This triple feature was sometimes horrific, sometimes humorous, and sometimes boring for me. Let’s get right into it.
CAT SICK BLUES (2015)
In this day and age, this movie is basically one big trigger warning, so only go into it if nothing really bothers you and you like fucked up movies with psychotic killers doing depraved things to victims.
That’s mostly all that happens in this nasty flick, although the movie does seem to be trying to present two different extremes on how people cope with grief—in this case, the loss of a cat.
The opener introduces us to our killer, who wears a cat mask when he strangles and hacks up victims.
Then we meet our main girl. She has a beloved cat that is an internet sensation. A mentally challenged fan unexpectedly comes to see the cat live at her home…before unaliving it and then raping the main girl, which is all caught on camera. Footage that ends up on the internet.
Yeah. This movie indulges in cruelty. Continuously.
We then get to know our killer better. He is totally sexually messed up. He has a terrifying, huge, spiked strap-on. As much as this movie indulges in terrorizing women, it really could have been worse, because we never actually see the killer using this thing on any victims.
We do get plenty of scenes of him killing women though. In between all that, he joins a grief support group the main girl is in, and we learn he also lost a cat. As a result, he begins to bond with the main girl.
It’s weird. It’s uncomfortable. It’s disturbing. What it isn’t is scary, so unless you’re a fan of twisted cinema, you’re probably best off skipping this one.
HOUSE SITTER (2026)
There are some fun moments in the last half hour of this occult/slasher/home invasion hybrid flick, but there’s a lot of bland, chill downtime with the three main characters for a majority of the runtime.
A young woman takes a job house sitting for a wealthy dude. She invites along her best friend and her boyfriend, who can’t stand each other and bicker a lot. There’s plenty of exploration of the house—yet nothing interesting or ominous is discovered. They lounge by the pool, which at least gives us the boyfriend shirtless.
They also order pizza, and we’re subjected to unnecessary footage of the delivery guy trying to find the place. He is then killed in a cutaway scene.
When weird stuff finally starts happening, the trio begins panicking, but they decide to just relax and watch a movie. This is when the best friend and boyfriend discover they both love horror, and they get into a detailed convo about their favorite scenes from different horror movies.
An hour in, we finally get a chase scene with a masked figure wearing a hoodie. But…it’s only a dream sequence. And yet, as soon as the best friend wakes up from this nightmare, the same killer is actually outside the house. So…is she psychic?
There’s something rather funny about the way the trio acts in response to the killer’s appearance, but this final act is the best part of the movie. There aren’t many kills considering the small cast, but there are several surprises along the way, and the film tries to keep us entertained by piling one twist on top of another to make up for the low body count. The highlight for me is a very close-up eye shot that feels like something out of an Argento movie.
SCREAMBOAT (2025)
The tone of this film is refreshingly fun, and with its dash of playful humor, it brought to mind the slashers of the early 2000s.
Although not as blatantly based on Disney cartoon properties as some of the other films released in this subgenre lately, it does make meta references to various Disney animated classics if you pay attention.
Unlike the other killer Mickey movies I’ve seen recently, this take on Steamboat Willie—in this case, Screamboat Willie–doesn’t resemble Mickey Mouse at all. Actually, he’s the worst part of the movie. The mouse makeup is really goofy, but drag out the old green screen, because he’s not human size. He’s only two feet tall! He is, however, played by none other than Art the Clown.
The opener is a goodie, and demonstrates the kind of gore and cheesy practical effects we’re going to get, and that perhaps is the highlight.
Teen Wolf Tyler Posey is shamefully relegated to a short cameo. Would have preferred him as the leading man, although the leading man is just as cute.
Passengers board a ferry in New York City, and pretty soon they’re being killed by Screamboat Willie. That’s it. That’s the plot.
The humor and gore carry the movie for quite a while, but this boat does begin to…um…lose steam after a while, I think due to the fact that the 24-inch Screamboat Willie simply isn’t menacing. There are some camptastic kills, including death by ferry propeller and double death by forklift, as well as an old school boobs and sex scene, which leads to a severed wiener in mouth mid-BJ. Screamboat wiener….
After some lag, the film picks back up for the final battle. I think maybe it just needed to be edited down somewhere in the middle to fix the pacing issue.
