It’s a trio of indies from my Tubi watchlist, including a horror take on a Disney fave, a vampire buddy action flick, and a desert mutants splatterfest. Let’s find out if this was a triple win for me.
THE LITTLE MERMAID (2024)
If you’re hooked on the new trend of children’s stories going horror, expect to be disappointed by this take on The Little Mermaid, which is mostly romance, minimal horror.
First, we meet an undeniably sexy archeologist and his team in the Caribbean as they discover signs of an ancient civilization just as the landowner is pressuring them to leave. Tapping into this civilization seems to trigger the sexy archaeologist to have nightmares about a mermaid. He looks sizzling hot when he tosses and turns. I’d like to do the tossing for him, but it turns out he’s into fish.
There’s little to no buildup to the mermaid morphing into a human. She is caught by two fishermen and already has her legs, so we get no Ursula. She bites the fishermen and turns one into a fish man minion.
With no explanation, the mermaid is instantly a well-adjusted human posing as a rich businesswoman, and she begins seducing the sexy archaeologist. There’s virtually no other plot. Even when she appears to be going out to get revenge on anyone that wrongs the sexy archaeologist, there are no kills.
The most horror on display is in a nightmare sequence involving one character having his face peeled off by one of the fish man minions in a bad fish face mask.
The final ritual and confrontation when the mermaid abducts the sexy archaeologist’s men and reveals her evil plot to rule the world is super cheesy, and it just manages to make me angry that we never even get to see the sexy archaeologist naked during the course of the film. Bottom line is that the mermaid looks more terrifying in the poster art than she ever does in the actual movie.
BLOOD SHOT (2013)
This is pure SyFy level action horror comedy cheese with a dash of humor, and the hubby and I were all in for it. It also gave me flashbacks to the direct-to-video action horror flicks of the 90s, and it features several familiar faces, including Christopher Lambert, Lance Henriksen, and Brad Dourif, who plays a terrorist, complete with Middle Eastern black face. WTF? What were they thinking?
Our main cop is a hottie with a horrible hairstyle.
He’s having marital troubles, is immediately thrown into a furious fight with a monstrous hitman, and soon discovers that the hitman is a bulky, towering vampire loaded with campy one-liners. This Nosferatu on roids totally steals the show.
Just go for the goofy fun ride as the cop and vamp team up together to stop a terrorist organization from blowing up L.A. It’s a buddy movie! Awesome.
But it’s more involved than that, because Middle Eastern black face Dourif has an occult plan that leads to ritualistic chaos in the final act, and the unleashing of a new, monstrous presence.
Our main cop even gets in on the vampiric action, which magically makes his hair look so much better and him so much sexier.
DESERT FIENDS (2024)
Indie horror actor turned low budget director Shawn C. Phillips directs this desert mutants horror comedy, which starts quite strong and deliciously simple.
Two guys dumping a company’s chemical waste canister in the desert are mutilated by mutants. There’s even a nasty penis removal.
Savor that moment, because the kills, which include even more penis destruction, are the highlight. The film runs way too long at 107 minutes, and much of that time is padded with the kind of nonsensical banter and over-the-top behavior between too many characters that is meant to be funny but just falls flat while failing to establish any sense of plot.
So what is the plot? For her birthday, a girl gets taken to a desert concert by her friends, while a rescue crew is sent out to clean up the mess caused by the two guys in the opening scene near the same location.
There’s a major 80s style, low budget synth score, the gore uses grisly practical effects, and the mutants are nice and gnarly, but they talk, and when they do, they behave like Beavis and Butthead. So don’t expect anything about this film to be scary or intense.
There’s an array of familiar faces, including Lisa Wilcox, Michael Pare doing an awful British accent, Tom Arnold, Scout Taylor-Compton, Eileen Deetz (who gets the funniest death scene), Eric Roberts, and Bai Ling, but they all seem to Have been directed to give bizarre, quirky performances that just don’t land.
The highlight comes in the last twenty minutes, with a band performing a new wave song at the concert, which turns into a bloody massacre. Right after that, the final scene totally goes off the rails. In a good way. All I’m going to say is…dick syringe.
