MY CALL:  Far from a home invasion movie, this film is much more than you’d expect from the trailer…and way more brutal. This was an entertaining thriller that unexpectedly unfolds.  MOVIES LIKE Don’t Breathe:  Maybe 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) for more crazy recluse action or Hush (2016) for more sensory impairment horror.

At first I was honestly not excited about this film despite the fact that it stars Stephen Lang (The Monkey’s Paw, Into the Badlands), who I tend to like as the moderately older yet still tough guy (e.g., Avatar).  I mean, I was gonna’ see it—but I intended to wait for HBO.  The story of a group of twenty-somethings robbing a surprisingly capable blind war veteran and having it blow violently up in their faces simply didn’t appeal to me as a way to spend $10 on a Saturday afternoon.  And that’s all the early trailers showed us…however, newer trailers indicated that there might disturbingly be more to the story.

But then it was pointed out to me that the lead was Jane Levy (Suburgatory)—who starred in the Evil Dead remake which I actually very much enjoyed—and that Fede Alvarez, who also wrote and directed the Evil Dead (2013) remake, wrote and directed this.  You’ll also notice (in my parenthetical annotations, like these) that our three home invaders have been cast by actors with a fair bit of horror experience.  Okay…nooooow I guess I’m on board.

So Rocky (Jane Levy), Alex (Dylan Minnette; Goosebumps, Let Me In) and Money (Daniel Zovatto; It Follows, Fear the Walking Dead) are three young criminals who intend to rob a blind man (Stephen Lang; The Monkey’s Paw, Salem) of his wealth which he evidently keeps as cash hidden in his home…rather than a bank, annuity or investment account.  Of course, as the trailers clearly forecast, it doesn’t go as planned.  The blind man is aware of their presence, traps them in the house and proceeds to hunt them down.

But why doesn’t he just call the police?  Because this is more than a simple home invasion movie.  Our blind man is hiding more than just money in is largely abandoned neighborhood—he has something to hide and he’ll go to great lengths to keep his secret.

Much as she did in in the Evil Dead remake, Jane Levy physically undergoes some tough scenes for the sake of her art.  From sexual assault and generally taking a beating to close-quarters dog attacks and tunnel ratting, Levy did more to build this film’s intensity than most already-mainstream actresses would ever consider.

SIDEBAR: In the past I’ve praised some actresses for what they physically endure on film: Jo Beth Williams (Poltergeist), Jenny Spain (Deadgirl), Isabelle Adjani (Possession), Elma Begovic (Bite), Linda Blair (The Exorcist), the entire cast of The Descent, Monica Belluci (Irreversible), the women of Martyrs, Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist, Nymphomaniac), Alison Lohman (Drag Me to Hell), Danielle Harris (Halloween), Caroline Williams (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), the cast of The Human Centipede films, and all actresses from the I Spit on Your Grave films, the women of all other TCM old and new and Last House on the Left films/remakes, Monica Bellucci (Irreversible), that poor woman in Cannibal Holocaust, and now we must add to this list Jane Levy (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe).

In fact, the whole cast (Lang, Levy, Minette and Zoyatto) see their fair share of enduring physically violent scenes. Not that they didn’t have some help from stunt doubles, but I imagine the cast walked away from the set with quite a few bumps and bruises at the end of filming.

Perhaps providing him with more ammunition in his campaign to play Cable in the Deadpool sequel, Lang really brings the intensity on many levels.  I think he was channeling a PTSD iteration of 10 Cloverfield Lane’s shut-in headcase (i.e., John Goodman).  At first, it’s a quietly lethal intensity, later escalating in pitch to the desperate shrill of a war cry.  As he shifts gears from defense to offense, his home intruders likewise shift from playing a silent game of cat-and-mouse to fighting for their lives.

I may not have been handed quite enough to care about the pseudo-protagonist home invaders (mostly Levy’s character, really), but the situation felt more than sufficiently dire for me to feel nervous for them at first, and terrified for them later.  And not just dire, but outright BRUTAL.  The violence in this is brutal and, although limited to blood and swollen bruising make-up, the bloody effects felt pretty intense—clearly efficiently magnified by the situation.  When Lang gets his hands on these young criminals you quickly learn to fear for them.  And when Lang hits them, it hits deeper than Rocky’s blows in the final round.  His strikes aren’t striving for glory or desire; he’s trying to beat you to death and I believed him every time he made a fist or clutched a throat.

Lang is intense as the hound, and Levy a magnificent hare.  We also see echoes of Sam Raimi’s influence (he’s a producer) with some of the neat sweeping shots, the dreaded cabin-like isolation, and the use of the infrastructural guts of the house.  The most notable “new” dimension added to this film was the occasional use of total silence when you find yourself listening along with Lang for the sound of their breath.

Folks, I agree that the premise probably sounds lame.  But this flick is pretty awesome and after 20 minutes it doesn’t even resemble a home invasion movie.  See this, applaud Levy’s dedication to rough roles, reconsider Lang as a petite Cable and, most of all, ENJOY!

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This article is rich with images you do not want your boss to see when he’s looking over your shoulder at work. View at your own risk.
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CLICK HERE TO GO TO PART 1

Transformation scenes are often the coolest things we see in horror films–especially when they’re executed with practical effects.  Some of my favorite transformation scenes are also the most gory and brutal.  In The Best Transformation Scenes of Horror Part 1 we reviewed the transformations featured in Tales from the Darkside (1990; the short story Lover’s Vow), Zombeavers (2014) and Wolfcop (2014) (the latter two are also discussed in the MoviesFilmsandFlix Podcast Episode 17).  So today I’m continuing to highlight transformations in which the “new form” pushes its way out of the “old” (human) form much as a moth emerges from its cocoon…but deliciously GORIER!

CLICK HERE TO GO TO PART 1

Transformations like these are gory, abrupt and to the point; like the human skin was just an ill-fitting suit entrapping a monster.  The first film (that comes to mind anyway) using this transformation method was the werewolf movie The Howling (1981), and far later by the werewolf character from Hemlock Grove (2013-present; Netlfix show).  The Fly (1986) also utilized this method, in which Brundelfly’s transformation was a slow mutation and his human form was almost gorily “molted” off.  I feel like an honorable mention is owed to Spring (2014), which features hints of onscreen transformation frequently and in interesting ways but limits all significant changes in form to offscreen events (i.e., revealing the final form but not witnessing the actual transformation).  If only that film had a larger budget–but then, that might have spoiled the more elegant tone of that special romantic horror film.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO PART 1

But enough of this banter.  Here are a few more transformations that I really enjoyed.  Stay tuned for future installments in this series of articles…

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)

Opening as playfully as the original ended, this sequel has brought a bit more humor than original, but maintained the dark and dire evil aspects. From his very introduction Freddy is noticeably more malicious and now he wants Jesse’s (Mark Patton) body!  Things get more than a little weird in this sequel.  Freddy seems to be crossing over into reality on his own accord, which seems to violate the rules we once learned about him.  But how…?

Freddy (Robert Englund; Wishmaster, Hatchet) uses Jesse’s unwilling body as a conduit to exact his revenge. Whereas part 1 introduced us to the terrifying notion that someone (or something) can hunt and kill us in our dreams (and we really die!), this sequel removes from us not only control of our dreams but also control of ourselves.  After harbingering the horrors to come in dreams of Jesse wearing the bladed glove, Freddy’s claws pierce through Jesse’s fingertips and the skin lacerates from the inside out making way for Freddy’s iconic sweater to appear beneath.

This scene is gross, painful to watch…and AWESOME!!!  From here Freddy’s face forms through Jesse’s stomach and pushes its way out like a belly-born pregnancy of Krueger’s head and torso.

As if to offer a bit of poetic justice, when Freddy is defeated by Lisa’s love for Jesse (BARF…LOL), Freddy’s burnt husk is peeled away to reveal Jesse within.

This scene isn’t majorly transformative and some would reduce it to Freddy simply tearing his way out of Jesse’s body.  But I contest that, while perhaps a lesser transformation scene with little onscreen transition (e.g., the claws emerging from Jesse’s fingertips and the “glove” now being Jesse’s hand in several scenes), I figured it had just enough merit to include it.

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Late Phases (2014)

Directed by Adrián García Bogliano (B is for Bigfoot – The ABCs of Death), this film throws tropes out the window to deliver a fresh indie werewolf movie with a blind elderly antihero.  I enjoyed the different approach to the hero, the unique retirement community setting, and the deviation from some standard tropes. But do you know what I loved most about this film? The practical effects!  The transformation scene may not have been top-dollar, but it was cool and smacked of Hemlock Grove (2013-2016), The Howling (1981), Wolfcop (2014; transformation scene) and The Company of Wolves (1984).

During the full moon transition, the body expands tearing open the clothing and subsequently expanding and internally rending the flesh to reveal the furred beast within.  The werewolf itself had a sleek look of its own, too.  This little indie was a blast!

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The Company of Wolves (1984)

This is one of the more stylish (yet less substantial) werewolf movies out there, featuring two highly memorable transformation scenes (out of four, in total) worth the price of admission alone.  The first transformation scene begins with a subtle change in eye color to a sharp yellow. He proceeds to tear away chunks from his cheek and his forehead, stretching and yanking flaps from his neck and his chin.  It’s quite deliciously gross.  After tearing away the last of his skin and hair with bony hands he uncovers a fleshless head of sinew from which springs and extends his canine muzzle.  It’s all practical effects, of course, and weirdly off-putting—it actually reminds me of the modern “Bodies” exhibit.  Finally, his neck extends like a turtle’s from its shell as it unsheathes!

This scene may not be as brutally long and painful as An American Werewolf in London (1981) or as grimy and sloppy as The Howling (1981) or its Wolfcop (2014) successor, but it’s quite effectively uncomfortable to watch.

Another transformation scene in the movie feels brief and comical, more akin to Howling 3: The Marsupials (1987).

But the final transformation scene features a gross writhing tongue followed by the emergence of a wolf’s snout from a man’s wide open mouth (as seen on the movie poster) before it tears its way out of his skin as if it wore him as a suit (a more crude version of the “unzipping” werewolves we find in Trick ‘r Treat).

I have a major soft spot for this movie.

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I hope you enjoyed these gore-slathered movie memories and perhaps you have been directed to new things you need to see for yourself.  Stay tuned for future installments…

CLICK HERE TO GO TO PART 1

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Working out in the 80s…in horror movies?
You guys know this is gonna’ be a bit dirty!
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Ready to sweat out the sins of watching too many horror movies?  Well throw on your halfway shirts, short-shorts and tube socks and let’s get to it!

Killer Workout, aka Aerobicide (1987)
Pretty classy poster, right?

Killer Workout, aka Aerobicide (1987) is easily one of the most TnA-rich raunchy throwbacks I’ve ever seen.  Hardly horror at all, this was deliciously cheesy to the point of hilarity.  Watch this to remind yourself of what it’s like to be a teenage boy.  Brace yourself for sweaty hard bodies, ass-choking leotards, hot pink tights and excessively inappropriate camera angles as we are introduced to Rhonda’s (Marcia Karr; Maniac Cop, Savage Streets) gym.  Despite a recent series of in-gym homicides people keep coming to the gym as if nothing happened and never seem to wonder what happened to their training partner.  This may sound bad, but we came to laugh as people get killed with random gym apparatuses.  What this flick lacks in knives in cleaving sweaty cleavage, it makes up for with extra cheese in your post-workout shake.

We get our raunchy cheese, as any cheese connoisseur would have it, in a variety of forms.  But the real highlights here are aerobics montages to remind us that back in the 80s women pretty much dressed like hookers when they worked out.  We learn that the camera man understood his instructions loud and clear as we are bombarded by tandem close-ups of sweaty bouncing aerobic boobs, thong-wedgied butts and leg-spreading crotch shots.  No joke–the aerobic routines are more than a little slutty and there’s an inordinate amount of this.  Every 10-15 minutes it’s like the director was just filming hooker tryouts.  SIX TIMES we get these bouncy slut montages encored by a highlights reel during the closing credits. LOL.  We even see a scarred up burn victim’s bare breasts in more than one lengthy scene!!!  That’s an awful LOT of screen time for TnA even in a raunchy horror flick.

This spa looks like the 80s vomited all over it.  Super short shorts on allegedly straight guys with feathered hair, girls in provocatively snug unitards, lots of hairspray, tights, promiscuity, legwarmers and a strangely wardrobed black dude (Ken Foree; Dawn of the Dead, The Lords of Salem, Halloween) who the director clearly decided was “tough” because he’s a tall black dude who works out in a robe!

As the “spa” continues to strike, its assaults include tampering with a diving board, scalding hot showers, projectile bath tiles flying at naked women, a busted hot water pipe melts the face off of some chick and a needlessly deadly chest-fly machine.

Not surprisingly it only takes a few free months of gym memberships for gym rats to remain loyal to Brother Iron and Sister Steel while several people have been serially killed or injured in the past week!  Later some dude has his face squeezed off (the only real latex effort in special effects), a chick’s hand gets blended into a protein shake while it’s still attached to her and there’s a random zombie fish attack…yes, one zombie in the entire movie and it’s a fish.  They’re rich in omega-3’s, bro!  This movie even includes death by tanning bed–which is the second time this ever happened on film (Killer Workout (1987) was the first), later copied by the I Know What You Did Last Summer and Final Destination franchises.

Shower scenes and wet bodies abound in this extra cheesy flick in which a HAL-like gym security system takes it upon itself to kill its members like they kill their triceps.  I’d like to see this remade by Eli Craig, Joss Whedon or Sam Raimi…you know, like the minds behind Evil Dead (2013), The Cabin in the Woods (2012), Final Destination 5 (2011), Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010), Drag Me to Hell (2009), and of course Evil Dead 2 (1987) and The Evil Dead (1981).

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Happy Birthday to Me (1981)

Grin-worthy 80s lameness abounds in this gory flick.  The deaths range from ho-hum to laugh-out-loud hilarity.  But my favorite kill involves giving a mean spot while someone is doing bench presses, which of course reminded me of Killer Workout (1987; aka Aerobicide) and Death Spa (1989).  But unlike the other two mentioned flicks, Happy Birthday to Me (1981) features but a single gym-related death.

After any good workout you gotta’ eat right to get those gains!  PROTEIN!!!!  And if you’re a gym rat, you know muscles are made in the kitchen.  So whether your forcing kabobs down your throat or prepping your girlfriend’s severed head, get to it!  The pay off is so worth it.

I know you’re full, bro.  But take it down like the lion does the gazelle. GET THOSE GAINS!

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We hope you enjoyed these three gory sets of horrific muscle-building reps from the 80s.  Stay tuned for The Best Horror Workouts Part 2!

SPOILERS

MY CALL:  If Norman Bates and Leatherface had a telekinetic lovechild with a fondness for mannequins, this lunacy is what you’d have.  It’s not scary or gory, but it trumps the deck in the weird and creepy department.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Tourist Trap:  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), House of Wax (2005) and Psycho (1960, 1998).

Also released as Horror Puppet, this cult classic leaps right into the deep end of its own lunacy.  We’ve barely met our group of victims when one of them, approaching a sleepy and perhaps abandoned gas station (a la The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), wanders into a sort of elaborately rigged funhouse loaded with evil mannequins.  The scares are cheap and numerous, but they should crack a grin.

I have no idea why this poster depicts a naked women (there is no nudity) or why her nipples emit beams of light (that obviously doesn’t happen).
This is a terribly misleading poster.
And while we’re at it, what is with this raunchy poster pose?
It’s oddly similar to Evils of the Night (1985)

The humor may not be entirely deliberate, but I finda sort of sick slapstick nature to it as the mannequins cackle and random objects jettison through the air at our victim.

This may make some horror lightweights a bit uncomfortable.  Writer/director David Schmoeller’s (Puppet Master, Netherworld) first feature length undertaking sets the stage much like its successors The Evil Dead (1981) and The Funhouse (1981).

Now one short, four twenty-somethings remain including Jerry (Jon Van Ness; X-Ray, The Hitcher), the anxious Molly (Jocelyn Jones; The Enforcer), the bold Eileen (Robin Sherwood; Death Wish II, The Love Butcher), and the foxy Becky (Tanya Roberts; The Beastmaster, Sheena).

The classic tropes are on display, that’s for sure.  When our four victims go looking for their missing friend, they go down a road passing a sign with a vulture perched upon it that reads “closed to the public.”  Maybe read between the lines, folks.

This won’t end well.

The friendly backwoods landowner Slausen (Chuck Connors; Soylent Green, Summer Camp Nightmare) catches the girls in his swimming hole and kindly introduces himself, explains the regional history and warns that they leave before dark.  He ran the now out-of-business “local museum” and offers them a ride to pick up some tools to fix their broken down car.

Things get really troped up and really suspicious really fast…and the short shorts get really short.  The phones don’t work, he warns them not to wander around, he gives cryptic answers to simple questions like “who lives in that house” and Slausen wastes no time separating the group.

Random objects break, shatter or shutter about adding little of substance to the haunted house atmosphere.  It feels cheap and desperate.  What does work are the creepy mannequins’ shifting eyes, moving on their own, and blatant nods to a slack-jawed, eerily masked Leatherface-like villain with some Norman Bates issues.

The death scenes are pretty hokey. Scarf strangling by ghost (or telekinesis or something), a projectile pipe stabbing, asphyxiation by plaster…they sadly do not comprise the highlights of this flick.  But it’s charm is instead found in the antagonist’s mania as our murdered victims are added to a creepy mannequin menagerie.

This split-personalitied maniac and his romantic proclivities clearly inspired Motel Hell’s (1980) sympathetic Farmer Vincent character, who also echoed Leatherface and other aspects of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).

For whatever reason or coincidence, this outfit makes out villain look like Tony Clifton!

Tony Clifton is for real gonna’ murder this chick!

I’d recommend this to seasoned horror fans—who have already seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Psycho (1960)—who like digging deep to observe the roots of subsequent horror themes.

Before.

After.

Some SPOILERS

MY CALL:  I had fun watching this movie. Once it gets going it’s actually quite exciting if you don’t get overly aggravated by its repetitions from 1999’s playbook.  But I also enjoyed it much less after I left the theater and had time to reflect on it.  Sigh.  Take from that what you will.  Felt like a great jumpy popcorn flick to me, but not something for anyone hoping for a satisfying film following up The Blair Witch Project (1999).

Almost 20 years ago, The Blair Witch Project (1999) took theaters by storm in an era before internet hype; before social media minefields of spoiler-rich click bait revealed everything before the opening day of the movie; and, most importantly, before anyone had ever considered found footage to be a subgenre (let alone a subgenre of which they tired).  It was about three film students who vanished after venturing the Maryland woods to film a documentary on the local Blair Witch legend, leaving only their harrowing and turbulent footage behind.  The film powerfully impacted the horror industry and its fans, so naturally followed an under-appreciated sequel.

The 1999 indie film was more than a bit divisive.  Causing shaky camera-induced motion sickness in a sea of viewers, this otherwise impressive film ignited the tidal wave of found footage hatred in its wake about which so many peevish horror fans moan today.

The more mainstream (and not found footage) studio sequel Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) followed a subsequent group of investigators to Burkittsville, Maryland after seeing The Blair Witch Project (1999), herein treated as a “real movie” within the movie.  In this metamovie, our protagonists explored the local mythology only to get caught between mass hysteria or, perhaps, the magical influence of the Blair Witch.  Whereas I enjoyed and highly recommend this sequel, the majority of horror-goers don’t seem to share my opinion.  An obvious consequence of this backlash being that this new 2016 sequel directly follows The Blair Witch Project (1999) while apparently ignoring the events of Book of Shadows (2000).  However, one could thinly argue that both sequel stories transpired and that their constituent investigators simply never crossed paths in person or in research.

Now with this third film upon us the Blair Witch has become a franchise—a brand.  So it came as no surprise that such a stylistic indie filmmaker was chosen for this third Blair Witch film which, for fear of being stoned to death, I dare not call the completion of a “trilogy.”  Director Adam Wingard (The Guest, V/H/S 2 – Phase I Clinical Trials, The ABCs of Death – Q is for Quack, V/H/S – Tape 56, You’re Next) is no stranger to found footage, nor to taking the road less traveled to pursue less mainstream-style horror stories.  He has even taken it upon himself to helm the risky American remakes of Death Note (2006) and I Saw the Devil (2010).  And where we find Wingard, we find writer Simon Barrett, who wrote all of the Wingard projects mentioned above, including the upcoming Americanized remakes.  They make a good team…I have high hopes for this film.  Or should I say, I had high hopes.

Having just left the theater I can comfortably say it was consistent nerve-racking fun…but also rather annoyingly just more of the same, turned up to an “11” and super loud.  If you can enjoy a film simply for its rollercoaster jumpiness and ignore its content altogether, then you could end up loving this completely unoriginal film.  It’s a thrillride and it’s great at being a thrillride, as if we were injected into a fast-play horror videogame towards the end.  But outside of that, this brings nothing new to the table except for a “witch” that looks like a tall lanky monster from a Doom or Resident Evil first person shooter game—and with similar effects.

The original (and Book of Shadows) focused on the characters and their superstition turning them on each other and likewise turning to terror.  Putative supernatural occurrences were suggested but not evidenced back in 1999.  This 2016 film, however, was more akin to sprinting through the woods and an abandoned dilapidated house screaming “WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH IN THE WOODS” with a super shaky camera that captures occasional glimpses of terrors.  Much as The Thing (2011), Star Wars Episode VII (2015), Jurassic World (2015), Cabin Fever (2016) and Ghostbusters (2016), we have yet another film that paints by the numbers of an overly familiar model pattern.  And that model pattern was a successful one the we loved… but did anyone really want to see the investigators get lost, apparently hike a giant circle, and end up back at the campsite again?  Did we need more sprinting while holding a flashlight-lit camera at high speeds in the woods?  Did the creek need to disappear… again?  Did we need to see another person standing in a dark cellar facing the wall?  Probably not.  But, again, despite being a mediocre film (in my opinion), it manages to be a quite entertaining movie experience (for me).

As it turns out, this redundant link is perhaps also the deepest aspect of the film–addressing the aspect of time distortion in the forest.  Lots of theories out there, so we won’t discuss it here other than to say that many think this is the “same event” showing the “same character” in both movies.  Think about it…if time passes differently in those woods, this is maybe possible depending on your rationale.

That’s not to say everything was replayed from what makes me now shutter to call “part 1.” There were new character elements (for otherwise underdeveloped characters), they forced more probable supernatural elements upon us sooner (rather than relying on mystery or possible hysteria for much of the running time), there was a shocking voodoo doll scene (with a back break akin to Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)), a completely disjointed implication of a parasite of some sort (with greater implications that I feel failed), some more clues to the component of time distortion (addressed in the other two films as well), and they made a bigger overblown deal out of the house (which was straight out of a videogame).  But, like I said before, it still smelled of the original, and strongly so.

In the end I had fun watching this movie. It’s actually VERY exciting and entertaining if you don’t get caught up in aggravation—LOL.  But I also enjoyed it much less after I left the theater and had time to reflect on it.  Sigh.

Regardless of one’s enjoyment, I’d struggle to identify anything new that actually contributed to the 1999 story…other than that we got to “see” the Blair Witch and she looks like a starved, gangly-limbed videogame monster that was probably transported back to Earth after the reappearance of the Event Horizon (1997), the wrong turn to Silent Hill, or the incident at Raccoon City.

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After seeing this I imagine you’ll want to see more witch movies.  Maybe because you loved this above-discussed 2016 film or because you want a witch movie do-over to make up for that hot mess.  So, now that the Blair Witch discussion has come to an end, here is a little witch movie guidance…

MORE WITCH MOVIES:  Some excellent witch movies that actually feel like witch movies include Warlock (1989), The Witch (2016; podcast discussion) and The Witches of Eastwick (1987).  Beautiful Creatures (2013) and The Woods (2006) may appeal to young adult audiences.  But I would sooner direct you to Hocus Pocus (1993), The Witches (1990) and The Craft (1996).  I’m leaving Harry Potter out of this discussion, by the way. Fantasy sorcery (Willow, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) and wizardry (The Lord of the Rings) is to be considered its own thing entirely.

The campy The Kiss (1988), Spellbinder (1988), Necropolis (1987) and Cherry Tree (2015) are entertaining but bad.  And speaking of campy, Superstition (1982) and The Haunting of Morella (1990) are allegedly witch movies but don’t feel like it. But even if you want a bad movie, definitely skip Witchcraft (1989) and all sequels.

The dark noir Lord of Illusions (1995) is intriguingly edgy and, while more a “magic movie” than a “witch movie,” it hits a lot of the same dark arcane notes.  And, of course, The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) were awesomely stylized in their own unique ways despite never actually showing us a witch.  Check out Pumpkinhead (1988) for a great depiction of a witch, though it’s not a “witch movie.” Meanwhile Deadtime Stories (1986) and The Theater Bizarre (2011) features a pretty cool witch short story, and The Pit and the Pendulum (1991) addresses witch trials.

Witches can come in so many flavors, can’t they?  Lords of Salem (2013) and Mother of Tears (2007) deal with witches’ spirits in the form of dark ritual and possession.  Quite the opposite, Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), The Last Witch Hunter (2015; podcast discussion) and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) offer action and effects-driven popcorn fun—Season of the Witch (2011) attempted this, but failed miserably.  But the witch from The Brothers Grimm (2005) was pretty cool.

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Well that concludes today’s witch movie discussion. That is, of course, until they release The Blair Sasquatch!  I totally think the story would make more sense if it was just some bigfoot making crude stick men and eating campers that nosily wander too far from the safety of their trails.  That thing we saw for half a second at a time in the Blair Witch (2016) finale could have easily been an albino sasquatch, rendered almost completely ravenous, hairless and gaunt from the extreme malnutrition of having no campers to eat for 17 years (since 1999)!  I’m just glad that poor crypto-critter finally got to eat something.

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If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome!

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Summary: This week we discuss Fede Alvarez’ second horror film Don’t Breathe (2016), Stephen Lang and Jane Levy’s physical dedication as actors, and Fede Alvarez’ first film the Evil Dead (2013) remake.

We answer the tough questions in this podcast!  For example…

“Did Bloodsport (1988) have the best soundtrack of 80s action movies?”

“If Stranger Things took place in the 1990s what movies would be used for inspiration?”

“Does the Evil Dead (2013) remake have any heart?”

“Are there really very many movies featuring monsters barbecuing people?”

LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOG TALK RADIO,
or head over iTunes, and if you get a chance please SUBSCRIBE, REVIEW, RATE and SHARE the pod!

Okay, guys. So the movie is called CANNIBAL Ferox!
Soooooo… NOT SAFE FOR WORK, right?
Any movie with CANNIBAL in the title probably means NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

MY CALL:  I always used to think that Ferox and Holocaust were the two formative extreme cannibal exploitation films.  The truth is that Holocaust is, and Ferox just retraces its brutal steps.  Fun for exploitation fans, but a major bummer for film fans.  MOVIES LIKE Cannibal Ferox:  Cannibal Holocaust (1980) above all other cannibal movies.  I’d warn you to skip Green Inferno (2013), but if you’re like me you’ll watch anyway… and then regret it since it’s just another cheap knockoff masquerading as something original since it came out over 30 years later.

In Cannibal Holocaust (1980) we were graced with an excellent introduction to our characters, their motivation, and why we’re all here.  But as if in a rush, we now find ourselves in the Amazon almost immediately as our three protagonists begin their search for a jungle village which, by all local accounts, doesn’t seem to exist.

Rudy (Danilo Mattei; Ironmaster), Gloria (Lorraine De Selle; House on the Edge of the Park, Wild Beasts) and Pat (Zora Kerova; The New York Ripper, Anthropophagous) venture into the Amazon so that Gloria may gather the information she needs to “prove” her dissertation’s thesis that “cannibalism as an organized practice in society” does not exist, nor has it ever.  You’d think Gloria would be intelligent, working on her PhD in anthropology and all, but she can’t be that smart… since these three American buffoons drive into the jungle without a guide, breakdown, and then travel aimlessly on foot and off-trail in hopes of basically “bumping into” Gloria’s alleged village of cannibals.  But they sure do seem to get lucky—or unlucky.

During their adventure hey bump into Mike (Giovanni Lombardo Radice; The Omen, City of the Living Dead) and Joe (Walter Lucchini; Ironmaster), who claim to have escaped cannibals!

Written and directed by Umberto Lenzi (Nightmare City, Ghosthouse), this film follows close in the footsteps of its predecessor Cannibal Holocaust (1980).  The tortuous use of a coatimundi (that narrow-snouted muskrat looking critter) echoes Holocaust’s influence—when we saw one stabbed in the neck and killed on film.  Keeping in the spirit of animal cruelty, we watch a coatimundi die to an anaconda (for real, on film) while yelping its last breaths, a jaguar kills a small monkey (for no good reason), Mike stabs a young pig to death (again, for no reason), an iguana ravages a boa, and an alligator is gutted.  Probably considered avant-garde filmmaking by some, this needless “real” gore contributes no more value to the film than the completely forced nudity.  Throw in a lot of violence against women, some genital mutilation, bloody eye gauging, child nudity (a la National Geographic), dismemberment and sloppy disembowelment and I guess we’ve got ourselves an exploitation film.

Overall the gore and violence aren’t very effective, but anyone would wince at the castration scene—we see quite a bit.  I was particularly surprised by the meat hooks through the breast!  It was also somewhat unexpected (or more hilariously unreasonable) that the natives had a special table designed just for skull-capping victims to expose and eat their brains.  But hey, that’s the kind of thing we signed up for with this film, right?

The grossest thing about this movie was when they found a native eating big fat beetle grubs alive.  You saw its guts as he bit into it and chewed with his mouth open. Yuck!

A lot of things happen but they never coalesce into a reasonable story.  Our trio encounters natives who had gorily died to booby traps, it’s explained that they had helped Mike and Joe escape, and when they all later return to the village together the natives sit quietly together as if scared of their white visitors (who do as they wish in the village like pale rulers).

“White Devil, White Devil.”

There seems to be no inspiration behind this stale film.  It just rides the coattails of Cannibal Holocaust (1980) with no more rhyme or reason than chasing a paycheck.  Holocaust was avant-garde extreme filmmaking, but Ferox is just one of the many random exploitation films inevitably to be found in its wake.  Don’t think I’m being fair to this film?  They even decapitate a large turtle and then butcher it while it’s still twitching… just because Holocaust did it. We flip-flop scenes between New York and the Amazon, just because it worked for Holocaust, and New York’s Lt. Rizzo is played by the star of Holocaust (Robert Kerman; Night of the Creeps, Cannibal Holocaust). As the story unfolds, a great deal more of the Ferox story (and the cast) mirrors Holocaust but continues to offer little in its honor in the process.

Everything that made Holocaust work is absent here, unless you count “real gore” from animal cruelty and a few boobs as highlights.  This is a cheap, uninspired knock-off and, while admittedly quite entertaining to a fan of the occasional extreme or exploitation film, it completely fails as a “film.”  This is an exploitation “flick” that has nothing original to say, and says nothing at all well outside of step-by-step instructions for field-dressing a turtle or pushing natives to cannibalism.

MY CALL:  Watching this will accomplish two things: 1) you’ll wait a whopping 90 minutes to see the monstrosity from the VHS/DVD cover art for 90 seconds, and 2) you’ll have bragging rights among horror hounds for having found and seen this incredibly obscure movie.  Those will be your only joys.  90 seconds of mutant monster baby, and bragging rights over a film most have never known to exist.  MOVIES LIKE The Night Feeder:  It’s Alive (1974, 2008), Dead-Alive (1992), Things (1989) and Hideous! (1997) also feature laughable mutant monster babies to various humorous or twisted effect.

This schlocky oldie opens with a murder crime scene in with a woman’s wounded dead body, clothing tattered and a breast exposed.  It’s the third such murder targeting young women and a local writer sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong when a friend of hers becomes the fourth.

The acting is pretty bad, but for deliberately watching an obscure B-movie it could really be a lot worse.  Adding to the super low budget and haphazard ambiance, the night club and band performance scenes feel and look as unnatural as an early 80s New Wave British music video.  This is where we are bombarded by boobs and stale exposition (e.g., who’s dating who, who works where, and who our victims will be for the evening).

Watching, or more accurately “enduring”, the first 30 minutes of this strange movie was not an enjoyable endeavor.  It’s terribly slow, having no sense of dynamic pace.  But things shift gears for the better for a few minutes during the awesomely gory autopsy scene which revealed that the victims were killed by brain extraction, leaving them with largely hollow skulls.  This scene was pretty cool, but it’ll be over an hour before anything interesting happens again.

There are no fewer than five women’s boobs in this not-so-classy and obscure horror film—however, it is always somehow unraunchy or brief enough that it never feels smutty despite the volume of nudity.  Not only that, but these must be the most boring boobs to ever grace the screen—I never knew I could care so little for boobs until this film came along.  I also didn’t think the discovery of so many dead bodies could be boring.  I’m not surprised the director (Jim Whiteaker) never did anything else.  One-and-done for sure.  Sometimes these bad movies can be quite laughable (e.g., Def By Temptation, Night Angel, Spellbinder, Nightwish), but unfortunately the cast and crew tried too hard for it to be enjoyably so-bad-it’s-good, yet didn’t try quite hard enough for anything to really be good at all.

Red herrings are abundant.  The local New Wave Punk band DZS (pronounced “disease”), a street drug of the exact same name (DZS), and a strange hobo known citywide as “the creeper” are presented as possible killers.  But if you bought or rented this movie, you’ve seen the cover art illustrating a mutant monster baby of sorts.  So there go those theories.

Outside of the typically lame eye-gauged corpses, the special effects include some momentary slime drool, slimy undead (during a dream sequence), the highly entertaining autopsy effects (complete with the sound of pulling the skin from the skull), and, of course, the killer mutant baby!

This monstrous infant is THE ONLY REASON to watch this movie.  You saw the awesome DVD cover, decided you had to see it (like me), you suffered through 90 minutes and now it’s finally time!  Yes, that’s right, you don’t even see the baby until the very end.  Take it or leave it.

Well, the mutant baby monster is pretty awesome (for an 80s B-movie).  The problem is that we only see it for about a minute and then the movie ends.  For real.  A minute.  Now, I really liked this monster and it looked like Evil Dead 2’s (1987) Henrietta and Total Recall’s (1990) Kuato had a baby.  But the looooong wait for such little payoff makes this obscure and bizarre movie hard to recommend.

MY CALL:  Watching this cult classic and its diverse 80s practical effects should bring a smile to your face. Equal parts dumb and fun abound in this campy, cheesy, somewhat raunchy Halloween movie.  Enjoy.  MOVIES LIKE Night of the Demons:  Night of the Demons 2 (1994), Night of the Demons 3 (1997) and The Hazing (2004).

It’s Halloween and for just one night all things evil roam among us freely.  And not just evil…douchebags are out tonight, too.

Stooge (Hal Havins; Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama, Witchtrap) and his fellow teenage delinquents are out on Halloween night harassing the elderly and looking for trouble.  Two couples (including Cathy Podewell) have the misfortune of joining these degenerates to a Halloween party thrown by “the weird girl” from school Angela (Mimi/Amelia Kinkade; Night of the Demons 2-3) and her sultry friend Suzanne (Scream Queen Linnea Quigley; Creepozoids, Silent Night, Deadly Night).

The party is being held in an abandoned funeral home, a haunted venue called Hull House where the family and staff were all brutally murdered. So what could possibly go wrong?

How about demonic possession?  Much as in the Evil Dead series (1981, 1987, 2013) and Demons 1-2 (1985, 1986), demonic possession is quite contagious.

This film was clearly the high point of director Kevin Tenney’s (Witchboard 1-2, Pinocchio’s Revenge, The Cellar) career.  This cult classic has its raunchy moments, taking every opportunity to have women changing clothes on-screen, bra and panty shots, abundant boobage, Linnea Quigley offers up the longest naughty panty shot in horror history, and a LOT of sexy dancing.  Sexy demon-possessed dancing actually turns out to be a theme in this franchise.

Wow! This is like Flashdance (1983) meets Legend (1985).

The raunchiness is heavily complemented by the campy cheese factor permeating the writing.  The malevolent old man with his razor blades, an underground stream that runs in a circle around Hull House (because we all know streams flow in circles!) entrapping the evil spirits, lame dialogue, girl-on-girl kissing to transmit demonic possession like an STD… need I go on?

The effects and gore include bitten out tongues, demonic faces with mangled demon teeth, the iconic “disappearing lipstick” scene, an awesomely eye-popping eye gauge, fire-scalded melty flesh, tattered demon zombies… this is no one trick pony.  We enjoy a nice range of horror effects entertainment.

But as far as the plot goes, it’s all pretty haphazard really.  Essentially, a bunch of teenagers go to a demon-infested house, people become possessed and then either try to infect or kill those who remain.  There is no sense of story, climax, challenge or goal other than to survive and escape the house.  Our once semi-clever demons had a few tricks up their sleeve, but by the end they are senselessly reduced to a nearly mindless and tactless zombie horde, and despite being featured on the DVD cover the “Angela demon” is no more menacing or in charge than the others.  Although she probably won the sexy demon-possessed dance off challenge!

Sort of reminds me of Soul Train or MTV’s The Grind.

After the “lipstick scene” of course, the best scene was the last—in which a crotchety old man (from the opening scene) eats a lethal pie made from his razor-blade apples.  Cheeky and memorable.

This reminds me of Bridesmaids fighting to catch the bouquet!

The diversity of effects and the silliness of the growling-laughing demons continues to make this work as a cult classic while clearly offering nothing in the way of substance (or style).  It’s pretty stupid.  But even more so, it’s pretty fun!  Highly recommended for a laugh while unwinding after your Halloween party, or as an installment to mark on your 31 Streaming Films for 31 Days “Horror Calendar.”

Like an alligator at feeding time. Haha

MY CALL:  I consider this sequel to be a far better film and far more fun than Night of the Demons (1988). Featuring everything you loved from before, but with more of it and more handsomely packaged.  If you only see one of the four Night of the Demons movies, make it this one.  MOVIES LIKE Night of the Demons 2:  Night of the Demons (1988), Night of the Demons 3 (1997) and The Hazing (2004).

Director Brian Trenchard-Smith (Leprechaun 3, Leprechaun 4: In Space) picks up where Kevin Tenney (Night of the Demons, Witchboard 1-2) left off.  We find the now permanently demonic and prettier Angela (Amelia Kinkade; Night of the Demons 1-3) residing in the same haunted house where we left her possessed by a demon in 1988.

And staying true to the somewhat raunchy path paved by Tenney, Trenchard-Smith doles out the nudity early and heavily by suggesting that bedtime in the Catholic school girls’ dormitory means “panties and topless time.”

“Is that really what you wear to bed?”

Creating a more formal continuity, the end of Night of the Demons (1988) is recounted as a dormitory ghost story noting that everyone was found mangled and dead except for Angela, who was missing and presumably remains a part of Hull House.  This ghost story is particularly troubling to Mouse (Merle Kennedy; May, Dollman, Leprechaun 3).

The actors in this sequel glow compare to those who came before them.  Both written and acted more convincingly, they include Z-Boy (Darin Heames; Dr. Giggles, Alien Nation: The Enemy Within), Rick (Rick Peters; Leprechaun 4: In Space), Terri (Christine Taylor; The Craft, Campfire Tales, Room 6) and Kurt (Ladd York; Leprechaun 4: In Space).

For his aptitude regarding the occult, Perry (Robert Jayne; Tremors 1 & 3 & TV series) seems to be modeled after Christian Slater’s role in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), and Shirley (Zoe Trilling; Night Terrors, Dr. Giggles, Leprechaun 3) appears to be assuming Linnea Quigley’s Night of the Demons (1988) role as the raunchy girl with the demonic lipstick-eating breasts.

Father Bob (Rod McCary; also Father Bob in Leprechaun 3, 976-Evil II, Komodo vs Cobra) and Sister Gloria (Jennifer Rhodes; Halloween, Slumber Party Massacre II, Charmed) run the Catholic school and both characters offer a lot of flavor and fun personality to this movie.

During preparations for the Halloween dance Perry’s interest in demonology inspires him to perform a summoning ritual using the dark tome called the Necronomicon (not sure where he got that exactly) and Shirley rounds everyone up for a Halloween party at Hull House.  So what could possibly go wrong?  How about demonic possession?  Much as in the Evil Dead series (1981, 1987, 2013) and Demons 1-2 (1985, 1986), demonic possession is quite contagious.

Like its predecessor—but bigger and better—it has its raunchy moments, taking every opportunity to deliver boobs, bra and panty shots, more boobs, some sex scenes both demonic and human, and a LOT of sexy dancing.  Sexy demon-possessed dancing actually turns out to be a theme in this franchise, and Angela has returned to defend her title!

The raunchiness is heavily complemented by the campy yet clearly deliberate cheese factor.  For example, like in part 1 either injury or kissing transmits demonic possession like an STD… and more often than not, it’s girl-on-girl kissing or forced kissing.  We also have demon heads in toilets, deliberately lame creepy shadow stalking and randomly “poof” appearing demons, a nun arming herself like she’s Rambo, filling water balloons and super soakers with holy water, sexually aggressive demon hands and infernal trouser snakes, multiple sports references involving a severed head, a ninja turtle head-poking nun, during the sacrifice finale Angela actually seems to use the Force to paralyze two teenagers, and at one point they play stock footage of part 1 Angela (with shorter non-permed hair) floating down the hall.  It’s all quite delightful.

Note the hairstyle change.

This sequel is to Night of the Demons what Evil Dead 2 (1987) was to Evil Dead (1981); a remake masquerading as a sequel.  Only in this case, it builds on the story much as The Thing (2011) was a prequel that replayed key scenes from the 1981 original as if it were a remake.  And like The Thing (2011) and Evil Dead 2 (1987), it offers a lot “more” of everything.  More boobs, more melty demons, more raunchiness, more cheesy ploys, more sexy dancing, more “lipstick scenes” and more gore.

The effects and gore include more demonic faces with mangled demon teeth, an infernal acidic handshake, bloody decapitation, a phallic lipstick demon parasite, holy water-soaked gore-slathered demons melting like Gremlins (1984), snake monster Angela and a deliciously chunky gory explosion. There is a solid range of horror effects entertainment.

Additionally, this sequel makes a great callback to the fan favorite Night of the Demons “lipstick scene.”  The very lipstick Suzanne (Linnea Quigley) inserted into her breast is discovered again.  After an attempted mouth-rape impregnation, the lipstick transforms into a fleshy tendril and crawls up into a girl like the Evil Dead (1987, 2013) tree rape—it was not consensual.  It’s gross and quite provocative, and now it’s possessed this young lady and imbued her with demonic breasts which then literally attack someone!

In the end evil is vanquished and the demonic lipstick is found outside of the Catholic school to usher in another sequel…which does in fact come along in 1997 followed by a 2009 remake.

However campy this sequel may be, the writing is far more credible (i.e., less silly), the acting is superior, and there is actually some substance and reason to the story.  Whether you love gore, boobs, or gore on boobs (yep, that happens), this movie is for you.  Honestly, even if not a single breast populated this movie, it would still be a popcorn favorite of mine.  It’s loads of fun, it’s never slow, and there is a broad range of gross effects waiting to entertain you.

Highly recommended for a laugh while unwinding after your Halloween party, or as an installment to mark on your 31 Streaming Films for 31 Days “Horror Calendar.”

MY CALL:  The kills remain highly creative, Freddy gets sillier, the characters get pithier, and the re-watchability remains top notch for this stellar franchise.  This movie is excellent for a fun popcorn horror night!  MOVIES LIKE Dream Master: First off, you should first see the original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985) and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.  Other classics everyone should see include Poltergeist (1982; discussed at length in our podcast episode #16), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Hellraiser (1987).  For more recent horror with a similar sense of humor try Wishmaster (1997) and Hatchet (2006).

As is typical for the franchise (but not at all boring or played out), we open with a surreal dream. Kristen pulls Joey and Kincaid into her nightmare as we are reminded of the excellent scoring and soundtracks that continue to grace this franchise and complement the spectacles of a most eerie atmosphere.  Whether for use of shadows, our villain’s skin-crawling chuckle, or elaborate set design, the mood is persistently uneasy when it should be.  This is a sequel worthy to follow the mighty Dream Warriors.

Dream Warriors ended with the unusual circumstance of three teen survivors: Joey, Kincaid and Kristen (replacing Patricia Arquette is Tuesday Knight; Wes Craven’s New Nightmare)—instead of the standard “final girl” survivor theme.  Contrary to the beginning of part 2 and part 3, both of which reference part 1 without really being “direct” sequels of the story, part 4 now continues with our three survivors back in high school after their apparent release from the mental health facility.

I love that we get a good sense of these characters, their relationships with each other and what they’re like individually—a luxury we typically don’t enjoy while watching horror movies, yet a thankful staple of the NOES franchise so far.  Their actions reveal their relationships instead of having a poorly written script “telling” us who’s who.

In addition to Joey, Kincaid and Kristen, there’s the nerdy Sheila (Toy Newkirk) who doesn’t pay attention to boys, the shy and virginal Alice (Lisa Wilcox; A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: Dream Child, Watchers Reborn), her dapper martial artist brother Rick (Andras Jones; Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama), his jock buddy Dan (Danny Hassel; A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: Dream Child), and the man-hungry fitness fanatic Debbie (Brooke Theiss; Beverly Hills, 90210).  Continuing the franchise legacy of prohibitively mettlesome alcoholic absentee parents, our protagonists must defend themselves against more than just Freddy.  So they have only on each other to rely.

By this fourth movie, Freddy’s menace has almost completely wicked away like his cindered flesh, leaving now the outwardly iconic sick sense humor left completely uncaged in Dream Warriors.  If there was any question about his heavy transition to comedy please take, for example, his beach sunglasses and Jaws (1975)-homaging shark fin claw.  Yeah, things are getting silly even for Freddy Krueger.  He’s peeling apples with his claws, speaking like a wise 1800s kung fu master, playfully eating pizza topped with teenage meatball souls, and feistily pelting out adages like “no pain, no gain,” “you can check in, but you can’t check out,” and “sayonara”—all appropriate to the murderous situation and all delivered with the shamelessness of a sitcom dad gleefully embarrassing his kids.

Freddy’s kills continue to entertain with creative flair.  Kincaid is killed after his dog’s flaming stream of urine resurrects our clawed killer; Joey succumbs to yet another way out-of-his-league topless dream girl (Hope Marie Carlton; Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Savage Beach, Slumber Party Massacre III, Slaughterhouse Rock); the nerd is life-sucked to a drained husk a la Lifeforce (1985) or Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988); and a fear of roaches and an evil bench press spotter lead to a grossly insectoid transformation death scene.

Freddy (Robert Englund; Wishmaster, Hatchet) has fully embraced being a known entity rather than the mysterious boogeyman he was in part 1 and Freddy’s Revenge.  Not only has Freddy evolved, but so has Freddy’s dream world.  Whereas Freddy once held all the power in his realm, with Dream Warriors the once defenseless teen dreamers became more empowered.  Playing on that notion of power as Kristen, the last of the Elm Street kids, dies she imbues Alice with her power sort of like a Highlander movie (1986, 1991).  Now Alice can pull people into her dreams and, after Rick dies, she can use nunchucks, too!

Even if it’s just a product of directorial flourishes, Freddy’s influence likewise continues to expand with each sequel. Two examples include Freddy being resurrected somehow by flaming dog piss and Alice awakening to find a postcard that ignites while she is clearly awake.  In part 1 Freddy’s realm of influence was only in dreams, then he used a dreamer’s body as a conduit (part 2), and his reach continues to ebb into reality leaving the line between dream and reality ever more blurred.

SIDEBAR: This is the kind of sequel the franchise deserves!  Not just for how it has evolved, but for what it retains.  Like every sequel before it, Dream Master calls back to the paramount NOES themes.  Parts 1-3 featured the steam-spewing boiler rooms, the power plant where Freddy worked and the junkyard where his remains were hidden, and here we revisit all of them.  Instead of face impressions on Nancy’s bedroom wall, Freddy’s form emerging through Jesse’s stomach, and Freddy manifesting himself through a television set, we find the impression of stolen souls trying to writhe free from Freddy’s body.
Where once the perverted Freddy licked Nancy through the phone, licked a young girls stomach, or tongue-tethered a teenager’s limbs in a sick fantasy, he now lecherously flicks his tongue and “sucks face” to kiss a teenager to death.  And rather than slicing off his own fingers, revealing his own brain, or uncovering his soul-embedded chest, he now reveals that he is literally filled with the souls of his victims.  Also continuing to flavor the franchise, we again revisit Nancy’s dilapidated house on 1428 Elm Street and the unnerving little girls, likely the ghosts of Freddy’s victims.

I must emphasize that I still enjoy all the practical effects in all four of the first NOES films that are now 30 years old.  Sometimes the simplicity makes it more gross, weird, off-putting, or even a bit more funny; and thrillingly FUN.  I especially enjoyed Freddy’s resurrection when his bones reassemble and, just like Hellraiser (1987), his fluids congeal over his joints and skull to form sinew and flesh (like reverse time lapse melting of wax).

The effects of the animated writing on the physics exam and the life-draining kiss were also noteworthy.  But Debbie has the most spectacular death since the Dream Warriors wrist tendon marionette.  She slowly turns into a roach—a creature for which her hatred is firmly established—first through her arms torn asunder, then she finds herself in one of her own roach motels and the glue gooily tears off her face!  And Freddy’s defeat in the cathedral finale is decidedly unique as the souls trapped within him manifest as slimy flayed arms emerging from his body, tearing him open while trying to escape themselves.  It’s quite a sight and a testament to 80s practical effects.

Despite the rapid release of sequels (following the 1984 original in ‘85, ‘87, and now ‘88), this movie triumphs with heavily diversified and interesting sets, and the deaths remain elaborate and creative…as are many of the themes of the film.  Director Renny Harlin (Deep Blue Sea, Exorcist: The Beginning) even tunes in to our childhood sentiments with The Wizard of Oz (1939; Alice’s ruby red shoes and the gale force wind pulling her into the black & white movie), another dream-like world ruled by someone with magical powers and beaten by a young woman who gains strength from her friends.

If I had one disappointment it would be that Dream Master does nothing to build on the mythology of Freddy Krueger after Dream Warriors gave us Amanda Krueger, the ghostly nun who told the story of Freddy’s rape-conception in a mental hospital.  That said, we do clearly observe a continued and gradual evolution of Freddy’s influence which will continue in subsequent sequels (Dream Child & New Nightmare).

If Dream Warriors was the “fan favorite” sequel, I’m tempted to say that Dream Master might be at the very least tied for the “most fun sequel,” ranking quite high for re-watchability.  Not only that, but I decree that anyone who fancies themselves a horror fan should own NOES 1-4.

Enjoy and pleasant nightmares.

MY CALL:  Boring, boring, and more boring–not even really “so bad it’s good.”  The best part of this movie was its silly Claymation, and they overplayed it so much that it became more annoying than entertaining.  Hard fail.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Mutilations:  Alien Predators (1985).  Or even Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) comes to mind just for the cheap claymation.

So why am I watching this?  I had never heard of it.  No one had recommended it.  And that is the reason.  I could say the same for the quite obscure Nightwish (1990) or The Night Feeder (1988) which, however poor and boring, did have a most bizarrely interesting payoff in the end with a tentacle-tongued brain-sucking mutant baby—not that I’d recommend it.  These are the often somewhat regrettable films that I just can’t help myself but to need to see from time to time.  And this is another one…

We open with an astronomy professor explaining the basics of the thousands of stars visible during an evening class trip with his students, of one which asks if any of those distant “specs” (i.e., the stars) could have life on them.  The answer is NO.  A burning star (i.e., a SUN) would fry any lifeform!  The planets that we cannot see, however, do have a shot at housing life.  Next question. LOL.

The same night, using the light from his hobo garbage fire, a vagrant reads in the newspaper about recent cattle mutilations as a meteor is revealed to actually be a UFO.  About as casually as approaching the new neighbors across the street, he casually approach the spaceship to meet a slimy-clawed reptilian alien—a more menacing Gorn (Star Trek) monster really.

Our astronomy class takes a trip out to the remote area where some “lights in the sky” sightings have been made and cattle have been mutilated.  They find the most terribly (yet hilariously) mutilated Claymation steer.  It’s pretty poor, and you can actually “see” the green screen separating the actors from the flayed-inside-out steer as it thrashes.  It’s pretty goofy.

Speaking of not taking this at all seriously, our professor uses phrases like “conduct legitimate scientific research” when he really means “gaze at the sky” with his students, and he identifies his job title, specialty and institution to basically everyone he meets. In fact, almost all dialogue in this movie is exposition, and often needless.

The effects are pretty entertaining (even if dumb). A victim is strangled and his head shrivels and transforms into a sloppy gory mess.  The finale includes some tentacle-armed Claymation aliens (looking like the Gorn and Brundlefly had a baby) against green-screened students armed with harpoons and flashlights.  And, of course, there was that Claymation steer.

Officially listed at 1:07:30 (67.5 minutes), there were 2.5 minutes of opening credits with no scenes taking place in the background—just empty space and theme music—and the closing credits begin at 1:05:00, leaving this haphazard film barely over 60 minutes.  Although that might be something of a blessing considering how boring it is.

This 60-minute B-movie was written, directed and produced by one-and-done filmmaker Larry Thomas (no other credits) and stars almost entirely actors who had never been in anything else, nor would they ever.  The acting is on the verge of robotic, like they were reading cue cards completely unrehearsed and limiting the filming to single takes.

As much as the Claymation scenes made me smile, they were overused and often repeated the same footage several times.  And as silly as the premise was, the movie was too boring to really embrace its badness.  It was almost as if they were trying to make a “real movie” on a shoestring budget and an inexperienced cast, rather than realizing what this truly was and running with it.

Just terrible.  I recommend this to no one unless you have a group of friends and a case of beer.

MY CALL:  We have horror films and horror movies. Make no mistake, this is a horror movie.  But it’s a horror movie crafted by a true horrorsmith and solid writer, acted on point by an excellent cast with a sensible story, and depicting a truly creepy child possession.  Very scary, very fun.  Enjoy!  MORE MOVIES LIKE Ouija: Origin of Evil:  Well, Witchboard (1986) also happens to involve a Ouija board-catalyzed possession. But in ceoncept I’d instead suggest the deep slowburn White Noise (2005) or, in style, Insidious (2010).

Written and directed by acclaimed horrorsmith Mike Flanagan (Absentia, Oculus, Hush), Origin of Evil seems to be an effort by a stylish director to make a more mainstream horror film.  This may lack the full Flanagan treatment of nuance and style we’ve seen from him before, but I couldn’t be happier to see this anyway.  His past films have been dark, intense, jarring and cerebral.  Origin of Evil has just enough of these elements to elevate the film above most of the slapped-together-plot horror releases that plague theaters, but not so much Flanaganism as to divide fans and critics with too many questions (as was observed with Oculus).

Ouija: Origin of Evil only seems to be given the subtitle to avoid direct association with Oujia (2014), a dastardly menace of a film that snuck past the direct-to-DVD Gods and somehow poisoned theaters with its inane stupidity.  This was originally titled Ouija 2—thank God, good taste prevailed.  So much more than “Ouija 2,” Flanagan delivers a more mainstream horror movie LOADED with excellent scares, writing and acting!  But it is connected in that the mouth-stitched ghost of Doris we met in Ouija (2014) now has her full story told in this prequel.

Providing an emotionally comforting service to her bereft and grieving clientele, Alice (Elizabeth Reaser; The Twilight Saga, Stay) and her two girls—the younger Doris (Lulu Wilson; Annabelle 2, Deliver Us from Evil) and high schooler Lina (Annalise Basso; Oculus, Dark House)—run a scam séance and fortune telling business out of their house in the 1960s.  It’s all an act, but when handled appropriately, it helps people who never got to say their goodbyes or apologies to move on.  But everything changes when Alice brings home a Ouija board as a new professional prop and Doris finds a special connection within it.

Believing that they have made contact with the benevolent spirit of her deceased husband, Alice and Doris end up opening the flood gates to a hostile apparition and, much as with Insidious’ (2010) Lipstick Demon, this spirit is one that had never been among the living; a demon.

From the initial contact with the other side, we all know something is very wrong. But it doesn’t make it any less creepy.  In fact, it is the process of Doris embracing the established contact that terrifyingly reveals the true nature of things and some of the brief “corner-of-your-eye” imagery will smite any sense of comfort you once had.  From there the physical manifestations are quite disarmingly uncomfortable (in a good way, of course).

I love that we get to know and really care about these characters. Flanagan and his cast makes it seem so effortless as both the acting and writing were splendid—especially our child actor Lulu Wilson as the transitioning innocent-to-Satanic Doris. WOW! The Catholic school principal Father Tom (Henry Thomas; Don’t Look Up, Dead Birds, Fire in the Sky, ET) is an excellent supporting character in identifying when things are amiss, and when they are malevolent.  And watch out for the brief creature-acting of Doug Jones (Crimson Peak, John Dies at the End, Legion) as, well, you’ll see. It’ll be obvious.

In a scene introducing us to the 1960s view of the “game” Ouija, we have a creepy and utterly hilarious experience watching one of Lina’s classmates react to the notion of contacting the dead.  It’s a real treat and it transcends the typically laughable jump scare of a “surprise cat” or loud junk unexpectedly falling out of the closet.  This may have been one of my favorite scenes.  But really, I had many favorite scenes, particularly in the first 60 minutes.  They packed a LOT of creepy in this and I don’t even want to mention most of it.

So where did Flanagan go more mainstream?  There were some components that felt stereotypical to the genre almost because they were easy, and these scenes were biased to the third act of the film.

For example, the rules of Ouija suggest that you never play alone, and never play near a graveyard.  Why no “graveyard play?”  Did the makers of the game know too many spirits in one place was a bad thing, or was this just an example of the movie being ironic when the evil spirits’ origins are revealed?  And not play alone?  Because it’s creepier?  These things were all in good fun.  But they weren’t so necessary and the graveyard reveal harkens back strongly to Poltergeist (1982).

Then the demon seemed a bit too much in the style of the Insidious’ (2010) lipstick demon, more in presentation than actual appearance.  I think the fault here is in showing us what this demon looked like at all.  It wasn’t necessary, all be it fun and quite shocking to watch!  And with the spiritual abduction came The Last Exorcism (2010) back bend—not that it was the first film to feature such a possessed bodily distortion.

While effectively scary, was the stitched mouth gag meant to be a direct callback to Ouija (2014), which did the very same thing? And the effects were a lot like Neo’s sealed mouth in The Matrix (1999)?  Don’t get me wrong, though, sealed and stitched mouths are creepy AF!

Then the often utilized “they” (or group of impostor spirits pretending to be your friendly spirit) of the other side manipulating the vulnerable or desperate among the living (e.g., Poltergeist, Insidious, White Noise).
The ending gets a bit bonkers with Exorcist (1973) wall-crawling, whited out eyes, evil grimaces and slack-jawed evil.  I guess this is also Flanagan going for a more mainstream approach.  Not that this imagery didn’t work…it was terrifying! LOL.

Doris, while being manipulated by evil, gains quite a bit of power.  She lures victims into insecurity and menace in different and satisfying ways, and the special effects behind her evil manifestations may readily disrupt your sleep.  But while this movie packs a lot of excitement and dread, it complements it with a great deal of sound storyline and practical plot development.  Kudos for that!  The writing in Origin of Evil reduces the Ouija (2014) script to something written with those fat Crayola markers on construction paper by someone with cerebral palsy.

I’m not calling this a great horror “film.” This is not a Flanagan caliber film in the sense of his last three conquests.  However, this is one of the better “mainstream style” horror movies of the year along with Lights Out (2016).  No one will be talking about their critical acclaim, but people will absolutely be buying these and enjoying them as fun, re-watchable popcorn horror.  And I’m one of those happy customers!  I hope you will be, too.  So please watch, leave your “film critic” hat at home, and enjoy.

MY CALL:  It might be fair to say that the Hellraiser sequels continue to drop in quality with each subsequent release.  However, they remain quite watchable and enjoyable, even if not “good” Hellraiser movies at this point.  This, like parts V and VI, is a standalone movie with a horror-mystery edge.  I think it’s worthwhile for the adventurous or Hellraiser completists.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Deader:  Be sure to see Hellraiser (1987) and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) first, of course. Then maybe Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth (1992) and Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996).  Hellraiser: Inferno (2000) and Hellseeker (2002) are more standalone films, along with this part VII.

*************How it fits in the franchise (minor franchise spoilers)*************

Directed by Rick Bota (Haven, Hellraiser VI-VIII), this seventh installment to the Hellraiser franchise follows Inferno (2000) and Hellseeker (2002) by presenting another stand-alone story.  Hellraiser was a dark chamber thriller fueled by lustful desire, Hellbound more of a curious exploration of Clive Barker’s Hell-ish Labyrinth and his Cenobites, Hell on Earth was a troped-up action/horror movie chronicling Pinhead’s own escape from Hell, Bloodline an anthology story illustrating the creation and lineage of the Puzzle Box, Inferno a crime thriller neatly packaged in the dark trappings of the Puzzle Box, Hellseeker yet another murder-mystery crime thriller, and now we follow in the steps of parts V and VI (Inferno and Hellseeker) with crime, cults, mystery and mysticism.  From its very start we expected Hellseeker to be playing out the flashbacked fantasies of someone already condemned to Hell and, like Hellseeker, Deader isn’t overly predictable.

There may be an admittedly significant drop in quality in the third and fourth films from the original two, and yet another such drop for the fifth, sixth and this seventh direct-to-video installment, but it remains comforting that we never seem to find the same story simply recycled and retold with different victims.  And more importantly, despite the drop in quality, I still enjoy them a lot!  A major fault of Hell on Earth and Bloodline was the nuisance of over-exposition. I didn’t find that to be a problem in Deader (at least not until the third act) nor in parts V-VI.

The franchise continues to expand the Hellraiser mythology, although with less impact here than before. Whereas parts I-IV revolve around the Box or Pinhead (Doug Bradley), parts V-VI and this chapter are illustrative of what experiences befall those damned souls who open the Box. Thus, we see much less of Pinhead and focus more on our curious and potentially damned souls—as it probably should be. Now with part VII, Amy’s journey begins as a rational investigation of something potentially supernatural, shifts to supernatural experiences of her own, and ultimately steers us into what feels like a surreal dreamscape of her life.

***************How it fits in the franchise ***************

Meet Amy (Kari Wuhrer; Eight-Legged Freaks, Sharknado 2), a top-notch undercover investigative reporter.  She does whatever it takes to nail the major scoops and now she’s been recruited to investigate the “deaders,” a group of Romanian cultists who appear to be able to resurrect the recently deceased following ritual suicide.

Upon arrival in Bucharest everything seems…well, appropriately wrong given this is a Hellraiser movie.  A lead’s apartment wreaks of rotting flesh and flies, and houses a dead body clutching the Puzzle Box artifact after an apparent suicide.  A video from the suicide victim admonishes us not to “open” the box.  Which, of course, cues Amy’s interest to do exactly that.

From the moment the Puzzle Box is opened we are struck with the hooked-chain urgency of the old days.  Well, perhaps it’s a bit weakened by the CGI.  But whatever, they’re trying.  An unfortunate trend in this franchise is that the effects go from “Holy Shit Awesome” (for their time and even today) in parts I-II, to pretty good in III-IV, to typical direct-to-DVD in V-VI.  But fret not, it’s all still quite entertaining and Pinhead’s tissue-rending hooked chains get their pound of flesh.  Some sloppy gory scenes are present, but it’s just not exactly in the dire theme to which we’re accustomed.

If anything about this film specifically bothered me, it would be that the new Cenobites don’t even seem to matter.  Chatterbox is here… and some others.  But they’re really just “there,” offering no substance.  These Cenobites are more akin to Christmas tree ornaments.  You may stop and enjoy noticing one here or there for a fleeting moment, but it’s the tree (i.e., Amy’s relationship with the Box) that we truly “see.”  Even Pinhead is quite downplayed.

At times this movie tries to be a bit too neo-contemporary and, for all its effort to appear in-touch, this makes it feel momentarily out-of-touch…like it’s trying too hard to impress us with its self-awareness and social sub-cultured edginess.  Much as Hell on Earth tried and failed to capture the big city club scene, so does Deader fail to capture whatever “this” all is… whether it be afterlife-challenging cultists or trippy underground punks.  Speaking of whom, the Romanian underground subway seems to be a nihilistic Satanic sex trade loaded with disconcerting imagery.

Of course, Amy locates the cult, ends up in over her head, and this is the point at which the film sadly turns to heavy exposition to tell its story.

The final act is weird, bloody, weird, trippy, weird, culty and more weird.  The film ends on a dark cyclical note after a finale offering honestly no satisfaction other than a gory rending, but that’s perfectly fine with me.  I enjoyed most of the movie, so I won’t let the last five minutes ruin the experience.  Although I was a bit bothered by how the ending seemed to violate our understanding of Pinhead’s influence and control regarding soul ownership and Box openers.

Parts I-III of this franchise should be watched in order. After seeing them, there seems to be no consequence to seeing part V, VI or VII before part IV outside of the fact that Bloodline is much better. This film is nothing special, nor is it even a “good” Hellraiser story—yet it’s not bad either.  I take it for what it is and appreciate of it what I can. I didn’t regret watching it, and—while I wouldn’t necessarily “highly” recommend it to viewers—I have, in fact, seen it about four times now.  It’s pretty neat.

Overall, I was pleased with this as a direct-to-DVD horror film, but disappointed as a major Hellraiser fan.  In either case, I’d still recommend it (to a choice few of you).  But only AFTER seeing parts I-IV.

MY CALL:  This gory B-movie callback to The Thing (1982) was far better than expected.  More of a B+ movie, the creature effects were frequent, diverse, fun and satisfying—so I’d highly recommend this to fans of monster movies and old school practical effects.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor:  Blue Monkey (1987), The Nest (1988), The Deadly Spawn (1983)…The Thing (1981, 2011), Leviathan (1989), Blood Glacier (2013) and Harbinger Down (2015).

I rather enjoy it when B-movies just jump right into things.  Not three minutes after the opening credits we are made aware of the presence of some mutant tentacle monster that’s already racking up a body count.

Written and directed by Glenn Takakjian (who never directed again), I was quite pleasantly surprised by this movie!  It didn’t suck at all.  I mean it’s bad, but it’s also sort of awesome.

A research facility has been experimenting with alien DNA—which means good news for us horror fans. We see glimpses of alien plants, strange reptilian creatures, and other mutant critters.  Everything seems fine until one of the scientists accidentally hurts one of the creatures and is bitten by the frightened beast.  Naturally, the researcher becomes infected…and it advances quickly.

Dr. Viallini (Marcus Powell; Rejuvenatrix, Time Bandits) and Dr. Stein (Allen Lewis Rickman; Flesh Eating Mothers, Slime City) decide to keep the infected scientist on site—obviously a mistake.  As their patient transforms I’m reminded of From Beyond (1986) and Aliens (1986), as he becomes more amorphous and his blood becomes acidic.  His now inhuman form has sealed shut his mouth and eyes, but opened entirely new orifices from which it “shoots” clawed harpoon-like tentacles and strange toothed parasites (a lot like in Without Warning).

After their father doesn’t come home from his night security job at the lab, sisters Sherry (Tara Leigh; Sabbath, Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension) and Kim (Dianna Flaherty; Class of Nuke ’em High, The Toxic Avenger) go to facility to investigate.  Viallini only tries to cover things up and he makes an excellent villain, his very speech patterns sounding like he is perpetually conniving.

The budget is surprisingly not so low (considering I had never heard of this), and significant efforts were made on the gore by the effects team.  The gore and effects are frequent and care was taken in their presentation.  I didn’t mind at all when a scene from The Thing (1982) was emulated as our patient’s head was tearing away from its body and small tentacles thrashed from its chest cavity.  We also find an inside-out dog reminiscent of The Fly II (1989), which also dealt with genetic mutations, transformations, and monsters running amok in shady private research company buildings.

Eventually an all new monster somewhat “emerges” from within the infected transforming patient and it resembles the “husky ball” from The Thing (1982).  As if that wasn’t already pretty spiffy, we’ll even enjoy a fair bit of cool Claymation to complement the animatronics.  Another funny observation is that with the monster’s final form, its tentacles and its projectile infectious parasites, it seems that the alien monster from The Faculty (1998) might have been modeled after this!

The creature effects were frequent, diverse, fun and satisfying!  The monsters got loads of screen time, and they are consistently slimy, gross, tentacular, gooey—just all that good stuff.  So I highly recommend this to any fans of monster movies or practical effects fanatics.

MY CALL:  If The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) family had a cabin in the woods and swapped chainsaws and cleavers for bows and axes, this fun gross-out hillbilly horror is what you’d have.  Highly recommended for fans of brutal horror.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Wrong Turn:  Wrong Turn 2 (2007), The Hills Have Eyes 1-2 (1977, 1984, 2006, 2007), Just Before Dawn (1981), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) will all continue to satisfy the hillbilly horror subgenre.

After a playful death scene, the opening credits are accompanied by a montage of news clippings about legends of mountain men, deformities from inbreeding, disappearing hikers, freakish strength and psychosis, and maps of West Virginia (our lovely Appalachian setting).

That’s right.  When it comes to inbred cannibal redneck hillbilly horror, the locals are the monsters.  They scramble through the forest laughing with maniacal yips and haws rustling every bush in their path all the while as noisy as simian Planet of the Apes extras.  But what changes the pace from most of the horror genre is that these woods are well-lit and gorgeous.

After finding some barb wire tire caltrops and crashing, Chris (Desmond Harrington; The Neon Demon, Dexter, Ghost Ship) ends up stranded in the woods with Jessie (Eliza Dushku; Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Soul Survivors), Scott (Jeremy Sisto; Six Feet Under), Carly (Emmanuelle Chriqui; Entourage, Thundercats), Evan (Kevin Zegers; The Colony, Vampire, Frozen, Dawn of the Dead) and Francine (Lindy Booth; Cry_Wolf, American Psycho II, The Skulls 2) on a dirt mountain road.  Of course, they separate almost immediately as two stay behind while the others go seek help.

They find an old shanty cabin besieged by old broken-down cars with some very old models among them.  “Maybe they have a phone we can use.”  Yeah, right!  The interior is alarmingly unclean.  Bowls of car keys; crude rusty cutting implements; crates with sorted cameras, shoes and children’s toys; and all manner of sorted organs in jars create the hoarded décor.  In case that wasn’t enough, the fridge is loaded with leftovers (i.e., Tupperware filled with kidneys).

Can’t find the phone?
Well, the owners seem to be getting home so we can just ask them.

This gory shock flick may run deeper in the tropes than it does in the woods, featuring cliché horror drags pulling victims off-screen, tank topped scream queens, and maniacal briar-stirring mongoloids with a taste for human flesh.  In the beginning when Chris stops by a gas station, the owner (Wayne Robson; Cube, Wrong Turn 2) is about as “harbinger creepy” as they come.  He’s filthy, sparsely toothed, chugging Pepto-Bismol (because whatever), and his phone doesn’t work.  That’s a lot of red flags screaming for an escape to a populated city!  But, unluckily for Chris, the road is blocked and he decides to take an unpaved detour that surprises even the uber-creepy backwater gas station attendant.

The characters are decently written considering there isn’t much to the story (i.e., victims are stranded in the woods and are hunted by cannibals), but the highlight is clearly Jeremy Sisto’s idiosyncratic comic relief—he almost reminds me of Jeff Goldblum.  Outside of his clever banter, we’re really just waiting for the cast to get through their lines so as to hurry us along to the next death scene.  But this is due to the absence of story development and not because of bad acting.  The acting is fine.

The kills are generally more fun than brutal (but still a bit brutal), including a mangled variation of a choking and an excellent pseudo-decapitation high in the tree canopies.

And speaking of tree canopies, that “set design” was pretty unrealistic and mostly CGI.  I didn’t even notice this when I first saw it (in theaters 13 years ago), but now it is blaringly obvious.

Whether audibly sawing flesh and chopping limbs as they butcher a victim, or their wheezy grunts and maniacal laughs—someone put a lot of thought into the visceral sounds.  And if it “sounds” uncomfortably brutal then know you’ll love the gory butchered corpse, exaggerated hair lips, and “Three-Finger” (Julian Richings; The Witch, Urban Legend, Cube) who looks like someone lit Dee Snyder on fire and then extinguished the flames by pushing him into a septic tank.

Our nerves are tested several times over by director Rob Schmidt (The Alphabet Killer)—when the victims tip-toe around the sleeping rednecks, when they hide under the table while their friend is carved for dinner, and the cat-and-mouse game played high in the trees.

I love how campy this movie is and that it doesn’t rely on any gratuitous nudity to be as such.  The redneck family’s mania and their gory wake accomplish it perfectly.  It’s not very jumpy.  But it may find you on edge with a nervous smile and, despite its gory brutal nature, this West Virginian horror feels far more playful than its mean-spirited Texas counterpart.  The movie ends on a humorous note that is more than a bit suggestive of a sequel.  I would expect nothing less.

MY CALL:  A satisfyingly fun creature feature for fans of Gremlins (1984) and Ghoulies 2 (1988).  Not much of a plot, but loads of off-the-wall inventiveness, playful nods to the genre, and likably cute miscreant monsters.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Critters:  Critters 2 (1988), Gremlins (1984), Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), Ghoulies 2 (1988), Tremors (1990), Grabbers (2012)…maybe even Munchies (1987) and Hobgoblins (1988), although they are of considerably lower quality.

This movie’s opening is as cheesy as it gets.  After a batch of fuzzy little aliens escape a maximum security “prison asteroid” they are followed to Earth by a pair of intergalactic bounty hunters reputed for their destructive methods.

Meanwhile on Earth, Helen (Dee Wallace; The Howling, Lords of Salem, Halloween, Cujo), Jay (Billy Green Bush; The Hitcher), and their kids April (Nadine Van der Velde; Munchies) and Brad (Scott Grimes; Critters 2) have a pretty normal life…that is, until the critters land their spaceship on their family farm to turn Kansas into their buffet.

Their small town has its fair share of personality.  Sheriff Harv (M. Emmet Walsh) tries and fails to keep the peace while Deputy Jeff (Ethan Phillips; Star Trek: Voyager, Critters 3) hits on their dispatcher Sally (Lin Shaye; Insidious 1-4, Chillerama).  And keeping the sheriff on his toes is Charlie (Don Keith Opper; Critters 2-4), an alcoholic simpleton whose belief in little green men is known all throughout town.  His “crying wolf” archetype and friendship with Brad clearly served as a model for the similar dynamic in Leprechaun (1993), which is a decent R-rated horror comedy follow-up for adult fans of Critters.

The shape-shifting bounty hunters learn about Earth much as Leeloo and Neo (in The Fifth Element and The Matrix) and assume the form of a rock star (Terrence Mann; Critters 2-4) and a few locals.  This hardly serves the story, but it garnishes an additional layer of silly icing on this cheesy B-movie cake.

The special effects feature a transformation scene that serves as a predecessor for Hellraiser (1987) with reverse time lapse wax melting.  The UFO and scenes in outer space are forgivably laughable—mostly because it all feels deliberate and suits the younger PG-13 demographic.  This movie transcends the “so bad it’s good” territory and finds itself comfortably in the “good” zone…in the sense that it’s timelessly entertaining.  I mean, the critters’ main objective on Earth is comically “food,” they roll around like Sonic the Hedgehog, and they grow as they eat creating a giant Tribble-like threat.  Much as Ghoulies 2 (1988) has a giant ghoulie, Critters has a giant critter.

I still like the creature effects. The critters’ toothy maws are menacing.  These critters are met with a comical impish first impression.  But make no mistake, they are here to kill and eat!  They rampage a steer leaving a ripped up gory cadaver, they eat April’s boyfriend Steve (Billy Zane; Demon Knight, Bloodrayne, Survival Island), and brutally maul any within biting range.  To level the playing field these diminutive monsters are 50% teeth, swarm like piranhas when they can, and they shoot tranquilizing sleep quills.

Helming his first of many feisty movies to come, director Stephen Herek (Rock Star, The Three Musketeers, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure) knows how to entertain us…and our kids!  That’s right.  Horror for kids?  This is PG-13 but it’s every bit as gory as some convincing R-rated movies of its time—although it’s not trying overly hard to shock us and there is nothing brutal or mean-spirited about it.  There are a few swear words here and there (uttered by cute aliens and our kid hero Brad), but this is easily suited for preteens.  It’s never really “scary” and you never “see” anyone die (although it’s implied once).

There’s a lot to love about this movie—but most of all is that Stephen Herek really tries to entertain you instead of doing just enough to hold things together between special effects. It’s kind of adorable that the critters are intergalactic fugitives, Brad hypothesizes that the critters are radioactive gophers created by the government, a critter confronts an ET plush, Brad’s cat is named Chewie, and Jay’s bowling team shirt looks like the Ghostbusters’ logo.  Also grin-worthy is that when the critters “speak” it sounds like a Pomeranian shaking a chew toy, despite the subtitles of totally normal dialogue.

This fun creature feature will happily please fans of Gremlins (1984) and Ghoulies 2 (1988).  What it lacks in cohesive plot, it more than compensates in off-the-wall inventiveness, frequent self-aware nods to the genre, and likable miscreant alien monsters.

Watch this, then watch for more since, at the end, they laid eggs!!!

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Summary: This week we discuss The Blair Witch Project (1999), briefly address Book of Shadows (2000), delve deep into the links between Blair Witch (2016) and the original, and address fan theories of time distortion.

We answer the tough questions in this podcast!  For example…

“What do Bigfoot and the Blair Witch have in common?”

“What animated films should get live action remakes? How about Anime?”

“After Olympus and London Has Fallen, where should Gerard Butler go to murder more people?”

“Just what exactly is going on with these time distortions in the Blair Witch’s woods?”

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MY CALL:  This monster movie is nothing special at all outside of providing a less mainstream B-movie to entertain horror fans.  The effects are more entertaining than good, but unlike the acting and writing, the effects clearly put forth a solid effort. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Being:  This movie is similar to but not as good as Xtro (1983), Without Warning (1980), Blue Monkey (1987), The Kindred (1987), The Nest (1988), Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor (1990), The Deadly Spawn (1983) and Humanoids from the Deep (1980).  I’d recommend you see all of these before attempting The Being.

Written and directed by first-time filmmaker Jackie Kong (Blood Diner), this film opens uninventively with a narration of the most basic exposition—locals are missing, strange things are happening, and “the ultimate terror has taken form” right there in Pottsville, Idaho.  We are “told” these three things.

The creature effects swing into action early, which is always a good thing when dealing with B movies since the creature effects are really the only reason we’re here—and I can gladly say the effects are satisfying even if truly nothing special.  They include gross slimy monster limbs, gory on-screen decapitation, an out-of-focus monster attacking an in-focus naked woman, the old ripping the heart out of the chest gag, a prehensile frog-like tongue, and loads of green slime and gelatinous sludge.

Propagandist scientist Dr. Garson Jones (Martin Landau; Without Warning, Ed Wood) addresses the public regarding the safety of dumping nuclear waste into drinking water sources.

Because what harm is a little toxic waste?
I guess this movie is telling us!

At first things don’t totally make sense.  For example, during a gratuitous sex scene in a car green sludge oozes through the AC vents and radio as our Casanova rounds third base.  Then, all of a sudden, a skeletal slimy sludge hand reaches up and attacks the young lovers—so the thing must have formed right there in the car!  But wait…did the monster liquefy then reform?  We never find out!  Speaking of slimy monster arms, that is all we see until we find a slimy mutant monster fetus and a throwback creature to the Husky lump in The Thing (1981).

When our protagonist meets our monster and tries to warn Mayor Gordon (José Ferrer; Dune, The Sentinel, The Swarm), he could care less.  His only concern is the town’s revenue stream of potato exports.  The mayor actually hires Dr. Jones to look into things and keep the situation quiet.  This all highlights some of the dumber aspects of the movie, among some other probably unintentionally silly scenes poorly held together by wooden acting and some incredibly lazy dialogue.  These actors couldn’t be troubled to care about delivering a single line.  But hey, it’s a fun B-movie.  What did you expect, right?  I mean, whenever the monster leaps towards someone, it seems a production assistant just throws a monster dummy across the camera and onto the victim.  There’s even a low-speed chase scene and a needless car explosion.

It’s not until the finale that we get to see something awesome.  The somehwat full-body creature is a sloppy, gory mess of teeth.  We actually just see its head and an arm.  But the head is pretty cool. Not creative at all, but fun to watch.

And that’s what this movie is.  It’s “fun to watch” and nothing else.  There’s nothing to brag in terms of interesting effects or story and the death scenes are uninspired.  But this bad movie is a good bad (i.e., so bad it’s good).  The fight between our hero and the toxic mutant is about as bad as it gets—and I giggled throughout.  If you enjoy B horror movies, you probably will, too.

Greetings, horrorounds!  We spend so much of our time complaining about re-used, recycled, unoriginal, tired-out horror tropes and stories and stale archetypal horror character roles presented by actors that can’t act, directors who can rarely direct, and budgets that don’t get us anywhere.  So I thought it was time for us to take a moment to remember that even today in the modern horror era we find the occasional delight in our modern horror in the form of worthy remakes or original approaches to old ideas…maybe even some new ideas.

This is a follow-up article to 15 Images for 15 Years of Horror, Part 1 (2000-2014) and 15 Images for 15 Years of Horror: The Good, the Bad and the Hilarious. So if you don’t see your favorite movies listed here, they were probably in last year’s review of awesome horror scenes.  If you want some excellent horror suggestions from further back, you should check out The Best Moments in Horror: looking back 20 years to 1995 and looking back 20 years to 1996, and The Best Horror Came from the 80s: Part 1 and Part 2.

I really wanted to include movies like Session 9 and The Skeleton Key, but such films are more about tone than single iconic images that ignite memories. So now I give you 15 more photos for 15 years of horror.  These don’t necessarily represent the 15 “best” horror movies since 2001–for that you should check out our articles on What is the Best Horror Movie of the 21st Century? and The Top 21 Horror Films of the 21st Century!–but rather 15 of the most memorable moments for me.

Krampus (2015)

Remember when that demented, possessed elderly woman swallowed a child’s head whole like one of those egg-swallowing snakes in The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)? This was kinda’ like that.
Krampus was loaded with a yuletide menagerie of monsters, one of which was a somewhat cute-yet-clearly evil Jack-in-the-Box with the lower body and snow-burrowing habits of one of the victim-dragging Tremors (1990) monsters.  How’s that for nightmare fuel? But the real shock came when we caught this snow slug with its mouth full. And just like Deborah Logan and her unhinging jaw, this Christmas creature was hungry for kids on the “Naughty List.”  Feel free to listen to our podcast discussion of Krampus.

Goodnight Mommy (2014)

For future reference, if your child is so guilt-stricken over the accidental death of his twin, just let him enjoy his new imaginary friend.  If you don’t, you may experience a bit of a domestic power struggle.  This film was loaded with brutal scenes, twisted imagery, and paranoid crises of identity.  I highly recommend it.  If you don’t believe me, check out our podcast discussion on the film.

Evil Dead (2013)

The Evil Dead remake succeeded because it had many of the elements of the first two films (1981, 1987), but they have been chopped up, modified, meshed with other elements, spread across the entire cast or lumped into one.  For example, there is no character that fills the role of Ash.  Not really.  But you’ll see “Ash” moments played out by different characters as well as “Ash” lines and other Ash-isms.  What’s great about this is that you don’t know who, if anyone, is going to survive this movie.  What a nice touch.  It all feels so familiar to Evil Dead fans yet, despite this familiarity, you never know what’s in store except for a few iconic scenes.  This horrendously brutal “tongue scene” however, was original to the remake.  Please join us and listen to our podcast discussion on this remake.

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

Most people like referencing the Merman as the most memorable aspect of this brilliantly funny, gory and clever film.  And in last year’s post I refer you to the board and the premise behind it.  Was it genius?  No.  Was it 100% what we horror fans never knew we wanted?  ABSOLUTELY!!!  With such entries as “angry molesting tree” honoring Evil Dead, sexy witches and the much discussed “Kevin”….this film managed to give nods to a broad sweep of the horror genre’s better moments.
But for me, nothing offered such adorable levity as when our government horror technicians celebrated prematurely, breaking out into some impromptu white guy dances!  Not only did we love this film, so did our readers!  We conducted a poll and podcasted the results: that this was the best horror film of the 21st century!!!!

The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence (2011)

In case you should ever find yourself arguing “what’s more disgusting than a human centipede”…here’s your answer.  And it’s not an even larger human centipede, but rather its creator. This little deviant masturbates with sandpaper while fantasizing about compound shit-eating alimentary canals.  This mentally retarded, severely disturbed and abused man obsesses over Tom Sixx’s movie, takes it as medical canon and pursues his own dreams of a bigger, better human centipede.  This metamovie sequel (as did Hostel 2) presents its sick, depraved story through the mad scientist’s perspective.

Altitude (2010)

I DO NOT recommend watching Altitude unless you’re in the mood for a bad movie featuring a giant flying squid monster brought to life by the overactive imagination of a nostalgic horror comicbook fan. This is not happening in the sea.  It’s happening 20 thousand feet above the ground at 200 mph!!!!  I’m pretty sure that their plane would get shredded in the tail winds of this monster, which, by the way, is flying 200 mph backwards while assaulting this plane.

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

When Alison Lohman gets dragged to Hell in Drag Me to Hell. Yeah, I know it’s the title of the movie.  But that was SHOCKING and somehow totally unexpected anyway.
But, then again, she did turn down a loan that threw an elderly dead-eyed gypsy out on the street.  And, while you may argue she was just doing her job and making a tough call, she also did kill a kitten.  Kitten killers go to Hell.  It’s as simple as that.  Honestly, I’m sort of relieved that Justin Long didn’t end up marrying that kitten killer.

Mirrors (2008)

Let’s be clear here.  Mirrors definitely had its share of shortcomings.  The movie is effectively quite creepy–as a more films relying on evil mirror images–but it starts off at a sluggish pace and ends in a lame finale.  But trust me, the movie is worth it anyway.  And this is the scene that brings it all together.  There are few scenes so effectively terrifying…and it is not short either.  Poor Amy Smart.

Trick ‘r Treat (2007)

Trick ‘r Treat is a favorite for many reasons and I consider it one of the better horror anthologies you can watch.  I especially loved the artistic license taken on the werewolf transformation scene!  It may seem a little questionable to horror fans at first glance, but it was done VERY well and it mingled fantastically with the “girls in slutty costumes” theme; they literally “stripped” off their human skin (i.e., the Wolf’s slutty costume) to reveal the wolf within.  Given the tone of the movie and the scene, it felt perfect.

Slither (2006)

There couldn’t have been a more deliciously disgusting movie in 2006.  Slither was the gourmet of all things gory and gooey.  There are tentacles and mutations and transformations…and Nathan Fillion proclaiming that he has too much muscle mass to get drunk.

The Descent (2005)

Talk about cultivating urgency.  When all your friends have been eaten alive by a race of subterranean blind vampire Morlocks and the only way to evade detection is to submerge yourself in an offal pit of decaying blood and chunky guts, it’s pretty fair you’re having a rough day and starring in a horror film that doesn’t need to resort to cheap thrills to get you on edge.  Watch this movie.  It has so much more to offer than it’s spelunking mole people monsters suggest.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

There truly is something magical about the completely credible, everyday apathy that could permit someone to completely overlook the beginnings of the zombie apocalypse around them.  And this was before people walked about with their eyes affixed to a SmartPhone screen.  Shaun of the Dead will likely forever remain among the very greatest of horror comedies.  Not only is the writing on point, but the acting is splendid and this film always finds a way to be funny.

Freddy vs Jason (2003)

When Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees first met, I felt like such a fan boy!  Their direct fights may not have been amazing, but Jason did rip off Freddy’s arm and Freddy did stab Jason with his own machete.  I guess that’s just the kind of conflict that arises when a soul-stealing dream demon is serially foiled by the exploits of a promiscuous camper-killing zombie of vengeance.  There’s also some general silliness, like getting baked with an evil caterpillar and using mommy issues to manipulate your nemesis.  All in all, a great ride even if not a great film.

Cabin Fever (2002)

GOOD LORD!  Scenes like this are why I loved the Cabin Fever films so much.  But this scene had to be the best of all four movies–even the Cabin Fever: Spring Fever (2009) and Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (2014) had their charm.  So good was this scene, in fact, that the Cabin Fever (2016) remake, of course, had to replicate it.  This scene is really a simple concept brilliantly realized on screen.

Thirteen Ghosts (2001)

Remember how cool it was seeing all the different ghosts of the Black Zodiac?  Well, few were as fun as the “Angry Princess.”  Yeah, as a teenager I loved boobs, too.  This suicidal specter wandered around with dead eyes, bare boobs, and a fixation on beauty.  I remember being so nervous when she was standing behind Scream Queen Shannon Elizabeth.

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Hope you enjoyed some of my favorite mania-feeding moments.

Please read on to 15 Images for 15 Years of Horror, Part 1 (2000-2014).