Although I may not have loved every film in this foursome, I sure enjoyed the variety of styles and tones. Let’s get right into them.
DEAD STOP (2011)
Overall, Dead Stop is worth a watch for some gore and cheap thrills.
A group of friends on a road trip gets stuck in a desert. After 37 minutes of silly soap opera sex and romance stuff, a guy goes out to pee at night, gets chased by red monster POV, and then the cycle of attacks on the group’s van begin.
And it is a cycle. At night they get attacked with quick flashes of creature, choppy editing of gore, and people screaming. During the day they get out of the van, they stay out too long, and the attacks begin all over again once night falls.
The ending is fun, if not a little out of left field.
IT CAME FROM THE DESERT (2017)
This would make a perfect midnight movie double feature with Dead Ant, another creature feature comedy about giant killer ants in the desert.
While It Came From the Desert features motorcycle racing competitors having a huge party in the sandy hills, it focuses mostly on two main guys and a girl saving everyone from a colony of giant ants.
Almost like a less dumb Bill & Ted comedy duo, the lead guys are a pair of the most likable dudes I’ve seen in a horror movie in a long time. They’re not full of machismo—they’re actually kind of geeky, and they scream in terror when they encounter the crazy critters. They’re as funny as the ants, which have personalities as well.
There’s plenty of humor and gore, plus an oddly overdramatic score that doesn’t actually fit the tone of the film yet helps enhance the quirky ambience.
This film is a blast, and Gen-Xers should note that it’s actually based on a text-based video game of the 1980s!
ROTTENTAIL (2018)
Killer bunny movies have become a subgenre of their own in the past few years—enough for an all-day Easter marathon, so check my full list of them on the holiday horror page. This one is a mix of campy grindhouse 80s throwback schlock, so if you’re looking for more serious bunny man movie, well, try the Bunnyman movies.
Drenched in neon lights of the horror rainbow throughout, Rottentail is about a geeky scientist bitten by a deformed lab bunny, which causes him to transform into…Rottentail!
The timing couldn’t be better, because it’s right before his high school reunion, when he gets to confront all the bullies from his teen years and give them a big Easter surprise. To get around, he even hops…on a moped…
That could have made for the perfect creature feature slasher, but this is one whacky wabbit. While the movie is fun and funny, I found the character of Rottentail too obnoxious and grating to be a likable comic baddie—and the film runs a little too long to sustain the humor.
I also wasn’t a fan of the side story that derails the simple revenge slasher formula—a rival scientist makes his own creature to go after Rottentail. Blah.
HALF MOON (2010)
I’ll warn you right from the start—this film is all talk between two characters until the last seven minutes, when there’s finally a werewolf transformation.
That doesn’t leave me much to say. A handsome guy hires a prostitute, but when she gets to his hotel room, he just wants to talk and eat dinner.
Even her sexy lap dance doesn’t interest him…and gives her an excuse to call him a faggot. Sigh.
Slowly but surely she draws his tragic past and truths out of him…he’s a werewolf and wants her help. Trapped in a hotel room with him, I would have been coughing up furballs before he even told me he was a werewolf.
Sooooo, with seven minutes left, there’s a cheap and cartoonish CGI transformation, a quick, vicious attack that’s kind of fun, and then it’s pretty much all over.
