When two Scout Taylor-Compton films ended up on my streaming watchlist, I became curious as to how many of her horror movies I hadn’t seen yet. Turns out only four. So I watched them all…and ended up buying two of them on DVD. Let’s find out which two I felt were worth having in my collection.
STAR LIGHT (2020)
Star Light is the first film of this foursome that I ordered on DVD before I’d even reached the end of the stream. Basically I hit the buy button moments after the first awesome demon flashed her nasty yellows.
Horror queen Tiffany Shepis has a disappointingly small role (as usual) as the single mother of a cute young man. After they get into an argument, he heads off to a party with his friends.
We get to see some bod and a hint of butt crack when he hooks up with a girl, and eventually he stumbles upon a woman in peril—Scout—and brings her into the house.
That’s when shit gets weird for him and his friends. A creepy, fantastically over-the-top devil dude shows up at their door, demanding the girl back. As he skulks around outside, all hell is unleashed as we get into Evil Dead territory.
While I’m not a fan of the title, Star Light is a fricking popcorn horror movie blast! Likable cast, fun demon effects, some gore, quick pacing, and familiar concepts yet a never predictable plot make this a great one to show at a horror movie party or Halloween party…someday.
THE LURKER (2019)
If you dare to read the first sentence of most reviews of The Lurker on IMDb or Amazon, you’ll likely notice they’re totally bashing Scout for looking like a 30-year old high school student. I didn’t hear any complaints when 30-something Danielle Harris played Scout’s high school friend in Rob Zombie’s Halloween….
I don’t find Scout’s age the issue here. There are some fun kills and a cool killer mask, but this film just has a weird vibe and a sloppily presented plot—that wasn’t, however, convoluted enough to keep me from figuring out who the killer was almost immediately.
Pepper from American Horror Story: Freak Show draws us in playing the first victim in the opening scene. Horror king Adam Huss comes in as a detective asking questions about the murder, which took place in Scout’s high school.
Scout is the lead in the school production of Romeo and Juliet. Offstage drama unfolds between her and her friends (and frenemies), poorly segued flashbacks reveal a “prank” in which they were all involved, and then they get together for a party, which is when the killer starts working overtime.
This evolves into a cat and mouse game between the cast of kids and the killer that relocates to the school for the final act and the weird denouement. Despite all its quirks, the film has its charms, especially if your thirsty for a slasher—any slasher—during this drought.
GETAWAY (2020)
I expected nothing going into this one, and it turned out to be such a suspenseful little film with familiar themes yet plenty of unexpected turns. It’s sort of like a crazy backwoods family movie with a rape/revenge edge and occult/witchcraft elements.
I was hooked by the opening scene, which presents us with a disturbing and unique perspective on a classic death scene.
Then we meet our bodacious main girl. A sexy cop is the new man in her life, but she’s off on an excursion with a couple of friends—Scout and her girlfriend (Scout once again playing gay as she did in Feral).
The foreboding tone is established immediately as the main girl is on her way to their place then builds as the trio goes to a bar to party. There’s drinking and drugging, and our main girl gets entangled with a trio of male religious nuts that need a new sacrifice. But she’s no victim, so she mind fucks them, suggesting that she will use magic powers to destroy them. I always wondered why the accused witches in Salem didn’t play the same dastardly trick.
Weird shit starts happening to the men, and it seems something has invaded their property. Is the main girl a witch, or are the ghosts of previous female victims back for revenge? And with two awesome lesbian friends and a hot cop in her life, will anyone come rescue our main girl?
The sense that something is very off as events unfold makes this a fun guessing game for the audience, and I fricking loved the three female leads by the time the film concluded.
CYNTHIA (2018)
Take the It’s Alive concept and make it into a comedy laced with gross-out horror humor, and you have this fun little film.
Scout plays a young woman trying to get pregnant through fertility injections. When it finally takes, she immediately starts having crazy horror dreams.
And then the baby is born—well, one normal baby and another one no one realizes has been set free. Fresh out of the hoohoo hole, the deformed baby delivers baby POV and nasty noises as it runs around the hospital causing chaos. This movie even delivers the kind of raunchy sex scene tragically absent from most modern horror films, and offers some man flesh that scores this one a spot on the stud stalking page.
Once Scout and family return home, naturally the forgotten baby finds a way back to them. But this isn’t your usual killer deformed baby movie, so there are surprising turns as it races towards the campy final act. All I’m going to say is that a hot gay couple absolutely makes this movie and lands Cynthia on the does the gay guy die? page.
Adding to the fun are a load of horror veterans, including Sid Haig, Lynn Lowry, Robert LaSardo, James Karen, and Bill Moseley…in drag!
Needless to say, this is the second Scout film of this foursome that I’ve added to my DVD collection.
