January 31st, 2015 - The Silent Scream (1979)

The Silent Scream is an enjoyable early golden-era slasher film. As it was made early on in the slasher boom, it's got a little different flavor/tone than some of it's more well-known brethren. Ostensibly, it was made to ride the coattails of Halloween, but honestly it's almost more of a mystery-thriller akin to Psycho rather than an outright slasher.

And it's got a pretty solid cast to boot. I ended up with it as a random recommendation from the algorithms at Netflix, so I was pleasantly surprised with getting not only Cameron Mitchell and Barbara Steele, but also Rebecca Balding (who I really liked in one of my recent favorites The Boogens). So from the credits on up, I was hopeful.

January 30th, 2015 - Black Forest (2012)

A little while ago I made a joke while writing about I am Omega about how "The Asylum Presents" were the only words you needed to read to strike fear into the hearts of even the most seasoned movie watchers. But now, I've found even scarier words... "Syfy Presents." I wish there was some kind of warning (maybe a little logo on the art on Netflix?) but I figured "what the hell" and sat through it. And it ended up being quite the chore.

I think Black Forest is more or less trying to ride the coattails of Once Upon a Time, the CBS TV show that re-imagines Fairy Tale characters in the real world. Here, some people from the real-world are transported to the Black Forest - another realm/plane of existence where all Fairy Tale characters are real. Basically, a group of seven tourists are roped in by a fast talking tour guide to visit a "magical world" - they figure it's all in fun, but boy, are they ever wrong.

January 29th, 2015 - Ghostlight (2013)

Ghostlight is a pretty okay little indie. It leans rather heavily on the dramatic side of things, and the horror aspects of it are probably the least successful parts of the film. But it's very well-made (especially as far as indies go) and moves along fast enough to be enjoyable.

I was a little nervous going in - I haven't had a lot of luck with films from the Brain-Damage label. They are an independent horror movie distribution company based in Arizona, and specialize in low-to-no budget films. I've said before, you need to keep an open mind when checking out this type of film, but I've still had bad luck with most of their releases (the notable exception being Suburban Sasquatch, which is awesome/bad). So it may have benefitted from lowered expectations, but I still think Ghostlight was all right in the traditional sense.

January 28th, 2015 - Witchouse (1999)

For the majority of the time I've been thinking about Witchouse, I've been trying to figure out the best way to spell a noise... I think they call it a 'rasberry?' You know, when you stick out your tongue and exhale and make sort of a farting nosie? Oftentimes accompanied with a thumbs down? That should give you an idea of how compelling Witchouse is. Mmpthhthhthh. It's not very good.

Also, "Witchouse?" Why not "Witch-house?" "Witchouse" sounds like some kind of strange French method of cooking our something.

The story of Witchouse is kind of along the lines of Night of the Demons (or exactly along the lines) - a young woman is throwing a party is a spooky old house. Ostensibly to have a gay old time, but really to bring back a long dead witch from her family lineage to get revenge on the family of those who killed her 300 years ago. I would probably get a little suspicious when the hostess is all "now lets join hands around the pentagram on the floor." But maybe that's just me.

January 27th, 2015 - Mine Games (2012)

Or, The Evil Within, if you believe the credits. I don't know why I get such a kick out of surprising title changes like that. Apparently there was a video game with that title, so the producers changed it to Mine Games. In this case, they are both pretty bad.

It's hard to talk much about Mine Games without ruining the one thing that makes it kind of interesting. It's still not all that good of a movie, but I don't want to totally kill the experience should you ever come across it. So this entry may be short and cryptic.

Mine Games tries to do something different, but starts with about as generic of a set-up as possible. A group of friends (who seem like they would *maybe* be friends in real-life - so that's a small accomplishment) are headed out to a house in the woods. Now normally, you'd hear cabin - and some people may call this a cabin... but it's actually a Super Nice Home. It always bugs me when people are all like "we're going to our cabin for the weekend" and it's a sparkling luxurious home that is three times bigger than any place I could reasonably ever hope to live in. Just because it's in the woods does NOT mean it's a cabin! I'm not bitter though... (I do not have a cabin.) Anyways, none of them have ever been to said house; and their van breaks down! They walk for a while through the woods and come across the house. There is a note in there for them, so they assume it's the right place. But guess what? It probably isn't - and some shit goes down. And... horror movie.

January 26th, 2015 - The Sleeping Car (1990)

Even though it may sound like a children's book about a tired old Buick, The Sleeping Car is actually a pretty entertaining slice of pre-grunge cheese. I say pre-grunge, because even though it is technically 1990, it has a lot of 80's charm and style to it. And since the titular car refers to a train car, you know we're dealing with slightly outdated things anyways. But while The Sleeping Car is unintentionally entertaining at times, most of the times it is intentionally so. It leans hard on the comedy, and I guess your mileage will vary on how funny you find it. Most horror/comedy you come across nowadays depends to some degree on physical/gore-type humor, but the humor here is more character based. Specifically, our leading man Jason (David Naughton of American Werewolf in London fame) is all about super corny one-liners. And while they are often groaners, they are actually pretty funny most of the time. It's almost like a decent late 80s sitcom transposed onto a horror movie. If that idea doesn't repulse you, I think you might dig The Sleeping Car.

It doesn't hurt that it starts off with one of the best/worst opening sequences I've seen in a long time. A young man and woman are getting it on in a moving train (so you get lots of the requisite nudity out of the way right off the bat). It's intercut with some old man yelling maniacally for the kid (presumably - he's just yelling a last name). This goes on for about 2 minutes. Once the old man finally finds him, he speaks the first line of dialogue in the film: "Get your filthy fornicating ass back on watch!" (which sets the tone for a lot of ridiculous dialogue to come). The kid is all like "whatever old man, I'll stick with getting laid." Then there are some incoherent shots of trains at night, the old man screams, jumps off the train, and the train blows up! We learn later that two trains (supposedly) crashed, but the was it's shot/edited makes it completely incoherent. We're off to a good start!

January 25th, 2015 - Disaster L.A. the Last Zombie Apocalypse Begins Here (2014)

That's one heck of a title, eh? Sorry you can't really read it.

Disaster L.A. The Last Zombie Apocalypse Begins Here is probably better than you would expect knowing that it's probably super low budget and has just one guy doing a lot of the heavy lifting behind the scenes (Turner Clay on writing, directing, producing, sound engineering, special effects, and editing). It starts out strong but loses steam along the way, ultimately being just another in the pile of generic, low budget, apocalyptic-zombie flicks.

I've found that there are a couple of different types of low-budget films. There are those that are proud of their indieness - they like to boast about their small budget (a la Revolution Trail) - saying "look how good we did with this little amount of money!" And then there are movies that are seemingly embarrassed by it - they are either trying to fool people into thinking the movie is a blockbuster, or they don't want potential investors to know how much (or how little) actually went into production. I think Disaster L.A. is the latter - I was genuinely curious to know what this thing cost, but haven't been able to find the info. Judging by the size of the credits and the scope of the film, I'm guessing not very much. So while I want to give it credit for being "pretty good for being so cheap," I can't verify if that is actually true or not.

January 24th, 2015 - Dark Floors (2008)

I had completely forgotten about the concept of Dark Floors being "the Lordi Movie" until I saw that the script was based on an idea by "Mr. Lordi." Lordi, if you are unfamiliar, is basically the Finnish GWAR - a rock group who dress up as their monstrous alter egos and play rock n' roll music. I'm not a Lordi (or GWAR) aficionado, but from what I can tell, Lordi is more serious than GWAR (who mostly seem to go for laughs). Although I guess you have to have a decent sense of humor to do a press conference in full costume. Lordi also has better costumes - it turns out Mr. Lordi designs all of them and is a professional makeup artist. So it kind of makes sense that Lordi the band would eventually make their way into a horror film.

But despite being labeled as "The Lordi Movie" in a lot of the press, the band really isn't in it all that much. Dark Floors plays out a lot more like a haunted hospital movie, where the band members just show up, one at a time. Really, there could have been any ghost/creature here, and it wouldn't change the story all that much.

January 23rd, 2015 - American Mary (2012)

I've had American Mary lingering on my watchlist for quite some time. I was definitely looking forward to it - I remember it being on a lot of 2012 "best of" lists. I didn't know a ton about it, other than it was about body modification and that it wasn't much of a "fun" horror film, so I had to be in the right mood for it. But I bit the bullet this weekend - and unfortunately it just didn't do it for me. It's nicely shot and well made from a technical perspective, and the body horror stuff is quite well done. It's just a little too tonally inconsistent for me. American Mary wants to exist in a grim and gritty reality, but it is populated with characters who just don't act like real people. Also, the pacing of the film is just a little too intense - I felt like there just wasn't enough room for the story to breathe. It's certainly an engaging film - one that I've thought about a lot since watching it - but ultimately I was let down.

The story is about the titular Mary (although her American-ness is in question), a very promising young surgeon attending medical school. She is having trouble paying the bills, and is looking for ways to make easy money. While at an interview at a strip club, she presents her resume saying she's spent time as an aspiring surgeon. Coincidentally, the skeezy strip-club guy needs a doctor. He's got some very bloody, injured guy he needs to keep alive (for presumably nefarious purposes), and offers Mary $5,000, no questions asked, to keep him breathing. It's obviously sketchy, but she's desperate. This is her jumping off point into the field of questionable medicine. Her next client wants some rather extreme elective cosmetic surgery that no legit doctor will perform. She does the job and is suddenly an all star in the world of body modification.

January 22nd, 2015 - Invisible Ghost (1941)

Invisible Ghost is another one from the lovely folks at archive.org. I actually had to leave town for a funeral, but had Invisible Ghost loaded onto the iPad and figured it would be okay to watch - it's relatively short, and (being from 1941) hopefully wouldn't be too disturbing to watch sandwiched between a wake and a funeral. It's kind of weird though, watching a horror movie in those circumstances... I mean, if I'm going to keep up with this movie-a-day business, I'm going to have to do so in less than ideal situations. But Invisible Ghost was a welcome distraction from a pretty heavy night. It went down easy, and while it wasn't great (or really even that scary), I was happy to let my mind wander for an hour or so.

Invisible Ghost a pretty horrible name for this movie though, as there are no ghosts in it, nor anything invisible. It's about a wealthy man named Mr. Kessler (Bela Lugosi), who is torn up about his wife leaving him for another man. He does pretty well in his day to day life, but celebrates their wedding anniversary with a fancy dinner, where he instructs his butler to serve both him and an empty chair for his wife. He also talks to her during the meal... so I guess that's where the "invisible" comes from. 

January 21st, 2015 - Dawn of the Mummy (1981)

Dawn of the Mummy is essentially a zombie-by-way of mummy flick, as you may be able to guess by the mash up of titles.  It doesn't offer anything especially new or exciting, and is pretty slow for the first half, but it's decent enough if you're a fan of slightly corny early 80's horror.

It starts off in 3000 BC in Egypt, with a group of marauders on horseback running rampant through a village, whipping people and kidnapping young boys. I couldn't tell you why. Cut to the interior of a tomb/pyramid, where a priestess is performing a mummification ceremony. (Complete with gross but not too gross effects, which will be par for the course for the rest of the film. Think real animal organs, just sort of set on top of someone and then lifted off.) And you get the requisite Curse. The twist here? All of the people who helped build the tomb and perform the ceremony will be killed by poisonous gas to keep the location of the tomb a secret. They seem okay with this. If the Curse ever comes to fruition (it will), the helpers will also rise from the dead to take revenge along with the Mummy, whose name I have surely misspelled as Saabernon.

January 20th, 2015 - A Walking Nightmare (1942)

I was not expecting a lighthearted screwball-esque comedy when I popped in A Walking Nightmare, but sometimes the budget set can surprise you. There are *some* horror elements here (as the title would imply), but it's far more of a comedy/mystery than a horror film. But the good news? It's pretty enjoyable. If you were on a steady diet of wisecracking private investigator films, I'd imagine A Walking Nightmare would be pretty middle of the road. But for me, the fun, fast talking approach was a nice change of pace.

The film opens with newspaper headlines (naturally), telling us of the disappearance of prominent banker Walter Craig. The Craig family is rife with in-fighting, as Walter's current wife and his daughter from his first marriage do not get along. There are a couple of other interesting characters in the Craig household, including an old lady obsessed with cults and the supernatural, and a very Lurch-ish creepy butler. Eventually, they decide to call upon former police investigator Nick Trayne (James Dunn) - "the best in the business" - to see if he can get to the bottom of the Walter's disappearance. Trayne hits it off with Billie Hilton (Joan Woodbury) - a woman who works for Walter, and they pair up and begin their search. But Walter mysteriously appears in the house on the very night Trayne shows up! The catch? He has a traumatic brain injury, and is more or less in a coma. (And he will be for a year... although how the doctor diagnoses that is a mystery.) Trayne and Billie must work together to find out who put Walter into his current state!

January 19th, 2015 - Winterbeast (1991)

So just what exactly is a winterbeast? Oddly enough, Winterbeast does not answer that question. It is too busy being amazing to worry about things like having a coherent title. Or much adherence to any standard rules of moviemaking. The box art says "It Must be Seen to be Believed" - and I think that is a fair statement - it's hard to encompass in words just what exactly this movie is. It's definitely low budget, cheesy, and surreal. But it's also a ton of fun if you're looking for off-the-wall entertainment.

I'll try to sum up the plot: People are going missing in a small town up in the mountains. A forest ranger and a general store owner are trying to figure out what is going on, and stumble across a huge, very menacing looking statue out in the middle of the woods. (There is a Native American mysticism angle to the mystery, but it's not presented in a way that makes any sense.) Periodically, people will get attacked by crazy stop-motion creatures (or sometimes puppets) that have nothing to do with each other... they're not great looking, but they are all fun in a very lo-fi way. Also, the ranger wants to close down the local motel where all the tourists are staying, saying it's dangerous to keep it open when people are going missing... but the skeezy/impish motel owner is having none of it. Admittedly, it doesn't sound like much, but Winterbeast is not something you watch to be entertained by the twists and turns of the plot. It's the execution that makes it excellent... it's just charmingly insane.

January 18th, 2015 - Holy Terror (2002)

After getting REALLY excited about the pretty goddamned awesome/bad Hellinger, I was looking forward to Holy Terror, as it was on the same disc. When I saw it was the same director (Massimiliano Cerchi) I was even more stoked. It'd be hard to match the sheer greatness of Hellinger, but could Mr. Cerchi have upped his game even more in the 5 years since Hellinger? I figured Holy Terror would at least be worthy of sharing a DVD with that powerhouse of a movie...

Well, it is and it isn't. Holy Terror is one of those movies that I'm not even really sure is a movie. I was ignorant of the runtime, had just cracked another beer, and was settling in for the long haul, thinking "there's been so much padding, we have to get into the real story soon, right?" And then it was over. 55 minutes. It was a long day and I was thankful for the length, but still. I want to say "inept," but I gather that there wasn't really a lot of effort going into this one. It's stupid enough to keep you off-balance and be vaguely enjoyable, but there just isn't a lot of meat on them bones.

January 17th, 2015 - As Above, So Below (2014)

As Above, So Below is a pretty solid found footage flick. It's pretty well-made and ambitious as far as these sorts of things go... and it takes advantage of a really unique setting to make it stand out from its "lost in the wilderness/ghost hunting" found footage brethren.

Perdita Weeks plays Scarlet Marlowe, the sort of adventurous archeologist that you only really see in movies. She travels the globe, makes dangerous escapes from the law, and (in the opening scene) solves ancient riddles under the pressure of a (literally) ticking time bomb. She has spent her life (she's in her mid-to-late 20s) searching for the Philosopher's Stone, an ancient rune created by alchemists that is said to give its possessor eternal life. Her father died before he could track it down, but by combining his findings with hers, she's thinks she's found the stone's whereabouts - deep underground in the catacombs beneath the streets of Paris.

January 16th, 2015 - Evil Bong (2006)

I guess it shouldn't come as much of a surprise, but Evil Bong really isn't that good. In the pantheon of Full Moon films, my best frame of reference would have to be The Gingerdead Man, in that they probably just thought of a title and then fleshed out a story around it. But where Gingerdead Man was stupid but still managed to be a little bit charming, I never really felt charmed by Evil Bong. It felt cheap and long and at some times just kind of embarrassing, which is the last thing I want out of a modern era B-Movie like this. Plus, Evil Bong tries really hard to be funny, and rarely succeeds. But I wasn't high while I was watching it, so maybe I missed out. But I'd like to think even stoners have their self-respect.

Evil Bong is about a trio of stoner roommates that come in three stereotypes - light, medium, and ultra. They love smoking weed and talking all "c'mon dude bro man" and what not. They get a new roommate in super-nerd Alistair, who doesn't smoke and is just focusing on his studies. Medium stoner reads an ad about a bong in High Times, and despite the warning that the "seller is not responsible" for its effects, he is "like super stoked bro" to use Alistair's money to buy it.

January 15th, 2015 - The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959)

I didn't have much of a reaction to The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake either way. It's not a bad film... there's just nothing extraordinary (or really even terribly interesting) about it. It's got a decent atmosphere about it, and generates most of its chills from examining the concept of head-shrinking. So I might be able to shrink a head now, if I wanted to. But there isn't too much here to get excited about.

It starts off with the titular Jonathan Drake, waking from a nightmare with three skulls floating around... he's had feelings of doom his whole life, but that feeling is getting stronger by the day. Jonathan is an expert in the occult, and instinctively knows that his family is in some kind of trouble. He goes to visit his brother Kenneth after receiving a strange letter (I think?), but by the time he can get there, his brother is dead! The doctor says it's a heart attack (there is a history of it in the family), but we are hip to the true cause of death. A creepy dude with his lips sewn together snuck into the house and poked him in the neck with some poisonous thing. (This guy is even more creepy by virtue of being a white man painted brown, playing a Jivaro Indian.) He was getting ready to cut off Kenneth's head, when he was scared off by approaching footsteps.

January 14th, 2015 - The Sadist (1963)

I was not expecting The Sadist to be so damned bleak. I'm not sure when the first really nihilistic American horror was produced, but when I read the description on the 50 Tales of Terror Box and saw the date (1963), I assumed it would be horror, but probably on the corny side. True, we're in post-Psycho territory by this point, but I didn't think that there were that many films that were this rough from the era. The Sadist feels ahead of its time in terms of its depiction of a horrifying hostage situation. It never really even tries to be fun - it's just a really messed up guy holding people hostage and threatening to kill them for 90 minutes. It's certainly not torture porn - but is psychological torture porn a thing? And any rate, I was pretty impressed and surprised with the film. For a movie over 50 years old with a pretty thin story, it is taut, well-made, and plenty disturbing.

January 13th, 2015 - I am Omega (2007)

As a somewhat seasoned movie watcher, nothing quite strikes fear into my hear like reading the words "The Asylum Presents" in the opening credits. With I am Omega, the production company behind such mockbusters as Paranormal Entity, Transmorphers and The Terminators are up to their old tricks, trying to work their brand of "magic" by reimagining/ripping off the 2007 Will Smith hit I am Legend.

Admission - I haven't seen the original Legend. I just know that it's a "last-man-on-earth-versus-zombie/vampire"thing. I am Omega borrows from that basic plot, and starts off as a one man show. But eventually (I would guess because they ran out of things for him to do alone, and also to get the film to feature length), they throw in some other survivors. So it's more of a "a-few-people-left-on-earth-versus-zombie/mutant" thing.

January 12th, 2015 - The Blob (1988)

I'm certainly no expert on the 1958 horror classic The Blob. I saw it a year or two ago and remember liking it quite a bit, but it seems fair to me to remake it. Really, it's such a basic plot (small town, teenager witnesses people don't believe, amorphous mass killing people) that it's not exactly untouchable. While this new(er) version doesn't have a ton new to say plot-wise (a little anti-government paranoia creeps in though), it delivers in terms of thrills and pretty excellent special effects. It certainly doesn't have the same vibe as the original, but I think that's impossible to duplicate. The 1958 Blob is very much a product of it's time and just feels nostalgic, you know? But still, the 1988 Blob is a solid monster flick in its own right.

January 11th, 2015 - The Ape Man (1943)

It's hard not to feel a little bad for Bela Lugosi in The Ape Man. And not bad for the character (a scientist who is turned into a man-ape), but for Lugosi the actor. He's responsible for some of (if not the) most iconic performances in horror film history, and here he is in The Ape Man - walking around slightly hunched over with a bad teen-wolf-meets-Abe-Lincoln beard, and tussling with a guy in a gorilla suit. Although looking over his credits, you've got to wonder how close to the bottom The Ape Man actually is.

Lugosi plays Dr. James Brewster, whose experiments have "unfortunately been successful" according to his partner Dr. Randall. Why you would want to create a procedure which would turn a man into a half-ape is questionable - why you would then try it out on yourself is beyond me. But that's 40's movie science, I guess. Anyways, Brewster has been reported missing (it's front page news), when in fact he is just hiding in his secret laboratory thanks to his new ape deformity. Brewster's sister Agatha, who also happens to be a ghost hunter (?), comes from overseas and the urging of Randall to learn the horrible truth about Dr. Brewster... He looks like this!

January 10th, 2015 - Housebound (2014)

Besides The Babadook, Housebound was probably the horror film that I had heard the most online chatter about in 2014. It won people over big-time in its festival run, and I can see why. It's a well-made and quite funny horror flick, and would probably have pretty wide-appeal - there are some scares and gore, but it would play to non-horror audiences as well.

The film starts with Kylie Bucknell (Morgana O'Reilly) and an unnamed partner trying to steal cash from an ATM.  Things go comedically awry, and she ends up getting busted by the police. It's a fun little scene, at lets you know right off the bat that Housebound isn't going to shy away from comedy. Despite being relatively young (maybe mid-twenties), Kylie has a long rap sheet and history of failed rehab assignments, so the judge sentences her to house arrest. Kylie is mortified - and seems to feel that a prison term would probably be a better thing that living at home for 8 months...

January 9th, 2015 - I, Frankenstein (2014)

One of my good friends inadvertently recommended I, Frankenstein to me. We both are into kind of kitschy/crappy movies, and he sent me an e-mail where he was talking about everything he'd seen recently, and finished it up with: "I, Frankenstein... Oh my god." And oddly enough, that's probably more of a recommendation to me than someone saying "so-and-so is pretty good." So thanks for tip!

"Oh my god," if said while averting your eyes and slowly shaking your head, is a pretty good summation of I, Frankenstein. It just goes to show you what can happen if you just throw a bunch of money at any comic book property and try to turn it into a slick, CGI-filled blockbuster. Although the January release date tells me there wasn't an awful lot of faith in it anyways. It's a mess, and the writers didn't seem to think Frankenstein (I'm calling him that, not Frankenstein's Monster) is an interesting enough character to support even part of the story - we get a very brief history of his creation, and then he's thrust into a war between demons and the Holy Gargoyle Order (?). Because I guess just being Frankenstein wouldn't give you an excuse to kill a bunch of CGI demons now, would it?

January 8th, 2014 - The Crimson Cult (1968)

The Crimson Cult (also known as Curse of the Crimson Altar, as you may have guessed) is probably most noteworthy for its cast of horror icons. Here you get Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, and Barbara Steele, all together in the same film. It's probably stunt casting to a certain extent - Barbara Steele is particularly underused here - but it's still a treat to see them all. The movie itself is okay. There is a pretty neat/artsy vibe to all of the witchcraft/cult scenes, and it's fun to see the big names do their respective things, but the overall story isn't all that enthralling.

The Crimson Cult starts with a bang though. You get a pretty wild sacrifice scene right off the bat - a woman tied to an altar getting whipped by another woman in pasties, some mostly naked guys hanging around with S&M gear and antlers/goat masks on, and most notably, Barbara Steele as Lavinia, the cult leader. She's painted blue (?) and is wearing a crazy feathered/horned headpiece. There's a super-reverby sound to all of this, and it's backed with a droning sound that wouldn't be out of place in a 50's sci-fi/alien movie.  Lavinia is encouraging a guy named Peter Manning stab the woman on the altar and then sign some sort of book, so he can "enter their world of darkness." It's an intense and colorful opening.

January 7th, 2015 - Haunting of Cellblock 11 (2014)

Admission: I am into Ghost Hunting shows/movies. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the Ghost Adventures crew specifically - back in my cable days, that was really the only non-sports thing I would watch. My DVR was filled with hours upon hours of the misadventures of Zak and friends. I was so happy for Aaron when he got promoted to "fellow investigator!"

But I think one of the things I like about the ghost hunting movies is that you're pretty much always going to see shit go down. In the TV shows, you maybe see a weird light, or hear some questionable voices or something. But in a movie, it's always going to be full-on apparitions that totally kill people. I also dig ghost hunting movies because they've got a built-in reason to be found footage, and I'm totally into that. So I was a little disappointed when I started Haunting of Cellblock 11. It's not found footage! But I figured it could be a unique angle - an easy way to change up the formula a little bit. Unfortunately, the formula doesn't really change. The traditionally shot footage is mostly just padding, and the scares are nothing you haven't seen before. It's never super terrible, but it's never really that good either.

January 6th, 2015 - Crypt of the Living Dead (1973)

I was a little nervous about Crypt of the Living Dead. I haven't been having lots of luck with the 50 Tales of Terror budget set, and the description of the film on the sleeve didn't sound terribly interesting. (It turns out it's not accurate either, but still. It also says it's in color and it is not.) But I dug it. It's pretty much saved by one performance (Frank Brana - more on him later), but outside of that the story is okay and there is an eerie enough atmosphere to make it watchable.

The story: an archeologist studying "paganism, demonism, and the occult" has made his way to a remote island, where he is checking out a tomb said to belong to Hannah, an ancient vampire queen who was buried 700 years ago. He gets down there and is attacked and pushed under her tomb, which the attackers knock down, crushing him to death. His engineer son Chris (Andrew Prine) comes to the island to bury his father, and meets Peter (Mark Damon) - I don't know what his deal is... and Peter's sister Mary (Patty Shepard) - a school teacher and eventual romantic interest for Chris. Incidentally, in the first scene we saw Peter as one of the two evildoers who killed Chris's father... so despite him appearing to be helpful, we know he's up to no good.

January 5th, 2015 - Ritual (2012)

I can't really write much about Ritual without giving away what I think is too much. I picked it from the Netflix queue and watched it more or less blindly, and was glad I didn't read any of the reviews about it or anything beforehand. I wouldn't say it's a must-see or anything like that, but if you are looking for a something unique that goes down pretty easily and doesn't require a ton of thought, I'd say to check it out. It's an Indonesian film (so it's a little different style-wise from what you usually get) but shot in English, but there isn't really a lot of dialogue anyways. It's not super gory but has its moments, and genre-wise has a little bit of stalker/home-invasion feel to it.

Okay, if you if that sounds like your bag, stop reading.

For real.

...

because we all like movies, and this one is better if you don't know what's happening.

January 4th, 2015 - Chloe, Love is Calling You (1934)

Or, as I will know it from now on, Chloe, Love is Calling You a Racist. This is a film from 1934, and reflects the ugly, racist attitudes of the era. It's pretty hard for me writing about it 80 years later to separate the politics in it from anything else in the actual movie. Although it's not really all that good of a movie to begin with, and is honestly more of a romantic tale than any sort horror film. But that's what I get for rolling with the 50 Tales of Terror budget set.

I guess I would explain it as a sort of Romeo and Juliet type doomed lovers story - although instead of being from warring families, Juliet (Chloe in this case) may be part black! Which, in the world of this film, is worth gasping, screaming, and crying about. You see, she was raised in the bayou by a black voodoo priestess who claims Chloe is her daughter, despite Chloe appearing even paler than the average white person. Also, the voodoo priestess is upset at the white folks in the town for lynching her son. Which seems reasonable to me, but she's the baddie in this one for some reason (in fairness to the movie, she may be mad at the wrong white person, but still). Chloe is being courted by some bayou guy (I can't tell if he's supposed to be white or black - which sadly is important here) that she doesn't really like.

January 3rd, 2015 - Witching and Bitching (2013)

My command of the Spanish Language is not what it used to be (or not what it ever was?), but from what I can tell this would be translated to "The Witches of Zugarramurdi." Not sure why they went with the vulgar title for English speaking audiences... we like our swears, I guess! But maybe it makes sense, while it's not a overtly vulgar or gross film, it's certainly far from subtle. I know director/co-writer Alex de la Iglesia is a highly lauded filmmaker - and Witching and Bitching is certainly enjoyable and has style and energy to burn. But I *loved* the other film of his that I've seen (The Last Circus), so I felt just a little disappointed that this one was just "kind of good."

The story begins with a robbery in a gold store - the crooks are dressed up as street performers (human statues and Spongebob characters, from what I could tell). It's actually kind of high concept - our main thief Jose (Hugo Silva) is dressed as Jesus and painted totally silver and his weapons are stashed inside the giant cross he's carrying. His accomplice Antonio (Mario Casas) is painted all green, posing as a plastic army man. These two characters really pop off the screen (silver Jesus in particular looks great), and overall the movie looks awesome. It's crisp and colorful throughout, and this kinetic first scene sets a high-energy tone that the film more or less sustains throughout the run-time.

January 2nd, 2015 - Night Feeders (2006)

I saw the term "Z-grade" get tossed around a bit while I was reading up on Night Feeders. And I suppose that means a typical B-movie story, made independently, coupled with a low budget and probably not made with the most seasoned crew/actors. I don't think the "Z" label is inherently a bad thing. Sure, any film can be painful if it's not well done (and I think it may be more *likely* to be painful the deeper you go into the alphabet), but just like any style/genre/whatever, there are good ones and bad ones. And I thought Night Feeders was one of the good ones. Once you get past the really poor CGI (which is charming in a Birdemic sort of way, but not quite as bad), it's a fun, decently-paced piece of indie monster-horror.

January 1st, 2015 - Manhattan Baby (1982)

Happy New Year! Let's start it off with a Lucio Fulci flick! At least no women are graphically mutilated in this one... This is the first Fulci film that left me a bit disappointed. Up until now, his films that I've come across have been pretty dependable in terms of crazy violence, general sleaziness, or just plain insanity. But Manhattan Baby (titled to remind people of Rosemary's Baby) doesn't have much of those qualities to offer. Sure you get the occasional guy falling on a bunch of spikes or birds pecking off a guy's face, but there isn't too much here to recommend.

Contrary to what the title leads you to believe, the film actually starts in Egypt, with a guy collecting a live scorpion in a little plastic container - he thinks it would make a great souvenir for his daughter. Now that's good parenting! He's an archeologist named George Hacker, and he's on the cusp of a big find that some native Egyptians are warning him to stay away from. But of course scientific arrogance wins out, and he comes across an ancient "consecrated temple, whose members worship the forces of evil." Things do not go well - his assistant is killed by a booby trap and this crazy emblem shoots lasers into George's eyes, blinding him. Meanwhile, his daughter Susie and wife are out chilling at a different (mostly abandoned) site, and his wife leaves the daughter alone to go take some pictures. Again, good parenting! Anyways, a creepy old woman with whited-out eyes gives her some weird talisman - which happens to be the same emblem that blinded her father in the temple! Crazy!