C, D and E horror from the early 2000-teens

Posted on February 28, 2019 by Daniel

As I near completion of blogging about all the movies in my collection, it was just obvious how I could group these three very different films from 2010 and 2012 into one blog. It’s all about being alphabetically OCD.

CHERNOBYL DIARIES (2012)

Chernobyl Diaries is one of those movies that bores me until the final amazing act. For starters, how fucking stupid are Americans that we would think going to a town destroyed by radiation is a good idea? Not to mention, who the hell would want to go to Russia…besides Putin-loving Republicans?


Seriously? I wouldn’t put my hands in that shit even without radiation!

Well, this stupid group of friends includes the hottie from Wolf Creek, flash in the pan teen heartthrob pop star Jesse McCartney, one of the cuties from the Friday the 13th remake…and some girls.

As they hop in a van for an extreme tour of the abandoned town, I couldn’t help but feel that this film has a found footage vibe even though it isn’t found footage. But all the boring stuff they do sure makes it feel like it. Most of the film is filled with them touring derelict buildings and encountering lame shit like a bear and wild dogs.

But when they start getting taken by the leftover inhabitants of the town with just 20 minutes remaining, shit gets wild fast!

It’s a nonstop chase from hell through grungy locations while freaky humanoids we never really get a good look at pursue them. It really gives me a Silent Hill vibe. Hell, there’s even a part where one dude finds a map just randomly hanging on a wall. WTF? Can I get a save point, too?


Well, you dumb bitches stuck your hand in the water, so naturally…

This last segment even feels like a linear video game, because no matter how far the survivors run through new locations or how many unexpected turns they make, they somehow keep stumbling upon bodies of their missing friends. How convenient.

DYLAN DOG: DEAD OF NIGHT (2010)

Based on a comic book series, Dylan Dog probably gets much of its hate from purists. Having never read the comics, I was able to just go with it. And by it, I mean a typical plot—monster hunter with a comic sidekick.

“Superman Returns” plays Dog, another reason this one received a lot of hate. My only issue with him here is that he has just one brief shirtless scene. Well, that and his annoying narration, which makes this feel like a bad attempt at old school film noir mystery.

His sidekick is Josh from Being Human, playing a zombie here instead of a werewolf. He gets all the funny parts, there just aren’t enough of them. Or maybe there are, but they’ve been spread too thin across the way too long 107-minute run time. Should’ve been 88 minutes tops. That’s right, I don’t even give it a full hour and a half. But back to Josh. As funny as he is here, his slapstick shtick borders on being shrill at times. Needed to be toned down a little.

A variety of cool monsters saves the films, including werewolves, vampires, zombies, and a mega zombie. It’s all very Buffy…or very Being Human. Personally, I think it would work better as a SyFy series based on the pacing and cheesy, goofy tone.

Other highlights include Taye Diggs as the king vampire, who is also disappointingly shirtless only briefly, and wrestler Kurt Angle (River of Darkness)…who disappointingly doesn’t get shirtless at all.

And of course there’s the final boss battle, visually comparable to something cool you might see in Van Helsing, The Brothers Grimm, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and other Hollywood monster movies of the early 2000s. In other words, this film was behind its time.

EXCISION (2012)

Take the teen angst of Ginger Snaps, the sexual awakening of Teeth, and the psychotic bitch from May, and you get Excision.

Richard Bates Jr, director of Suburban Gothic, goes for the gross, disturbing, and stylishly artistic with this bizarre film, which may seem immediately jarring because virtually every moment of dialogue delivery is shot head-on, so each character seems to be speaking directly to the camera.

The supporting cast features a bevy of horror and indie faves, including Traci Lords, Roger Bart, John Waters, Ray Wise, Malcolm McDowell, Marlee Matlin, and even little Ariel Winter of Modern Family.

But it is AnnaLynne McCord (Day of the Dead 2008, The Haunting of Molly Hartley, 68 Kill, Scorned) who carries the whole movie, doing what she seems to do best—playing a psycho bitch from hell. Perhaps her career is overshadowed by her time on the 90210 reboot, but she deserves so much more recognition than she gets, especially in the horror genre.

Her performance is what makes this movie worth watching for me, because this isn’t conventional horror and really leaves me unsatisfied when all is said and done. McCord plays the weirdest girl you’d never want to know in high school. Her morbid obsession with becoming a surgeon makes her an outsider everywhere, from home to school. And she’s not the Carrie type, who you actually feel bad for. She is a straight up psycho not even a mother could love.

In a weird way, not much actually happens in the film beyond her interacting with characters and having gruesome dreams that blend sex and mutilation. The movie incorporates aspects of teen struggles, sexual identity, body image, body horror, and religion into the mind of one single character. Expect some of it to be quite repulsive.

The conclusion is as odd as the rest of the film. Despite her strange behavior throughout the film, it somehow feels like there’s no actual build-up to the extreme thing she suddenly does at the end. And considering that moment just works as an exclamation point on the rest of the film, you almost get this feeling of, “Wait! The horror just started!” and then it’s over.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

A creature feature, a supernatural urban legend, and an anthology

Posted on February 26, 2019 by Daniel

A little bit of everything in this trio of recent films I streamed and watched on cable. Are any of them worth a watch? Let’s find out.

STRANGE NATURE (2018)

Great title for this movie, which is strange in a good way. Reminiscent of eco horror/nature strikes back horror of the 1970s, it has an odd, underlying sense of humor even though it’s a serious film.

And even though it’s a slow burner and not significantly in-your-face horror until the last 15 minutes or so, the likable characters and slow unfolding of bizarre events sucks you in.

A woman comes back to her small hometown with her son to be there for her father. The place is loaded with rednecks, including hottie John Hennigan with a mullet sent from heaven. This dude is apparently a former Survivor contestant and wrestler.

Main actress Lisa Sheridan (of the short lived series Invasion) has a great dry delivery, and reminds me strongly of Mary Steenburgen, and her quirky father rox…probably because he’s the funny dude who was trapped in the building across the way in the Dawn of the Dead remake. Dad ends up helping daughter when she becomes determined to find out why deformed frogs are growing in number in the area.

Here immediate obsession as soon as she arrives, along with her back story—which is so far from scientific it makes her obsession even more bizarre, are exactly what make the movie so weird and keeps you watching. That and a couple of “attack” scenes that suggest something is out in the wilderness and preying on people like Tiffany Shepis in a cameo…

The leading lady goes through all the usual research and investigation to figure out what is causing the deformities. Meanwhile, mutilated animals are being found, people are disappearing, and eventually the townsfolk start getting affected by the situation.

It all leads up to a thrilling but way too short creature feature segment at the very end. And even though it’s short, it’s worth the wait for all the retro horror fun, gore, and practical monster effects.

SLENDER MAN (2018)

You have to know what you’re in for when you watch a Hollywood tween horror flick based on an urban legend soon after a shocking case revolving around the legend hit the news. If you don’t know, then you really shouldn’t bother criticizing the film, because it does exactly what it’s supposed to do to spook its target audience.

Really, Slender Man is just another take on the popular plot of teens being stalked by a boogeyman that haunts their dreams and then their reality. It’s impossible to ignore the similarities to the Freddy Krueger legend, with a good dose of The Ring thrown in.

Teen girls hear about Slender Man, they watch a creepy online video to summon him, they start disappearing one by one, the survivors scramble to figure out how to stop him. Tale as old as horror.

Most of the film is fun and eerie, with some great suspense scenes, including a library attack and a girl receiving a video call that shows the perspective of Slender Man as he enters her house and heads for her room. EEK!

It’s when the remaining girls are onto him in the final act that things just get too sloppy and chaotic, which is usually the case with this type of film. It ruins the movie. Slender Man even turns into, well, Spider Slender Man…

Not to mention it leaves a major plot hole concerning one girl who never died but just disappears from the script completely while in less than normal shape.

WELCOME TO HELL (2018)

The wraparound of this anthology looks as low budget as it gets, with a couple sitting in what appears to be an actual home, trying to figure out what to watch on TV when a video tape suddenly drops through their mailbox. Hmm…where have I seen this wraparound before?

As for the stories, they also all feel low budget, and some of them seem like incomplete concepts.

1st story – This is nothing more than something you’d find on YouTube—a thrown together plot leading to a nonsensical final scare. Horror king Bill Oberst Jr. plays a detective, but the role could have been given to anyone, because he spends most of his time sitting at a desk for way too long doing nothing but silently pondering his case.

2nd – This is basically an homage to Argento and an excuse to place two lesbians in a Suspiria setting.

3rd – Wow. This one impressed me simply because it dares to go for the totally subversive. It’s an entirely controversial plot about parent/child incest and murder.

4th – A dialogue heavy short about a support group for people affected by a zombie outbreak. There’s also a zombie baby that looks like the kind you buy at the Halloween store in October, perhaps just covered in a sticky gel.

5th – about a guy with a gun in the woods.

6th – Notable for starring a handful of b-horror faves, including Marv Blauvelt and Felissa Rose, this is truly the most horror classic of the bunch, as a group of hunky guys try to cover up the murder of a woman and get monstrous payback.

As for the conclusion of the wraparound, no one even bothered to put any thought into it. I was kind of dumbfounded.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on A creature feature, a supernatural urban legend, and an anthology

Do you want to stick with Patient Zero or hold out For A Few Zombies More?

Posted on February 25, 2019 by Daniel

I’ve definitely become more discriminating about which zombie films are going to make it into my movie collection these days, and one of these two very different zombie films did. Read on to find out which!

FOR A FEW ZOMBIES MORE (2015)

It’s crazy that it was a decade after the low budget zomcom Hide and Creep came out that it scored a sequel (I wasn’t aware of it until it hit Prime).

Soooo…there was only one thing I remembered clearly about the first film. A guy runs around completely naked. I had to read my blog to refresh myself on the rest of the film, which makes sense, because my final line in that blog is “You might get some enjoyment watching Hide and Creep, but you probably won’t remember a thing about it a few weeks later.”

So trippy. It’s like the past me knows exactly how the future me is going to feel.

For A Few Zombies More actually brings back some of the original actors, which is cool, and it’s a more polished presentation, so it feels less like a cheap film made by struggling directors and more like an authentic, financed production.

There are crisp visuals, gory special effects, and rich zombie makeup (They are blue-faced as in Dawn of the Dead, yet still look better), but the plot is a harsh reminder that the zombie genre has been decimated by oversaturation. There’s just nothing original here, mostly because there’s very little left to bring to the zombie genre.

In an effort to make this more than just another zombie survival film, the main characters have a bigger enemy this time: zombie eaters. Yes, in between excessive conversation scenes, there are fights for survival against a Mad Max-like community of baddies that party, eat zombies, and kill people. You have to wonder in all these post-apocalyptic films dating back to the 80s…how the hell do these baddies have the time or products to keep up a kick ass Mohawk under the circumstances?

Most of the action in this film consists of gunfights between humans! It’s like watching The Walking Dead with some low budget camp and meta zombie references thrown in.

Future self, if you’re reading this, you didn’t remember a thing about this film a few weeks later and have no need to ever revisit it. I think I just blew future self’s mind.

PATIENT ZERO (2018)

The title is as generic as it gets. The movie starts and I’m like YAWN. Secret military base, they’re trying to find patient zero after infected outbreak, one guy has been bit but didn’t change and can now communicate with the infected.

After one brief subtitle scene to make it clear he speaks in a different language when he interviews the infected about patient zero, the film gives up on creating a zombie language, and he and the infected just speak English to spare us all the reading.

Aside from one soldier being sizzling hot, the most entertaining part of the film at first is that they name each infected after a classic rocker—Joe Cocker…Pete Townshend…

It’s all very predictable until…Stanley Tucci shows up. Holy shit! Brad Pitt, Glenn Close, and now Stanley Tucci? Also keep an eye out for one of the Dr. Who actors as the lead. Can zombies get any more mainstream?

It’s everything that happens from this point on that convinced me to buy the Blu-ray, which is when I noticed everyone on Amazon trashed this movie. What the fuck ever. This shit rules.

It’s infected insanity as a horde infiltrates the base, Tucci’s character brings a fresh take on the zombie/infected philosophy, there’s a great battle to the death, and there’s a vent scene from hell. I know I say that every time there’s a vent scene, but this time I mean it like never before.

The ending makes it feel like there’s either going to be a sequel or a fun new zombie show to replace Z Nation on SyFy.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Do you want to stick with Patient Zero or hold out For A Few Zombies More?

PRIME TIME: from slashin’ to laughin’ with this trio

Posted on February 22, 2019 by Daniel

If you love slashers and like something a little unusual in the subgenre now and then, this threesome is anything but usual. Of course, that’s not always a good thing. Let’s see what we get in this triple feature and which are worth a watch.

HARVEST OF THE DEAD (2015)

I was so in when I read a synopsis of girls going into the woods and being hunted down by “The Plague Doctor”. Unfortunately I couldn’t get into what turns out to be a weird, sloppy, amateurish slasher/Halloween/backwoods/anthology mashup.

The super dramatic, Omen-esque choral music seems to be in place to cover for the fact that there are essentially no sound effects during kills scenes. This deficiency isn’t masked enough, because that lack of sound weakens every kill…as does the lack of agony expressed by victims in every case. This is also one of those oversaturated films that essentially washes out all but a few colors (this may have been intentional, not sure).

Anyway, some girls go hiking in the woods right before Halloween, with footage interspersed with some random kill.

Then…the girls tell four very incomplete stories, most with low budget special effects. My favorite is one about killer pumpkins…around a campfire…simply because it’s about killer pumpkins.

The last story has the girls discussing the Plague Doctor right before he starts coming for them.

The final act is a hugely unpolished backwoods slasher full of disjointed scenes (one a total Jason canoe homage), finally ending on a bad location set in a room that doesn’t look like much of a killer lair at all. It’s more like that eternally empty office you walk by everyday at work on the way to your cubicle and wonder, “Why the fuck can’t I get that office?”

Finally, we get an expositional killer soliloquy…ugh. It’s still not as bad as the lack of enthusiasm the victims express over being hacked up.

MURDER LOVES KILLERS TOO (2009)

This oddity is not a horror comedy but manages to somehow be tongue-in-cheek by the end, despite some rapid fire, super brutal kill scenes.

The usual cabin in the woods scenario is shaken not stirred, for as soon as these kids get to the place in the woods, they are quickly dragged off one by one and gruesomely killed…right in another part of the house! Awesome. Luckily for the killer, numerous party and sex montages with blasting music drown out the sounds of the screams.

That also makes this one as much a home invasion flick as a backwoods slasher, because this ordinary killer nonchalantly roams around the house, just out of view as everyone goes about their business.

As if the fast-paced slasher part isn’t enough, once it’s down to the final girl, there are a series of fresh and unique scenes that bring this one to a whole new level. And the end scene is the ultimate in unconventional slasher territory.

BAGMAN (2018)

This comedy slasher about a guy with a bag on his head who goes around killing people who don’t recycle is…silly as fuck, naturally. It’s also wonderfully funny at times. Bagman is a charming killer who waves hello and goodbye to his victims and drops some great one-liners.

And despite the goofy motive, Bagman doesn’t hold back with the kills. Hell, the very first hammer kill in a barn is so fast and vicious you might be surprised to discover this is a spoof once you get into it. Off course, once Bagman starts stuffing a plastic water bottle in a dude’s mouth and telling him to swallow it like a big black dick, you know what you’re in for.

Sure, that and other scenes, like the cute main boy (yes, it’s a main boy) being told by a gay guy at a party that he has a great ass, and hilarious exchanges between Bagman and a lesbian and a whore get my seal of approval, but like many slasher spoofs going way back to the 80s, the film suffers from a manic, messy plot, too many characters not doing much of anything, and a convoluted denouement that creates unwatchable chaos. Bummer.

And I know I sound like a broken record, but…100 minutes. No. Just. NO. IMO, the script should have gotten a rewrite to tighten up the plot, cut the pointless excess, and completely change the final battle, and the film should have been trimmed to about 80 minutes long.

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on PRIME TIME: from slashin’ to laughin’ with this trio

PRIME TIME: 2 flicks that get inside the head, but do they deliver the horror?

Posted on February 19, 2019 by Daniel

These two films explore the fears, memories, dark sides, and mental states of two different people: a single father and a single woman. But is what’s going on in their heads scary to us?

DARK SILENCE (2016)

I can’t be hard on this one despite it not being my kind of horror flick. In other words, it’s a “deep” film. 

A man is haunted by his own demons, which begin to manifest in dreams and delusions as a freaky masked figure that is after his daughter. That alone brings some good horror entertainment value.

Trippy and surreal, this is more a character study translated into visual horrors rather than a “scary” movie. The sequences are definitely eerie and atmospheric, but it becomes somewhat repetitive as it moves towards a conclusion you can see coming if you’ve been around the horror block a few times.

The daughter is creepy—trauma has led to her not talking and having a doll for a friend. And dad has a beard, wears flannel, and runs around shirtless in all his dreams sequences, so no complaints there.

I like that the film doesn’t rely solely on the masked freak, instead bringing in some creepy corpses representing the guilt he has over those he’s lost in his life. But that does cause the trajectory of the film to be spelled out for the audience rather than metaphorical, so it just falls a bit flat in the end.

ALONE IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT (2017)

Hottie Matty Castano, director of 1 Dead Party, is back with another horror flick.

In this one, a young woman with a bad knee is trapped in her apartment by a masked creep…but not until an hour into the movie!

It’s really astounding that absolutely nothing of importance happens for most of this film! We meet the main girl, her friend comes over to hang for a while, they talk a bit about her ex-boyfriend, there’s a little promise of something creepy going on when they hear noises from the empty apartment next door…

…but it all goes nowhere and the friend leaves. After that…holy fuck! It is just one montage after another as we watch the main girl do random girlie things like trying on clothes and doing her makeup. I seriously can’t comprehend that anyone would watch this film back and think that any of this worked. The only bone we are thrown is a gross body horror moment.

It’s a shame, too, because once she gets chased by a masked creep, this film has real potential. There’s an absolutely claustrophobic scene in the bathroom in which a freaky demon woman thing terrorizes her. I fricking loved this scene.

It has a very Silent Hill vibe, and if there were more of this, I would have been able to overlook that the psychological horror aspect of the film didn’t clarify anything by the end. I really have no idea what this chick’s deal was, or if anything she experienced really happened.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on PRIME TIME: 2 flicks that get inside the head, but do they deliver the horror?

A 4-movie weekend marathon; it gets better…

Posted on February 17, 2019 by Daniel

Things were not going my way when I started my horror viewing this weekend, but by the time I got through this mish mosh of killer clown, possession, deadly game, and ghost films, my horror happiness was restored. This, luckily, is the exact order in which I watched these four.

CLOWN KILL (2014)

A final twist in a slasher really means nothing if everything that comes before it leaves you not even caring by the time you get to it, as is the case with this clearly low budget film. Everything about it is rough, but I could overlook that if there were at least some thrills. There just aren’t.

A woman stumbles to a bathroom in a bar and gets raped by a clown (it’s implied). Flash forward, and now she works at an office and is barely the focus. There’s a sexual harassment segment and then a whole lot of footage of employees just talking at their desks. The film even tries to introduce humor and some meta horror convo to make it more bearable. Doesn’t work.

37 minutes in, the clown shows up. About ten minutes later he begins killing people.

Nothing gory or scary to see here, and the clown killer one-liners fall flat. There is at least a chase scene and a body reveal party.

Eventually there’s that twist, but I’d be surprised if anyone but me made it that far.

DEMONS (2017)

Look, I’m going to spoil the fuck out of this movie to save you an hour and forty-five minutes. So if you don’t appreciate the huge favor I’m doing you, then just skip to the next movie.

Forget the demon pictured in the poster art. The demons in this movie are personal demons disguised as possession. Yep, it’s a movie about a girl that appears to be possessed, but in the end it turns out she was just losing her shit because she was being abused by her dad, played by Andrew Divoff.

How do we learn all this? The priest who performed the exorcism married her sister, they are staying at a friend’s house for a wedding, and she’s being terrorized by visions of her sister. Personally, I’d be like, “Dead sis, what are you doing wearing that silly ghost makeup?”

Now get this. While it’s implied that the priest and wife don’t know exactly what occurred or why the sister died during the exorcism, they take part in a séance loaded with messy flashbacks that negate the entire point of the film by showing that they were there for the whole thing and experienced the truth. WTF?

There’s a twist after the credits start to roll, and it’s the only part that pretends to be a horror movie.

TRUTH OR DARE (2018)

Your classic, polished horror flick about a group of friends dying one by one, Truth Or Dare is like It Follows…with the Truth Or Dare game being the “it”. Not to mention, aspects of this film are strikingly similar to the Hulu show Light as a Feather.

A group of friends crosses the border to Mexico—which hasn’t yet built a wall to keep American shits out—and plays a game of Truth or Dare in an old, rundown cathedral.

They come back home and suddenly they’re being forced to continue playing whenever someone nearby gets this evil expression on their face and pops the question. Whether you chose truth or dare, it’s never a pleasant outcome.

Odd thing is, the evil face everyone makes that passes from person to person is almost exactly that of the traveling face that jump bodies in the low budget Christmas flick Elves!

The movie pretty much gets 5 stars simply because Teen Wolf is one of the leads, but as the kids run around trying to figure out how to stop this curse (it’s very The Ring), it soon becomes obvious that I’m always right—horror flicks should not be longer than 90 minutes long. This one runs 105. Ugh.

But I’ll let that go because it is a fun mainstream tween horror flick. Plus there’s a gay character who makes it pretty far into the film (the cutie on the left).

HIDE IN THE LIGHT (2018)

As the title suggests, this is a basic “Darkness Falls” premise—stay in the light or it gets you!

A group of friends that calls themselves the Urban Explorers goes to check out an abandoned orphanage, but it’s never quite clear if they have a video channel or something of that sort, or if they’re just doing it for kicks.

Every single guy in the group is adorable, especially the two guys shamelessly proud of their homoerotic bromance.

On top of that, for a low budget film with a familiar plot, this is quite successful at being suspenseful, scary, and fast-paced.

The group splits up to explore and film, and pretty soon they are encountering a little girl who wants to play a game…but only with the lights out.

It’s non-stop running with flashlights as they try to figure a way out in between getting dragged into the darkness. My only real complaint here is that they never seem to get a clue that they get dragged away because there is darkness behind them! Walk in a damn circle formation to cover all sides with light. Geez!

Best scene definitely seems to be inspired by Session 9, plus, there’s a scene totally borrowed from the final frame of Quarantine.

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 A 4-movie weekend marathon; it gets better…

STREAM QUEEN: holiday horror from Halloween through Valentine’s Day

Posted on February 14, 2019 by Daniel

I was expecting to just hit up the latest Valentine’s Day horror flick from Hulu’s Into the Dark series, but I ended up all over the map this week thanks to uncovering movies that touch upon the bulk of the holiday season! So much to add to the complete list on my holiday horror page. Here they are in order of holiday appearance…beginning with Halloween, naturally.

THE WITCHING (2016)

Call it my personal preference, but if you’re going to set the wraparound of an anthology on October 31st, make all the stories revolve around Halloween. The Witching has a group of geeks trying to become famous on the Internet (basically anyone under 50 these days—shit, I have like 2 more months to become a sensation) by telling scary stories in the woods on Halloween, which means even their situation doesn’t bring holiday spirit to the movie. This is essentially just another anthology of campfire stories—they are definitely good and to the point, but not focused on Halloween.

1st story – Creepy but generic ghost boy story.

2nd story – A woman is terrorized by the sleepwalker, an awesomely freaky ghoul!

3rd story – A skeptical DJ has a psychic on his show, and tells her to prove with visual evidence that God and the devil exist as she claims. Big mistake.

4th – A haunted object story revolving around a child in a crib for good measure.

5th – Another night security guard terrorized by ghosts story with a fun twist.

6th – A fun car breakdown stalker story on a deserted road.

I wouldn’t mind seeing the wraparound as a full-length film, because it gets witchy good for the last five minutes. A 5-minute witch in the woods moment that’s ten times more satisfying than sitting through The Blair Witch Project.

THE TERROR OF HALLOW’S EVE (2017)

Imagine my surprise when the end credits role on this Halloween flick and I discover it’s written by our favorite horror hottie Zack Ward! Adding to the behind the scenes hotness is the director, who also happens to have a small role in the film!

This is a fun and fantastical revenge flick wrapped up in a Halloween theme. Speaking of, it interweaves plenty of nods to Carpenter’s Halloween along the way, including the music, which also sounds like Carpenter’s Christine soundtrack at times.

The first part of this short 80-minute movie establishes that our main teen boy is a horror fanatic, artist, and bullied geek.

After a particularly harsh encounter with his bullies, he finds a mysterious pumpkin on his way home, carves it in fury while wishing for revenge, and accidentally summons the “Trickster”.

Played by horror monster god Doug Jones, this freaky troll wills the main boy to draw the Halloween horror fates of his enemies, which begin to come true with great horror atmosphere. There is what can only be described as the most terrifying horror movie scarecrow I’ve ever come across (not surprisingly also played by Doug Jones), what appears to be an homage to Puppet Master, demon women, and a big Pumpkinhead type monster.

There are also various cameos, including delicious Christian Kane, Eric Roberts, and Juliet “Drusilla” Landau of Buffy fame.

I’ll definitely be adding this goodie to my Halloween DVD collection. Just note that because this is a revenge flick, the frightening moments are softened by the fact that we’re not exactly rooting for the victims.

GRANDMA WEREWOLF (2017)

This is a short, goofy indie that could have been better embellished with a bigger budget.

As is, it feels very cheesy and low budget. Of course that lends itself to the silly story. A dad takes his son and daughter to their grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving, and before long she reveals she is a werewolf. When she runs away to wreak havoc on the town, it’s up to them to stop her.

I’m always happy to have another Thanksgiving flick, and they even start some Christmas decorating. It’s a good plot point for a werewolf granny movie, but the film moves away from the holiday theme too soon.

Instead of grandma’s identity staying secret throughout the Thanksgiving festivities with the family slowly beginning to suspect something is awry (as is usually the case in the “My xx is an xx” formula), grandma just flat out admits it.

The family spends a lot of time hunting her down and gaining some supernatural powers to aid in the final battle, plus there are some detectives on her trail. There’s even a hunter who looks like he stepped out of Mad Max, but his role is sorely underplayed, to the point of being, well, pointless.

Hairy granny’s look is merely cheap costume store crap, but it fits with the oddball notion of little old grandma being a werewolf. And while there are some quick, funny jokes, the film is carried by the kids. These two are such great natural actors, play off each other perfectly, and absolutely steal the show from all the adults.

ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE (2017)

Despite all the hype, don’t go into Anna and The Apocalypse expecting it to be anything but High School Musical level songs interspersed throughout a pretty good zombie movie with plenty of campy fun gore.

The plot is smartly simple—Anna and her friends deal with parents, teachers, and teen angst at school around the Christmas holiday…just before the zombie outbreak. Characters are likable and well developed. One of them is a lesbian, one is a funny bimbo who does a sexy Santa number at the Christmas play with boy dancers backing her up, and there’s a villainous teacher who totally reminds me of the duke from Moulin Rouge.

The songs are catchy because they feel like Radio Disney pop tracks circa 2005. The singing is average—clearly acting was more important than singing when casting—and the musical performances and dancing are veeeeery basic. Dare I say…clearly acting was more important than dancing ability when casting.

Perhaps my favorite musical number is performed by a gang of zombie hunting boys on the street. The song totally riffs off “Eye of the Tiger.” Now there’s an idea. What if the other novelty of this Christmas zomcom musical had been that every song replicated the sound of an eighties classic?

The Christmas holiday is perfectly intertwined into everything that happens throughout, so it’s most definitely a holiday horror to get you in the spirit.

Finally, the movie wasn’t as captivating as I expected. The pacing is a bit off, with noticeable lag between songs and zombie attacks as the kids just migrate from one place to another. Honestly, I think the energy was a bit too low-key considering all that is going on. Even my hubba hubba announced it wasn’t totally grabbing him…and then went to bed without seeing it through to the end!

My takeaway from the film is that it’s a better zomcom than zomusical.

DOWN (2019)

The February installment of Into the Dark focuses on Valentine’s Day, but neatly works Presidents Day into the mix. Two pretty people—a guy and girl—find themselves trapped in a malfunctioning elevator in their office building right before Valentine’s Day weekend, which happens to coincide with Presidents Day Monday, which means they are stuck for a long weekend.

Luckily, they are each prepared for the holiday, so there’s some wine and candy kisses on hand. It would all be kind of romantic if…

…it weren’t clear that they are being watched through the security monitors.

I don’t think this is what she meant when she told him she wanted the shaft.

Much of the film focuses on the pair getting to know each other quite intimately (ah, so that’s why it’s called “Down”).

This is what I call an elevator ride.

But there’s an unnerving feeling all along that something is wrong (those monitor POVs), so it’s no surprise when it all leads to violence at the hands of a psycho.

It’s safe to say this is P2 on Valentine’s Day in an elevator instead of on Christmas in a parking garage. While it takes a while for the suspense to hit, the unnerving tension beforehand keeps your attention, and once the fight to the finish begins, it doesn’t let up.

Having said all that, it’s undeniable that this is a totally predictable thriller; I’d be surprised if you don’t see the twist coming right from the start. Even so, it’s still one of the best installments of the series so far.

Posted in The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

PRIME TIME: an eleven, a twelve, and the after effect

Posted on February 12, 2019 by Daniel

It’s always a shock to me when I do an Amazon Prime marathon of stuff I’ve thrown into my watchlist and I actually enjoy a majority of it. As is the case with this trio of films that ranges from zombies and the infected to a masked killer.

TRENCH 11 (2017)

I wouldn’t imagine that a film both military themed and a period piece would ever hold my interest, but infection flick Trench 11 does it. I’d describe it as mashup of The Thing and The Descent.

When a military team is sent to search an underground bunker for missing men during World War II, they soon discover a bunch of sinister Nazis have been doing some evil experiments—shocker—and the victims have gone The Crazies route…thanks to squirmy spaghetti worm parasites in their bodies.

There’s a bit too much scientific chatter throughout the film—we don’t need all the complex details beyond evil Nazis infect people who turn into killers—so the film isn’t nonstop action and suspense. But that’s forgivable, because the phenomenal gore effects and brutal attacks make this a standout from similar plotted movies.

On top of that, the main guy is very human despite this being a military film, the guys are hot (especially pretty boy Charlie Carrick and hunky baldy Jeff Strome), the acting is excellent, and there’s a fricking crawl space scene. Eek!

But most important, whether intentioned or not, the movie seems to be patterned after the structure of a video game, combining aspects of both first person and third person horror games. Cool.

XII (2008)

This odd little flick does very little to make any sense, and it generally drags all the way through, but it’s worth it to see the sudden shift to a brutal slasher at the very end, with Harmony of Buffy as one of the main girls.

After a quick setup showing a convict’s prison background, which sets up the killer motivation, we jump five years ahead to a just married couple driving through the desert to major disco music…and then getting hunted down and killed by someone in a red truck.

In between what feels like random people getting killed in a desert town (I’ll never understand how those types of towns even exist), there’s an FBI guy doing an investigation. YAWN. Of course those scenes, which I totally tuned out, explain the rather basic backstory. But who the frick needs a backstory? A killer in a red truck is killing people and sewing together human face masks. Just get to it already!

Finally, when it’s just Harmony and another girl, the movie becomes focused…in a totally unfocused way. There are shootouts with the killer, car chases, a torture lair (heinous face peeling), a bear trap scene (shocker), and a brutal fight to the death.

The film definitely redeems itself with some horror appeal in the final act, even if it is as predictable as they come and not particularly scary.

AFTER EFFECT (2012)

If you’re just looking for a quick zombie/infected fix, After Effect is the way to go. Don’t let the fact that Daniel Baldwin is in the cast deter you…this isn’t a really awful low budget flick. The infected are gnarly gross, the gore effects are tight, and the suspense and action are quite good. Despite being derivative, it’s a very satisfying horror film.

A handful of students volunteers to be part of some sort of experiment for money. As they hang out and get to know each other, everything seems okay. But once they begin getting called away one at a time, things go downhill fast.

A good old sex scene featuring big boobs kicks off the horror, and within minutes, body fluids start to flow. The kids are on the run, trapped in the facility as running, snarling, talking infected chase them down. Talking infected really do up the creepy factor of this subgenre for me.

The cast is likable, the guy heading the experiment is a chiseled stud, one of the main dudes is beefy, and one bald guy comes across as gay. Plus, there are some cool twists along the way.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on PRIME TIME: an eleven, a twelve, and the after effect

The House trilogy…part 1, 2 and…4?

Posted on February 7, 2019 by Daniel

I realize now you had to be there and about 15 years old to appreciate 1985’s House. I was, and I did, but things change.

Steve Miner (Friday the 13th 2&3, Lake Placid, Halloween H2O, Day of the Dead remake) directs what I used to think was a kick ass movie. It always hurts to revisit an 80s classic only to find that all it has going for it is nostalgia.

It’s astounding to me that House is barely funny—in my head it was horror comedy gold—and that the plot is a ridiculous mess. Only the various ghouls save this one.

Tommy Ross/The Greatest American Hero William Katt plays a former military man who is now an author struggling with the loss of his son. And by that I mean the kid just went missing. The flashback seriously makes it look like a car drove off with him.

Now Katt is estranged from his wife, played by Kay Lenz (Stripped to Kill, The Initiation of Sarah), so he decides to move into the home of his aunt, who recently committed suicide there. But auntie ghost isn’t the problem. There’s a Lovecraftian creature in a closet, little creatures in the fireplace, a deformed monster version of his still living wife, and an old military buddy turned zombie, played by Richard “Bull” Moll. Oh, and his son is trapped in the house in another dimension that is set during the Vietnam war. None of it makes any sense at all.

Meanwhile, Norm of Cheers plays his neighbor, and even he isn’t as funny as I remember him being.

HOUSE II: THE SECOND STORY (1987)

Different house, different story. Ethan Wiley (Blackwater Valley Exorcism, Children of the Corn V) the second terrible House film that I never remember until I watch it again.

Lar Park-Lincoln of Friday the 13th Part 7 has a surprisingly minor role as the wife of the main man, played by Arye Gross of the Ellen sitcom, before it was called Ellen. When they move into a new house, his buddy comes to visit and they go dig up his grandfather’s grave to rescue a supposed magic skull crystal from it.

With the skull they also unearth corpse gramps, who comes to live in the house with them and even blends in at their Halloween party. Then some old muscle barbarian crashes the party and gets the skull. The guys have to follow him to prehistoric times to reclaim it. They bring back an ancient princess, a baby pterodactyl puppet, and a caterpillar/dog mashup puppet. It’s like watching fricking Fraggle Rock.

Bill Maher makes a brief appearance, and Cliff from Cheers comes around as an electrician, and he’s funnier than Norm was in the first film.

Eventually the main guy has to fight a zombie cowboy, which gave me really bad Bubba Ho-Tep flashbacks. Yet this piece of crap is better than that film.

HOUSE IV (1992)

Years ago when I worked at the video store, I drove my boss crazy trying to get him to find “House 3” after we got House IV into the store. It wasn’t until the Internet changed the world that I learned the truth about The Horror Show being slapped with that title in some markets. It’s also slapped with that title on my Blu-ray, so I’m forced to shelve it with my other House films.

House IV fails miserably at trying to bring the series back full circle to the first film with the return of William Katt. Unfortunately, he now has a wife who isn’t Kay Lenz (even though they reconciled at the end of the first film), and he has a daughter instead of a son, and she’s in a wheelchair. Plus, their house is now an inheritance from his dad, not his aunt. It’s like Katt’s character went into witness protection and started a new life.

But the focus isn’t on Katt, because, you know, he was just overwhelmed with other acting jobs by 1992…

The focus is on his wife, who moves into the house with just her daughter…and is harassed by Katt’s brother, who wants the house. Terri Treas of the Alien Nation series, who plays the wife, is awesome in the film and the best lead character of the series. She’s funny and dives head first into the horror craziness. I just wish there was more horror than she deals with.

Weirdness slowly creeps into her world—pizza with a face, a blood shower, a fight with her daughter’s bed, a nightmare of her brother-in-law in nurse drag—but then the film veers into an absurd, Full Moon Films style organized crime plot involving her brother-in-law and very little in the way of ghosts or monsters.

Leave it to the 90s to make an already weak franchise from the 80s even worse. On the bright side, Katt returns to save his family, but it’s hokey as hell.

Posted in Living in the 80s - forever, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on The House trilogy…part 1, 2 and…4?

It’s a love/hate friendship when the Killer Clown meets the Candy Man!

Posted on February 5, 2019 by Daniel

Director Pete Jacelone has a long filmography of varying styles of horror (I blog about many of his films here), but if you’re no stranger to his violent male sexploitation flicks, you’ll know what you’re in for when watching this one. He has essentially incorporated his shock horror formula (young men in tighty-whities being choked to death) into a fictionalized showdown between two real-life psychos: John Wayne Gacy and Dean Corll.

Gacy’s clown was already given his own feature with The Pogo Project, so in this film much of the young men fall victim to the Candy Man, played with twisted perfection by Edward X. Young.

Basically the two serial killers meet and each describes the gruesome, graphic nature of his kills. True crime fans take note—while dark and over-the-top, the film does borrow from factual details of each killer’s M.O.

This is pure exploitation, so it comes with a disclaimer noting that it in no way means to demean the deaths of the actual victims. In other words, beware if you’re sensitive to actual murders being turned into a pervy flick loaded with young men in undies writhing and begging for their lives while being taunted by dirty old men.

Jacelone always manages to make you feel uneasy at least/repulsed at most without ever showing much more than the victims being choked. It’s what’s implied that causes you to fill in all the gaps in your mind.

The young men never even get naked…It’s only Edward X. who rocks a jock at one point.

He also gives you the icks with his perverse facial expressions, flicks of his tongue, the way he touches the victims, and the things he says, including homophobic slurs that highlight the self-loathing of many male-male killers.

It’s very easy to be up in arms at the treatment of men in The Killer Clown Meets The Candy Man, but if you think about it, that revolting feeling hugely calls out a double standard that has existed in horror since forever. An uncountable number of films have treated women this way and worse over the years, yet they’ve become an acceptable and basically embraced and expected part of the horror landscape. Finding yourself deeply offended by what’s being presented as entertainment here and could be interpreted as the fetishization of torture, rape, and murder of young men may just be pointing out your own hypocrisy about gender.

As disturbing as the subject matter is, Jacelone manages to somehow make you feel guilty for laughing at oddly campy moments. Personally, I couldn’t help but giggle whenever the killers got “turned down” by uninterested guys they approach on the street. And the film makes sure to veer away from all the what-the-fuckery with slapstick conflict and camaraderie between the two serial killers caused by their own deep-rooted issues. The jarring shift in tone to crazy camp feels weirdly inappropriate, but it’s a notable relief to betaken out of the otherwise horrible realism of the kill scenes to which we’re being subjected.

In other words, if you watch The Killer Clown Meets The Candy Man, plan to have everything you know about your own psyche challenged big time.

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , | Comments Off on It’s a love/hate friendship when the Killer Clown meets the Candy Man!