Three degrees of slashing

Posted on September 4, 2025 by Daniel

This is definitely an uneven selection of slashers I picked from my streaming watchlist, but are any of them worth a watch? Let’s find out.

AMERICAN SCARECROW (2020)

If only this film had recognized the opportunity embedded in its unintentional comedic moments, it could have gone a totally different route.

As far as killer scarecrow movies go, this is not a supernatural flick…it’s a guy in a scarecrow mask. So, it’s nothing more than a slasher.

After an opening “kill” scene in which a dude simply falls in a well from freight, we meet a group of friends that comes to an abandoned farmhouse to assess it for rehab and renovation. They explore the vacant house’s creepy nooks and crannies, one girl finds a diary that adds no significance to the plot, a little, scared girl shows up and also adds no value to the plot, and there’s a brief discussion of Native Americans having the land stolen from them…which…has no bearing on the plot.

What I’m saying is, there’s not much of a plot.

To pad the time, we see a random redneck enter a cornfield about 30 minutes in for a nicely crafted, claustrophobic chase scene in the rows, but there’s no screaming or blood when the scarecrow strikes. Sigh.

52 minutes in, one of the main dudes is killed by the scarecrow, at which point the slashing action takes off, and this becomes fairly watchable. It’s also where the humorous potential shines. The kills come across as funny, and one dude who gets his hand hacked off suddenly becomes hilarious as he keeps begging someone to rescue his severed extremity. I’m almost positive that this whole segment is intentionally funny, which makes me wonder why this tone wasn’t established earlier and carried through the movie.

The final chase and fight definitely deliver, so the film ends on a high note, even if there’s no clear explanation for the unclear unfolding of events.

THE OMICRON KILLER (2024)

Making the odd choice to cash in on a pandemic four years after it changed the world, this film is about a copycat killer following in the footsteps of a previous killer known as the New York “COVID killer” (because he wears a surgical mask). How is that for a weird setup? The original COVID killer is dead, so we never even get to see him in action. You’d think this was actually a sequel to another movie.

Adding to this bizarre setup, there’s a satanic cult, led by Felissa Rose, that hangs out in the cemetery throughout the movie trying to do a ritual to resurrect the original COVID killer.

Horror queen Lynn Lowry has a minor role as the head of police, but the detecting is done mostly by two recovering alcoholic dudes, which is when you realize this movie appears to be trying to come across at least in part as a horror comedy. Very confusing.

The copycat killer ends up in a hospital after his first three kills in an alley because the police think he was just defending himself against a trio of thugs…that he brutally killed. There are some weird characters at the hospital, including a nurse and a doctor, but the focus on them goes nowhere once the copycat killer escapes the hospital, killing everyone on his way out the door.

There’s virtually no plot to follow beyond the copycat killer being incensed that he is considered irrelevant because he’s just a pale imitation of the original COVID killer. Even news reporters are calling him a “weaker variant” (wink wink), which is when he goes out and buys a cooler mask to replace his plain old N95 mask.

The kill scenes, which just consist of taking out random people rather than relevant characters, are at least pretty intense, but the final battle between police and the copycat killer is a letdown.

There is, however, an epilogue scene that ties up one of the dangling subplots and promises a sequel with a much cooler looking killer.

TORTURE THE FLESH (2024)

The movie poster of a sexy neon glow killer mask says sleek, contemporary slasher, but the title tells the real story. There’s nothing sleek or sexy about the way the flesh is tortured in this throwback to serious video nasties, complete with grisly, old school practical effects.

Those gross death scenes are definitely the reason to watch this one, because the “mystery” is weak and the events that unfold between the kills are painfully repetitive as the movie tries to drive home the profiles of the minimal number of main characters so that they all seem like suspects. The overkill could have been paired down by editing out much of the repetition and trimming the movie down from a whopping 110 minutes to a leaner 90 minutes.

This is a purely misogynistic massacre movie with kills reminiscent of the gnarliest over-the-top deaths in late 70s/early 80s Euro horror. There’s plenty of female nudity as a nipple is cut off, faces are cut in half with buzz saws, fingers are chopped off, heads are bashed with a hammer, and not once, but twice, vaginas are stabbed repeatedly in explicit closeups.

While fucked up, the mutilations are definitely a way to balance out the plodding plot. One guy is dealing with his wife and daughter being victims of the killer, and he does a lot of moping around while grieving. There’s also an alcoholic, abusive detective on the case, along with his insecure, rookie partner. And just for good measure, we get Lynn Lowry again, this time as the ex-wife of the abusive detective.

Near the end of the film, we get a long strip club scene, because every sleazy horror flick needs one, and the film concludes in a warehouse with the main characters standing in a circle accusing each other of being the killer. It’s a bland finale that includes a shootout (yawn), and you’ll most likely guess who the killer is before the reveal.

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When ghosts, demons, and zombies get the last laugh

Posted on September 2, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a trio of indie horror comedies in various subgenres, but do they all deliver on the humor? Let’s find out.

FOREVER HOME (2023)

This film is going for the playful haunted house vibe, but its charm is hindered by one thing—the whopping 115-minute run time. Argh!

It starts off strong with a few kids sneaking into a reportedly haunted house and discovering it is indeed haunted.

Then we meet our main straight couple, and wouldn’t you know they’re headed to the same house because they just bought it. The wife’s quirky brother shows up, and that’s when the ghosts really start to show themselves.

For most of the movie, the ghosts consist of an adult woman with a knife in the back of her head, which never gets old, two mischievous kids, and a woman playing a violin.

The couple and the brother learn that anyone who dies in the house is doomed to be trapped there forever, so they try to sell quickly. Naturally, the ghosts use their powers of spooking to scare away prospective buyers. A psychic medium is brought in, and there’s a séance.

An aggressive male ghost comes forward way into the movie and becomes the main enemy they have to contend with, leading to a possession.

There are cute, funny moments, but there’s really nothing new to the plot, and the film is way too long, so the pacing struggles. It’s also padded with too many montage sequences, like them driving to the house, them cleaning the house, and the ghosts playing silly scare games with them.

The final act also shifts tone and goes the heartfelt, melodramatic route, which feels a little out of place in an otherwise silly film, but the final scene does take place on Halloween. Yay!

THE HOUSE ON ADAM’S DRIVE (2024)

In the tradition of Black horror comedies like A Haunted House and Meet the Blacks, this possession flick comes from writer/director/star LaRonn Marzett. He’s a total cutie who has a clearly defined comedy style that he exploits here.

It’s perhaps a bit too self-indulgent at times, with some sequences going on too long, making this a 110-minute movie, but in a major meta moment near the end of the film, one of his fellow characters calls him out on milking his act and making the movie too long! Makes for a good in-joke, but if he had heeded his own script’s warning and cut some of the excessive fluff showcasing his talent from the first part of the film, the pacing would have greatly benefitted. Luckily, LaRonn is charismatic and funny, plus he has a good supporting cast to work with, so the film is a blast as he indulges in classic, satirical white/Black issues and in-your-face sex humor. Just be warned; the n word gets dropped incessantly.

The opening scene shows how brazen, confident, and comfortable LaRonn is. He and his woman are at a restaurant, he can’t pay the bill, and he hopes to secretly work off the bill quickly washing dishes or something like that. Instead, the waiter makes him a proposition he can’t refuse, resulting in unapologetically sexual gay banter, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

A series of scenes follows featuring LaRonn interacting with other characters, which is where his overindulgent shtick stretches out the runtime, but 45 minutes in we get to the point—desperate to make money to appease his woman, he dresses as an 80s adult film star, complete with Jheri curls and short shorts, and goes to a house where he thinks there’s a porno being shot.

He discovers he has accidentally committed himself to working an exorcism…of a white girl that has been turned into a Black girl by a demon.

You can imagine the racial comedy that ensues. The white priest he is assisting plays a great straight character against his over-the-top performance, making them a perfect comedy duo. When the priest eventually gets shirtless to fight the demon, I was kind of hoping that whole porn job was going to come back into play, because they would be sizzling hot together.

The film is a hoot despite the long length, and there are fun pop culture references, including nods to Mariah Carey, Michael Jackson, and Ghostbusters, plus the final exorcism battle rises to Evil Dead 2 levels. I hope LaRonn makes more horror comedies in this style, because I’m so there for it.

ALL YOU NEED IS BLOOD (2023)

Although it’s not really the same and nowhere near as good, the structure of this minimalistic zomcom reminded me of One Cut of the Dead.

The opening scene, which is set 30,000 years ago with cave people establishes that there’s a meteor that turns you into a zombie if you touch it. There’s absolutely no need for this scene beyond starting things off with zombie action.

Next, we meet our main teen kid. He’s an aspiring filmmaker, lives with his unsupportive dad, and speaks to the urn that holds his dead mother’s ashes and speaks back to him…a plot point that seems like it’s going to be of some significance but instead is completely forgotten.

The main kid’s best friend is a mute kid, and they want to enter a film festival to win some money, but the festival is only for horror movies, and he doesn’t want to make horror movies.

However, just as two girls arrive at his house to audition, including Mena Suvari, a meteor lands in his yard, and his dad touches it and turns into a zombie.

Before you know it, they realize they can use his zombie dad to make a horror movie. It’s a cute concept with plenty of opportunity for some humor, with things spiraling out of control as more and more people are bitten and the “cast” of zombies grows, but despite a lot of heart clearly being put into the film, it tends to get slow in the middle and isn’t quite as funny as it could be.

Things pick up in the final act, mostly because there’s a sudden burst of zombie action as we see the results of all the incidents they’ve been filming. There’s even some good gore. However, things get really weird when one dude turns into a sort of final boss with a turtle head.

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Evil children, psycho seniors, and a deformed killer

Posted on August 29, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a trio of indie horror flicks, and each one had at least a little something to keep me entertained, but there was definitely a winner for me.

MY FIRST YEAR OFF CAMPUS (2024)

The IMDb description of this is way off. It sounds like two girls move into an apartment and discover their landlord is obsessed with Hitchcock. Instead, this turns into It Follows combined with a psycho senior citizens flick.

There are definitely some nods to 80s aesthetics in the beginning of the film as we meet the girls and the young male landlord. We learn people died in the house they’re renting, we learn he’s gay. He even mentions that he’s a different kind of gay than Norman Bates was, because he has a healthy relationship with his mother, so this one earns a spot on the does the gay guy die? page.

Then we meet the crazy elderly parents. They seem to be supernatural. No matter where the two main girls go, the parents find them. The parents keep abducting them, they keep escaping, and the parents keep recapturing them. The parents are definitely creepy, but the repetitive structure chips away at the effectiveness of their presence.

The family is involved in the black arts, but the son begins to show resistance to hurting anyone else. It’s all mysterious and weird with some fun, spooky atmosphere, but there’s never any sense of urgency in the events taking place, so it loses steam after a while. However, there is some satanic ritual action in the last few minutes, and the results promise something that could have been at the forefront of the frights if it had taken place earlier in the film.

BEWARE THE CHILDREN (2018)

This is probably too low budget for most viewers, with a weak script, and it doesn’t exactly feature professional actors, but I have to admit there are some deliciously mean-spirited killer kid moments, and the plot idea is pretty unique.

However, there’s a lot of noise around the main storyline, and there are really no clearly defined characters to latch onto to carry us through the film, so it can become a little confusing. Generally, young, troubled kids suffering from nightmares or sleep paralysis end up in group therapy at an institute where something nefarious is going on.

Eventually, the kids disappear, their parents panic, people begin dying, and police investigate. Like I said, it’s all really messy, and the finale is disappointingly anticlimactic, but when the kids begin murdering adults they are convinced are monsters, the death scenes add a nice touch of low budget gore. Plus, the reason the kids begin killing is clever. With a bigger budget and a better script, this little film could have brought something special to the killer kid subgenre.

Note that there are some conservative-leaning elements to the film (a military family, talk of God over evil as the answer to everything) that might jump out at left-leaning viewers—not to mention the filmmakers chose to have a Black kid in a hoodie as the one who wields a gun as his choice of weapon (palm, meet forehead), but the main message has to do with revenge for bullying, particularly of a kid with a disability, so the movie does seem to mean well…

CAMP TERROR (2024)

Camp Terror is a sleekly produced indie slasher with one major flaw—it runs 110 minutes long. Argh! It’s a basic slasher setup, so it simply did not need so much padding. I assure you, if you overlook the slow start, you will be well-rewarded in the second half.

It opens strong with chasing and killing, complete with practical effects gore and an awesome deformed killer that’s a blend of Jason Voorhees and Victor Crowley. If there’s one minor flaw to the film, it’s the excessive, booming stinger sounds used to up the jump factor.

The intro credits feature a piece of pop rock circa 2003 direct-to-DVD horror movie soundtrack, so I felt all giddy with nostalgia.

Next, we meet our main characters. There is a group of friends (they’re a little bit too old to call “kids” this time). Theres a redneck creeper at a convenience store who warns them away from the camp they’re heading to. There’s a female sheriff. Brinke Stevens is the shunned local whose brother was a bullied boy that went on a killing spree years before, and everyone believes she is keeping him hidden away somewhere.

The plot may not be original, but it’s the kind of paint-by-numbers slasher that does what it needs to do, but not until 49 minutes in, when the first kill happens. Wouldn’t you know the victim is the Black guy of the group?

The death scenes are hardcore, the lighting is horror perfection, and the final act focusing on the final girl’s chase and battle with the killer totally rocks. We even get a hokey, old school final frame, plus a post-credits tag that is a must-see for both its cameo and its nod to a summer camp slasher classic.

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Mothers and others

Posted on August 26, 2025 by Daniel

This trio of films about mothers and monsters offers a variety of familiar subgenres, including evil children, backwoods slashing, and possession. But do they also deliver on scares?

THE OTHER (2025)

The director of the gay slasher classic Hellbent takes us on a white hetero couple’s crazy ride with their newly adopted Black daughter. It’s so crazy that despite being intriguing and having some compelling horror elements, it’s absolute chaos and completely loses focus. There’s just way too much going on here.

The couple adopts the girl, who is mute. Things immediately start getting weird around the house—everything in the fridge goes bad, pink stuff shows up in the pool, the kitchen knives end up in the little girl’s bed.

There’s also a psychotic neighbor girl with Down syndrome who befriends the adopted girl and encourages her to indulge in macabre behavior, like mutilating dolls. The neighbor girl’s mother is also pretty weird and played by horror queen Shawnee Smith.

There’s a disturbing backstory, the concept of “other” is explored in various ways, bugs play a prominent role in the nasty moments, the wife seems to become possessed and turns on her new daughter, and the husband is determined to protect the seemingly evil daughter. Literally everyone appears to be psycho, so it’s hard to figure out what is going on, which is part of what makes this so intriguing and watchable.

The horror really delivers in the final act as things get clearer and move into Stephen King’s The Dark Half territory.

WOMB (2025)

Violent, macabre, dark, and suspenseful, this backwoods horror flick has a killer opener, with perfect camera angles and use of sound (or lack of it) to create a super tense chase. A camouflaged killer carrying a baby carrier and a knife chases a very pregnant woman through the woods. Eek!

Next, we meet a young woman being driven to a cabin in the woods by her hot fiancé so she can spend some time alone with her future sister-in-law.

Here’s where things get infuriating fast. A cop stops them for a chat, and the main girl says, “Shouldn’t you be out looking for that fetus snatcher?”

WHAT? You know there’s a fetus snatcher on the loose and you’re going to go stay in a cabin in the woods? WTF? This is an immediate suspension of disbelief cock blocker. Oh, but it gets better. She arrives at the cabin, and there’s a padlocked door inside with a cryptic message on it, and she just accepts that the owner has said it’s off limits. Also, the windows are boarded up, yet that’s explained away, too. Am I supposed to feel sorry for her pregnant ass?

I have to admit, the first appearance of the fetus snatcher is perfectly smooth and fresh and thrusts us right into the action, but then the pregnant girl cries out to the killer, “What do you want?!?!”

No. Seriously. You don’t know what he wants?

The film really is intense and thrilling as more people find their way to the cabin for various reasons, the most important one being to get killed off, but even though there are some red herring along the way, I knew where this was all heading right from the start, and I imagine most horror veterans will as well.

Despite the flaws of the film, the final few moments get into Jeepers Creepers territory, and the ending is nasty, mean, grisly, fatalistic, and comes complete with a graphic visual baby delivery moment. Nope. Birth is not beautiful, real or fake.

THE BEAST INSIDE (2024)

I love scream queen Sadie Katz, and while she usually does great horror comedy roles, she is notably good in this more dramatic role. I was really liking the fresh take on the possession theme at first, but the movie ends up going nowhere and concludes with a very typical and bland exorcism scene.

A divorced mother, all Sadie wants to do is see her son, but she is fighting her demons, literally. She believes her mom died of possession and that her family passes possession on and now it’s her turn. While it’s not the focus of the film, the Christmas season is on full display, so this one goes on the holiday horror page.

Sadie definitely experiences signs of possession, and she goes to her family’s priest for help, but he tells her the church doesn’t believe in possession anymore and passes on helping her…for now.

Therefore, Sadie decides to self-exorcise. Cool change in plot, right? Unfortunately, it just drags on and goes nowhere. The most that happens is that she has some demonic encounters in the hotel room in which she’s staying, and her ex-husband’s girlfriend seems to be lightly terrorized by the demon.

And in the end? The priest comes back to help exorcise her, making for a routine possession bedroom scene with a lot less excitement than the best of them.

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PRIME TIME: flesh and blood

Posted on August 24, 2025 by Daniel

For a change, I picked three from a streaming service that all delivered on the horror elements I crave, even if one of them had a more substantial plot and was going for an elevated story. Let’s get into them.

CONSUMED (2024)

 

This is a monster flick, but it’s also a metaphorical movie about how cancer attacks the very core of who we are and devours our existence, making us just a shell of who we used to be.

A straight couple goes on a hiking trip to celebrate the woman’s remission from cancer. Even so, she’s still struggling emotionally and having nightmarish, symbolic horror dreams about some sort of creature tearing her body apart.

Turns out there’s also a creature in the woods, and soon the couple is on the run from it and trying to find a place to hide.

They encounter horror king Devon Sawa, who is out in the woods hunting what he believes is a Wendigo that takes over people’s bodies by stealing their skin. This makes for some nasty epidermal effects.

There are plenty of close encounters with the creature and some good suspense, but this is a slow burn with lots of exposition and exploration as well. Not to mention, there’s quite a bit of symbolic imagery that starts to feel like overkill after a while in its effort to sprinkle visual horror throughout the movie.

Things really pick up in the final act when it’s time to come face to face with the creature. Great monster, great fight to the death. More than just a cheap thrills flick, this one is a nice balance of smart and scary.

MOUSEBOAT MASSACRE (2025)

It’s another killer Mickey Mouse movie, and what it lacks in storyline it makes up for in some fricking gnarly kills. By the time the mouse pulled out a cheese grater, my hubby bailed on our movie night and left me alone in the living room to the sounds of a victim shrieking in agony.

The plot is pretty silly. There’s this old cartoon video, and if you watch it, the cartoon mouse comes to life and goes on a killing spree.

Our main girl is a druggy. Her family and friends bring her to a secluded house for an intervention. They lock her in a room with the video, which was a favorite of hers when she was a child. So…she watches it. Let the mouseboat massacre begin.

There’s sex, boobs, tons of blood, and the mouse executing some excruciating kills that most often involve very slowly sawing off body parts with a sharp object.

The backstory of the tape is goofy (not that Goofy), and the final moment between the main girl and the mouse is not all that surprising if you’re a horror veteran. It’s also anticlimactic, but you should really just go into this one for the grisly kills.

WEREWOLF IN A WOMEN’S PRISON (2006)

Campy, sleazy sexploitation with a classic creature costume, tons of blood and an 80s VHS flick filter complete with tracking lines at the bottom? Sign me up for this trashy werewolf flick.

It opens strong with a couple having sex in a tent, and the dude getting mutilated by a werewolf. The woman gets attacked…

…and wakes up naked in a women’s prison having her snatch examined by a dominatrix. Oh yeah. This goes right for the 80s female prison movie vibe right from the start. I welcome all the sex and nudity, but I am bummed that none of the men get naked, especially the head warden, played by hottie Domiziano Arcangeli of the gay vampire flick The Brides of Sodom. He looks sexy as hell when submitting to the dominatrix, but he does it with his pants on. What the hell?

Anyway, there’s tons of misogynistic female exploitation, lesbian sex, and cat fights, but the movie doesn’t skimp on the werewolf action and practical effects gore either.

Our main girl is visited by her decaying boyfriend’s ghost, in true An American Werewolf in London fashion, and he informs her she’s cursed, will be turning into a werewolf, and needs to kill herself.

Instead, she falls for her pretty prison mate and ends up becoming her werewolf protector every time some nasty dude tries to abuse her.

There’s a whole lot of involuntary sex work going on in the prison, which leads to the warden throwing a big sex party that turns into a werewolf massacre for the final act.

It’s (im)pure sex and violence fun if you’re into that kind of blast from the VHS and cable past.

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Sequels and anthologies

Posted on August 18, 2025 by Daniel

This foursome of flicks features sequels to two films I’ve already covered and two anthology films. Let’s check them out.

CORN II: MIND HARVEST (2025)

The original C.O.R.N. was a Halloween themed flick, and it was wild and weird, which was the reason I enjoyed it despite the chaotic unfolding of events. And although it was about a cult that used humans for taxidermy, it was actually a slasher at heart.

The sequel is barely a horror movie, does not take place on Halloween, and is not a slasher. It’s instead a character study of sorts about both a young girl who is pretty mental because she grew up with the main scientist psycho from the first movie, and the police therapist assigned to work with her, who is working through issues of her own involving her child.

The girl is in a foster home, so when people start dying and disappearing around her, the therapist steps in to deal with her. The girl acts like a victim, terrified that her mad scientist father is coming for her, but she’s also a fricking killer, so it’s hard to feel for her.

Meanwhile, the scientist dad is hunting her down, and he’s also moved past basic taxidermy and on to transplanting people’s souls into other people and reaching into other planes of existence.

It’s a mess. It’s really a mess. I wasn’t feeling it at all.

DOGMAN 3: FIGHT TO THE FINISH (2025)

I was a fan of the low budget, cozy country creature feature feel of the first two Dogman movies, and while I’m happy to see several of the characters back for more, this movie doesn’t build on the others at all and delivers barely anything in terms of monster action. The characters are simply going through the motions because they’ve been down this road before.

There have been new attacks in town, and our main man Larry Joe Campbell just assumes the Dogman issue is back. With the help of those who went through all this with him before, they try to figure out why people are being infected and why the special moss that conquered the infection in the last movie isn’t working.

28 minutes in we see the classic Dogman mask when a woman spots him. There are some implied kills, a brief Dogman attack 52 minutes in during which a guy gets scratched but gets away, and in the last few minutes, they find a dead Dogman sitting in the driver’s seat of a car.

That’s it. That’s all the horror you get. I have the first two movies on DVD, but I just don’t see the purpose in buying this one if it gets a physical release other than to complete the trilogy in my collection.

JINXX PRESENTS: THE DEVIL’S VORTEX (2024)

This anthology is hosted by Jinxx of the band Black Veil Brides, in a sort of wraparound about a house he was going to buy…so he researched its history. Are the incidents that took place inside these walls terrifying? Let’s find out.

1st story – a guy goes to get a tattoo but has no recollection of it being done when he comes to with a demon image on his back. And then the demon enters the real world. Eek! This one is short and to the point, and this demon, a bald-headed ghoul, appears in almost all the stories.

2nd story – my absolute favorite of the bunch because it feels complete, this one takes place on Halloween and has a satisfying twist. A mute girl comes to the door during a Halloween party, and something doesn’t seem right with her, so out of concern, the partygoers invite her in. Uh-oh. So short and satisfying.

3rd story – this is where the stories start to falter. A woman comes home to find her daughter missing and her husband and another man hooked up to electrocution devices. Now she has to decide who she wants to save.

4th story – the bald ghoul serves as the devil on the shoulders of characters for the final three stories. In this one, a boy being haunted by ghosts tries to get someone to believe what he saw and why he did the awful thing he did…which we never get to see him do. Story falls short and feels unfinished.

5th story – four female friends are out at a bar, and when the driver starts dropping them off at their homes, she seems to snap thanks to the bald ghoul whispering in her ear.

6th story – I really have no idea what this one about a man stuck at home and visited by the bald ghoul was going for, but it is quite dull, so this anthology doesn’t end on a high note, and you are not left with any sense of the stories tying in together despite the shared ghoul.

LORE (2023)

This is a polished anthology that takes the simple, straightforward route, with a traditional wraparound. Four friends meet a creepy haunted tour guide in the woods, and he sits them around a campfire to partake in a ritual in which each of them tells a scary story.

1st story – this is perhaps my favorite of the bunch. A dude being chased runs into a warehouse, and soon a large creature crawls out of the shadows to take out the men pursuing him.

2nd story – totally a cheap thrills ghost story, this has a mom and son living in haunted house and being terrorized by a female ghost. There are incessant loud stingers whenever the ghost woman appears, she moves in a jerky motion like Silent Hill nurses (eek!), and there’s a Lights Out element to the haunting.

3rd story – love me a sexual tale about morality, and in this one, a straight couple just looking to swap partners for the night is drawn into some sort of cult.

4th story – the anthology ends strong with an atmospheric slasher in a movie theater, complete with kills, chases, and a big goon in a mask.

For such a tightly produced anthology, with a good array of subgenres, the only disappointment is the conclusion to the wraparound. So anticlimactic, and I didn’t really get what was going for. Also keep an eye out for a tag scene after the end credits start to roll.

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From kids’ characters to holiday horror

Posted on August 15, 2025 by Daniel

The bodies pile up with Popeye, Goldilocks, and two movies for the holiday horror page. Let’s take a look.

SHIVER ME TIMBERS (2025)

I’ve already covered Popeye’s Revenge, so I was so ready for another spinach-fueled slasher.

Actually, this evil Popeye is fueled by a meteor. A group of friends goes camping in the woods for a viewing of the burning rocks from space but spend most of their time partying and telling campfire stories instead.

That is until the meteor shower transforms an old fisherman on a rowboat into a hulking, killer Popeye! Awesome.

Running only 73 minutes long, this is a simple slasher that goes for the basics, and I found it to be gory fun with a mix of a classic, 80s-style synth score jingle and raucous metal music during kill scenes that perfectly fits the splatterfest feel.


“Well blow me down!”

Popeye really beats his victims to a pulp, which often involves squishing their heads. There’s also a humorous edge to the nastiness, including a trashy outhouse scene, complete with the splashing sounds of the dump and even Popeye taking a turn on the crapper.

And after the chaos of running through the woods, the final girl goes hardcore with a giant saw to hack away at Popeye in a scene that looks right out of a video game.

GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEARS: DEATH AND PORRIDGE (2024)

This is one for the home invasion loving crowd, but it’s like comfort horror—an easy watch that requires nothing new to absorb.

Friends gather for a reunion at a house in the woods, realize they’ve come to the wrong place, and decide to break in and crash there for the night.

As they explore the house, the references to the classic tale are fun, and there’s a foreboding tone, right down to the POV of watchers breathing in masks from the woods.

However, it’s 38 minutes before we first see one of the characters outside a window (people wearing Goldilocks and the Three Bears masks). One guy thinks he’s hallucinating the sightings of the characters in some effective setup shots.

It’s not until 49 minutes in that we see all four psychos and things finally take off. There’s some gory killing and torture, but in the tradition of The Strangers, there’s no apparent reason for what’s going on. Only Goldilocks talks, but it’s just to taunt victims, and it’s in a high-pitched, singsong voice with her mask on, so I could barely understand what she was saying, and I didn’t feel like reaching for the remote to turn on subtitles.

Speaking of the masks, the cheesy final frame has Goldilocks remove her mask while her face is out of frame and hold it up to the camera, essentially breaking the fourth wall.

GNOME SICK: 7 SLAYS TIL MITHRAS (2025)

This campy Christmas comedy knows exactly the style and tone it’s going for and nails it from the start. It’s a movie made with bold confidence and has plenty of moments that made me laugh.

It also has a super Christmasy tone and loads of festive décor, which it should considering it takes place in a town called Christmas, and the main guy’s family owns an ornament making business.

Having broken away from the family business to become an actor, the main guy returns home to find his family is missing. His family also happens to be part of a pagan Christmas cult, and his father is an infamous Santa slasher that kills people and sucks up their souls.

This is where the movie is imbalanced. The Santa killer is a hoot and has cheesy CGI minions helping him do his dirty work, giving their presence a very cartoon Christmas special vibe. Unfortunately, the kills take a backseat to the characters that revolve around our main guy, including his old friends, neighbors, and high school sweetheart. The humorous shtick between characters makes them endearing, but it really starts to wear thin when we know there are killer gnomes waiting in the wings to spread Christmas fear.

Even though the film could have been shortened for better pacing or focused on more kills, it’s still a seasonal bonanza and quite charming.

The guy playing the sheriff gives off a Frank Grillo vibe and was the highlight for me, and the two detectives on the case have a very funny fight with the gnomes, but I was disappointed that they don’t get much focus. Why? Because right at the last second before they are killed, their gay love for each other is expressed. WTF! If flirted with throughout the film, that plot line could have been comedy gold. Especially if they had survived…

WICKED SEASON (2024)

This one opens strong on Halloween night. A woman leaves a Halloween party and hops in an Uber, only to find her driver wearing a scarecrow costume. Things do not go well for her.

Next we meet detectives at the crime scene. There’s a crucified body, and it looks like a copycat of “the scarecrow killer”, who murdered the daughter of one of the guys on the case.

The detectives decide to go to the abandoned prison where the scarecrow killer was incarcerated to look for old records. The caretaker takes them on a tour, and then this goes into Thirteen Ghosts territory with no signs of Halloween.

There are a handful of different specters roaming the halls, including a psycho in drag with a switchblade, a girl ghost who looks like she just crawled out of a well, a feral werewolf sort of guy, and a big guy with a chain who goes around asking victims to play with him. Eek!

The setting is great, and the camera work and lighting are spot on, but instead of focusing on the detectives being chased by the psychos, the film delves into a lot of procedural investigative stuff, and eventually it steps into the spooky spiritual realm, as if it has taken a slight turn into religious horror territory.

I do like the discovery of how you stop these seemingly unstoppable ghosts, as well as the connection between a killer scarecrow choosing to crucify victims in the same way that scarecrows essentially are, but I’m bummed that the film had such great killers at its disposal but instead focused on the otherworldly plot. The conclusion also seems to set us up for a very apocalyptic sequel.

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Vampires and witches

Posted on August 11, 2025 by Daniel

It’s all about the classic creepers of the dark in this foursome of flicks I check out on Tubi. Let’s get into them.

BLOODTHIRST (2023)

I can’t believe a movie with a whole vampire cult and a gang of redneck vampire hunters would have so little action and so much talk, but that’s what happens here.

The good is that you get a few familiar faces, including Tara Reid with fun vampire makeup on. Also good is that all vamp voices are drenched in audio effects, so Tara Reid doesn’t sound anything like Tara Reid. I’m not even sure they used her voice.

In between all the vampires talking about making more vampires to satisfy the master and the slayers talking about ways to take down the vampires, there are a few instances of the vampires attacking victims, but that’s as exciting as it gets. The whole thing takes place in a desolate desert, so there isn’t much to work with here.

The master looks like something out of a Buffy episode, and there are a few humorous moments, the best being when one girl says of a bunch of other rednecks, “Let’s go before they get rapey again”, but the final battle is totally hokey, and they don’t even kill the master! Be warned. A final title card promises a sequel. Can’t promise I’ll be watching it…

YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE LET ME IN (2024)

I was really feeling the sleek, sexy, and suspenseful vibes of this Tubi original, and it even has a major gay character, so it goes on the does the gay guy die? page, but there just wasn’t enough oopmh in the events that unfold to keep me riveted.

The opening scene is the standout moment for me, with a girl leaving a club and then getting pursued into an alley in a very Subspecies long shadows/long fingernails kind of way.

Our main girl and her gay BFF head to a villa in Italy to join in on the bachelorette party of one of her friends. The gang gets together, there are some creepy encounters with locals in the village, and then there’s a sexy and spooky dancing montage at the local club.

The main girl meets a handsome dude (aka: vampire) and invites him and his minions back to the villa to party. This is where the movie loses steam. There are some atmospheric moments, but our sexy vampire simply isn’t mysterious and ominous enough to put us on edge.

There are some light, sexy shenanigans, including the gay guy scoring a kiss, as well as a lesbian kiss, plus a few subtle chase scene moments, but it’s just not intense enough to deliver on thrills and chills.

We finally see the vampire in his true form near the end of the movie, and I just think there was so much missed opportunity for him to have turned sooner and really terrorized the girls (and gay) trapped in this house with him. Bummer. However, the final scene is a tasty little zinger to conclude the film.

THE TEXAS WITCH (2025)

It’s Blair Witch without the found footage POV and with an actual witch. Eureka!

We begin with a bearded muscle hunk and his woman in a tent in the woods. It starts off with classic opener suspense, but cuts short before getting to the guts, if you know what I mean.

I think the first act is where the problem lies in the pacing. We meet the sister of the now missing hunk, who decides to take matters into her own hands when police refuse to go look for him in “the forbidden territories”. There is way too much back and forth between her and her friends before they all get on board with the search party idea and finally leave.

Once they’re in the wilderness, the local legends of the woods and the witch are revealed during the hike and during campfire discussion. There’s even a flashback to the old days when the witch was working her black magic and was murdered by townsfolk. And she’s haunted the woods ever since.

We get early glimpse of the witch, and then she finally attacks 47 minutes in. Don’t expect to see full Monty witch face though. She’s always just rushing by the camera or shown in mysterious black silhouette. Still more witch than we ever see in Blair Witch.

There are some bloody elements, but nothing too extreme as the foursome of friends tries to escape the forest. As in Blair Witch, members of the group go missing, and those that remain end up at an abandoned house in the woods. It’s fairly entertaining, but it still needed some trimming to tighten up the runtime. And yet, the final moment is still more horror than we ever get from Blair Witch.

IT SHALL NOT BE NAMED (2023)

The effectively creepy opening scene of this witch flick sets a tense tone, but this particular moment takes place later in the chronology and wasn’t necessary draw us in since the movie’s suspenseful situation unfolds very quickly.

The film features a single set and minimal characters. We meet our main girl, who doesn’t bother to vet her new roommate. She immediately begins to suspect that the roommate is up to something sinister. It’s Single White Female with a witch. Awesome!

The atmosphere and mood in this little apartment are great, and the scare sequences rock, but there are a few problems that go along with that. First, there’s an exorbitant number of jump scare stingers. Like, even when a phone rings…stinger! It really dilutes the jump scare factor.

The other issue is that virtually every excellent, eerie sequence is a nightmare sequence! Is our main girl actually experiencing these things, or is she under some sort of spell?

As she delves into what the new roommate’s deal is, her boyfriend runs hot and cold—at times he tries to help her expose the truth, at other times he tells her she’s being ridiculous.

Considering there are only three characters and one setting, the claustrophobic feel is high, but the excessive nightmare sequences and lack of actual scary events make this start to feel like it’s not going anywhere. However, for a low budget project, it’s generally a spooky experience, the visual horror is quite satisfying, and there are some delicious surprises in the final act.

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BOUGHT ON BLU AND DVD: from the 50s to the 90s

Posted on August 7, 2025 by Daniel

Time to cover six horror flicks I’ve added to my collection over the last few months, and they span decades. Let’s get into them.

THE MOLE PEOPLE (1956)

I love me some black and white sci-fi horror, but despite having freaky monsters, this one takes a turn I didn’t expect, becoming notably heavy on social commentary for its time.

After being caught in an avalanche, archaeologists in the snowy mountains drop down into a hole to rescue one of their team members. The use of a flashlight beam to create visual suspense is great and foreshadows so much horror that was yet to come. We even get an eerie, early glimpse at one of the monsters.

Things get even more terrifying when the men have sacks thrown over their heads by monster hands and get dragged into the ground. Eek!

They wake up in a sort of forgotten city. Here’s where things go awry. There are albino humans living there, and they are heavily into believing in religion and gods in the sky, which they use as an excuse to enslave and torture the mole people. They also consider one ‘normal shade of white’ woman in their society as a sort of monster and refer to her as a “dark” one. Holy crap.

To escape the city, the archaeologists end up teaming up with the mole people. Bummer. It’s one of those “humans are the real evil monsters” movies…especially the extra white people. There’s even a less than happy ending, which is another surprise.

The mole people and the idea of them dragging victims into the ground is so freaky that it’s sort of disappointing that this isn’t the whole plot of the movie, and we are instead made to feel empathy for them. This movie was woke decades before woke was even a slur.

TORSO (1973)

I finally picked this one up due to it being considered both a giallo and a precursor to the slasher genre. It definitely delivers on both counts, but just make sure to watch the 94-minute cut and not the 90-minute U.S. edit, for without the grisly gore moments, it would definitely be a little flat, despite being loaded with sexual situations. Yay!

Appropriately, it begins with a torso and tits at an orgy with a creepy doll laying around. This is really a film about men leering at women, which the camera also makes sure to do as well.

The settings is a college, where someone starts killing off pretty people with a black and red scarf. The first kill is classic slasher, with killer POV as a couple has sex in a car. The killer even wears a ski mask.

The kills have the usual odd and engrossing giallo style setups—like a girl walking through misty, dark woods and falling and then rolling around in mud with her tits hanging out when the killer comes for her. In each death scene, the killer scarfs the person to death then does some dissecting and mutilating with a knife while flashes of that creepy doll pop up on screen. Based on the title, I really thought this was going to be a situation in which the killer is gathering body parts to make a stitched together masterpiece.

There are plenty of shots of lecherous male gazes around campus. Each main girl has man trouble…obsessive, stalking behavior to confuse us with red herring.

Eventually the girls make a getaway to a country villa to escape the madness, but the killer follows them. The final act is somewhat disappointing, because it’s a perfect setup for the girls to get picked off one by one, but instead the final girl wakes up to find all the girls dead in one big body reveal moment. After that, she spends the remainder of the movie trying to get out of the house while the killer is inside with her. It should be super suspenseful, but I wasn’t totally feeling the tension. And the final frame features a couple walking off into the night to the sounds of sappy 70s soundtrack music. Ugh. Way to kill the vibe.

THE FREAKMAKER (1974)

I think this is the last movie I needed to complete my collection of every horror movie Donald Pleasence starred in. While there are some eerie aspects to the film, Pleasence is incredibly drab, forgetful, and completely overshadowed by his plant-human hybrid creations and the real deformed people hired for roles as sideshow freaks.

Pleasence is a scientist working at a college. He’s also up to some sick experiments. No surprise there. Haunting, natural images of plants in time lapse as they mutate sets a tone, along with Pleasence’s monotone musings on science that serve as narration.

There aren’t many strong characters, so there’s not much to cling to that can carry you through the movie. Pleasence is using the freaks as assistants to abduct college students for his experiments, and in exchange he promises them he will be able to fix them.

His main mutant sidekick begins to realize Pleasence won’t be keeping his promise, so he tries to convince the other freaks to revolt. This is the most compelling part of the plot.

Meanwhile, college students are chased and killed in some atmospheric scenes set to unnerving music. However, there are no standout characters among the group of students.

The climax is pretty good, with one of Pleasence’s man plants finally walking around terrorizing people. I really appreciated the look and feel of the film, but in general it’s low energy and doesn’t quite live up to its premise.

UNTIL DEATH (1989)

This Lamberto Bava flick features a plot that has been done to death, especially in short tales in anthologies. This particular take on it is drawn out and has very little in the way of satisfying horror elements.

A woman and her lover kill and bury her husband then start life together, but you immediately wonder why the woman would kill her husband for this dude. He is extremely abusive and hates her young son.

A drifter shows up looking for a room, so the woman lets him stay. The boyfriend becomes jealous. He also becomes convinced the handsome drifter (who looks like Jensen Ackles) has something up his sleeve.

As the couple gets into more and more fights, with the boyfriend repeatedly coming close to raping the woman, her son is having nightmares of the husband coming back from the dead.

I was curious as to how the hot drifter was going to play into all this but was left not quite understanding it at all. It almost seems like he was the dead husband in hot man form, making this some sort of unexplained supernatural situation, but all the dead husband sightings both the woman and the boyfriend begin having seem to be delusions. I really didn’t get it. However, whether real or not, the final melding of hubby and hottie is freaky good.

MOM (1990)

This one is loaded with a late 80s horror sleaze vibe, and despite working at a video store back then that had mostly every horror movie that got released on VHS, I’d never seen it. It was a blind buy, and I have no regrets, because it gave me all the nostalgia feels. It totally delivers on the weird horror style of that era.

In the opening scene, a woman is attacked by horror king Brion James, who transforms into some sort of monster, presumably a werewolf. Awesome.

The newscaster on television reporting on recent animal attacks on pregnant women comes home with his girlfriend to see his mom. They inform her that they are having a baby. Uh-oh.

Soon after, Brion shows up at Mom’s house to rent a room, becomes aroused by some meat she’s serving for dinner, bites her, and turns her into a monster, too.

Then the son discovers that they are out on the dark city streets at night together luring in homeless people to eat.

Faced with the dilemma of what his mother has become, the son tries to keep her from killing anyone else while throwing police off the scent.

Mom has some fun monstrous moments when she attacks people, but she never really turns fully into a monster, which is somewhat of a letdown. The body count is also disappointingly low, even when Mom enlists her son to bring her more victims. And the plot point about pregnant women being targets all falls apart.

The late 80s horror charm is there, but I definitely feel the film could have pushed the envelope a little more—more monster action, more kills, more blood.

DEATH MASK (1998)

The director of Jack-O, which also starred Linnea Quigley, decides the way to hook low budget horror fans into his movie is to begin it with her in a shower scene…that doesn’t actually fall chronologically into the events of the plot until ten minutes before the end. So we get to see it twice.

This is a simply, cozy plot. Linnea is a stripper at a carnival. Wilbur, one of the “freaks” in the carnival, is played by Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane from The Dukes of Hazzard. Wilbur has a fairly basic scar on his face that he simply cakes with makeup so it doesn’t look as noticeable. Really not that impressive of a physical deformity considering that he’s supposed to be hideous.

Wilbur has the hots for Linnea and tries to woo her away from her sleazy boyfriend, the guy who runs the carnival. Wilbur wants more out of life, so he visits a swamp witch and makes a deal with her. She gives him a magical piece of wood, which he uses to carve a mask.

He soon learns that he can get revenge on those who wrong him by putting on the mask. His victims see it turn demonic and then suffer some sort of violent accident.

It’s silly and basic, but it has that early direct-to-DVD charm, two familiar faces, sex, and a mask that comes alive. You get what you pay for, which probably would have been a 7.99 price tag at Best Buy back in the day.

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Man meat and dead meat at a gay club

Posted on August 5, 2025 by Daniel

Queer horror fans are always waiting for the next major release that celebrates queer lives and queer fear, and this year it looks like Meat is the one to see…and to add to the complete homo horror movies page. The title works on several levels, from the sexual man meat to the slashed dead meat, not to mention this is one meaty movie, running a momentous two hours and fourteen minutes long. Did it need to? No, but even being the stickler that I am about overblown lengths in indie horror flicks, this one managed to deliver enough in-your-face sex and violence to keep me watching.

When scream queer Roger Conners is involved in a movie, whether acting in it, directing it, or both, queer characters are always at the forefront and integral to the plot even if it’s not an inherently queer film. Not to mention the queerness is always unapologetic and not trying to appease cis het sensibilities. This is a film directed and co-written by Roger, and he also has a minor role in it as well.

With a title like Meat, it’s no surprise that we get a sleazy queer slasher (yay!), not one in which we cozy up to likable characters and root for them to make it to the final frame. This is a look at a nasty side of queer club culture. While approached from a queer perspective, it’s also in keeping with more modem slashers—despicable characters get what they deserve.

We meet Noah, who is drawn into the club scene by “friends” that prove to be vile excuses for humans. There’s a roofie/gang rape situation that leads to a tragic death. It’s a reprehensible take on the old school slashers in which a group of people did something “last summer” (so-to-speak), and eventually someone in a mask catches up with them to enact revenge.

In this case, that someone is dressed head to toe in silver studded leather. The killer’s presence is darkly sexy and flamboyantly flashy all at once. The kill sequences revel in brutality and practical, gruesome gore effects. While not an overly “scary” slasher, some of the chase and death scenes deliver on the suspense magnificently and are beautifully orchestrated as they carry you through the stalking and slashing, from a locker room shower scene to a bathhouse massacre. I really loved the longer kill sequences here.

Another highlight for me, naturally, would be the hypersexual situations. There’s plenty of unapologetic butt, balls, and dick action drenched in sleek neon lights and dark shadows, marrying the spirit of the club scene with the horror atmosphere. Even the dance music is actual thumping dance music reminiscent of decades past, not the low BPM, hollow rhythms of the EDM most popular these days. Hell, I’m old so I don’t even know if there’s a club scene at all these days…they were all closing in New York City back in the first decade of the new millennium, just as I was settling into being an adult and swapping out late nights and city lights for takeout and movies at home with the hubby.

It’s a challenge to make the perfect slasher—pacing, tension, scares, gore, sex, character development, mystery, story, visual presentation, a chilling score, etc. So many elements need to come together, and most films don’t tick all the boxes, but it’s no fun being a purist, so as long as there are aspects of the production that really grab me, I’m good, as I was with Meat. The kills and sex really carried this movie for me since these are those loathsome types of characters you don’t want to connect with—you just want to see them die. Even with a two-plus-hour runtime, I didn’t get the sense that any character was fully realized enough to sympathize with.

Instead of a single evening of slashing at a gay club situation, the film structure doesn’t let us settle in one place on one night with a core group. It spans a course of days and jumps locations, so there isn’t a straightforward plot throughline to carry us from start to finish. The killer seeks out victims instead of waiting for victims to walk right into their own demise, so the isolation of each character sort of reflects fractures that keep the queer community from standing together in safe spaces.

Meanwhile, there’s also a subplot featuring detectives on the case, but that tends to falter and eventually fades out of the picture completely. Bringing an investigation element into the story doesn’t carry much weight when there aren’t many mystery elements or false clues dropped along the way. Barely anyone seems like a red herring here, because we know most of them are destined to die. Only one character gets to shine, and that’s the “stud” of the group, who far overshadows the “final boy”.

As for the killer, the murdering motivation is somewhat derailed when the kills veer off into random victims to up the body count (not complaining about that) rather than sticking to those responsible for the specific incident that triggered the slashing to begin with. While the killer’s identity felt to me like it came out of left field, the killer’s final appearance perfectly encompasses the whole tone of the film—it’s both sexual and disturbing. Awesome, but I can’t share a visual of it because I don’t want to spoil the payoff.

In the end, I hope this one gets a physical media release, because it’s a goodie to add to my gay horror collection…along with all the other Roger Conners flicks I already have.

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