Women take the Writing and Directing Wheel!

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Daniel

It’s all about the girls in this trio of light horror flicks that are all written and/or directed by women and rely on hot pink to make their poster art pop…

LISA FRANKENSTEIN (2024)

I kept my hopes for this one low because it was getting way more hype on social media than most movies end up deserving. I was definitely excited that it is written by Diablo Cody of Jennifer’s Body fame (one of my hundreds of favorite horror movies), and I was also looking forward to a movie immersed in the 80s (the film takes place in 1989). Unfortunately, despite its dark theme, Lisa Frankenstein feels more like a cutesy Frankenstein with an Edward Scissorhands vibe than a horror movie.

I’ll start off by saying the 80s soundtrack is great, going for deeper cuts rather than the obvious, including tracks by When In Rome, Blue Peter, The Chameleons, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Flatmates, The Pixies, Galaxie 500, Jeffrey Osborne, and even the main character covering REO Speedwagon. Visually it looks like the end of the 80s because it mimics Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands style and colors.

We meet Lisa, who hangs out in a cemetery and is drawn to a grave statue of a young man who died ages ago. She’s trying to cope with her life turning upside down after the death of her mother. Her dad remarried, her stepmother hates her, and she doesn’t fit in at school.

However, her stepsister treats her kindly and takes her to a party…at which she is basically roofied. Lisa stumbles home using the cemetery as a shortcut. There’s no logical explanation for what happens next beyond Lisa having been shocked by a faulty tanning bed, Lisa making a wish, and lightning striking. As a result, the young man whose statue she adores in the cemetery returns from the dead and follows her home.

From there, the film really drags as Lisa gets to know him while keeping him hidden. This is sort of like one of those monster romance flicks from the late 80s/early 90s (My Demon Lover, My Boyfriend’s Back, etc.), but Lisa is pretty self-centered. She finds her rotting friend gross most of the time, she talks to him about the guy in school that she likes and wants to have sex with, and she uses the monster to get revenge on people that wronged her—although in return it scores him some of the body parts he’s missing. He even gives her a makeover as well, turning her into Madonna circa 1984, which you would think would make her more popular at school, but that plot point doesn’t really go anywhere beyond making her act even weirder than she already was.

Despite the gothic, morbid theme and great performances by everyone, the movie is incredibly flat. It runs way too long, takes forever to get to the moment when the monster actually kills someone, is pretty sterile in presenting its more gruesome aspects, and is a little bit too charming in its humor, making it feel more like a tween comedy than a horror comedy. Even the “dirty” parts feel quaint rather than raunchy.

COURTNEY GETS POSSESSED (2022)

This is one of those horror comedies that has a really fun premise, but the writing doesn’t completely rise to the occasion. The talented cast does the best they can to create a vibe, but inevitably there’s just a special spark missing.

Courtney is about to get married, but still has unresolved issues with her sister (played by the co-writer and co-director of the film), who always used to steal her boyfriends. Even so, the sis is in the wedding party, and the girls gather together in a house for one last hoorah…which involves Courtney asking them to do a chant with candles. Uh-oh.

There’s a knock on the door, and it’s one of Courtney’s exes. It also turns out he’s the devil and isn’t willing to give her up. Awesome.

So much potential here. Courtney gets possessed, they tie her to the bed, the men of the wedding party show up, they call in a priest…so much fun to be had, but the movie never quit gets there despite having its moments.

Like I said, the cast is excellent and gives the movie all its charm. Plus, there are some nice twists in the final act.

FESTIVAL OF THE LIVING DEAD (2024)

Although this zombie film is directed by the Soska Sisters, don’t expect anything as dark or twisted as their usual output. They didn’t write this film, and I’m guessing they were just hired for name recognition to direct a Tubi original.

The interesting aspect is that this is supposed to be a sequel to the original Night of the Living Dead. It takes place 55 years later, when kids are going to a festival celebrating the original outbreak…including a young woman who is a relative of original NOTLD hero Ben.

However, don’t expect much explanation as to how the original outbreak ended or why a new one begins. You just have to go with it.

There’s nothing very original here, and it comes off feeling like another cash grab based on a classic—think the Return of the Living Dead sequels that were SyFy originals in the early 2000s (which most people hated, but I am a fan of).

We get a group of teens, some good zombie makeup, plenty of gut munching, and other zombie movie tropes. Of note is that most of the heroes in this one are the girls.

The focal point in the final act is a big burning man monument that comes into play as the group of teens attempts to fend off all the zombies attacking an outdoor concert. Despite the derivative nature of everything that unfolds, it does give you a sense of nostalgia for simple zombie flicks from two decades ago.

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TUBI TERRORS: zombies, ghosts, and an exorcism

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Daniel

I watched this assortment of indie horror flicks so you don’t have to…unless you like what you hear.

SHIFTED (2022)

I did not know what to expect going into this film that at first felt like it was going to be strictly about a group of neighbors all trapped in one house while a zombie outbreak we never witness is going on outside. I thought I was in for some torturous Pontypool shit, but although this is a slow burn, it succeeds in making you more interested in what’s going on inside with the characters than outside. And yet it even manages to actually deliver some intense zombie action.

We are thrown into the middle of an outbreak during the wintery, snowy time of year. I’m a sucker for zombie outbreak movies that take place during the day while it’s snowing.

Anyway, this group of neighbors is struggling to survive with limited resources. We slowly learn what each of them experienced before arriving at the house. They also welcome new people to their safe haven, but they do tend to treat them with suspicion and interrogate them.

There are a few fleeting struggles with some seriously nasty looking zombies outside, but things get complicated inside the house when one of the survivors is found murdered in the bathroom!

Trapped with each other, the group has to deal with the fact that there’s a killer among them, which of course leads to heightened tensions, distrust, and eventually survivors turning on each other.

It’s all quite compelling, and there are some unnerving moments when zombies infiltrate the house. Plus, there’s a hunky as hell zombie. I’d eat him before he could get his teeth on me.

However, one thing really kills the whole mystery behind the plot: ***SPOILER*** the opening scene shows one of the main characters murdering someone before coming to the house. I kept telling myself this person couldn’t possibly be the killer of the victim in the house, too, because it would defeat the point of the mystery, but alas that person is indeed the killer! WTF? That first murder scene is completely unnecessary, and I don’t understand why the creators of the movie didn’t choose to remove it other than the fact that they wanted to open with something shocking and bloody. As if there weren’t some other kind of horrific opener they could have come up with in a movie about a zombie outbreak…

THE HEADMISTRESS (2023)

One thing about this derivative ghost movie saved it for me…a gay couple that lands this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

Ghost movies in general don’t particularly scare me, so all the tropes we get here had no effect on me. After a woman in serious debt inherits an inn in the woods from her father, she takes a small group of interested buyers to see it. We have a misogynistic douche, two different female characters that are pretty indistinguishable other than their hair color, and the cute gay couple that proudly owns a pizza shop.

Once in the house, the group splits up to explore. One woman sees a ghost girl in the basement and “help me” written on a closet wall. The other woman sees a dark figure moving closer to her every time she lifts her old school camera to take a picture. There are fleeting glimpses of ghosts in the shadows, there are some jump scares, ghosts start messing with everyone’s minds, and the ghosts appear to start manifesting in the flesh.

The group slowly begins piecing together the history of the large house, which involves an old boarding school and children being tortured. One thing that definitely has a lot of embellishment here is the backstory.

There is a final confrontation between the main girl and the ghosts, but that just gives us one cool appearance of a demonic looking main ghost.

The gay guys are the most interesting of the bunch. One of them dreams of buying the place to make it into a haunted hotel, so he’s also the most prepared to deal with the ghostly insanity. Best of all, the gay guys get the last line, and it reminds us of just how adorable they are together.

THE DEMONS WITHIN (2023)

I watched this movie for one reason—80s sweetheart Deborah Foreman of Valley Girl and April Fool’s Day was listed in the cast. Turns out she has about a 20-second appearance as a nurse and is not a good reason to sit through the movie.

I’m not going to spend much time on this. For me, the fact that a movie like The Exorcist exists makes it barely worth it for major studios to throw money at inferior exorcism films, let alone for low budget indies to go there.

So this girl Izzy doesn’t get along with her parents. She goes to a therapist where it appears demons are transferred into her phone. Ah, a comment on phones taking over our lives in modern society.

This kicks off cheap versions of typical exorcism movie tropes. With 20 minutes left, the parents, who are atheists, cave to organized religion and call in a priest, who performs an exorcism on the living room floor, because family TV time is surely the most important part of the day.

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These slashers are the stuff of children’s nightmares

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Daniel

British directors are pumping out slashers almost faster than I can find them on streaming services to devour and then cover on my site. The latest trio I binged takes on classic children’s nursery rhymes and beloved stories. Each one also happens to feature a British scream queen named May Kelly, but I’ve decided to anoint her as Lindsay Clonehan because she is a total Lindsay Lohan clone, right down to the vocal fry. She’s racked up roles in movies like Nutcracker Massacre, The Killing Tree, Easter Bunny Massacre, Curse of Humpty Dumpty 2, and Sky Monster.

MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB (2023)

This British nursery rhyme slasher is as templated as a backwoods family horror film can be, but it mostly does a good job of creating atmosphere, plus it has a great killer—my favorite of killer of this bunch.

Lindsay Clonehan stars as a true crime podcaster about to be out of a job because she’s not garnering enough listeners. So she decides to take her team to an area where people go missing all the time for a real juicy story.

They discover a house in the middle of nowhere…and a bunch of fog machines that seem to only work intermittently, leaving us with an inconsistent, patchy, foggy setting for the rest of the movie.

An older woman named Mary lives in the house. She says her son is upstairs. The group convinces her to let them stay for the night (so they can do some podcast investigating). Being true crime experts, they literally suspect this whole situation with this woman and her unseen son is bizarre in a place where people have gone missing, and yet…well, we know what happens next.

Slowly but surely they split up and start getting killed off by the “son”. You may think he’s wearing a lamb head as a mask, but this dude has an actual lamb head and growls like a bear. Therein lies the big problem with this film. There would be only one acceptable backstory for this lamb man…the mother was fucked by a sheep. How they could pass up this twisted opportunity is beyond me, but they do.

There are some great chase scenes and tension (the fricking lamb man runs really fast!), but the kills fail to make contact…meaning you can always tell the actors are not actually getting struck by the weapons being used against them. It’s a glaring issue in an otherwise tightly made flick. It packs in all the clichés we love–murders, chase scenes, the crazy mom, a gruesome dinner party, and…a Texas Chainsaw copycat conclusion that brings the film to an abrupt end that feels very unfinished. I sense a sequel. Maybe then we’ll get the sheep fucking angle?

THREE BLIND MICE (2023)

The opening scene of Three Blind Mice is a goodie, but it also ensures there’s no mystery in this movie. A girl and a dude in the woods end up in an abandoned underground lab where they are attacked by three mice men, which we get to see in their full glory immediately.

Lindsay Clonehan is our lead once again. She plays a druggy, and her family and friends take her to a house in the woods for an intervention.

Soon, the mice men are killing her friends and family left and right. The film definitely delivers on the gore, but it’s not quite scary and there isn’t much suspense, although there are several cat and mouse chase scenes…where, ironically, the mice men are the cat.

The first time Clonehan gets abducted and taken to the lab lair she gets away and goes back to the cabin. The mice men invade the house, leading to more of her friends and family becoming victims, and then she ends up back in the lab lair for the final act. It all becomes quite boring for a while, but she does conveniently find a video to watch that explains how the mice men came to be. Not to mention, she deserves the title of scream queen, because her screams rock.

The biggest disappointment for me is that none of the mice men have their tales cut off with a carving knife. Weren’t nursery rhymes just so cute?

WINNIE THE POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY (2023)

Rhys Frake-Waterfield, the director of this more commercially successful childhood horror flick, has directed numerous other indie slashers I’ve covered on my site (including The Killing Tree and Sky Monster starring Lindsay Clonehan), so I’m happy for him finally getting a higher profile release. Although this is the most popular of the three flicks I cover here, it suffers from the same mid-movie slowdown the other two do.

We first get a dark animated backstory involving the famous Winnie the Pooh characters. Basically, human boy Christopher Robin deserted his furry friends to go to college, causing them to turn into blood-thirsty murderers. Robin comes back when he’s older and ends up getting abducted by Pooh and Piglet. Pooh is quite a sadist. He keeps Robin chained up and whips him.

Meanwhile, a bunch of girls heads to a cabin in the woods. Here’s the bummer. Lindsay Clonehan gets lost on the way and becomes the first victim. Blah. What a waste of final girl material. However, she gets a good chase scene and a gruesome death.

Pooh and Piglet kill a minimal number of victims before the remainder of girls work together to try to stay alive. The movie really slows down for a while once Pooh and Piglet invade their home.

However, the final act is a blast. A group of rednecks shows up on the scene to try to help the girls, making the body count skyrocket instantly. Awesome. The majority of the blood (and honey) is definitely saved for the last 20 minutes or so.

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A double feature of killer bunny Easter slashers!

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Daniel

It’s two more killer bunny flicks to add to the complete holiday horror page. There’s even a drag queen in each movie, landing them both on the does the gay guy die? page as well. But are these two movies a basket full of fun?

EASTER EVIL (2024)

Be warned, this is a loooooow budget film intentionally filmed with a 1970s campy trash quality…while looking like it takes place in the 1960s.

A hooker named bunny and her erotic dancer friend Trinity (played by a drag queen) hang out in a hotel room for a majority of this 72-minute film. Their dialogue about their jobs, aspirations, and men fail to bring any humor, so it’s not entertaining at all. Bunny does have one dream about a guy in a bunny costume to break up the monotony.

Eventually the girls go out to get Easter eggs. While they’re gone, a pervy room service guy comes into the room and is killed by the bunny man.

The girls return for some more filler—exercise, dance, and pillow fight montages. Eventually they discover the bunny man is in their room and some fighting ensues.

No body count, no comedy, no scares…not even the kind of crass material you might expect from a movie about a hooker and a drag queen erotic dancer in a sleazy hotel. The simple premise just begs for over-the-top absurdity, but we don’t even get that.

EASTER BLOODY EASTER (2024)

This big killer bunny has little red-eyed minion bunnies and is trying to take out a town full of churchgoers. Yay!

Our leading lady and director of the film is Diane Foster, who was the star of The Orphan Killer and its sequel. As the town prepares for its big Easterpalooza celebration, her husband goes missing and people start turning up dead.

One redneck who seems like a conspiracy theorist is actually right…it’s the work of supernatural entity Jackalope, first conjured by a woman decades before when she merely wanted her kids to experience a visit from the Easter bunny.

As the main girl and her friends put the pieces together and try to hunt down the bunny, Easterpalooza goes on. The big dance starts with a Bunny Hop montage led by the town’s gay boy dressed in Playboy bunny drag. In fact, this little redneck town is shockingly colorful and diverse…

The rest of the segment at the dance slows the otherwise fast-paced film down for a while, as do some dream sequences the main girl has. The film didn’t need to be 103 minutes long. But things pick up when an Easter egg hunt turns into a massacre! The big bunny looks awesomely evil, and his minions are good for a chuckle (they give off Critters vibes).

All the main characters end up battling bunnies in the woods in the final act, but then the film drags on for a bit too long after it, with nothing really happening. Not sure what they were trying to accomplish with the few final drawn out scenes. Even so, this is mostly a good one to watch if you’re doing a killer bunny movie marathon on Easter weekend.

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TUBI TERRORS with a side of laughs?

Posted on March 26, 2024 by Daniel

This trio of indies vacillated between trying to be funny but not delivering, and trying not to be funny but making me laugh.

MURDERCISE (2023)

The first few minutes of a Murdercise bombard us with 80s neon, spandex, leg warmers, a synth score, and an aerobics class.

A few minutes later, a woman is killed in her home before we get to the focus of the plot…the making of an exercise video with a bunch of slutty babes and one uptight girl, our leading lady.

Murdercise is intentionally cheesy in its effort to give off an 80s female exploitation slasher vibe, but it doesn’t quite hit with its attempts at humor. The highlight is one bimbo with huge boobs. She absolutely steals the show when she throws a tantrum because horror bear Drew Marvick (sporting Daisy Dukes and a crop top) won’t look at or touch her tits. The rest of the movie really needed to live up to this level of silly comedy.

As for the slashing, it’s not your usual format. The goody-goody girl, becoming more and more furious at how sexualized the video shoot is, starts to kill off all the skanky girls. Unfortunately, there aren’t many kills, they aren’t designed to be scary, and only one delivers on some good gore, with practical effects!

However, the film has a side story—there have already been a series of murders around town, and the cops are on the beat. When they show up at the studio, shit suddenly gets wild, with the girls working together to take down the other killer. Practical gore effects abound, and a chainsaw even gets in on the action. We even get an appearance by adult film royalty Ginger Lynn, plus some phobic jabs at the masculinity and heterosexuality of the cops, bringing old warm and fuzzy feelings of being a gay teen in the 80s flooding back.

But seriously, the final act rox, and I just wish the whole film had delivered this kind of midnight movie horror vibe.

SUMMERHOUSE SLAUGHTER (2023)

This cheerleader camp slasher film runs only an hour long yet still fails to fully develop the presence of its killer. Basically, “furry” slashers are all the rage these days, so this killer jumps on the bandwagon and puts on a panda suit. It has absolutely nothing to do with a mascot costume, which would make sense. And brace yourself…this is touted as a sequel to the 1988 classic Cheerleader Camp. Sigh.

The film sets us up for the perfect campy/sleazy slasher plot—after a sprinkler acid accident takes out a whole cheerleading team (it’s rather funny watching them all drop at once), a new team comes to cheerleading camp, and soon someone in a panda suit is killing them off. We even get the original young Jason Voorhees Ari Lehman as a pervy caretaker.

And yet, the pervy caretaker is barely in the movie and his red herring role isn’t exploited to give us peeps at showering cheerleaders or topless pillow fights. There’s also a young shirtless pretty boy on-site who makes a bizarre yet enticing entrance…and is then never seen again. WTF?

No nudity, no sexploitation, and as with many low budget indie films, it’s hard to tell if the movie is trying to be funny and mostly failing…or if the few scenes that give you a laugh were even meant to.

There are kills, and some of them are satisfying for a low budget film. For instance, there’s a nice killer POV moment leading up to an eye gouging scene, and a death by plunger scene in a tight shot in a tub with no score to fill  the sound void is actually effective. But the kills stop rather quickly when the girls realize a killer is out there. And then…the movie comes to a screeching halt as the girls just sit around trying to figure out what they should do to survive. The pacing is also hurt by totally pointless interruptions by a horror hostess. Sigh.

The final girl gets a chase scene, but as is always the case, setting a horror scene to metal music kills any sense of tension or atmosphere. But the final fight with the panda gave me a chuckle. However, like I said above, I don’t know if that was the intent.

SLAUGHTER BEACH (2022)

I know what movie you watched last summer…and then used as inspiration to make an indie killer fisherman comedy duo movie.

The problem with the movie? The comedy duo. It was refreshing to see the two leads were a Black guy and an Asian dude, but somewhere along the line something went wrong. This pair has no charisma, there’s no chemistry between them, there’s no comedic talent on display. There’s not even any funny material for them to work with.

The real star here is the fisherman. He’s not hidden from view—we see his face right from the start. He also delivers one-liners like some sort of late 80s/early 90s slasher killer as he slices and dices up victims on the boardwalk.

Which leads to the other star of the film: the death scenes. This is all bloody, violent fun with practical effects. The fisherman even goes on a rampage during a murder montage at one point…set to rock music. Sigh. But I can overlook the choice of rock music because the kills…rock.

It’s unfortunate that our two main guys, a couple of jobless friends who decide they are going to protect the boardwalk from the killer and solve the case, play such an insignificant role in bolstering the fun of this movie.

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TUBI TERRORS: who or what is killing queers?

Posted on March 25, 2024 by Daniel

Vampires, an infamous serial killer, and a masked psycho—it’s a trio of movies for the homo horror movies page!

SLAY (2024)

Slay could easily have been titled In Drag Til Dawn. This queer vampire flick is somewhat of a love letter to From Dusk Til Dawn, even referencing the film in its meta banter. I was expecting a cheesy, low budget, campy drag queen movie that looked like it was shot on video, but this is a genuine vampire flick despite budget constraints. For instance, there’s some CGI blood during gun fights, and even a scene poking fun at how the film couldn’t afford to show us all the action—very clever, but not even an apology that’s needed, because it’s clear a load of talent and creativity went into this one. I’ve yet to see a Tubi original come to physical media, but I hope Slay does so I can add it to my gay horror collection.

Before I even begin discussing the movie, I have to confess that I only know it stars several RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants because the friends we watched it with watch the show…Ink Master and Top Chef are more my and the hubby’s speed. I don’t know where the queens in this cast placed in Ru’s competition, but they all do a great job in this movie.

They arrive at a bar full of rednecks/hillbillies in the middle of nowhere. Turns out there was a mix up in the booking, but the owner lets them perform anyway. They aren’t welcomed at first…and neither are the vampires that show up. Awesome.

A freaky master vampire’s first bite starts a chain reaction of bar patrons turning vamp. Now it’s up to the queens and rednecks to band together to fight off the fangs.

This is such a great flick to watch with a group on movie night. The vampire action is a blast, and the cast is absolutely lovable. And of course there’s a mild message of acceptance and tolerance, intertwined with the idea of becoming a vampire.

The look of those who become vampires is good enough to distinguish them from the mortals (although their red eyes are CGI), but the vampire who absolutely delivers as far as performances go is this dude.

He plays a vampire like nobody’s business, and he gets an intense scene in a vent. Eek!

I will say that at 98 minutes long, the film—um—drags a bit in the middle, but once it picks back up for the final act, it’s party time. I was also impressed that the filmmakers were able to secure the rights for the drag queens to perform to Cardi B’s “WAP”.

As for the comedy, I felt that it was the straight cis characters that got most of the funny lines. I can’t believe I have to give more credit to hillbillies than homos in a queer horror movie, but unfortunately, the queens are predominantly relegated to the usual tired, cliché drag queen humor. I can’t even count the amount of times the sexual innuendo of “suck” is used for jokes in which queens are referencing the vampires. This has long been the type of humor associated with and expected from drag queens, but it is just way too obvious and simple for my taste—it’s the kind of shtick that has been used to pander to drag show audiences, mostly straight, for decades.

GACY: SERIAL KILLER NEXT DOOR (2024)

Like Fright Night and Disturbia, this is a movie about a teenage boy who realizes there’s a monster living next door. In this case, it’s John Wayne Gacy.

There was no need to use Gacy as the threat next door in this derivative film, because it easily could have just been about a teen boy who realizes his neighbor is a gay serial killer. Sadly, Gacy’s name is a money maker, plus, using a notorious real life gay serial killer as the subject helps avoid backlash from making a movie about a fictional gay serial killer who picks up and kills tricks.

That is what might disappoint those who are tantalized by the graphic details of killers such as Gacy. This film does not exploit the truth at all. The most we see is Gacy handcuffing, chocking, and stabbing victims, and even that is pretty tame. There is no suggestion of the horrific sexual assaults he committed on his victims.

While this is a predictable flick, what is notable is that it speaks to the idea that young people are never believed. The main kid is afraid to tell any adults what he witnessed through his bedroom window, and when he tells his parents, they make him out to look like the problem. Also highlighted is the idea that we refuse to accept the horror that can be perpetrated by the upstanding neighbor next door. Gacy is a beloved member of the community, dresses as Pogo the clown at kids’ parties, and even works for the Democratic Party…because, you know, democrats are never criminals!

The film could have been so much more than it is if it had written the lead teenage boy as gay or questioning—there’s so much that could have been explored about the fears and conflicts about coming out when you realize the boy-loving man next door is a monster. I’d say the most exciting parts of this fictional horror movie based on reality include the main kid sneaking into Gacy’s crawlspace to take photos of the dead bodies and Gacy making his way into the kid’s house to abduct him…while he’s showering. Eek!

REUNION FROM HELL 2 (2022)

A gay slasher gets a gay Christmas slasher sequel. Yay!

I have to admit, I didn’t find the first film compelling enough to warrant a sequel, and the main character Riley, played by the writer/director of both movies, comes across as totally unlikable and self-centered in the second film.

This time around, Riley gathers a new set of friends together (since the first ones are all dead) to go to a cabin in the woods for Christmas. He’s trying to avoid an aggressive reporter, played by Elm Street 2‘s Mark Patton.

This could be considered a “reunion” movie, because when they arrive at the cabin they are greeted by Riley’s mother (Lisa Wilcox of Elm Street 4 and 5), who has a trio of surprises—Riley’s uncle, the hot sheriff from the first film, and Riley’s ex-boyfriend are all there to celebrate Christmas.

While this is a bit more polished than the first film, there are still awkward filler scenes of the friends just sitting around and talking, adding nothing to the progression of the story. Editing some of those sequences out would have streamlined the movie and helped with pacing. The main focus beyond all the white noise is that Riley is still traumatized by the events of the first film, has cool, gory nightmares, and is also dealing with tension between his ex and the new guy he has been dating.

Mark Patton lurks around trying to get some dirt for his story, there’s a gay sex scene, and there’s one death scene involving deep throating a little fake Christmas tree.

The killer mask is pretty cool, but the body count is low. Basically the whole cast finds out at once that there’s a killer on the loose, and they all band together to fight to the death. For me, the highlight of all the chaos that ensues is a character getting hysterical and then being slapped.

Over all, this feels exactly like what it is—a rough, low budget indie slasher sequel. The gay storyline is perhaps the main reason you might want to give it a try since we don’t get a lot of gay slashers, with the added bonus of it being a Christmas flick that lands it on the holiday horror page.

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STREAM QUEEN: creepy creatures!

Posted on March 22, 2024 by Daniel

There were definitely cool monsters in my latest triple feature, but they pretty much all deserved to be in better movies than the ones we get.

SKY MONSTER (2023)

This 75-minute creature feature doesn’t even reach early 2000s SyFy original levels. It is loaded with terrible effects, absurd plot points, awful dialogue, and actors who seem to want to come across as American but keep forgetting to stifle their British accents.

A dude puts his daughter and her friends on a private plane for her birthday. It’s just them, the captain, and the “hot” flight attendant.

I guess he’s cute, but when you try to hype a dude up by making a point of drawing attention to his non-existent butt when he bends over, it immediately knocks him down a bunch of rungs on the hot ladder for me.

Also of note is that there’s a party montage set to a contemporary song about dancing that reminds you just how horrible “dance” music is these days…this shit is like 20 beats per minute. It’s no wonder the hot dude has no ass—there’s no good music to dance to anymore to build up the buns.

Anyway, the plane flies over the Bermuda Triangle, and this huge CGI octopus creature ends up wrapping itself around a toy plane. Then overlaid tentacle footage starts infiltrating the plane.

It’s a frightening concept in theory, but the execution ruins it. The movie just gets worse and cheaper looking as it progresses, with ridiculous plot holes (for instance, the girls open the door and stand right in the doorway without getting sucked out of the plane), and rescue efforts are absolutely laughable. If you reeeeaaaalllllly miss bad SyFy films, save this one for a rainy Sunday.

THE HUSBAND (2023)

Not sure if this low budget indie started off as a short, but it feels like a short film that was expanded into a full-length feature and should have stayed a short. You will spend a majority of this movie thinking this was miscategorized as a horror movie on IMDb.

It is over an hour of low energy, verbally and emotionally abusive relationship drama between a woman and her husband. We get endless demonstrations of how he controls her, she has scenes interacting with friends who urge her to get out of the relationship, and…that’s it. It’s quite honestly insulting how much it hits you over the head with a check list of abuse warning signs.

When she at last goes to a psychic who gets spooked and kicks her out, it finally feels like this might become a horror movie.

66 minutes in, the husband has his thug friends abduct her and take her into the woods. There’s absolutely no explanation why, but a demon woman with long fingernails and a giant, toothy smile lives in a cave there and comes to help her—by killing the guys off swiftly in the course of about five minutes with really bad CGI effects. And that’s the end.

It’s a shame, because there are some eerie sequences with the demon woman, and there’s also a moment when she asks the main woman to be her husband.

It implies that there was the possibility of a great backstory for this demon woman, and the creators simply failed to realize it or just didn’t want to go for it.

THE BREACH (2022)

This one starts off promising…with a cute sheriff delving into the mystery of a gory, mutilated body floating to shore in a canoe.

He assembles a small team to investigate the home of a missing scientist on the other side of the water. Inside they find some Lovecraftian trouble brewing, including a keyhole-shaped door to the edge of reality in the attic.

If only this film had as much sleaze and blood as the Lovecraft adaptations of the late 80s (I’ve even seen it compared to From Beyond on IMDb).

We get a lot of talk and not much action. One of the guys steps into the portal and when he comes out he slowly begins to mutate. Meanwhile, the scientist’s wife, played by the mother from the TV show The Strain, shows up to add her two cents to a plot that never quite makes sense.

I’d say it’s worth watching The Breach for the hot sheriff briefly shirtless and the fricking awesome deformed beings that begin to swarm the house at the end.

The final act is definitely a treat, even if we’re left with a load of unanswered questions. But who really needs answers when there are cool monsters?

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Tales From The Crypt!

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Daniel

It was the very end of the 80s when the horror anthology series Tales From The Crypt premiered on HBO and the Crypt Keeper quickly established himself as a horror icon. Episodes of greed, deceit, and lust leading to gruesome and often campy outcomes were a joy to watch…for a while. Then the show began to run out of steam, and in its last few seasons the creators seemed to forget they were making a horror show. So I’ve rewatched all my DVDs of all seven seasons to make a list of my favorite episodes.

SEASON 1

And All Through The House

The first two episodes premiered on the same night, but the second episode, from massively successful director Robert Zemeckis, was the winner for me…even though it aired in June and it’s a Christmas episode. It’s a remake of the classic killer Santa tale from the original 1972 Tales From The Crypt movie, and Dr. Giggles plays the freaky Santa!

Notable is that for the first episode, the Crypt Keeper was very subdued. He didn’t find his maniacal cackle until this second episode.

Only Sin Deep

Lea Thompson is a vain prostitute who doesn’t believe she’s actually selling her beauty to a shop owner for a large sum of money…until the wrinkles start to appear.

Lover Come Hack to Me

Directed by Tom Holland, this one stars Amanda Plummer as an heiress who just got married to a gold-digging man. On the way to their honeymoon hotel, they are forced off the road by a storm and end up in an abandoned house, and the groom soon finds out there’s a price to pay when marrying for money. This one gets nice and macabre, just the way these tales should be.

Collection Completed

I’m just listing this one as somewhat of a warning to those with pets. After he’s forced into retirement, a man married to Mrs. Roper has to contend with all the pets she’s accumulated over the years while he was at work. It gets very dark…

SEASON 2

Dead Right

Demi Moore is told by a medium that she will marry a man who will inherit a lot of money and then die. I won’t give anything away, but this is how you write a twisted anthology short.

The Switch

Arnold Schwarzenegger directs this episode and makes a cameo with the Crypt Keeper! It’s a tale of an old rich man who resorts to extremes to become a hunk to win the affection of a younger woman. How could it possibly backfire? With a twist, of course.

‘Til Death

While on vacation, a gold-digging dude has a voodoo priestess make a love potion for him to score a rich a woman. He had no idea how strong it would be and how long it would last. My favorite episodes are always the ones involving walking corpses.

Three’s a Crowd

This one delivers a classic horror tale twist. A man who is convinced his woman is cheating on him goes mad with jealousy and rage. It all seems to drag out, but it’s worth it for the zinger ending.

The Thing From the Grave

This one comes from the director of The Monster Squad and Night of the Creeps. Teri Hatcher is a model with an abusive agent boyfriend, who makes it a habit of killing off men he thinks are having an affair with her. It’s another corpse back from the grave story. Wahoo!

For Cryin’ Out Loud

A rock promoter is stealing charity money and soon starts to hear his own conscience, voiced by the late Sam Kinison. This is a body horror gross out episode involving ear canals. Eek! Iggy Pop appears as himself and Katey Sagal appears as a sleazy leather rocker chick in a minor role.

Four-Sided Triangle

Patricia Arquette plays a young woman who works at a couple’s farm and is preyed upon by the man of the house. At the same time, she begins a romance…with a creepy scarecrow! This one is so sleazy violent.

The Ventriloquist’s Dummy

The director of The Omen brings us a tale of Don Rickles as a ventriloquist who gets visited by a fan who idolizes him, played by Bobcat Goldthwait. Bobcat discovers the horrific reason why Don is such a success while he’s a failure. This is how you do an episode.

Judy, You’re Not Yourself Today

Carol Kane plays a woman whose body gets switched with that of a witch. Some nasty witch action at the end.

Fitting Punishment

This is as crypt as it gets. A funeral director who disrespects the bodies he tends to gets classic horror payback in the end.

Korman’s Kalamity

From the director of Jack’s Back, this one stars Harry Anderson of Night Court in a tale of a Tales from the Crypt illustrator who can bring the monsters in the comic book to life. This one is creature camptastic and also stars Cynthia Gibb of Fame and Jack’s Back.

Lower Berth

The show gets so meta for a second episode in a row. This is a tale of how the fricking Crypt Keeper was born in a side show!

Television Terror

At the end of the 80s, a talk show host named Morton Downey Jr. suddenly came on the scene with a short-lived, Saturday night show that was crude, scandalous, and exploitative, and we ate it up.

In this episode he plays a media host planning to tour a haunted house for shock ratings, but his terror becomes the entertainment.

The Secret

Strong final episode for a season, this one is about an orphan boy who is adopted, after which things enter classic monster movie territory.

SEASON 3

Carrion Death

Kyle MacLachlan is a serial killer on the run who ends up handcuffed to a dead cop. Instead of just breaking off the hand (he’s a serial killer, after all), he decides to continue his escape dragging the corpse with him…which attracts a relentless vulture. The payoff is grisly good.

Dead Wait

In this tale directed by Tobe Hooper, a thief wants to steal a precious black pearl. He gets a job on the plantation where it is located and begins making some really bad decisions that lead to freaky voodoo shit and some nasty situations. Vanity and Whoopi Goldberg co-star, which totally gave me good retro vibes, and Whoopi gets a great one-on-one with the Crypt Keeper at the end. Classic.

The Reluctant Vampire

Malcolm McDowell plays a vampire who works at a blood bank so he can spare mortals from dying to satisfy his thirst. Unfortunately, he’s causing a shortage at the blood bank, which could mean a bunch of employees getting laid off. On top of that, there’s a vampire hunter coming for him. This campy tale also stars George Wendt of Cheers and horror icon Michael Berryman and has a delicious twist ending.

Undertaking Palor

This one captures the spirit of 80s Spielberg flicks, especially thanks to the fact that Ke Huy Quan plays one of four boys that sneak into a funeral home and stumble upon a plot to kill people to bring more business to the mortician.

Mournin’ Mess

Directed by the creator of Dr. Giggles, this one stars the subway ghost from Ghost as a homeless man believe to be a serial killer. He offers to reveal the identity of the real killer to Steven Weber, who plays an out of work reporter trying to advocate for the homeless. Weber then gets drawn into a gothic horror nightmare.

Split Second

The director of Razorback brings us a tale of violent jealousy and infidelity starring the killer from Shocker. He owns a lumber camp and married a young bartender…who grows and screws around with one of his pretty boy employees. This has a classic, dark and gruesome twist.

Spoiled

Julie from V – The Mini Series is a bored housewife who lives vicariously through a soap opera because her doctor husband is never home. When the cable guy comes over to hook her up, meta references to cable television start flowing, including the Crypt Keeper popping up on HBO. Anthony LaPaglia plays the cable guy, and he is hunky hot, so they start banging. That’s it. That’s why this one is included on my list of faves. Not very horror, but it does have a campy conclusion though.

SEASON 4

None But the Lonely Heart

Tom Hanks directs, and Treat Williams plays a hunk (no surprise) who marries rich old ladies then kills them for the money. As always, I love when corpses get revenge on bad boys, and these corpses are gnarly!

On a Deadman’s Chest

William Friedkin of The Exorcist fame directs a body horror tale of a rock band called…Exorcist! A groupie turns the leader of the band on to a tattoo artist that gives him a design that seems to have a life of its own.

Beauty Rest

This one comes from the director of Elm Street 3, so it’s no surprise Jennifer Rubin makes an appearance. Mimi Rogers plays an aging woman desperate for a chance to shine, so she enters a beauty contest through nefarious means. This has one twisted and macabre conclusion.

What’s Cookin’

Not the most original plot—a failing restaurant starts doing gangbusters after serving human flesh as steak—but this one has a big cast, including Christopher Reeve, Bess Armstrong, Judd Nelson, and Meat Loaf.

The New Arrival

This one comes from the director of The Changeling, and has a great cast, including David Warner, Zelda Rubenstein, Twiggy, and Robert Patrick. A radio psychologist decides to go to the home of a caller with a troubled child for publicity. Soon he and his team are being terrorized and killed by the “child”. This one is 80s horror movie level good.

Maniac at Large

From the director of Prophecy, this goodie takes place in a library. It stars Blythe Danner, Adam Ant, and Clarence Williams III, and there’s a killer on the loose. The episode is very atmospheric, with the shadowy library making for a perfect setting and creepy characters give it a great whodunit feel. It also has a satisfying conclusion.

Strung Love

The director of Hellraiser: Bloodline delivers the goods in this mailer puppet episode with a twist. Stars Zach Galligan of Gremlins.

Werewolf Concerto

This one has the distinction of being co-written by Rita Mae Brown, who wrote Slumber Party Massacre, and has a cast of familiar faces. It’s a classic story in the tradition of The Beast Must Die and Howling V, with a group of people trapped in one place and discovering that one of them is a werewolf.

Curiosity Killed

Starring Margot Kidder, this story of old people who find the fountain of youth is slow going, but the payoff twist at the end rules, especially if you’re a dog lover!

SEASON 5

Death of Some Salesmen

The director of Bordello of Blood starts season 5 strong. Lily Munster makes an appearance during the opener in this tale of a sleazy door-to-door salesman who rings the wrong doorbell. Ed Begley, Jr. stars, as does Tim Curry in multiple roles, reason enough not to miss this episode that turns sleazy and gender-bending as a result.

Forever Ambergis

Roger Daltrey and Steve Buscemi star in this super gory and icky story of two photographers, an infectious disease, and the girl who comes between them.

Food For Thought

The director of Idle Hands brings us a circus side-show story, always a haunting theme for horror. Ernie Hudson plays a psychic and therefore knows his assistant/servant starts cheating on him with the hot fire eater who also cares for the circus gorilla. There are enough dangers in that one sentence to give you a sense of where this tale of revenge is going…

People Who Live in Brass Hearses

The director of the 1984 classic Razorback keeps this gory season going with an episode about a convict (played by Bill Paxton) and his brother (played by Brad Dourif) trying to get revenge on the ice cream man that got him thrown in jail. The big fight between them gets grisly good.

House of Horror

Kevin Dillon, Brian Krause, Wil Wheaton, Jason London, Courtney Gains…it’s a fraternity pledge story with boys in undies serving as slaves to other guys who then take them to a haunted house where a massacre took place years before. Yay! This is classic scary house goodness.

Creep Course

In this episode, which originally aired at the end of 1993, Anthony Michael Hall’s acting career finally landed him a role as a college student instead of a high school nerd. He happens to target a girl geek to help him pass a class, but both he and his teacher have plans for the virginal girl, and it involves a horny mummy.

Came the Dawn

This is how you start an episode—an axe murder in a bathroom. Then a rich dude driving in the rain at night picks up a woman stranded on the road…none other than Brooke Shields. He offers to take her to his cabin in the woods. It’s a stormy night, she seems crazy, he seems crazy…and another woman shows up. It’s a classic twist that never goes out of style in the horror genre.

Half-Way Horrible

The owner of a successful chemical company did some shady business in a rain forest, which helped him create a chemical that prevents things from rotting…at least it’s supposed to….

SEASON 6

This is where the show began taking a turn for the worse. The episodes move farther away from horror, which is not surprising since everything about the early to mid-90s horror scene was severely lacking. So many duds here, and in some cases the Crypt Keeper intro outshines the episode it bookends.

Only Skin Deep

The director of the House on Haunted Hill remake brings us a Halloween episode! It opens perfectly with the song “Change” by BigElf at a costume party. A violent dude goes to his ex-wife’s costume party and hooks up with a woman in a mask. You just know this can’t be good, and this episode totally delivers on the horror. Plus we get hot Peter Onorati bod.

The Pit

This is a non-horror episode, but what’s of note is that although the episode isn’t about Christmas, the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro center around Christmas and are clearly a promo for his Christmas album, for he sings his version of “Deck the Halls” a little.

The Assassin

Another non-horror episode but notable for one reason—William Sadler of Bill & Ted reprises his role as the Grim Reaper in the opening with the Crypt Keeper.

Stained in Horror

D.B. Sweeney is a murderer on the run who ends up hiding in a house with an old lady. She tells him she can become hot and sexy if he meets her in the middle of the stairway due to a curse placed on her years before. The twist at the end of this episode leaves an impression.

Surprise Party

This one comes from the director of The Car. A man kills his father to inherit a farmhouse. When he gets there, a party is in full swing. The son is about to find out his father has somehow managed to inadvertently get revenge from beyond the grave.

Doctor of Horror

At this point I’m just happy to have an episode involving dead bodies. Country singer Travis Tritt and Hank Azaria play two security guards at a morgue who buy into a crazy doctor’s scheme to cut open corpses to steal their souls. The finale is dead corpse perfection.

Comes the Dawn

Susan Tyrrell and Michael Ironside? Wahoo! Two ex-military men go into the Alaskan woods to do some unorthodox hunting. They make a gruesome discovery involving a classic night creature threat.

SEASON 7

The big deal about the final season of the series is that production moved to England, and many feel it absolutely ruined the series. This season definitely takes the prize for most often not feeling like a horror anthology show at all. Still, I tried my best to pick some highlights.

Fatal Caper

This episode is notable for several reasons. First, Bob Hoskins directs and stars in it. It also stars the late Natasha Richardson. There’s a séance and resurrection element, and there’s a trans element.

Last Respects

This episode is silly and a bit crass, but it takes place in a curiosity shop, features three sisters wishing on a monkey’s paw, and has a classic return from the dead moment like earlier Crypt episodes.

Cold War

Ewan McGregor and Bubble from Ab Fab steal the show as a violent criminal couple, making this campy episode align perfectly with the era of movies like Natural Born Killers and Kalifornia. There’s a good old monstrous twist at the end. Ironically, the very next episode also stars an Ab Fab cast member—Saffy!

About Face

This one gets credit for being one of the few horror tales of the season. A priest learns he fathered twin girls when they show up at his door as grown women. He takes them in, but one of them is deformed and horror ensues.

Confession

Women are being decapitated around town, and suspicion falls on a scuzzy horror screenwriter, played by Eddie Izzard. The best part is that there’s a twist with a collection of severed heads. Yay!

Ear Today…Gone Tomorrow

When a safe cracker gets mixed up with a mobster’s wife, he ends up becoming a bit of an animal experiment. This has a nice and bizarre ending.

Perhaps it should have been the final episode instead of the penultimate episode, because the show just completely threw in the towel for its finale…a goofy animated episode based on The Three Little Pigs! Ugh! It’s unbearable to watch and a disastrous way to send off a once great anthology series.

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TUBI TERRORS: stream and slash

Posted on March 18, 2024 by Daniel

Ah. There’s nothing like a triple feature of slashers. But are any of these three worth a watch? Let’s find out.

MIDNIGHT SCREENING (2021)

This 69-minute film is super low budget, but I can’t help but have a soft spot for horror films that take place in a movie theater.

The premise is simple—there are 5 employees at the theater at closing time. One of them got his hands on an old film reel and wants to do a private screening of it. As they clean up, talk about potential new hires, and watch the movie, someone begins killing them off.

There are two major problems with this movie. First, the movie they are screening, which promises to hold some mystery, plays no part in the plot that unfolds. Second, all but one kill happen off screen! It’s a shame, because that one “graphic” kill is so quick, absurd, and funny that it encapsulates how the whole movie (and death scenes) should have played out.

The other downside is that there weren’t enough employees. If there had been like three more employees for a higher body count, along with onscreen kills, the pacing would have been better, and this truly would have been a fun little midnight movie.

The killer motivation sucks, but the zinger ending is perfect, and feels more like it could have been the final scene of a Tales from the Crypt episode.

DON’T LOOK AWAY (2023)

This is a fun little supernatural slasher that combines elements of Smile and The Ring.

A young woman gets into a car accident with the driver of a truck that was delivering a cursed mannequin, causing the curse to start pursuing her and her friends.

Wherever they go, the mannequin will suddenly appear nearby, and once you see it then look away, it disappears. Sounds like a plan to me, but unfortunately, if you don’t keep your eye on the mannequin, someone dies!

There is some genuinely spooky atmosphere, there’s no shortage of mannequin moments, there are a few entertaining kills, and there’s a very satisfying twist in the final act that sets this one apart from other stalk and destroy supernatural spectre flicks.

BLISS OF EVIL (2022)

I was loving the setup for this Australian slasher, but the film simply doesn’t live up to its promise.

We have a rock band heading into a studio in 1997. They’re still reeling from the death of one of their crew. The new guy they got to replace him is kind of creepy.

When they get ready to practice their song “Bliss of Evil”, the sound engineer starts to have a panic attack. It’s safe to assume they are about to unleash some supernatural killer.

NOPE. Instead, we get a totally bland dude in a hoodie as the killer. Yawn. He literally has to paint a blood mask onto his face so he’ll seem somewhat menacing.

There are hints of the kinds of classic slasher tropes we live for, but there are barely any kills, no chase scenes, no scares or suspense, and the band spends most of the time locked in one room trying to figure out how they’re going to get away.

The only somewhat interesting part is a flashback revealing what the deal was with their dead crew member.

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Sequelitis time! Humpty Dumpty, a bad nun, and Terror Toons

Posted on March 15, 2024 by Daniel

I’ve covered all the previous installments of these three franchises, so it’s time to play catch-up with the latest sequels.

TERROR TOONS 4 (2022)

 

This installment of the Terror Toons series sucked me right back into the warped visuals and abstract ideas that series creator Joe Castro brings to his films. You either eat up his approach to crafting horror weirdness or you don’t.

The fourth movie breaks from the original story to give us an anthology film, with Castro handling direction on only one tale and effects on all tales to ensure the chaotic horror presentation continues. For instance, the opening scene is just a smorgasbord of bee attacks set to classical music to prep you for his crazed style. Then come the stories:

Dr. Carnage: Origins

What do we have here? It’s a prequel focusing on the major evil cartoon villain of the series. A therapist having nightmares about the Terror Toons thinks she’s taking on a new case of a troubled child, but instead walks right into a mad scientist’s nightmarish lab lair.

Castro blends his bizarre, campy computer generated effects with his gruesome practical effects to deliver a totally fabulous freak show, with Linnea Quigley even getting in on the action. However, a giant rat definitely steals the show, and the ending is reminiscent of a classic episode of The Twilight Zone.

Personal Demons

Brinke Stevens plays an out of work actress and recovered junkie who inherits a mansion from her aunt that is supposedly haunted.

She is soon on what seems like an acid trip as she is terrorized by horrific renditions of her personal demons—in Joe Castro’s whacky green screen exploitation style.

The Heads of Mr. Switch

It’s a Halloween tale that begins with a very sexual frat prank scene. The boys whip out a blowup doll to play with. She inexplicably becomes real so that they can lose their virginity to her.

However, we all know what happens when you have sex in a horror movie. There are naked pretty boys galore and loads of icky, crass sexual situations in this fantastic fever dream holiday slasher.

The Clucking

This is a very short, twisted game show tale in which the evil Terror Toons doctor makes a really gross appearance. It’s also a sort of wrap-up conclusion to the first story.

BAD NUN 3 (2023)

I said I’d come back for more after the second film, so here I am. Smartly, this third installment is short and to the point, running about 70 minutes long.

The nun is ringing doorbells again and waiting for gullible victims to answer. The opening kill scene immediately tipped me off that something was different this time—the nun has a black cloth over her face and goes old school slasher with a knife.

Turns out the first victim was in sober group therapy. A few of her fellow therapy members become curious about her murder and how it relates to the nun killings in the previous movies, which leads to some flashback scenes.

The main girl ends up going on holiday to a vacation home, and soon the nun is terrorizing other in the vicinity. The highlight is when the nun goes to slit the main girl’s throat from behind and she blocks it…by putting her hand in the way. Gruesome!

This movie definitely feels like a cash grab, especially considering that when all is said and done, this is sort of like the Friday the 13th Part 5 of Bad Nun movies, but once again, I’d totally come back for another installment.

THE MADNESS OF HUMPTY DUMPTY (2023)

Just like the Bad Nun series, Humpty Dumpty is losing steam with this third installment. It’s only about 70 minutes long, and there’s barely any body count.

Our main girl is the daughter of the schizo woman from the last movie, and she inherits her mother’s house. She and her boyfriend head there, meet some curious neighbors, and then she begins seeing and hearing things.

Most of the “scary” parts are hallucinations the main girl is having. Is she going mad like her mother?

There are a few violent kills at least, but you can tell pretty early on that this one isn’t actually going to be about the Humpty Dumpty doll. Yep, another bait and switch movie—but it’s even more than that as we get several twists before all is said and done. It was alright, but I miss the freakiness the actual Humpty Dumpty doll delivered.

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