PRIME TIME: my kind of chick flicks

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Daniel

It’s a double feature of horror flicks loaded with nasty women! Let’s take a look at SheBorg and All Girls Weekend.

ALL GIRLS WEEKEND (2016)

The director of Hazmat delivers an oddly compelling slow burn movie about a bunch of girls trekking into the woods and not being stalked and killed by a masked psycho. How refreshing.

I would describe All Girls Weekend as a low key mix of Evil Dead meets The Blair Witch Project in terms of the look and feel. The film stars prolific scream queen Jamie Bernadette.

I’ve covered many of her films, so it was time to make a spot for her on my wicked women page. Here she leads the charge as a group of female friends heads into the woods for a getaway…in the winter! Director Lou Simon definitely went out of her way to find some fantastic locations to shoot this one.

This is one of those films in which the group begins to walk in circles, and that aspect carries a little too much weight.

However, the film throws enough little traumatic situations at the girls to keep up the momentum and keep us wondering what is going on—such as one girl wiping with a leaf after she pees and getting a rash! Ew!

She was one of my faves in the group and I’d love to see the actress in more horror as well.

The most compelling part is the occasional blowing of a supernatural wind through the trees that sounds like whispering voices.

And that aspect moves to the forefront as the truth unfolds as to what is going on. It’s a pretty cool concept and I think this little indie handles it quite well.

SHEBORG (2016)

 

An alien cyborg woman comes to earth, and a couple of punk girls just trying to free some caged pups must battle against her and the humans she makes into her minions.

It feels both indie at times, yet surprisingly visually sophisticated with some of the early SheBorg scenes, but the treasure here is the girls.

I imagine these ladies are actual stunt women, because they have a blast kicking ass and doing some pretty major stunts. They are also quite funny and campy.

You also get loads of gore, flesh-eating, and green slime that makes the cyborgs melt.

While it might be a girl power flick, this one is right up my big gay alley.


Dude, you went at that from the wrong direction.

Speaking of, more than one dude gets anally probed.

There’s a horde of shirtless SheBorg minion dudes during a major battle scene.

and the brother of one of the main girls is not only funny, he’s a sexy stud when the shirt comes off! This is definitely one for my stud stalking page.

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STREAM QUEEN: gettin’ witchy with it

Posted on June 29, 2020 by Daniel

I’m always up for a good witch bitch in a horror movie, so let’s find out if the witches in these three films cast a spell over me.

GHOST IN THE GRAVEYARD (2019)

This one immediately caught my eye because we used to play Ghost in the Graveyard on my block during the summer. It’s an awesome game in which the person who is “it” has to hide, then everyone must look for them. The person that finds them has to scream out “ghost in the graveyard!”, which is the signal for everyone else to run to home base before the ghost can get them.

It’s such a great game when played in the dark utilizing an entire street, but it really sux when you’re at one corner and someone finds the ghost at the far corner, because you then have to race to the home base steps in the middle of the block before the ghost can intercept you.

While failing to really explain the game, the movie still starts strong. Children are playing the game in an actual graveyard when something awful happens…something that will haunt them a decade later. It kind of made me wish something awful had happened when we played on my street so we could be haunted by something during a block reunion today.

Anyway, that seems to be the premise, but this movie quickly veers completely away from the game having any relevance whatsoever. Instead we get a witchy woman hunting down the main girl and her family, led by Jake Busey. When he gives a speech to his son about a battle between good and evil they must fight to save his sister, I really lost interest, although there is one awesome visual moment in the graveyard where the battle takes place. Plus, actress Maria Olsen who has a substantial horror resume, plays a witch like nobody’s business.

A RESURRECTION (2013)

Pumpkinhead meets Pet Sematary meets Sometimes They Come Back in a supernatural horror film that starts as a slow burn then amps up to a frenzied suspense flick. There are plenty of familiar faces on hand, including Devon Sawa of Final Destination fame, Mischa Barton, and Michael Clarke Duncan.

A bullied boy believes that a witch has cast a spell to bring back his brother, who was killed in a hit and run. So when the boy gets trapped in the school with his bullies, it is the golden opportunity for his brother’s spirit to come do some soul searching!

Despite the obvious concept, the film manages to keep us guessing—are there really supernatural forces at play, or is someone killing off the small group of people trapped in the school?

There are some good scares, tense atmosphere, and surprisingly gory moments. However, there is one aspect of the film that isn’t quite clarified enough, and the hubba hubba and I had to talk it out for five minutes after the film ended to make sense of it.

THE HAG OF BLACK HOWE MOOR (2008)

I won’t deny that because it’s so rare to see it, blatant use of a witch that looks like she could start cackling and stirring her cauldron at any second always scores extra points with me.

The setup is simple. Some guys get stuck on the side of the road and a group of girls picks them up. They make a pit (and piss) stop in the wrong place, and once they’re back on the road some seriously freaky shit starts happening, including one of the best scenes, involving a girl and a dead sheep.


Haggy likes the heinies!

The meat of the movie has the group trapped in a derelict cottage being terrorized by the awesome hag. The problem is, they’re basically stuck in a single space experiencing one terror attack after another, and it just feels like watching kids reactions in a goofy haunted house attraction.

That part I could have lived with in all its low budget glory, but…ugh. There’s also a flashback period piece segment showing the hag being tried back for witchcraft in the old days. It feels even cheesier than the rest of the film, however it most definitely ups the witch theme cred of the film.

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When slashers come at you in threes

Posted on June 26, 2020 by Daniel

Okay, maybe they didn’t come at me. I went looking for them, because I was due for a slasher fix. Let’s see if Abandoned Souls, The Man in the Maze, and KILD TV did the trick.

ABANDONED SOULS (2010)

This film begins in a grisly, gritty prison run by guards wearing hazmat masks with sores on their faces…not that is ever explained or has any impact on the rest of the film despite this scene being pretty substantial in length.

We then meet a couple who takes a group of people the boyfriend doesn’t like to the main girl’s hometown to stay in a cottage for the weekend. Fun.

There’s an urban legend about a nearby island on which a hermit lived in an old shack, and if you went and knocked on the door, he would knock back.

So…these grown ass adults jump in a boat and locate the shack. They knock on the door, someone knocks back, they run back to their boat, and it has floated off. Seems like a great start of a horror flick, but it also feels like this whole damn thing might be a setup.

 Within minutes they’re fighting, one guy gets called a faggot, and one guy hits another guy in the head with a rock. What the fuck? Why do these people hang out together?

We learn through flashbacks that there’s a search for an escaped prisoner known as the feral man. Does he have whatever the prison guards had at beginning? We don’t know. The plot is almost good (and reminded me of Hide & Go Shriek a little), but there are way too many convenient coincidences as a catch is thrown in at the end that causes nothing to make sense. At all. Like the deformed prison guards…

THE MAN IN THE MAZE (2011)

The odd structure of this indie film really messes with the pacing. The only thing that kept me watching for quite a while is that the leading man is so damn sexy with a tight bod!


Need a hand…or a tongue?

We are thrust immediately into a serious situation—a group of victims in the woods is at the mercy of a killer with a bandaged head.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They overpower him then spend a huge chunk of the film just walking and talking as they try to escape the maze-like woods.

One guy is all freaked out that Doogie Howser is a homo, they talk about an old shamanic legend, and finally there’s a good jump scare when the hottie goes to take a piss.

There’s also some intrigue. The hottie discovers there’s a double of him roaming around the woods! I’d take two of him over-easy any day.

It all has something to do with an old tale of Native Americans having their land stolen by evil white men.

This truly is an odd film.

KILD TV (2016)

It’s yet another odd film that’s sort of good for a while but falls flat by the end.

There’s plenty of setup—a group of people works at a television station. At night they do an over-the-top horror host show. So when one of them turns up dead in the media room and the small night crew discovers they can’t get out of the building, they try to plea to their audience to call the police.

Meanwhile, they all agree to stick together…then immediately separate. Many of the kills happen off screen and we just see the aftermath, we never see a killer, and there’s one standout kill that is brutal and gory. There’s also a gratuitous tit scene…which also features a gratuitous guy in a Speedo!

There’s a whodunit angle with them all assuming someone in their group is the killer, but the denouement and killer reveal are the weakest part.

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I’ve had it with these motherfucking demons on this motherfucking plane!

Posted on June 23, 2020 by Daniel

I’m a fan of most of the movies by Chad Ferrin, director of Unspeakable, The Ghouls, Easter Bunny, Kill, Kill!, Someone’s Knocking at the Door, and The Chair, so when I learned he’d done a horror comedy called Exorcism at 60,000 Feet, it was an automatic blind buy.

Basically, it’s Airplane meets Repossessed, so if you’re into that kind of silly, slapstick comedy (from 4 decades ago—damn I’m old), you’ll love this one.

Campy, crude, and loaded with iconic names in horror, this fun flick begins with a priest exorcising Bill Moseley and then getting on a plane.

Next we meet the crazy crew and passengers.

Lance Henriksen is the pilot, Kevin J. O’Connor is the copilot, and Little Matthew Moy (Han from Two Broke Girls) is one of the hilarious flight attendants. However, veteran actress Bai Ling steals the show as the other attendant, although some might find her stereotypical Asian portrayal for laughs tired, not “woke”.

Passengers include two nuns, a rabbi, a muscle head, a slut, a hippy chick and her cute, horny husband, Adrienne Barbeau as a woman with very unique service dog, and Kelli Maroney of Night of the Comets as a woman who treats her adult little person son as a child.

The demon the priest exorcised is unleashed and begins to possess one person after another with comic results, often offensive, just as I like it. Hell, there’s nun on nun and rabbi on priest kissing. 

There are also plenty of horror movie references for fans of the genre, making this a goodie for your horror movie party night.

 

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STREAM QUEEN: summer is here, so it’s cabin in the woods time

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Daniel

Everyone is heading to that house in the middle of nowhere, all for different reasons. So let’s take a look at The Ranger, Come to Daddy, Captured, and The 6th Friend.

THE RANGER (2018)

In the tradition of The Stepfather and The Dentist, it’s The Ranger!

Teens at a punk rock concert flee when the place is raided, and then head to a cabin in the woods that belonged to main girl’s dead uncle.

The problem with a good chunk of this movie is that the five main kids are such pieces of shit you don’t care about any of them. Even the gay couple spooning together adorably isn’t enough to make you root for the pair to survive.

Not to mention, they’re an interracial gay couple in a slasher. How long do you really think they will survive? Either way, it lands this movie on my does the gay guy die? page.

The ranger’s kills are the most fun here, because they’re nice and gory.

The ranger’s lines aren’t quite as campy as they could be, but he is one creepy looking dude, and he sings Charlie Rich’s 1970s hit “The Most Beautiful a Girl” between kills. And by the end of the film, he is fricking craaaaaazy.

Shockingly, Larry Fessenden has a minor role in the film.

COME TO DADDY (2019)

Eh. This one got a lot of hype, but it goes from serious and boring as hell for exactly the first half, completely shifts tone to darkly comic with a great twist, and then becomes an absolute mess. And honestly, it’s not much of a horror movie, IMO.

Elijah Wood comes to the home of his estranged father after getting a letter from him. They have a lot of conversation to catch up, and then things go really wrong between them once again.

The surprise turn of events promises a much more intriguing film.

It sets Elijah on an unexpected, dangerous journey that had so many places to go, but instead it just goes to a sleazy hotel and feels more like a movie about falling in with the wrong crowd . What a disappointment.

CAPTURED (2020)

It’s a rock band documentary found footage slasher movie. I was expecting the usual rocker horror comedy, especially after the cool, animated intro set to an instrumental rock track. I always welcome the campy rock n’ roll slasher, but I was pleasantly surprised that this was instead a serious film with dark and grainy footage.

After interviews with some groupies/fans, the band heads to the female lead singer’s childhood farmhouse to make a music video.

Damn, the guys are sexy in this band…

Once they get to the farmhouse, the main girl begins acting uncomfortable, especially when objects and memories of her past start surfacing—particularly a mysterious mask.

Cue the killings! Once they start, it’s a thrill ride that is presented pretty dang effectively for a found footage slasher. The killer motivation is a little unexpected and off the wall, but at least it’s a bit different than the usual.

THE 6TH FRIEND (2016)

It’s rather refreshing to see a cabin in the woods slasher that consists entirely of females, but it is rather odd how flippantly and crassly this group of friends deals with female PTSD.

Once the girls gather at the cabin, we learn that the main girl is still struggling to get past something they all experienced five years before. She has nightmares and flashbacks about a masked man she believes is coming for them.

There’s a bit too much chatter, including a scene in which the girls have a shouting conversation through bedroom walls. I can’t comprehend how anyone would think a scene like this works.

Anyway, the film does finally become a somewhat exciting slasher, with the girls being chased and killed. It’s cool that this bunch of girls fights back, and there’s even a funny scene in which one girl gets heat for choosing a frying pan as a weapon.

Plenty of female drama and even a bizarre take on the pseudo celebrity of reality TV play into the plot as the girls fight to the death to survive. It’s definitely a good girl power ending, but I have a feeling most viewers will figure this one out before the big reveal.

 

 

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WrestleMassacre: he’s big and he’s hairy and he’ll tear your head off

Posted on June 19, 2020 by Daniel

The director of MILFs vs. Zombies goes full-on toxic masculinity with this pseudo slasher/exploitation flick. Sure there are plenty of muscle guys involved, but when a movie opens with a woman running naked through the woods, complete with a landing strip on display, you know the film is targeting the straight boys.

For a much tighter and better produced wrestler slasher, definitely check out Wrestlemaniac. Or make it a wrestling killer double feature, since WrestleMassacre delivers on the over-the-top gore and does include some silly, funny situations.

I would think that when your production is rockin’ the practical gore effects but has mostly non-actors, it would be best to focus on the strengths (the gore).

Unfortunately, WrestleMassacre runs way too long at 100 minutes and is filled with pointless, weak dialogue—and the poorly paced delivery is flat and awkward. At least twenty minutes of that nonsense could have been left out and still told the basic story: a wrestling fan treated like shit by everyone in his life snaps and begins killing them all.

That’s it in a nutshell. There are some other unnecessary sequences, including mock TV shows and commercials the killer watches, and there’s a bizarrely out of place appearance by a demon, but I guess they do establish the trashy indie vibe this film is going for.

It takes a long time to get past all that to the kills. The killer is inspired to go psycho after watching a televangelist on TV…who isn’t a big fan of abortion, gay marriage, or weed.

However you basically get just two massive montages of gory kills with no horror thrills in between, which is an odd way to present all the death scenes.

But like I said, there are some muscle boys, including horror hottie Jason John Beebe…

And this muscle man who sure knows how to arch that back…

Other highlights include one dude singing “Somebody’s Watching Me” as the killer approaches him from behind (awesome), a funny fight with the killer on a ladder…

…and some good 80s style horror music when the killer shows off his wrestling belt, a moment that feels like it could have been lifted from this film and placed in a more serious, darker horror film.

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STREAM QUEEN: for the love of horror anthologies

Posted on June 19, 2020 by Daniel

There are plenty of low budget anthologies to be found out there that are hit or miss, but this trio has plenty to appreciate, especially if you make it a triple feature! Let’s take a look at Evil Little Things, Nightmare Cinema, and Scare Package.

EVIL LITTLE THINGS (2019)

If you’ve seen every doll movie out there, you’ve seen everything that happens in this killer doll anthology, or might I say andollogy. That doesn’t make it any less satisfying for doll movie lovers, because it’s well made with some creepy damn dolls.

The only real disappointment is that this 85-minute movie only has two full stories plus the wraparound. The stories simply feel like they’re stalling to get to the good stuff because they’re longer than the usual anthology stories.

The wraparound features Zach Galligan of Gremlins fame as a dick dad who can’t stand that his son thinks there are monsters in his room. The boy’s mother isn’t much help considering she takes him to a toy store and lets the creepy owner tell the boy two nightmarish stories of killer dolls…

1st story – Hannah Fierman, who freaked us all out as the crazy bar bitch in V/H/S, is refreshingly normal here. She moves into her grandmother’s old house and then has to confront a suppressed memory of her childhood: an encounter with a killer leprechaun. He’s one creepy little fucker. Oddly enough, this killer leprechaun doll story takes place on Halloween!

2nd story – a young woman who was burned in a fire along with one of her cherished dolls is now messed in the mind and has a PTSD bond with the damaged doll. Therefore, the doll is not very happy when the young woman suddenly rekindles a romance with an old flame. This killer doll is even more fricking creepy than the leprechaun. She’s basically a doll version of Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

Wraparound – the boy finally decides on a clown doll, and things get so Poltergeist that the mom even references the movie.

NIGHTMARE CINEMA (2018)

This 5-tale anthology is nicely polished because it features all experienced horror directors, including Joe Dante, Mick Garris, the director of Juan of the Dead, the director of The Midnight Meat Train, and the director of 30 Days of Night. Oddly, while it begins really strong, I found the stories got increasingly less satisfying as the film progressed.

The wraparound is cool—a character from each story enters an empty, old school movie theater and becomes the star of the film on screen. While it’s not even necessary and virtually pointless, Mickey Rourke suddenly appears as the projectionist about halfway through the film.

1st – my favorite tale, this one drops us right at the end of a slasher film for the final battle. While we don’t really know what’s going on as the masked killer hacks and slashes, it all becomes clear as the awesome truth unfolds.

2nd – not a particularly compelling tale, this does have a classic zinger ending as it takes on the mutilating aspects of plastic surgery. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we are introduced to Rourke right after this segment.

3rd – my second favorite, this plays out like a crazy 1970s Euro rip-off of The Exorcist. A priest and nun are terrorized by a demon that even pulls some Asian horror stunts. Let’s just say I really needed the scene of a priest and nun going Kill Bill on a load of kiddies in my life right now.

4th story – Eh, it’s a semi-creepy tale of a woman who seeks therapy because she sees everyone she runs into as some sort of mutant. No, that’s not Mickey Rourke in the picture below.

5th story – a fairly generic tale of a boy who experiences some Sixth Sense shit in a hospital.

Two really fun stories and 3 just okay stories left me on the fence as to whether it’s actually worth buying Nightmare Cinema on Blu-ray.

SCARE PACKAGE (2020)

What a tease. This anthology starts with a Halloween tale in the style of Tucker & Dale—but it’s not a full Halloween anthology. Bummer.

However, the wraparound does take place in a video store, so it’s all good…and very 1980s. The guys begin talking horror, and we get a load of tales that are mostly meta madness and super farcical fun…

1st story – you can’t start any stronger than this. A bunch of campers in the woods gets thrust into more than one horror scenario at once. Over the top slapstick slasher chaos ensues.

2nd story – this brief tale about a man who joins a men’s empowerment club is okay, but it’s pretty forgettable.

3rd story – another short tale that’s okay in the moment but nothing special. Girls having a sleepover eat some candy that causes very odd side effects.

4th story – On par with the first story, this one features a group of kids capturing a masked killer that comes back each year and then trying their damnedest to do away with the threat once and for all.

5th story – another low key story that didn’t do much for me, this is about a woman who hates spoilers, so she…takes it out on the guy who possesses her?

6th story – ending at the same energy level at which the movie began, this story features a bunch of people trapped in a horror movie as they are hunted by a masked killer. The recently controversial Joe Bob Briggs plays himself in the story, but I just don’t think he has the charisma enough to stand out in a movie, so his appearance just distracts from an otherwise awesome slasher. Of course, this guy distracts as well…

So many highlights here, but for each kick ass tale, there’s one that fell flat for me. Good news is the weaker ones are all shorter, but if they had been absent entirely, this would have been an even tighter anthology. Of course, we did get that Halloween tale as the seventh freebie.

I think this Shudder exclusive is going to be a hit, so hopefully a Scare Package 2 will happen.

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SHUDDER AND SHRIEK: man movies!

Posted on June 18, 2020 by Daniel

Shudder delivered three “movie night with the hubby” flicks, and it was all about men vs. monsters. So what did my sofa sidekick and I think of The Head Hunter, Cold Skin, and Nekrotronic? Let’s find out.

THE HEAD HUNTER (2018)

I was shocked to discover this serious, medieval, beautifully shot, 72-minute creature feature is from the director of the absolutely absurd Thankskilling movies.

The only reason the hubby and I really knew what was going on is because we read the description of the movie on Shudder before we began watching. Essentially, a warrior living in a cabin by himself during medieval times collects heads of various creatures while hoping to snag the head of a monster that killed his daughter. We think.

For 40 minutes he barely speaks at all and interacts with no one as he just keeps collecting heads. The concept that virtually gets lost here if you don’t pay careful attention to the dialogue-free situations is that healing potions he concocts for his battle wounds accidentally bring the monster back to life. However, it isn’t fully brought back…it begins to slowly regenerate from its existence as a severed head.

It’s a pretty dang cool and horror-ific final act, and the conclusion is devilishly good, but it left us with quite a few questions. Argh.

COLD SKIN (2018)

The director of Frontier(s) gives us a creature feature based on a novel—which makes sense, because as I was watching this period piece with the hubba hubba, I kept saying it felt like an excellent adaptation of an historical novel even if it wasn’t my type of horror.

Mostly a character study with a horde of humanoid creatures as the distraction that brings out the best and worst of the protagonists, this is a story of the clash between a younger man and an older man. They end up trapped in a watchtower on a deserted island together with swarms of the creatures outside.

The bond remains on shaky ground as the two men work together to fight off nightly onslaughts. Aside from the film feeling a bit long and repetitive, my biggest gripe is that there’s no explanation as to why the creatures only come out at night—especially since there’s one creature that proves they can be out in daylight. Unless they did and it was one of those moments when my hubby was like, “look at this funny meme.”

After the initial terrifying introduction of the monsters (they remind me of the I Am Legend creatures), their nightly attacks make them less and less scary, and the battles with the men become more action-oriented. The real focus is on the moral messages the movie conveys as these two men begin to show their true colors.

NEKROTRONIC (2018)

The director of Wyrmwood brings us another action-packed monster flick, and it’s like Buffy meets Ghostbusters.

A handsome man gets shirtless in the first five minutes while cleaning septic tanks with his buddy, who is a fan of Shaggy’s hit Angel” and obsessed with a ghost hunting phone game.

When playing the game on the job unleashes some hellish spirit, the pair finds themselves being chased by a possessed human! The guys are saved from a demon attack by two sisters, and suddenly our main man is thrust into demon-hunting training.

It seems his sorceress mother is searching for him and has unleashed demons through the internet. So this small band of demon hunters never even has to leave their lair…they just WiFi the damn things into their private space to take them down!

Funny, quirky, and loaded with great demons and action sequences, Nekrotronic is the perfect movie for a horror viewing party.

 

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Steve Guttenberg…catalyst of horror?

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Daniel

He’s come a long way since boogying down with the Village People in Can’t Stop The Music, landing himself in the Lavalantula and Sharknado movies and on The Goldbergs in recent years. But in the past decade, Steve Guttenberg has also briefly appeared in a couple of horror flicks just long enough to trigger the premise. So let’s take a look.

CORNERED (2009)

If you’re a fan of the 1989 classic Intruder, in which workers at a grocery store are stalked and killed by a psycho, you’ll probably feel right at home with Cornered, in which workers at a mini-market are stalked and killed by a psycho.

With its top notch gore effects, Intruder is definitely the better film, but Cornered is a fun little slasher that came way too late in the post-Scream era to receive much attention.

Steve Guttenberg appears as a delivery man at the beginning of the film while the crew of the store is closing up and discussing a rash of murders in local stores. Steve poses the question: what awful things would you do to the serial killer if you could get your hands on him?

The likable and typical cast of characters includes a burly store owner, indie king James Duval as his junkie nephew, the pretty girl, the chunky guy, and the feisty black woman. Once they close the store, the workers go upstairs to play a game of poker. 

There’s too much talk while they play cards and constantly notice then ignore noises coming from downstairs. There are also a set of pointless sequences involving Duval having withdrawals while freaking out over cockroaches.

But finally the group starts heading downstairs one by one to be brutally killed off…in the ways in which they said they’d kill the killer. The killer wears a gimp mask, but it’s not explained why. Perhaps this psycho was inspired by Gimp Face from my gay Halloween horror novella Scream, Queen in my book Wet Screams!

The final act is the strong point here, with plenty of suspense, body reveals, and a chase scene. However, it’s so obvious who the killer is I can’t imagine you won’t guess right from the start.

GOOD BOY (2020)

In this installment of Hulu’s Into The Dark, the director of Tragedy Girls and Patchwork is back with another darkly comic horror flick, starring Judy Greer as a desperate woman. She’s desperate for companionship, desperate to have a baby, and desperate for job security.

Steve Guttenberg plays her boss. After telling her they are restructuring her company in a way that will afford her less work, he suggests she get an emotional support dog.

She does, and quickly falls in love with the little brat.

Actually, it’s much worse than a brat. It’s a cold blooded killer! It begins tearing apart anyone who rubs Judy the wrong way. How cool would it be to have your own little Cujo? I mean, as long as you didn’t have to clean up his messes.

Maria Conchita Alonso plays her landlord and pokes fun at the questionable need for “emotional support animals”, a very controversial topic these days, especially on planes. Well, at least it was until wearing masks became the hot topic on planes. What a world.

Judy is great as usual, and there are buckets of blood and some funny moments (the dog made me chuckle the most), but the film begins to drag once the plot is established. It’s no surprise it becomes fairly predictable. She has a killer dog, the dog kills. Not a whole lot you can do with that. The Bad Seed, The Good Son, Good Boy, etc, etc…

Things definitely pick up in the final act, and the generally sad themes that stem from her bond with the dog are really sobering. But the biggest question I had that’s never explained but almost seems implied—does the little dog grow into some bigger, rabid monster when it attacks?

 

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Something queer is going on…

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Daniel

These horrors are queer, but it’s not always quite clear…at first. Let’s take a look at Christmas Presence, The Skin I Live In, and The Bad Man.

CHRISTMAS PRESENCE (2018)

The most blatantly gay horror film of this trio, Christmas Presence is like a queer holiday horror flick done Euro horror style, so it lands on both my holiday horror page and my homo horror movies page. I wasn’t really feeling it for quite a while, particularly because of some forced, heavy-handed political dialogue, but by the end it was just wacky and surreal enough to change my mind, even if it didn’t make much sense.

A group of friends, most of them seemingly gay and lesbian, gathers at an isolated house for the holidays. The lone gay guy is a total caricature, and he starts off the party by making everyone try on some sexual underwear he designed. Montage time!

Unfortunately, he isn’t the final gay. We get a main girl, who swears she’s not anti-queer, but is against the way the LGBTQ agenda is pushed by mainstream media, especially trans issues. WTF?

Meanwhile, she has her own issues, namely the disappearance of her sister from the woods nearby. She’s convinced her sister is still alive somewhere, so the psychic woman in the group offers to use psychometry to see if they can learn the truth.

This triggers most of the horror that unfolds.

The main girl becomes somewhat delusional, while the psychic starts seeing a freaky apparition that she believes they’ve accidentally unleashed.

There is some crazy shit going on in the final act, and while I love the horror of it all, I’m almost convinced that in the end the characters are all punished for their sexual practices…even though there isn’t one single sex scene in the whole movie.

THE SKIN I LIVE IN (2011)

The Skin I Live In is a pretty darn masterful film, but it isn’t a traditional “horror movie”.

It does, however, combine elements of various subgenres to create a twisting, turning narrative that is both horrific and tragic.

The film begins with a classic mad scientist plot—Antonio Banderas is trying to create a virtually indestructible, synthetic skin to use for transplant operations in burn victims.

His guinea pig is a pretty young woman he keeps locked in a room in his mansion.

The movie uses time jumps to tell its story as it progresses, so we eventually learn that the mad scientist is also keeping a handsome young man captive in an underground lair!

As the truth is revealed as to what the mad scientist is doing and why, the various subplots and timelines come together with a myriad of shocking aspects, including rape/revenge, body horror, incest, grief, Stockholm syndrome, and complex queer themes handled with disturbing effect.

THE BAD MAN (2018)

 

As always, director Scott Schirmer tackles the horrors within our minds and our libidos with The Bad Man.

If you’ve seen his other films—Found, Harvest Lake, and Plank Face—you’ll at least be prepared for yet another fucked up film about the depravity of humanity.

A woman and her man (indie horror king Jason Crowe) are tying up loose ends at her late grandmother’s B&B when a previous guest shows up, not realizing the owner has died. He’s nice enough, so they let him stay overnight.

The first fifteen minutes or so of this film are exceptionally tense and eerie, with the woman convinced she keeps catching glimpses of a clown running around the creepy old place. Then the horror shifts as the couple is abducted by the clown…who has a gimp man servant by his side.

This turns into a film about the evil pair training the couple to become sex slaves so they can be auctioned off. It’s a nasty little study on breaking the human spirit, mind-fucking and torturing people into total submission.

The couple is drugged, raped, and humiliated. Most of the nasty situations are implied and not graphically shown, but there is a scene involving a penis and a needle…so beware.

Jason Crowe’s character is especially degraded and forced into man-on-man sex acts with the man servant, who takes a shine to him.

The final act feels like a grind house/exploitation flick with a hint of rape/revenge thrown in, but it’s also a disturbing look at the after effects of psychological and sexual abuse. The great performances by everyone in the cast really makes it that much more icky to watch.

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Something queer is going on…