April 30th, 2015 - See No Evil 2 (2014)

It's weird to me that there aren't more horror movies starring/about wrestlers. I mean, I think you have to be a fan of often campy and unsubtle entertainment to be a fan of either. Plus, both very nearly require you to have a high tolerance of (or a fondness for) stupid and/or terrible stuff. And I say that as a big fan of both. So it's just odd that there isn't more of a cross-pollination between the two.

I remember seeing the first See No Evil shortly after in came out and being a little disappointed. I don't recall it being outright bad - just that it could have been more fun. At any rate, I don't think anyone was clamoring for a sequel. But much like Roman Reigns' presence in the main event scene, sometimes it doesn't matter what the public wants.

Despite coming out eight years later, See No Evil 2 takes place the very same night as part one. Crazed murderer Jacob Goodnight's (Kane) dead body has been taken to the morgue, where Final Girl Amy (Danielle Harris) is working on her birthday. She was just about to go out and celebrate, but Goodnight's killing spree has packed the morgue to capacity. But Amy's friends (including Katherine Isabelle of American Mary fame) and coworkers are not going to let a bunch of murder victims get in the way of their fun, so they bring the party to the morgue. But, it turns out the EMS on the scene kind of sucks, because Goodnight isn't actually dead. (It's never made clear if this is supernatural or not - and I don't care enough to go back and check. Maybe it's mentioned in part one?) Now he's got another group of young folks to kill... which he does. Good times!

April 29th, 2015 - The Ghost Walks (1935)

The Ghost Walks is another film from the 50 Tales of Terror budget set where a group of people are trapped in an old house during a storm, only to find that there is a murderer in their midst. I swear I've seen at least three other similarly-plotted films from this set recently - "people trapped during a storm and then murdered" must have been the 30's equivalent of our superhero movies, I guess. There are a couple of interesting little quirks here and there in The Ghost Walks, but overall it feels very been there, done that.

The film centers on a famous play producer and his goofy assistant. They are being driven out in the woods by the (awesomely named) playwright Prescott Ames - the idea being that he is looking for a nice secluded place to read the producer his new play. But then a storm hits and their car gets stuck. The trio is forced to take refuge in a nearby house, whose residents are familiar with Ames - we don't know how or why, but something fishy is going on.

April 28th, 2015 - The She Beast (1966)

The She Beast was a really nice surprise. I have learned not to expect a lot from films on the 50 Tales of Terror budget set, but every once and a while you get a little gem that makes it worthwhile. And honestly, with the possible exception of The Sadist, this is the best I've come across in the 30+ I've seen thus far (Disc 9 and counting). It's a good mix of legitimately bothersome horror and off-kilter/almost campy comedy, most of which I assume was intentional.

After a pretty cheap looking credit sequence (see above - at first I swore they just used a crumpled paper bag for the back-drop), we are told we are in Transylvania. You know what that means! (If you said "witches," you and The She Beast are on the same wavelength.) We flash back 200 years ago, to an incident where a witch killed a child and was tracked back to her cave by angry townsfolk. And this is one nasty looking witch, with a really melty-looking face... really, she's more like a troll. Anyways, they capture her and slowly kill her with an iron spike to the chest and then dipping her in and out of the the town lake on some catapult looking thing until she drowns. It's rather barbarous, and pretty disturbing right off the bat - along with the gross face, she just screams like a banshee.

April 27th, 2015 - The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014)

When I was perusing the reviews of The Town That Dreaded Sundown, I came across one that labeled it a "requel." Not quite a reboot, not quite a sequel, but somewhere in between. We've got a lot more of these coming out it seems like - it's a little more fashionable nowadays than a straight remake. I'm convinced "requel" would catch on if it wasn't such a terrible sounding term.

This Town That Dreaded Sundown is definitely well aware of its 1976 predecessor - in fact, that version plays a significant role in this updated film. The Town in question is Texarkana (on the Texas/Arkansas border) - the 1976 film was looking back into that town's history, and was based on a (for real) mid-forties murder case where a killer dubbed "The Phantom" killed a half-dozen people and then stopped just as soon as he started. The case was never solved. Understandably, the case shook the small town, but was mostly forgotten by the mid-seventies. But the first film brought back all of those fears/emotions associated with the case. Now, forty years later, that 70's film has been embraced by some and has become an event in town - it's shown annually at the drive-in, and the local kids show up to get drunk and cause a ruckus. Naturally, some of the old-timers have a problem with this - they remember that it's based on a true story and think it shouldn't be taken so flippantly.

So this 2014 film takes place in a world where the first film exists, so there is an extra level of meta-ness when a new killer starts offing people in the same manner as the 1976 film. It's like Russian nesting dolls or something.

April 26th, 2015 - Monster (1978)

A little while ago I was talking about a film called Animal and super-generic horror movie titles. And shortly thereafter, I came across this appropriately-titled film on Amazon Prime. So I got queued up, and finally checked it out today. But while Animal had the decency to prominently feature an animal, the same cannot be said about Monster. I mean, the titular monster is the motivating force behind the plot, but until the very end there is precious little monster action.

The opening title card tells us the "story you are about to see is based on fact. The incident occurred in June 1971 in Columbia." There is no corroborating evidence to support this, but whatever. There was no internet in 1978, so maybe some people would buy it. An American-owned factory has been built in a small town in Columbia. There are many, many problems surrounding the factory; the locals are upset about its impact on the environment, a rebel named Sanchez is stirring up anti-American sentiment, a nosy American reporter is rooting around in company business, and a couple people have mysteriously gone missing. Plus, there is a rumor going around about a monster in the nearby lake (where the factory presumably dumps their waste). The company bigwigs think it's total hogwash, but what if there were some truth to the rumors? The American executives send down a Guy Who Means Business to check it out. He gets a lot more than he bargained for...

April 25th, 2105 - 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck (2012)

100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck is an Asylum-produced ghost hunting film. It's not directly ripping off any particular movie, as the infamous production company is wont to do (Transmorphers, Terminators). But that doesn't mean it's original. I mean, the ghost-hunting/found footage genre has a pretty well-established set of conventions (or more accurately - there just isn't all that much you can do in the confines of that set-up), and 100 Ghost Street doesn't stray far from the formula. Still, despite having a near total lack of story, it's decently-executed, which is high praise for an Asylum flick.

Rather than being boring with too much padding, in a way the action here *is* the padding - there's just too much of it. It's loud and effective at times, but eventually you just kind of get numb to all of the screaming/chasing/shaky-cam. A good balance is hard to pull off in a found footage film - you at least want a little calm before the storm. I mean, it's better to err on the side of too much action, but ideally there would be a little better balance. And the action happens early and often - Ghost Street probably sets some kind of record for the shortest amount of elapsed time until someone getting dragged away from the camera in that "classic" found footage shot (about 90 seconds). So at least it gets that requirement out of the way early.

April 24th, 2015 - Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers (1986)

The first Sleepaway Camp is the shit. If you haven't seen it and are in the mood for an off-kilter 80s slasher, stop reading this (and certainly don't read anything else Sleepaway Camp-related) and check it out. It's awesome.

Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers can't possibly recapture the same magic as part one, and it wisely doesn't try. Instead, you get a high body count slasher flick where the the killer is identified before the opening credits even roll. Because of this, there isn't anything by way of a mystery, but you get lots and lots of annoying kids getting killed with a variety of weaponry. It's a give and take. So if you are in the mood for some good old 80s killing and lots of dated fashion, Sleepaway Camp 2 will fit the bill perfectly.

It starts with a bunch of campers from Camp Rolling Hills telling scary stories around the campfire. After a couple of typically lame stories, someone tells the story of Sleepaway Camp part one. Some campers don't believe it really happened, and some do. But no one realizes that the killer from that story (named Angela) bears a striking resemblance to their new camp counselor, also named Angela... might they even be one and the same? Our suspicions are confirmed just a few minutes later when Angela stabs a girl to death and cuts out her tongue after she mouths off. And we're off!

April 23rd, 2015 - The Curious Dr. Humpp (1969)

When the algorithms at Netflix suggested The Curious Dr. Humpp, I didn't think much of it - old monster movie, creepy face on the box art, and the description "Mindless automatons and a curious-looking monster abduct drug-addled hippies, lesbians, and a stripper and deliver them to the manor of demented Dr. Humpp in this bizarre sci-fi horror flick." Sign me up, I guess? What would have been nice is if I had known how porny it is. I mean, the main story is a doctor who abducts people and gives them drugs to make them have sex all of the time, so he can get some eternal life serum, or something. And *after* the fact, I looked it up on imdb and found it had an X-rating. Now, I'm not saying this would have kept me away from it, but it would have at least changed how I approached it. Mid-afternoon is not the best time to watch an X-rated movie, you know?

So yeah, a lot of sex in this movie. And apparently, the English version (the one I saw) has even more than the original, as the American distributors decided to toss in some more random sex scenes (to the tune of 17 minutes!) to, uh, pad the film. And this movie is only about 85 minutes long. If you took out the sex scenes, you'd probably end up with a 40-45 minute movie.

April 22nd, 2015 - Late Phases (2014)

Late Phases is not a really easy sell. It's a pretty moody werewolf movie without a lot of action, and the werewolf design is... bold, shall we say. (It does *not* look like the box art.) Our main character is an old war vet who is blind, and most of the film takes place in a retirement community. And after an initial burst of werewolf excitement, nothing really happens for an hour or so. But still, something about it won me over. I'm not sure if it's just a different enough take on the werewolf genre, or the overall grim (but not depressing) vibe, or the stylish direction by Adrian Garcia Bogliano (Here Comes the Devil). It's kind of hard to put my finger on, but it just worked for me.

It centers on a Vietnam war veteran named Ambrose (Nick Damici), who has just moved to a retirement community with his seeing eye dog Shadow. His son Will (Ethan Embry) helps him get settled, but you can tell right away that the two of them have a rather strained relationship - Ambrose is portrayed as being a kind of bitter old man, and there is some tension between father and son regarding the former Mrs. Ambrose/Will's mother. On Ambrose's first night, he hears his neighbor being viciously attacked by a werewolf-ish creature, which eventually works it's way over to his house. Ambrose, of course, cannot see what it is, but senses that it is something significantly different than the puma that the police blame for the attack. Unfortunately, Shadow does not survive their encounter, and Ambrose spends a great deal of the film not only mourning the loss of his dog, but also preparing to go to battle with the creature the next time it pops up in the retirement community. Which it (eventually) does.

April 21st, 2015 - Buck Wild (2013)

I wasn't totally sure what I was getting into with Buck Wild. The cover art (featuring a dirty, bloody guy with bad teeth looking through binoculars) would lead you to believe that it's a backwoods cannibal flick. The Netflix synopsis says it's about a Chupacabra virus. And imdb says the story is "A hunting vacation goes awry for 4 friends after they accidentally shoot the lease land's owner." These are all technically true, but why not just say "small town zom-com" and be done with it?

Buck Wild is the sort of movie where the characters are just loud. Not that they are yelling all of the time, but everyone has a defining characteristic that is obnoxiously amped up to 11. As in, the smarmy asshole guy is a HUGE ASSHOLE, the crazy gun nut is Taxi Driver-times ten crazy, etc. Other than our main guy, nobody in the film behaves remotely like a real person. Our four friends are: Craig (the normal one), Tom (the ultra sensitive one), Lance (the Big Time Asshole), and Craig's cousin Jerry (the crazy one). The first hurdle to clear is the fact that it doesn't seem like these guys would be friends in the least. Actually, it's hard to imagine that they would be friends with *anyone* - they are that annoying.

April 20th, 2015 - Point of Fear (2006)

Happy 4/20! Don't watch Evil Bong.

Point of Fear is a not too bad (but not too good) indie psychological horror film - and it really only qualifies as "psychological" because it's about a killer psychologist. It's not like anyone here is playing mind games or anything. Honestly, Point of Fear is pretty dumb at times, but at least it has the sense to never really try to be intelligent. Basically, it's a simple story about a big lug of a crazy doctor who kills people, and the poor 20-somethings who have the misfortune of being his victims. Easy enough.

Four friends head out for a relaxing weekend at a cabin in the woods. (Stop me if you've heard this one before.) It's actually slightly different that the standard set-up, as the woods are in the mountains - and one of the friends (Melissa) is afraid of heights! Enter "The Fear Doctor" as he's been dubbed in the local press. Dr. Jamison has recently relocated to the small town of Pleasant Point, and he's found a small measure of success using controversial methods to cure his patient's phobias. (For example, he lets a tarantula crawl on the arm of a guy who is afraid of spiders. So he can work at his pet store unencumbered by his arachnophobia. Revolutionary stuff!) But it's not just his methods that are dubious - very little is known about his background, other than the fact that he moved to Pleasant Point after the death of his wife and child. The sheriff in town (who bears a striking resemblance to Pawn Stars' Rick Harrison) doesn't hide his contempt for Jamison - and it turns out he has good cop sense. We quickly find out that Dr. Jamison is indeed crazy - he occasionally snaps and kills his patients. Or (in Melissa's case), if you happen to remind him of his deceased wife, he might just tie you up and slap you around a little. (Seriously, they don't explain why he does this to her. Just plain crazy is reason enough, I guess.) Melissa's friends try to save her, and maybe they do. And good times were had by all.

April 19th, 2015 - Castle Freak (1995)

I was pretty late to the game as far as the films of Stuart Gordon go. I kept coming across his name again and again on movie websites and such, but it was only about a year ago that I actually saw one of his films. First was Re-Animator (which I really liked), and then last November I checked out From Beyond (which was great). I just really dig his style - he's adept at blending horror and comedy, and his films just have this vivid quality about them; a sort of aliveness and energy that is hard not to like. So while I recognized the Castle Freak box art from the good old video store days, I never realized that it was his film. And when I heard it was a reunion of sorts (bringing back stars Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton from Re-Animator and From Beyond), I had to check it out. And I'm glad I did. It's certainly a departure from those other two films - it has a decidedly different vibe and is a much more dour affair. There is hardly any humor in it at all, the sets are rather drab, and the effects are more grotesquely appalling rather than queasy fun. But it's still a well-crafted and often disturbing film that is totally worth your time.

Castle Freak centers on the Reilly family. Father John (Combs) has just inherited an old castle in Italy from a part of his bloodline that he didn't even know existed. There is some obvious strain in his relationship with his wife Susan (Crampton), and their daughter Rebecca is caught in the middle. Also, Rebecca is blind, which doesn't ease the stress between the bickering couple, as they are constantly at odds with the best way to take care of her. Anyways, they spend a few nights in the castle, and start to hear some strange noises. It turns out the recently deceased Duchess (the last owner of the castle) had some crazy rumors floating around about her. It is said that her son died at a young age, many years prior, and destroyed her emotionally - she never left the castle after that. But - what if she was actually totally insane and just told everyone her son died, when in actuality she just kept him chained up in the basement for decades until he went totally mad? Or if she fed him like an animal and beat him with a whip until he was disfigured? If that happened, when she died he'd probably either (a) slowly die of starvation, or (b) bite off his own thumb, escape his chains, and awkwardly terrorize the Reilly family. Guess which one happens?

April 18th, 2015 - The Asphyx (1973)

I had been skipping over The Asphyx for some time, mainly because of its PG rating. I certainly dig the British horror movies of the era, but I figured that the PG would equal "kind of slow, without a lot of blood and nudity to keep you alert late at night." And it turns out that assumption is correct. But today wound up being a morning movie, so I ended up enjoying The Asphyx over a hot cup of coffee on a relaxing weekend morning. And to that end, it worked perfectly. It will never be considered a juggernaut of action and thrills, but it's a perfectly acceptable flick with just enough eerieness and atmosphere to keep things moving at a good pace.

It's the early 1900's (I think) and wealthy Englishman (think Downtown Abbey-lite) named Hugo Cunningham (Robert Stephens) is headed back to his estate after a trip abroad. He's getting ready to introduce his children to his new fiancee - his first wife died some time ago. This group - Cunningham, his fiancee, and 3 children/significant others, gives us a reasonably-sized group of people to eventually be put into peril. He is is a man of many hobbies - since he comes from money and doesn't seem to have a job, what else should he do? He's an avid photographer, and this being the early 1900s, the equipment is very expensive and unwieldy, but really cool looking. Cunningham is also involved in a paranormal research group (I think it's called "parapsychology" here). Their most recent experiments involve taking pictures of people at the moment of their death. When the pictures are developed, they find a mysterious black smudge lingering around the subject. Cunningham believes that this is the person's asphyx - some sort of paranormal entity that goes after a person at the moment of death and helps their soul move on to the next world. He hypothesizes what could happen if one could manage to capture an asphyx... could the subject no longer die? Using his photographic technology (namely his ray-gun looking phosphorescent lighting apparatus), he attempts to do just that, and ends up playing God in the process. That always works out well.

April 17th, 2015 - Donovan's Brain (1953)

I've watched a head-in-a-pan movie for this project, but Donovan's Brain is my first brain-in-a-pan movie. And actually, it's in a tank, but whatever. I'm not sure if that would be an entirely different genre - they are both about mad scientists essentially playing god. But here, the brain itself is the big bad, which makes it a little less depressing than a head that is constantly asking people to kill it.

Donovan's Brain is a direct adaptation of the 1942 science fiction novel of the same name by Curt Siodmak. From what little research I've done, this seems to be the seminal "disembodied brain telepathically controls people to do its evil bidding" story - it's been directly adapted onto film two other times (1944's Lady and the Monster and 1962's The Brain). But it's been used as a concept in countless other sci-fi/horror films since. 

April 16th, 2015 - Muckman (2009)

Okay, time for a confession. It's possible that things could get a little sketchy over the next month or so. As far as this "watching a horror movie every day" thing goes, I feel like I've handled things pretty well - vacations, holidays, funerals, goddamned housework (I was out fertilizing the lawn for a couple of hours yesterday). But perhaps my biggest challenge started today - the 2015 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs. I am an avid Wild fan without cable, so I need to get out of the house to watch my beloved team (hopefully) go deep in the playoffs. Which means a bar. Which means being out late and getting pretty drunk. I mean, I don't want to be *rude* to the bar and just watch their TV without ordering anything, you know? Which means it's hard to watch a movie. So we'll see what happens. I was pretty stoked after watching the Wild go up 1-0 in their series against the Blues, but it has kind of made watching Muckman a blur. So, sorry if this is haphazard.

Anyways, I remember pretty much liking Muckman. It's definitely a low-budget affair (imdb says $500.00 - not sure if I believe that), but it's got an okay story, a good sense of humor, and likable enough leads.

April 15th, 2015 - Moon of the Wolf (1972)

I always get a kick out of the fact that the major networks used to run a lot of made-for-TV horror movies. Moon of the Wolf aired as an "ABC Movie of the Week" in 1972; presumably the market dictated that the public was hungry for some werewolf action in their primetime viewing. (This is yet another reason for me to have some 70s nostalgia despite not being around for them. Then? Horror movies. Now? Singing/dancing reality shows.)

The mass-marketed style of a made-for-TV movie doesn't really suit the werewolf as a monster/lead character. Moon of the Wolf ends up being a pretty bloodless affair with not a heck of a lot of action. But even though it was kind of boring, there are some things to like. I was mostly just into its nostalgic charms - it's full of stuff that you'd never see on non-reality network TV nowadays - it takes place in the deep south on the bayou, so you get a lot of southern drawls and redneckery, lots of back sweat and chest hair, and older people flirting. And really obvious musical cues when it's time for a commercial. If that wasn't enough for you, going into the breaks:

April 14th, 2015 - What Have You Done to Solange (1972)

What Have You Done to Solange is a solid entry in the giallo subgenre. It's pretty straightforward though - it doesn't have as many of the stylistic flourishes you might expect, and plays more like a standard mystery at times. But it's got enough suspense, brutality, perversion, and first person stalking to please the genre's fans.

Solange is about a teacher at a Catholic Girls school named Enrico Rosseni who is in a romantic relationship with Elizabeth, one of his students. It's not played off as sketchy or anything (he's our hero, after all) - he is just waiting for the right moment to tell his wife. One day, while he is out with Elizabeth on a boat in the Thames, they are about to get it on when Elizabeth freaks out, claiming to have seen a knife flash in the woods. Rosseni thinks she is just making excuses to avoid him, but when a brutal murder is reported on the news the next day, and he realizes she was telling the truth. Worse yet, the victim was a classmate and friend of Elizabeth. They hesitate to go to the police (wanting to keep their affair a secret) but then more students from their school are murdered. The evidence seems to suggest that the culprit is someone at the school, but who? There are a lot of really creepy looking guys to pick from... But Rosseni is the number one suspect, by virtue of him being at the crime scene, lying to the cops, and his reputation for liking the young ladies. In an attempt to clear his name, Rosseni and the officer investigating the crimes play a very dangerous game trying to catch the real killer.

April 13th, 2015 - The Midnight Shadow (1939)

Midnight Shadow is not a very good movie, but it is interesting from a historical perspective. When I first saw the label "Sack Mark of Merit," I laughed (because it's funny). But later I found out Sack Amusement was a company that made and distributed "race pictures" - featuring almost all black actors and screened at primarily black movie theaters. Which had to be an interesting business to be a part of in the late 30s in the USA. I mean, race relations being what they were (shitty), this has to be an early example of black actors not being relegated to roles that were broad, offensive stereotypes. Midnight Shadow has an all black cast playing wealthy businessmen, detectives, and others in positions of authority, which is just radically different than many others I've seen from this era. I honestly didn't even know that there were movie companies that catered to black audiences back then. So thanks for teaching me something today, Midnight Shadow.

Not knowing this going in, I was surprised to see an all black cast. And then there is this crawl at the beginning, which is just easier to quote than explain:

April 12th, 2015 - Proxy (2013)

Proxy is the kind of movie that is difficult to write about. It goes off into all sorts of directions that you don't really expect plot-wise. I mean, it's a pretty grounded film (in the respect that they don't end up in another dimension or vampires don't show up or anything crazy like that), and part of what makes the film interesting is just going along for the ride. So this entry will probably be a little on the rambling/non-specific side...

The first 15 minutes or so are just staggeringly depressing/shocking. A *very* pregnant Esther (Alexia Rasmussen) is having what has to be her last ultrasound before giving birth. She doesn't seem terribly excited about the prospect of becoming a mother, as she is just being kind of mopey and detached in the examination room. On her way to the bus, she is viciously attacked. This being the first time I yelled "JESUS!" - the second time being a few minutes later when they show the operation happening to try and save the baby. It's brief, but man... So it's pretty fucked up right off the bat. And it continues to be a pretty fucked up movie. Esther, having no real friends or family to lean on, goes to a support group for parents who have lost their children. There, she meets Melanie (Alexa Havins) who has lost her son to a drunk driver, but doesn't quite have the same dejected look as everyone else. They form a bond, and then a bunch of depressing and crazy stuff happens that I don't want to spoil.

April 11th, 2015 - Creepshow (1982)

It's sad but true... I've never seen Creepshow until today. It's one of those movies that I've just never happened to sit down and watch, and despite the caliber of talent involved it's never been a priority for me. (In my defense, I thought it was a more traditional anthology and George Romero just directed one segment, not the whole shebang.) I was never exposed to the old horror comics of the 50s that Creepshow is a tribute to, so it just never seemed like anything I needed to see. But the algorithms at Netflix suggested it, and I have heard/read so much about it over the years, that I figured I had to check it out.

And I'm glad I did. It's a pretty breezy two hours with 5 stories and a wrap-around featuring Tom Atkins (I love that guy). Nothing in it is going to blow your mind - the effects are okay (gross, but in a fun way) and the stories are relatively simple, although I'd guess that's by design. I'd have to imagine the old comics that Creepshow is a love letter to didn't exactly have labyrinthine plots either.

April 10th, 2015 - The Hole (2009)

The Hole is a fun, mostly family friendly flick directed by the always reliable Joe Dante. This was his first feature length horror film in quite some time (almost 20 years), and it delivers a good mix of comedy, horror, and heart. It's rated PG-13 and consequently feels a little toned-down at times, but it works well enough to definitely be worth a watch.

It's about a single mom and her two boys who move to the small town of Bensonville, Oregon from Brooklyn. Teenager Dane (Chris Massoglia) is none to happy about the move, since the family has been moving time and time again for undisclosed reasons. Plus, Bensonville sucks compared to NYC - the only perk for Dane is he can stare out the window at his gorgeous new neighbor Julie (Hayley Bennett). One day, while monkeying around in the basement, Dane and his younger brother Lucas (Nathan Gamble) discover a super-padlocked door on the floor - when they open it, they discover what seems to be a bottomless hole. They are understandably curious, and get Julie's help to try and figure out exactly what is going on. The Netflix synopsis says the hole "leads to excruciating pain and misery." That might be overselling it a bit. But regardless, dangerous supernatural shenanigans start happening to all three of them, so they must fight back. But in the great tradition of teenage/youth genre films, they never tell any adults in authority about what is happening.

April 9th, 2015 - Psycho Shark (2009)

You'd think a film called Psycho Shark (aka Jaws in Japan in its native country) would at the very least have some solid shark action. But sadly, you'd be mistaken. There's an ocean, and some underwater cameras, but maybe a total of ten seconds of shark "action" spread out over only two scenes, one of which is a dream. The later scene is a solid WTF moment, but it hardly makes the journey there worth it.  So what does Psycho Shark have to offer? Lots of recycled footage, a half-assed found footage angle, a super underdeveloped story about some sort of cult (I think?), and a lot of young women in bikinis ogled by the camera - kind of to the point where it's uncomfortable. But counterintuitively, there is zero nudity. And hardly a shark to be seen.

It's just a bad, bad movie. The story is not clearly explained, but from what I can gather: Two young women (Mai and Miki) go on a vacation on a very isolated section of the beach. No one else is really around besides the innkeeper (who lends them a video camera to "create some memories," - although the underlying message is "I will steal this and sell it to perverts") and this guy Kenji, who Mai gets a crush on. While Kenji and Mai are out doing their romantic thing, Miki finds a video tape of three other girls who also liked to videotape themselves frolicking in the ocean and zooming in on each other's breasts. So we get to watch the three friend footage while the main Miki/Mai/Kenji story unfolds. They sort of run parallel to each other, but don't worry - Psycho Shark does nothing interesting with it.

April 8th, 2015 - The Evictors (1979)

I've said it before (Find Me) - there ought to be a database somewhere of houses where people have been murdered. (Update: Apparently there is: diedinhouse.com. But you have to pay for it! Although I guess $11.99 isn't much to avoid a potential haunting.) It never turns out well for the new owners, like Ruth and Ben of The Evictors. Not that diedinhouse.com would've helped them - the action here takes place in 1942. But it still would have been nice for them to have gotten some kind of a heads up. The mysterious deaths in the old Louisiana house have since been explained away as accidents - but we know better. I won't spoil them, since they are slowly revealed and make up the bulk of the horror in the film. These scenes are nothing special, but this is a PG movie from 1979, so I guess they are about what you'd expect.

The opening scene takes place in a sepia-toned 1928. A banker and several cops in old-tymey cars approach an old house - the banker explains that he tried to evict the homeowners already, and they shot at him! So the crew going to the house is now well-armed and ready for action. He gets to the house and yells "Hey! It's just my job, but get out of the house!" And... he gets shot at again. A lot of gunplay ensues, and the credits roll. Hence, The Evictors. (The opening credits are probably the most stylish part of the movie - the action freeze frames and all of the sound goes away whenever a credit comes up. It kicks the film off with a solid feeling of tension and instability.)

April 7th, 2015 - The Snow Creature (1954)

The Snow Creature is a pretty typical bad mid-50's monster movie. Not a great story, bad looking monster, and boring scenes of people walking around to pad the film (here, you get treks through the Himalayan mountains as well as the sewer system of a big U.S. city). There's just enough laughable weirdness to not make it a total waste of time, but it's still a pretty rough one to sit through.

It's about an American scientist named Dr. Frank Parrish who is in the Himalayas to do research on some recently discovered plant life. He has brought a photographer named Peter Wells with him; these two, along with the Sherpa guide Subra, are the only English speaking characters in the first half of the film. Dr. Parrish has hired a team of sherpas (sensitively referred to a being "much like mules under the weight of our heavy supplies") to assist them in their trek up the mountain. But several days into it, word reaches the camp that a Yeti has kidnapped Subra's lady from the lowland village. Parrish and Wells don't care, and they threaten to shoot Subra if he takes the men to search for her (it's mutiny, they say). Real nice. But Subra steals their guns, and like it or not, they are tagging along in a quest to find the mythical beast. And (no surprise) they find him. And since you'll come across it in just about every synopsis you can find, they do the King Kong thing, capturing the Yeti and bringing him back to the U.S. for further study. Predictably, he gets out and runs amok.

April 6th, 2015 - Torment (2013)

Does it still count as a home invasion movie if the owners have been away from the house for like six months and people have just been squatting there? I mean, it's still a violation of privacy and all that good stuff... but I figure it's like finding a bunch of masked killers in a rental vacation home or something. It just doesn't have the same oompf as someone invading your current living space, you know?

Anyways, Torment is about newlyweds Cory & Sarah, and Cory's son Liam. Cory's mom is no longer around - you assume she died, but it's never explicitly mentioned. Anyways all is not well with their family dynamics - Liam is all pissed off that Sarah is trying to take his mom's place. But they are hoping a trip to their "cabin" will help things. (The cabin is actually a really nice house, which Sarah mentions right away - ingratiating herself to me immediately.) But unless they are able to bond over being kidnapped and tortured by a masked family of lunatic squatters, the vacation probably isn't going to help much.

April 5th, 2015 - Beaster Day (2014)

I don't care how hard up you are for holiday-themed entertainment on Easter - Beaster Day (aka Here Comes Peter Cottonhell) should be avoided at all costs. Don't get suckered in by the title, or the pretty cool box art, or the "giant killer bunny" premise. It's a low budget effort - imdb has it at $150,000 - but someone is getting hosed somewhere because I have a hard time believing it was that expensive. And actually "effort" would probably be overselling it. It seems to be part of the trend where filmmakers will come up with a marketable title, and then worry if there's even enough there to shoot a movie. And here, I guess they figured a puppet, super-shitty CGI, and a threadbare story would be enough. And Amazon bought it, so there's that. And then I watched it, so there's that too.

April 4th, 2015 - Exists (2014)

It's kind of fitting that I watched Exists just a couple days after The St. Francisville Experiment. St. Francisville was a Blair Witch Project knock-off, and Exists finds one of the Blair Witch creators (Eduardo Sanchez) going back to the found footage well 15 years after he, uh, founded it. It seems like he's done some found footage shorts (VHS 2) and web series in the interim, but I think this is his first full-length found footage feature since 1999. And it's as good as you could reasonably expect for a FF Bigfoot movie. Nothing is really going to surprise you too much, but there's enough quality action that it's well worth a watch.

Exists just pretty much jumps right into it. There isn't as much of a setup as you usually get for these sort of things. Five youngsters (despite making me sound like an old man, I hesitate to say kids - they seem to be in their early 20s) are headed out to a cabin in the woods. You are never really given a reason to like or dislike them... presumably you don't want them to die because they are the leads. Or at least blank slates, for you to project onto. Regardless, they aren't well defined as characters, and are pretty much just treated as Bigfoot bait by the script. And that's okay - Exists is a thrill-ride type movie, and well-rounded, deep characters just aren't necessary for what the movie ultimately wants to do.

April 3rd, 2015 - The Crimes of Stephen Hawke (1936)

You know, I think I really like this Tod Slaughter fellow. I knew nothing about him before seeing A Face at the Window a couple of weeks ago, but I have to say I really love his style. He's great at playing the over-the-top villain - he's got the look and the mannerisms down, and just has a magnetic screen presence. It's undoubtedly corny by today's standards, but it's hard for me not to love such a mustache-twirlingly evil villain. (Note: he does not have a mustache in this one. But I will be doing my best to track down a film where he does, indeed, twirl his mustache. It has to be out there.)

The Crimes of Stephen Hawke has a really odd framing device - the opening shot is zoomed in on a radio microphone, and we are "treated" to a several minute bit from the musical-comedy duo Flotsam and Jetsam. (They read the newspaper, comically, and to music. It's not that good.) Then the host interviews a guy who sells cat food. (?) I don't know why this is there - I didn't think movies from the 30s needed padding, but whatever. Anyways, about 6-7 minutes into the film the radio host introduces the actor Tod Slaughter, who talks about being a deviant in his other movies, but also his newest film, The Crimes of Stephen Hawke. Then the actual movie starts.

April 2nd, 2015 - The St. Francisville Experiment (2000)

The St. Francisville Experiment is not very good. Like, at all. I wanted to be really, really hard on it for being such a startlingly poor ghost-hunting movie, but then at the very end of the credits I noticed the date it was made. 1999 - released in 2000. So when I realized it was in all likelihood made as a knee-jerk reaction to The Blair Witch Project, I had to cut it a little slack. I mean, it still sucks, but at that point people hadn't really figured out just what exactly it was that made the whole found footage genre work. If The St. Francisville Experiment was released now, it would be inexcusable. But as it is, it's just a really bad, old Blair Witch knock off.

I mean, maybe my expectations were just too high. I mean, who could blame me for getting excited, after seeing this fine promotional art courtesy of Amazon Prime:

April 1st, 2015 - Horns (2013)

There's a lot to like in Horns, but unfortunately there's a lot to not like too. It's sort of a roller coaster ride of liking and not-liking - I'd totally be on board, then something stupid would happen, then something kind of cool, then something even worse. Ultimately, it's an interesting enough film with a unique enough perspective that it's worth a watch - it's basically a horror by way of fantasy movie. But there are still quite a few nagging issues with it.

Daniel Radcliffe stars as Ig Perrish (ugh), a young man in a small-ish Washington town whose girlfriend has recently been murdered. Everyone in town assumes he is guilty - there are reporters camped out at his house that greet him in the morning with Fair & Balanced™ questions like "how does it feel to get away with murder?" At first, we're not sure of the circumstances surrounding the murder - you assume he's not guilty since he's the leading man/Harry Potter, but you never know. Anyways, one morning after a serious bender he wakes up with horns protruding from his head. All of a sudden, people are telling him their deepest secrets, and listening to him when he suggests they do something. Once he figures what the horns do to people, Ig uses his new "talents" to try and find who really killed his girlfriend.