part of his land. He runs a haunted Halloween attraction, and after things go horribly wrong one night, he decides he needs to get revenge on all those who are trying to wrong him, including the sheriff (played by Kane Hodder) and his deputy, who is a racist douche yet seems to be portrayed mostly as a cute and goofy kind of guy. Weird.

Moseley makes a deal to keep his land—if he can prove that his hayride is terrifying.

This isn’t set up to be a scary movie, so it’s basically just campy revenge kills as everyone on the hayride witnesses what they think are fake murders for a majority of the film. Of course we know where this is all leading…the people on the hayride will pay. My fave death scene features a huge drill.

AMITYVILLE TURKEY DAY (2024)


This one is a sequel to Amityville Thanksgiving. The therapist from the first movie is back, and this time he unleashes a talking killer turkey on the cast and crew of a movie.

I think they’re supposed to be filming in the Amityville house, but I’m not sure.

SRS Cinema is essentially the Troma of the 21st century, so this is just a cheap, silly horror flick that is also a rip-off of Thankskilling. The turkey drops one-liners, gets horny with women, and even does drag.

The best, trashiest aspect of this film is a murderous, bearish gimp chained up and wearing a turkey mask in the final act. This is the moment when you realize this movie would have been so much better if it had been all about the killer turkey mask gimp and not about a killer turkey at all.

SNOW FALLS (2023)

This is one of the first full-length films from horror cutie Colton Tran, who also stars in the film. Only problem is…it’s not much of a horror film at all.

A group of friends arrives at an isolated house in the woods to celebrate New Year’s Eve. They hit the hot tub, they FaceTime with Jon Bennett (a friend who can’t make it to the party), and then a winter storm hits.

The rest of the movie is sort of hard to believe. It seems there might be a Cabin Fever situation about to go on here. There’s a blackout, the heat stops working, and the group begins freezing…in an insulated house with a fireplace and plenty of clothes and blankets.

When they each experience hallucinations, they ponder whether they are suffering from hypothermia or if they’ve been infected by the snow. Don’t expect to learn which it is.


I usually like my buns warm, but I’ll make an exception in this case.

They each have pretty tame hallucinations (a snowman that looks like it comes to life like Jack Frost is the scariest one), and very slowly they are each pushed to dangerous acts.

The problem with a horror flick about everyone having hallucinations is that they’re having hallucinations. They don’t turn on each other, they don’t get infected. Simply nothing in the way of a hardcore horror plot. Bummer.

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DIRECT TO STREAMING: another trio from Bruce Wemple

Posted on September 16, 2024 by Daniel

I’ve covered director Bruce Wemple’s movies before, so it was time to catch up with his latest releases, and it turned out there are three of them I hadn’t yet seen, and they feature an assortment of creepers and monsters.

ISLAND ESCAPE (2023)


The basic premise of this movie is familiar—a team is sent to a research facility on a remote island as part of a rescue mission after communication is cut off with the scientists.

There’s a refreshing twist here. As the team begins to discover dead bodies while searching the island (with some nice, gnarly gore), they also encounter what are basically super-sized zombies, and eventually notice something distinct about them. These towering zombies look like pumped up versions of each member of the rescue team. Yikes!

There’s an element of sci-fi in this horror to offer a deeper story than just the usual “experiment gone wrong creates mutant humans” plot. It’s a cool if not slightly confusing premise, and the super-size zombies are awesome, but the film is oddly low energy despite all the zombie encounters. The most glaring issue is the absence of prominent sound effects (it’s notably hollow and lacking audio cues at times), and part of it is a lack of atmosphere and suspense despite plenty of action sequences.

There is, strangely enough, a sex scene in the last twenty minutes of the movie, not to mention a shirtless guy with a rockin’ bod.

FIRST CONTACT (2023)


This is a very brooding and moody take on the alien encounter genre, but rather than take a more common approach like movies such as Fire in the Sky or The Fourth Kind, this goes for more of a satisfying horror feel, with an evil entity element and a sort of possession angle. Having said that, it’s still a slow burn, but has a great, isolating vibe.

After their father’s “abduction” in the first scene, a brother and sister return to his home as reports of alien sightings are growing on the news. The sister is interested in continuing the work of her father, who was researching alien invasions, so she begins to watch his video tapes of his findings.

In the meantime, a straight couple the siblings know has an encounter on a deserted road at night, after which the male begins to have eerie episodes and then slowly starts morphing into something else. Which begs the question…why is his woman acting like it’s not a big deal for most of the movie?

As the siblings investigate, the morphing dude begins killing people. It’s mysterious and atmospheric, but don’t expect a thrill ride.

THE HANGMAN (2024)

The opener with two druggies in a cabin sets the scene for an awesome throwback to the supernatural slashers of the early 2000s. The Hangman is a great specter and does indeed lasso your head and hang you. Awesome.

However, this film fails to exploit it supernatural baddie, instead complicating matters with a whole lot of other stuff.

We meet a widowed Black man and his son, who make the horrible decision to go camping in the middle of white trash, redneck hell. After a curious conversation in which the son asks his father if he’s sleeping with a man (say what?), they go to sleep in their tents.

Next morning…the son is gone! The dad goes for help and is soon being chased by a cult of hillbillies. This is where the film just starts going off the rails. There’s plenty of action to keep the pace moving, but The Hangman gets totally lost in the shuffle…even though he’s an integral part of the shuffle.

Even the possibility of backwoods, racial terror is pushed to the side as the focus turns to, well, not focusing. The movie is all over the place, but at least the dad does finally face off against The Hangman in the end.

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TUBI TERRORS: ghosts and witches

Posted on September 12, 2024 by Daniel

Each of these films had its moments, but this was mostly an underwhelming marathon for me. Let’s find out why.

DEATH PH.D (2024)


Swisyzinna of The Ouija Experiment movies directs, writes, and appears in this Black themed indie horror flick. She plays a professor who assigns her students to spend the night in a haunted house.

There’s no reason for this film to run an hour and forty-seven minutes, because the excessive dialogue doesn’t add anything to the story and kills the pacing. It’s 30 minutes before the students even get to the haunted house.

Once they arrive, they are greeted by a sexy, bearded butler dude and then fill more time getting comfortable in the house.

There’s no slow burn here. Nothing happens until something finally happens big time, and it’s kind of hilarious—a couple freaks out when they encounter three ghost girls.

In fact, the reactions of all the characters to being terrorized by these ghosts are a hoot, and this becomes a fun, campy little supernatural flick finally.

In terms of quality, it often feels like the actors are simply going through a haunted attraction, and the ghostly girl makeup isn’t exactly professional level, but it gets the point across.

Eventually, a back story about slavery is introduced to add some interest to the otherwise simple plot. I really just wish the film had been edited down by at least 20 minutes.

HORROR IN THE FOREST (2023)


Nothing new to see here at all. This 80-minute found footage film sees a paranormal research team head to the woods where numerous people have disappeared.

They first interview locals about the missing people. They then explore the woods and run into a couple of people, including a redneck with a gun who wants them off his property, as well as a sobbing woman so distraught with grief that she continues to roam the woods looking for her lost daughter. Kind of haunting.

A hot ex-park ranger eventually hooks them up with a dude who believes a witch took his daughter and that he has the ability to summon the witch to get her back.

Soooooo…they head into the woods again to do a ritual. They also find stick formations hanging in a tree. Of all the clichés to fall back on. Sigh.

And just like Blair Witch, there’s no witch. There are a few roaming bloody people, but that is about it. I guess if you’re really looking for something found footage and familiar this fits the bill.

THE UNKIND (2021)

Starting in the past with an awesome scene of a witch terrifying and killing two little girls in their bedroom, this one gave me high hopes for a horror-packed witch movie. I love me some witch movies.

In the present day, a group of friends goes to stay at a mansion in Italy. I think the film was partially dubbed into English, so I was getting classic 80s Euro horror vibes. Yay!

The movie is overly long at 105 minutes, and we are bombarded by cheap scares, faux music stinger scares, and bogus nightmare sequences for a majority of the run time as the group explores the house. We also, on the other hand, get some sex scenes with the girl tits countered by some man pecs. Scrumptious.

Eventually the group finds an old book that leads them to underground tunnels, and the witch begins to take them out one by one.

The witch is cool and creepy, and the mansion is dark and shadowy, but it’s all cutaway kills! Bummer. And speaking of bummers, the finale is one as well. The movie didn’t quite live up to its potential, but I really liked the feel of it.

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Bear bods to die for in this gay horror double feature

Posted on September 10, 2024 by Daniel

Joshua R. Pangborn, the bear behind the web series Demon Doctor (and the happy bottom in the pic above), is back with two full-length features that celebrate bear bod positivity while offering the perfect blend of gay indie film elements—sex, nudity, camp, comedy, cute guys, and blood. This is the way you do fun gay horror on a budget. So glad Joshua gave me the opportunity to check out these two that are currently running in the festival circuit, which both earn spots on the homo horror movies page.

THE BROOKLYN BUTCHER


Joshua co-writes, co-directs, and co-stars in this devilish little movie that plays out like a series of non-chronological, tie-in gay horror tales about murders in an apartment building. It’s sort of like…Only Murders and Mos in the Building!

What I love about these intertwining stories is that there’s no clear-cut killer. This is an apartment building of horrors in which all kinds of murderous hijinks are taking place, and not all of them at the hands of humans.


There’s shapeshifting, possession, occultism, a Cthulhu looking fucker, the undead…but is there really a Brooklyn Butcher? Hell, yeah!

Joshua is a serial killer expert whose interview on television about the Brooklyn Butcher has the paranoid tenants tuned in…although it doesn’t stop them from seeking out sex every chance they get, which never leads to anything good.

On top of all the horror vignettes, there are sexy scenes, plenty of cute bears, twists and turns, and even the use of Bright Light Bright Light’s song “You Want My…” from his latest album. Awesome.

A TASTE OF YOUTH

While The Brooklyn Butcher is pure horror fun that feels like a throwback to the indie horrors of the VHS days, A Taste Of Youth keeps things fun and super sexy while delving into the complexities of gay existence, including obsession with looks, fitness, and youth, as well as drug addiction, monogamy, intimacy, dick size, ageism, and more.

Yet even with all those concepts being explored, this one is loaded with sexy scenes. Sex is one of the driving factors of the whole story—our main character, who is in a monogamous relationship with Joshua, is struggling with his own insecurities about himself, which is affecting their love life.

His mental state is also leaking into his job, into the gym, and into his dreams, which begin to consist of macabre nightmares that meld murder and erotic encounters.

The horrors he envisions in his sleep begin to spill into the real world as the story progresses, a mystery starts to unfold, and there’s even a bit of witchery involved. Awesome.

Also awesome? My gay horror buddy Stan the Mechanic makes a brief appearance in the film!

I really love Joshua’s balls-to-the-wall approach to gay horror, along with his unique storytelling approaches and his casts of appealing, likable characters. This isn’t mere copycat horror of more mainstream horror like many of the indie films we get these days. You can check out his gay horror series Demon Doctor on the Sidekick Productions YouTube channel.

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PRIME TIME: Bigfoot, a supernatural stalker, and a psycho sideshow act

Posted on September 5, 2024 by Daniel

It’s always a treat when I finish a movie marathon from my streaming watchlist and don’t find any real duds among the selection, as in this case. So let’s get into these three.

HOAX (2019)


This is how you start a movie. Kids at a campfire tell stories of Bigfoot, have sex, show some skin, and then get their skin shredded. Yay!

Next we meet a team assembled to do a TV documentary on the disappearances of the campers and the possibility that Bigfoot actually exists. Adrienne Barbeau has a tiny cameo in the beginning so that her name can be added to the cast…and so there can be a meta reference to The Fog. I was so there for it.

Soon after the group sets up camp, team members start getting slowly snatched away by Bigfoot.

There’s suspense and some gore, but it isn’t until the last 20 minutes that all hell breaks loose and shit gets really nasty. Let’s just say nothing is as it seems…while everything is exactly how it seems. The title Hoax is quite fitting. For me, this one was the most satisfying of this trio of films.

THERE IS A MONSTER (2024)


This is a pretty simple, low budget take on a familiar supernatural theme—a man is being haunted by a shadowy figure that only he can see.

This one gets trashed online because the “shadowy figure” is just a guy in a skintight, black body suit, sometimes combined with a CGI effect, but even so, a shadowy figure in a skintight black suit standing in the corners of my home would freak me out. In other words, the figure’s presence gets the point across and delivers some eerie moments even if the presentation is quite simple.

In fact, the creepy moments are the highlight here, because the story isn’t all that compelling. A professional photographer is cheating on his wife while desperately trying to keep his business afloat. His life is sort of falling apart when this apparition begins haunting him. As a result, his health begins to deteriorate.

There’s not much more to it than that. There’s an odd conversation with the wife and her friend in which the friend implies that a threesome might fix their marriage. Also bizarre is that the main guy goes to see a doctor (not a therapist) seeking help for his apparition issues.

Don’t expect a grand finale, because there’s no big battle to the death. It seems we’re contending with more of a metaphorical apparition in the end—sort of suggesting that darkness that sometimes consumes us can slowly chip away at our lives.

WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS (2023)


This film comes from a family known as the Adams Family, who also made the movie Hellbender. Like that one, this is visually arresting, so the atmospheric eye candy alone is enough to keep you watching.

However, this is not ordinary horror. This is a more artistic creation that serves as an exploration of PTSD.

We meet a family that runs a struggling carnival sideshow but also has a side gig that keeps them going—they are cold-blooded killers! But this isn’t some typical psycho slasher. It’s a dark, brooding movie, with the grisly murders serving to propel character studies.

The sideshow leader has gory flashbacks of fighting in war. His struggles rub off on another family member, who feels a need to kill to protect him. A younger girl in the family is low key, and her one job is to photograph all the murders.

On top of that, there’s an occult element as well. The sideshow leader made a deal with a demon and has a heart in a box that gives him the ability to chop off his fingers to wow audiences in his show and then simply sew them back on.

It’s engrossing but slow-paced, so it won’t be for everyone.

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Give me a B! Give me a C! Give me a D!

Posted on September 3, 2024 by Daniel

The three flicks I chose from my streaming watchlists for my latest movie marathon begin with B, C, and D, a coincidence that never fails to tickle me. But did the movies tickle my fancy? Let’s find out.

BED REST (2022)


Melissa Barrera’s Scream days might be behind her, but she found her way back into horror with this cliché but fun little supernatural chiller. There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before, but the creepy moments are highly effective, so it never gets boring.

Melissa is pregnant when she and her husband move into their new home. She begins seeing a little boy running around their home at just about the time she is forced to stay in bed for the duration of her pregnancy. This gives the boy ghost plenty of chances to freak her out.

In true old school ghost story fashion, the husband doesn’t believe her! But the family cat sure does—and even makes good on a classic cheap pussy scare.

Some spooky spirit highlights include a window encounter, a video monitor appearance, footprints on a wall and ceiling, and an under the bed scene. EEK!

While the film keeps up the tension and suspense, it does actually turn into somewhat of a hokey, sentimental Ghost type of situation in the final act, but it’s an interesting detour from the usual haunted house movie.

CHOMPY & THE GIRLS (2021)


This is the most fun the hubby and I have had watching a quirky horror comedy in a long time. The main girl, actress Christy St. John, is reason enough to watch it, because she’s a great, likable character.

She plays an emotionally struggling twenty-something who reaches out to the father she never knew.

He agrees to meet her in the park, and within minutes of them having an awkward conversation, they witness a creepy man walk up to a young girl and just swallow her whole with a giant mouth.

You’ll get total It Follows vibes as father and his newly found daughter are stalked by the big mouth man!

As frightening as it is funny at first, the film takes some major turns midway through that give it a life of its own, heading into campy, cosmic horror territory, and the chemistry between father and daughter is absolutely endearing.

DON’T SUCK (2023)

The hardest thing for me about watching this movie is that Jamie Kennedy shows no concerns about his appearance these days (which just happens to benefit the character he’s playing), and Matt Rife is on the opposite end of the spectrum, looking like he cares so much about his appearance that he’s turning into a Real Housewife.

I liked the concept of Don’t Suck as well as the first half, but the movie begins with a scene that takes place later in the story solely for the purpose of hooking viewers with vampire acti0n.

This moment also spoils the whole point—Jamie is a washed-up comedian and Rife is a newbie that wants Jamie to be his mentor, but he also happens to be a vampire. Fact is, this opening scene is one of few vampire attack scenes in the entire movie.

Instead, the movie is all about Jamie coming to terms with his fading star as the pair hits the road for a lowbrow comedy tour in a bunch of redneck dives. I’m not saying the movie is political, but there are some subtle comments that could be read as such—mention of storming the capitol, references to the struggle of being a white, cisgender, straight male comedian, a Let’s Go Brandon comment, a gender-neutral bathroom “joke”…. For a horror comedy, the movie is only occasionally funny. It’s mostly moody.

Some notable cameos include JJ Walker, Carrot Top, and Lisa Wilcox of Elm Street 4 & 5, and there are pop culture references to vampire movies, including Dracula: Dead and Loving It (fresh) and a jab at the Twilight movies (tired).

I wish the movie had focused more on the vampire elements, because love him or hate him, Rife really works as a mysterious, pretty boy vampire.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: Devil Times Five and Hell’s Trap

Posted on August 28, 2024 by Daniel

It’s one from the 1970s and one from the 1980s, neither of which I’d ever seen before. Were they worth the blind buy?

DEVIL TIMES FIVE (1974)

Another entry in the evil children subgenre, this movie is so 1970s….especially the cheesy music cues that make it feel like you’re watching a whimsical episode of The Brady Bunch. I would love to see a recut with a genuine horror soundtrack that lends itself to the tone of the proceedings—a nun and four mentally ill children that escaped a van accident take refuge in a snowbound resort then begin killing off the guests.

Cast highlights include Leif Garrett of “I Was Made for Dancin’” fame as one of the kids, Rosario from Will & Grace as one of the guests, and Boss Hogg as one of the guests.

This mess of guests includes an alcoholic, a sleazy real estate mogul, a mentally challenged dude, a slutty woman, our main straight couple, and more. There are love-making scenes, a cat fight in which tits pop out, and one of the boys in drag. It’s definitely 1970s weird. As a bonus, we get a sexy blond dude with a 70s mustache, furry chest, and a great tan line, even though they are in the middle of a snowstorm.

As for the kills, there’s a great slow motion scene in which all the kids and nun brutally beat a man to death, an axe murder, piranhas dumped in a tub, a swing booby trap, a victim lit on fire, bear traps, and my favorite kill of them all with a spear.

There’s even a great body reveal party right at the end. If only it weren’t for that horribly hokey soundtrack, this would be a winner.

HELL’S TRAP (Trampa Infernal) (1989)

This Mexican backwoods slasher was giving me The Final Terror vibes.

Two rivals decide to settle their differences with a challenge—they and their friends agree to go into the woods where people have been found dead to kill the bear authorities believe is responsible.

We get the classic trope of the old weirdo who tries to warn them away in the form of a guy selling weapons and ammo in a trailer home. The killer is a dude in a creepy mask who wears saw blade finger knives that are clearly made of a soft material that bends every once in a while. But the mask sure is fierce and oddly pretty…

Soon after arriving in the woods, the kids find human remains and a trap and realize they have to track the nut down and kill him or die.

At first they seem to do the smart thing and stick together, but pretty soon they leave one girl behind in their vehicle while they go hunt the killer. Idiots.

The kills are fun, but this is definitely more of a survival horror action flick than straight up horror considering all the kids have guns. I have to admit I was disappointed that no bear ever showed up to complicate matters for the kids, which would have been awesome.

The killer is finally unmasked briefly at the end so we can see what exactly he’s hiding under there. He’s no Jason, that’s for sure.

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A queer double feature!

Posted on August 26, 2024 by Daniel

It’s slasher and infected chaos with gay and trans characters as I take a look at two indie flicks by queer filmmakers.

INHERITANCE (2021)

Michael Kenneth Fahr, director/writer/star of the gay film Victimized, is back with a second film, and it’s a slasher meets Clue with a dose of queer camp so perfectly understated that it makes for a good midnight movie.

The tension-building opener has a wealthy couple being terrorized by a masked intruder wielding a knife and an axe. Awesome.

Next we meet Fahr’s character and his brother, who have gathered together family and friends for the reading of their parents’ will. Everyone thinks they deserve a piece of the pie, which means everyone could be the killer…or the next victim.

Before long, people are getting killed off so fast and furiously that I was convinced the runtime was going to run out of victims too soon. But Fahr has tricks up his sleeve to keep the pace going right up to a grand finale.

Despite the bitchy attitudes being thrown around by all the catty characters, I was at first thinking this one wasn’t going to offer any genuine queer aspects. But twists and red herring that would make Agatha Christie envious provide plenty of queer elements, along with an interracial gay couple that shows up for the gathering, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

The camp and killings kick into high gear for a big party massacre at the end, and there’s just the right balance of overacting, underacting, and even acting to make this one a goodie for a gay horror watch party.

T BLOCKERS (2023)

Queer horror filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay (So Vam, Bad Girl Boogey) makes a trans positive, in-your-face commentary on the anti-trans movement taking place in UK politics with this 74-minute horror flick drenched in 80s neon light. It also highlights the intersection between trans rights and feminism (the closing punk track “Dead Men Don’t Rape” says it all) and is both a therapeutic and cathartic exploration of trying to find love and success as a trans person.

Drag queer Etcetera Etcetera plays hostess in black and white in a movie within the movie. Our trans lead Joni, a wannabe filmmaker, is watching a lost horror movie of the 90s that plays an important role in dictating the events that occur within the movie.

After a date that doesn’t work out as planned, Joni begins having an extra sensory perception when near guys who have somehow been infected and have vicious, cannibalistic tendencies. Joni and friends at a local queer bar decide they must become vigilantes and take out these zombie-like incels and skinheads since the government isn’t going to protect them.

It’s a great plot and there’s some gooey gore and a retro horror vibe, but the film actually falls short in the horror aspects. A great percentage of the runtime focuses on the main character navigating life as a trans woman, and there’s a lot of dialogue.

With only 18 minutes remaining, they finally locate the “nest” of the infection, and even that battle with a bunch of the infected has very few infected for them to contend with.

I’m sure budget constraints had a lot to do with not delivering hordes of infected incels, but the plot really lends itself to a whole lot of action featuring queer folk taking down monstrous, hateful bigots.

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Ghosts, masked killers, aliens, and infected

Posted on August 23, 2024 by Daniel

My latest triple feature was a buffet of subgenres, and while there was nothing outstanding here, there was some fun to be had with each one.

LAST NIGHT AT TERRACE LANES (2024)

Running only 75 minutes long, this quirky film is a mix between a slasher and a home invasion flick…in a bowling alley.

The basic premise is that four friends—two guys and two girls—go to a bowling alley the night before it is due to close for good and are soon trapped in the alley with other patrons as masked cultists bust in to slaughter everyone.

While there’s lots of mayhem, good kills, and some funny moments, this definitely isn’t humorous enough to reach the level of cult classic material.

The really odd thing about the film is that it virtually sets things up so that one guy friend is gay for the other guy friend (he literally licks him behind the ear at one point) and that the main girl is into the other girl (the ear licker even tells his friend that she is), but these queer plants are never fully explored. WTF? What was the purpose of even including them?

Another glaring issue is that there weren’t many extras hired to fill the alley. There being barely any patrons would make sense for a place that’s going out of business, however the moment the masked killers show up, there are suddenly a bunch of people running around being killed off.

 

For me, the cast of characters was a letdown because of the refusal to delve into the queer stuff, but the cult members had some notable moments, like when they first enter the bowling alley…through the bowling pin racks. Awesome.

FOR SALE (2024)

This film falls short in that the attempts at comedy only end up being a little quirky. It falls long in that it’s an hour and fifty-five fricking minutes. This is inexcusable, and I don’t understand how anyone and everyone involved in the film didn’t tell the filmmaker that the movie should have been trimmed down to about 90 minutes long. All the good stuff is spread too far apart, and every segment of the story goes on too long, making what could have been a fun viewing a tedious experience at times.

A dude gets a job as a real estate agent assigned to sell a particular house. He immediately experiences a few odd things, plus some truly creepy elements including a freaky apparition. In fact, the ghosts in this film are spooky enough for this to have been a scary movie instead of a horror “comedy” if the more whimsical moments had been dropped completely.

Anyway, the real estate agent runs into one set of ghosts after another throughout the course of the movie, tries to do some ghost busting, and eventually has to face off against the ghosts and come to terms with his own shortcomings.

If you want to see a real estate horror comedy done right, watch The Selling of Scarry Manor.

SENTINEL (2024)

This combination of infected people, alien, and time travel subgenres would have been pure SyFy network original perfection back in the day. It even features b-movie king Michael Pare as the President of the United States…which is actually just a moon base now.

See, it’s the future, and the earth was ravaged by an alien invasion. So this team of three people from the moon base decides to head to earth…with a time travel machine! Yep. They’re going to save survivors from the past. Huh? Yet each member of the trio ends up in a different time period! Double huh?

It doesn’t even matter, because they encounter infected, zombie-esque humans (eek!), as well as the big sentinel monster that is controlling the infected. Awesome. This is old school costume monster, not CGI.

There are also some suspenseful scenes and some exciting action sequences, making this a perfect piece of mindless, cheesy, rainy Sunday sci-fi/horror.

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Back to the days of survival horror inspired by J-horror movies

Posted on August 20, 2024 by Daniel

Kuon is reminiscent of Fatal Frame, with a female character wandering Asian architectural structures while being attacked by ghosts and other creepy, angry entities, but instead of fighting with a camera, you use magic and a melee weapon. The game is also a bit more cartoonish looking, and therefore more reminiscent of games from the PS1 era.

Most notable is that you play through the entire game by completing three different phases, each with a different character, with none of your inventory carrying over to the next character, and with only slightly different experiences. For the most part it’s pretty typical survival horror—fight enemies, collect items, read notes, solve puzzles, run back and forth a lot, etc.

YIN PHASE

The magic adds something a little different, with magic cards you gather serving as your “ammo”, and the different cards providing unique attacks. Some of the magic options are animals you conjure and just unleash on your enemies instead of fighting them yourself. Such an odd game. You also have the option of using melee weapons for one button and cards for the other. During the Yin phase you have various knife options for melee. Unfortunately, the magic combat is not very responsive and it doesn’t auto aim. You’ll find yourself throwing weapons such as fireballs in what you assume is a targeted line only to see the fire pass right by the enemy, plus each magic spell usage is prefaced with animation of your character igniting the magic, so instead of instantaneous attacks, there’s a delay when you try strike the enemy!

There are healing items, but you also can simply meditate by pressing R1, which totally chills you out. Note this also takes a moment of action from the character and you can be struck by enemies while in the process of meditating. You collect little boats to use for saves, which are a sort of stone/fire conglomeration by the edge of the water—it’s very calming when you watch your save boat float away. You actually can gather more of these save boats as well as health when you fight the most common enemy—an annoying little bald bugger that gloms onto you in between you taking swipes at him. If you kill any enemies with a final blow (hit them melee style while they’re down on the ground), they leave behind a little bonus item. Yay!

While not as atmospheric and suspenseful as Fatal Frame, the game does deliver some great jump scares, including hot spots of dark energy that give you a jolt. You can’t avoid them because you can’t see them, and they can also lead you to getting “vertigo”, causing everything to go fuzzy. You can’t use magic when you’re experiencing vertigo, but you can shake it off by meditating.

Opening doors requires using cloths designated with the symbols on those doors, which means tracking down the clothes before you can enter certain places to progress.

The problem with the enemies in this game is that most of them are just an annoyance, not scary. Whereas the ghosts in Fatal Frame are unique and freaky, these enemies are cheaply designed and have obnoxious attack patterns. As for bosses, they take tons of magic cards to kill.

Once you get to the underground tunnels in the later part of this phase, the game becomes more creepy and atmospheric. There’s even a frustrating segment in which you are plagued by a hallucinatory state, and everything is blurry and shaky.

After doing some other exploring and fighting back above ground, including a boss, you end up down below again in a maze of tunnels. And get this. You’d have no way of knowing this without a walkthrough, but while you’re busy following bloodstained floors on purpose, which are intended to steer you in the right direction, at one point you enter a room with a tiny puddle of blood in the middle, and if you step on it you get sucked in and it’s game over. WTF?

Soon after a little more exploring, there’s a very anti-climactic ending to this first part, with no boss battle. Just the way I like it.

YANG PHASE

Once you finish the first phase, it’s not as if you continue the game automatically. You completely finish the game and can then choose to play the Yang Phase as a new game.

With the second character, instead of knives, you have a hand fan as your melee weapon. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it does slice and dice enemies like the knife.

However, while this second playthrough is different in the order in which you do things, much of it features the same exact scenarios and puzzles in the same locations, mostly with only unique cut scenes as the major difference in the storyline for this phase. Even so, you seriously have to use a walkthrough, because there is rarely any clue as to what you’re supposed to do next. Many times you’ll be running from one end of the map to another even with the walkthrough.

There is one cool but really hard centipede lady boss in the Yang phase that isn’t in the Yin phase, and late in the game you encounter both an invincible ghost woman you just have to run away from and a gorilla creature that is very strong.

Soon after that there’s a terrifying moment when you have to look through the window of a hut, watch a huge Yeti beast until he leaves it, then run inside quickly and grab three items before he comes back. Unfortunately, seconds later he chases you in the woods! Eek! It is ridiculous how hard this game suddenly gets. He’s fast, he kicks your ass in seconds, and there’s limited space to run around him. You’ll need lots of health and lots of magic cards to take him down.

You end up underground again, and if you walk too far into one of the final rooms, which has a save in a door just to the right, you trigger a cutscene and then can’t access the save after it anymore! WTF? Moments later you encounter the invincible ghost again and must get around her to reach a door that ends this phase.

KUON PHASE

This is an extremely short phase just to tie up the loose ends of the story. With this character you simply cover some old sites again and eventually get to the tough final boss. Only thing I’ll say about this phase is that you get very few of those save boats, so make sure to hold onto one for the final save before the boss…which you’ll only find if you follow a walkthrough.

 

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