May 31st, 2015 - Terror (1978)

Terror is pretty cool, but also pretty confusing. The story seems relatively simple: witch's curse from centuries ago cause havoc and murder in the lives of a film producer and his actress cousin in present day 1978. But the way it plays out just kind of makes you scratch your head. It's not *totally* out there, but there are enough questions that you kind of have to wonder just how much director Norman J. Warren is intentionally eschewing common sense. I mean, how does this curse manifest itself? And who exactly is it going after? Giving it away would spoil the fun... and it really is a great deal of fun - especially the last half-hour where things get a little kooky.

Terror starts off with a nice title sequence (brightly colored stills from the film, and a broken, bleeding title), and segues into the story of the witch that was burned at the stake centuries ago. Some evil stuff goes down while she's getting burned, showing that she truly has dark forces on her side. After the witch burns, she somehow reincarnates, randomly showing up in the Queen's (?) house. She puts a curse on future generations of her bloodline ("every male and female of your line is damned!"), and then cuts off the Queen's head with a giant sword. We're off to a good start!

May 30th, 2015 - Awaken the Devil (2014)

It always strikes me as odd when online synopses pretty much ignore the main things you should know about a movie. For instance, check out what Amazon Instant has to say about Awaken the Devil:

Brothers Tom and Vernon stumble into an abandoned building for shelter, entering a hellish world of shadows and nightmares that would change their lives forever. Trapped and psychologically tortured by unseen forces... (and it cuts off here, at least on my Roku)

It makes no mention of what I thought was the most important thing about the film - that it's essentially animated. I mean, it does star real actors, but the backgrounds and supporting characters are mostly animated/CGI, along the lines of a Sin City (but a lot cheaper looking). It looked to me like it could have been on Liquid Television, if you're old enough to remember that sort of thing. And you'd save people a lot of trouble by mentioning that. Anyone looking for a "normal" movie won't be disappointed, and it may actually be helpful for those of us who are looking for something a little bit different. I'm sure I would have watched it sooner than I did had I known that it was made in that style. Oh, and if you read what comes after the ellipses on Amazon, it ruins the whole story. I'm glad it cut off where it did, so there was at least a little mystery to the narrative.

May 29th, 2015 - Grim (1995)

Pros:

- Monster looks kind of cool.
- some stupid B-movie laughs
- I watched a really shitty cave-based horror movie yesterday (Abandoned Mine), so this didn't seem as bad.

Cons:

- it's still really bad.

Grim starts off with some sort of seance - a group of people are playing with a Ouija board and accidentally (maybe?) summon a troll-looking creature from his holding cell. (He's frozen in stone, or something.) You get a good look at him early on in the film and he's a decent looking practical creation. He's got the stoutness of a big troll, but a face that reminded me of a smashed-in Rawhead Rex with plentiful sharp teeth and fangs. I guess his name is "Grim" - I don't think it's ever called out or anything though. He's not going to go down in history as being one of the all time greats as far as design goes, but he looks good. If he didn't have such a laughably bad movie surrounding him, he may be remembered more fondly.

May 28th, 2015 - Abandoned Mine (2012)

Abandoned Mine (aka The Mine) is pretty damned terrible in every sense of the word. Annoying and unlikeable characters, stupid story, lame and obvious plot twists... you can see the script *trying* - things get set up and paid off, so it's a little admirable in that that respect. And I guess it's pretty competently shot too. But still, it's a pretty rough and surprisingly unscary ride.

It centers around five friends in Small Town America. (Happy Valley, state unnamed. Although apparently there is a Happy Valley in Oregon, so there's that.) The friends spend the Halloween night in... you guessed it... an abandoned mine! Only this mine is haunted by a miner ghost and his daughters, because little girl ghosts are scarier than little boy ghosts. This Jarvis mine has a reputation, and none of the group, besides leader Brad, wants to even bother checking it out. (This is explained when the friends are all "you said we were going to *an* abandoned mine... but not the Jarvis mine!" You would assume their spider senses would have been tingling when Brad said "lets go to a mine on Halloween"... but whatever.)

May 27th, 2015 - Hayride 2 (2015)

Today's movie really didn't stand a chance. I had just gotten back from seeing Mad Max: Fury Road (which is just ridiculously good), and I knew just about anything I'd watch would pale in comparison. So, I was looking for something that (1) I still kind of wanted to see so I wouldn't want to turn it off, (2) hoped would surprise me, but (3) would still probably not be very good. Enter: Hayride 2. (And interestingly, writing those rules made me think of the *other* summer blockbuster I'm stoked for - Jurassic World. I hope that fares better than Hayride 2, at any rate.)

When I watched Hayride a couple of months ago, I expected some decent slasher stuff and some bad character work - that's just the vibe I was getting. What I got was pretty much the opposite. I kind of dug the characters and dialogue (the bit where they were BS'ing about local legends and talk about a ghost who only shows up when it's windy *still* makes me laugh). But the slasher stuff, in particular the kills, were just unacceptably weak. I knew then that part 2 was in the pipeline, so I hoped writer/director Terron R. Parsons could keep up the good character stuff and improve on the kills.

May 26th, 2015 - Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971)

I know next to nothing about the original Murders in the Rue Morgue story. I knew it was a famous horror story... but that's about it. (I just would have guessed Poe - because who else is there? - and I would have been right.) I guess I remember reading Clive Barker's homage to the tale (which I think had a killer gorilla, if I recall)... what I'm getting at is I have no real attachment to the original story. Which is fine... because after a little wikipedia research the film has very little to do with the story anyways.

But the overall tone and setting seem kind of in line with what I'd expect a Hollywood Poe adaptation to do. It's a period piece, set in the early 1900s, and while the murders that do take place are occasionally gory, they aren't far enough out of line to make this feel like a slasher (or get it an R-rating - it's PG-13). But apparently the only real connective tissue between the story and this film is that it takes place at a theater where a stage version of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is being performed. The film itself seems to borrow heavily from Phantom of the Opera, as our main killer guy has an acid burn on his face and a familiar looking mask and cape. He's also smitten with a particular actress, and goes to great lengths to make her notice how much he loves her.

May 25th, 2015 - Haunts (1977)

I'm not sure why I still get excited abut seeing Cameron Mitchell in the cast of of a movie. (It must be because of Space Mutiny.) I mean, I like the guy, but in Haunts, much like The Silent Scream, he gets top billing and just isn't around all that much. Maybe that's just his thing? And the plot description on Amazon is a little misleading... "May Britt plays a seemingly innocent farm girl convinced that her slovenly uncle (Cameron Mitchell) is the man responsible for the bloody scissor-murders of several local girls." First off, May Britt was in her mid-forties when Haunts was made, and I don't think you'd ever *really* suspect Cameron Mitchell - the synopsis actually swerves you more than the actual film. Plus, the box art makes it look like the devil will be involved, what with the goat head outline and cross prominently featured. But not such luck - Britt does milk some goats I guess, but that's about the extent of it.

At any rate, Haunts is a psychological thriller that is really a product of it's time - it's moody, slow, and plods along, but still gets pretty nasty at times. I feel like that's a kind of unique cocktail that you mostly see in 70's films. It's not particularly well done - some of the twists just kind of come out of nowhere, and it's not that technically proficient from a filmmaking standpoint. But it's still pretty effective at times. It actually reminded me of a more amateurish Let's Scare Jessica to Death. They've got kind of a similar vibe, and both focus on women with a shaky mental stability. Although Jessica is made with a lot more skill (and probably money) and has a better story and more engaging cast.

May 24th, 2015 - The Devil's Partner (1958)

Devil's Partner had a little more teeth than I expected from a 1958 "pact with the devil" film. I mean, it's maybe a hard-PG by today's standards, but still - there's implied goat sacrifices and writing contracts in blood. So I was pleasantly surprised by that. Also a surprise? The movie being a notch or two above average. My last 50 Tales of Terror jam (Curse of the Headless Horseman) was effing terrible, so I was feeling a little down on the set. While Devil's Partner isn't a must see by any means, it's a decent enough watch if you're looking for some 50's style horror fun.

Our film starts with a guy named Pete Jensen - a Grizzly Adams-looking dude in an old, rundown shack. He's getting set for a little goat slaughter, which you see only in silhouette. He writes out a contract in blood, and draws a hexagon in blood on the floor. (A replacement for the pentagram, which either wasn't known or wasn't accepted by the public at the time. But the hexagon still must have been kind of exotic, as one character (the cop, even!) describes it as being "like a square, but with six sides." Ha!) Anyways, the cops find his body (we don't see this), bury him, and a few days later his "nephew" Nick shows up in town. Nick is "saddened" to learn that his uncle is not only dead, but was also particularly disliked in town for being a crotchety old man. But it's pretty obvious from the get go that Nick is just Pete reincarnated. They don't really even try to hide it.

May 23rd, 2015 - Tomie: Beginning (2005)

Tomie: Beginning was a Netflix DVD recommendation. Little did I know that the Tomie series is a big time franchise in Japan - at least as far as number of sequels go. Including DTV sequels, there are nine films and counting in the series. At first glance, you may think this is the first one (what with the word "beginning" and all), but it turns out Beginning is the fifth installment... it's just a prequel. I never felt lost or confused or anything though - it felt just as confusing and out there as just about any other Japanese ghost film I've seen. There's just some crazy randomness with Tomie (the titular ghost/spirit/whatever it is), but I highly doubt that things like her ear crawling off like a spider when it gets cut off is explained in an earlier film. So just like you could probably watch Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings and catch on all right, you can probably hang with Tomie: Beginning as well.

Anyways, what we have here is your typical high school class, boys and girls, at a school... somewhere. I'm not too sure about the typical Japanese high school experience, but the school seems to be way out in the middle of nowhere. Plus, when the kids don't go home one night, parents don't seem to be a concern at all. In fact, other than the teacher, I don't think there is a single parent/authority figure in the film. At any rate, it's a pretty normal school until a new girl named Tomie shows up. She's unquestionably gorgeous, and has an almost supernatural effect on the other students. Every boy in class is instantly smitten with (or more like obsessed with) her, and all of the girls are extremely angry with her. The one exception is Reiko - she seems to relate to her lonely and somewhat sad disposition.

May 22nd, 2015 - The Wicker Man (1973)

The Wicker Man is one of those films that I have always heard so much about but never got around to seeing. But watching a movie a day finally afforded me the chance to check it out. And honestly, I'm kind of glad it worked out this way. It's a really solid film, but had I watched it long ago I don't know if I would have appreciated the slow pace and it's insistence on being a different kind of horror movie - one that's certainly frightening but doesn't rely on a lot of classic horror tricks to get the job done.

While the tone and overall feel of the film isn't that easy to summarize, the plot is relatively simple. Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) turns up on the remote Scottish Island of Summerisle in a single passenger seaplane. He's investigating a report about a young girl that has gone missing - he's armed with just her picture and a name. But the locals make it pretty clear that they don't take too kindly to outsiders, as they are either deliberately obtuse or flat out rude when Howie questions them. But there is more going on in Summerisle than meets the eye, and Howie quickly finds out that the island does not fit neatly into his "civilized" worldview. The people of Summerisle practice a pagan religion that is at odds with Howie's prim and proper Catholic beliefs. The islanders believe people's spirits are in the trees, they perform various masked rituals, worship through big group songs, and engage in the occasional orgy - the people's attitudes towards sex are in particular a disgrace in the eyes of Sergeant Howie. But he diligently continues his investigation, eventually getting a better understanding of the island from Lord Summerisle, played by Christopher Lee. But even after Howie has wrapped his head around the religious practices on the island, he *still* thinks there are some shenanigans going on. He'll do whatever it takes to track down the missing girl and bring these "savages" to justice.

May 21st, 2015 - Night of the Flesh Eaters (2008)

Occasionally, I'll end up watching movies in chunks. As much as I'd like to take in all of these films in one sitting, it's sometimes just not possible. (Damned work and sleep.) In the case of Night of the Flesh Eaters, I started it just after midnight on Thursday 5/21, watched about 50 minutes, and then went to bed. I watched the last half-hour after work that evening. Normally, I don't think splitting a movie does all that much - I can usually get back into the flow of things relatively easily. It's not the best way to do it, but you do what you gotta do.

That being said, I think it may be the best way to watch something like Night of the Flesh Eaters. It's a mostly fun but really dumb and poorly acted low-budget indie that has a good sense of humor about itself. But it also has kind of a one-joke feel to it, so splitting it in two chunks made it go down a little easier. Even though I liked the one-joke, it probably would have been difficult to sit through 80-minutes of it.

May 20th, 2015 - Womaneater (1958)

aka The Woman Eater

The titular Womaneater is a plant from deep in the Amazonian jungle. A native tribe worships the huge plant as an idol, and regularly holds ceremonies where they beat some drums, chant a bit, and feed it a young woman. Somewhere in there is the secret to raising the dead. (Why wouldn't it be?) English (mad) scientist Dr. Moran has not only witnessed this ritual in person, he's also become obsessed with harboring the plant's regenerative powers. Since he's a typical mad scientist, he is hungry for the fame and fortune he'd get if he could, in fact, raise the dead. He somehow (it's not shown) managed to get the HUGE plant back to his secret laboratory in his estate, along with a native servant named Tanga (the probably not actually Amazonian Jimmy Vaughn) to help him figure out how it works.

The only problem for Dr. Moran? Being the Womaneater, it needs women to eat. It's a lot easier to come by women to feed it in the Amazon than it is in the big city. The doctor is a little apprehensive about killing random women, but he justifies that it's for the greater good. He manages to find the occasional victim here or there, but the police are getting suspicious. And just so we have a main character to care about, Dr. Moran hires a young woman by the name of Sally. Will she be safe from Dr. Moran and the nefarious womaneater? Tune in to find out!

May 19th, 2015 - The Nun (2005)

I'm always up for a little religion-bashing in my horror movies. It generally gives you a little more to chew on story-wise, although often times it's just there for a little extra jolt or cheap and easy shock. But I was kind of surprised how unbiased The Nun is - it's really more of a ghost-revenge tale rather than anything that takes any cheap shots at religion. Honestly, you could probably remove the whole Catholic school angle and the movie wouldn't change all that much. Although "Mean Boarding School Teacher Ghost" isn't a very good title. Plus, a decaying ghost in a nun outfit is a really good visual.

The story is about Eve (religion!), a young woman who sees her mother killed by a ghost nun. It turns out that her mom was in contact with a half-dozen or so other women who went to the same Catholic boarding school in Madrid when they were teenagers. The group is trying to arrange a reunion - but not a fun one. Apparently, every couple of days another member of their little group dies a gory, violent death. Eve gets wind of this and tries to get together with group and get to the bottom of just what the H. is going on. Along with her two friends and a helpful (and sexy) young man studying to be a priest, they travel across Madrid, eventually ending up at the boarding school where all of these problems started nearly twenty years ago.

May 18th, 2015 - Curse of the Headless Horseman (1972)

I think this is my first proper headless horseman flick. Not just of this movie-a-day marathon - ever. I never saw the Depp one, and honestly, I think my most vibrant memory of the character is from an old Scooby-Doo episode (I think he's running with Scrappy and Scooby Dum in that one). Anyways, Curse of the Headless Horseman is not only a terrible introduction to the character, it's also a terrible movie, period. And oddly enough, it feels like a Scooby Doo episode at times - just with annoying drug addled hippies instead of... whatever Mystery Inc. was. Which sounds like it could be cool. But it's not.

It's about this doctor guy who inherits a ranch from his uncle. But there's a catch - if he can't turn it around and make it profitable in six months, the ownership of the property will go back to Solomon, the hilariously creepy caretaker. What is never mentioned (but you end up inferring) is that this isn't the kind of ranch where you raise cattle or anything - it's a tourist trap where they do annoying old-west style stage shows/recreations of gunfights or whatever. The doctor and his group of hippie friends clean the place up - you never see them do it but you assume that's the case, since that's what would normally happen in a narrative like this - and open it up for business.

May 17th, 2014 - Cold Prey 2 (2008)

Cold Prey 2
my screen cap doesn't do subtitles

I don't really remember all that much about Cold Prey. If I recall, it was a decent, pretty straightforward winter-set slasher flick - it didn't blow me away, but it served it's purpose. Plus, the foreign-ness of it all (it's Norwegian) adds to the novelty and unpredictablilty - you never know if other countries are going to abide by the same "rules" that you are used to. But I think part one stuck pretty close to the established rules. And Final Girl Jannicke's (Indgrid Bolso Berdal) return in part 2 (as well as the generic sequel story) seems to confirm that.

Cold Prey 2 takes place in a small, rural-ish hospital just a day or two after the events of part one. (Quick refresher - five folks on a snowboarding trip are forced to take shelter in an abandoned hotel after one of them breaks their leg. There is a crazy killer there, and he does what crazy killers do.) The hospital is down to a skeleton crew - they are getting ready to shut down permanently the following day. Unfortunately, the hospital is near the abandoned hotel from part one - close enough that Jannicke has found her way to it. Or at least close enough that the man that almost runs over her (nearly frozen and exhausted) in the middle of the road has no choice but to bring her there. Once she wakes up, she tells the police what happened, and directs them to a crevice near the old hotel, where they haul up five (presumably) dead bodies - Jannicke's four dead friends and the killer. Since there's no where else to take them, they end up at the same hospital as Jannicke, where they begin to prep the bodies for... whatever they're going to do.

May 16th, 2015 - Satan's Touch (1984)

I've watched a lot of bad movies in my life, and while I don't think Satan's Touch was the worst, it has to be the most boring. It has next to nothing to do with Satan, or even horror. That little green sticker is a lie! It's a shitty movie about old unattractive people gambling in Vegas. It looks terrible, is super dry, and most damning, nothing exciting really ever happens. The closest you get to excitement? A guy falls through a table full of knickknacks... breathtaking. If you believe imdb, Satan's Touch was directed by a 75-year old man making his feature film debut. Sounds about right.

Honestly, the way I see it? Some people made a shitty drama about a guy with a lucky streak who wins a lot gambling in Vegas. Then, once they realized the movie sucked, they threw in some Satan business and shot an extra minute or two of new footage, and horror fans in video store across the land were bamboozled by cool title, rad cover art, and the most misleading plot synopsis I've ever come across. By the way, my copy is a VHS tape that I got about 15 years ago from a Video Update store closing sale. I've moved this damned thing like 6 times. And I can honestly say that it's the first time I've ever owned a movie that, after watching it, I wanted to just throw it away. I resisted that temptation and will probably keep it (for some reason). As far as I can tell, it's not available in any other format. And honestly, I'd feel bad for anyone who would spend the time to transfer it.

May 15th, 2105 - The Damned (2013)

The Damned is a pretty decent little possession flick. It's got a little international flavor (the characters are mostly English-speaking, but it takes place in Columbia) and strays far enough from the standard demon/Satan-possession genre to be interesting. Instead of a demon, the possessing entity here is an ancient bruja (witch) who can leap from one body to another. In the rules of The Damned, if you try to kill the bruja, it can jump into from the dead body to the body of the person who killed it. So trying to take it out is no good - the best you can really do is trap it. The possessed person is pretty much the same as you'd expect from any possession film - crazy eyes, scary voice, super strength, knowing your secrets - but here you get all of that goodness without having to deal with the lame religious angles and poorly done exorcisms. Plus, here the possessed isn't tied to a bed or anything - it can wander around causing havoc while trying to jump to the strongest possible body, so The Damned has sort of monster movie feel as well.

The setup? A man and his fiancee are in Columbia to retrieve his adult daughter. The girl's mom passed away some years ago, so you've got a little family drama to deal with that isn't worth getting into here. (To be fair, The Damned doesn't feel like getting into it either - it's presented and then quickly dropped.) Anyways, dad, fiancee, daughter, daughter's boyfriend, and daughter's reporter friend are traveling through the countryside to get to the airport (or something) when they are caught in a crazy storm/flash-flood. The ensuing accident is really well done from a technical standpoint (it's the biggest set-piece in the film), but it totals the car and injures the fiancee. They run to the only nearby building for shelter and help, which happens to be an old decrepit hotel. The old man at the door refuses to let them in, but when the dad begs for help for his "family," the man gives in. He offers to get them towels but insists that they do not leave the living room.

May 14th, 2015 - Devil's Backbone, Texas (2015)

Devil's Backbone, Texas is an aggravating attempt at a meta-mockumentary. It's about a filmmaker named Jake Wade Wall - his real name, as this film attempts to blur the lines between reality and fiction. His now deceased father Bert was into some pretty crazy shit out on his 20,000 acre ranch (is that way too big? This city boy doesn't know. 2,000 maybe?). The ranch was out in a region of Texas known as the Devil's Backbone, named as such for the mountain range that juts out of nowhere. Bert went kind of crazy up there towards the end of his life... tearing up his own house, making insanely gory artwork, and insisting there are ghosts on the property. Because of Bert's erratic behavior (as well as the fact that he was kind of a dick), Jake hasn't been out to the ranch for 20 years. Now, several years after Bert's death, Jake wants to make peace (and a movie!) by bringing Bert's ashes out to the property and having an "ashes ceremony." Jake also wants to learn a little more about his father - and perhaps find out what caused him to go crazy. But what if Bert's paranormal rants weren't just delusions, but were based in reality? Wouldn't that make a good movie?

It doesn't. But Jake thinks it probably would, so he brings along an annoying group of friends and a nameless, faceless cameraman to help him investigate the property and make a little documentary in the process. But, believe it or not, things do not go as planned.

May 13th, 2015 - Kill Zombie! (2012)

Kill Zombie! is a fun-enough Dutch zom-com thats got a lot of energy and some decent laughs/gags. There is a lot of zombie gore - although the blood is green after a person is infected - but ultimately the zombies are a little too ineffective to ever really be terrifying. But still, as a zom-com it mostly works. Although the title still throws me off - I keep reading it as an order to a zombie from its owner. Unless the idea is to do sequels with the same zany tone but with different monsters... the way this one ends is a pretty clear setup for Kill Vampire!

It's about an office drone named Aziz. His "dream girl" works along side of him, and after months of pining after her, she approaches him and asks him out on a date. This doesn't sit well with his jealous boss, who promptly fires Aziz. (It's easier to fire people in Amsterdam, I guess.) Aziz goes to hang out with his brother Mo - a big-talking goofball of a guy who is always cooking up a get rich quick scheme. They're at a party hosted by some rich guy (apparently there are a lot of Dutch celebrities in this thing - although the potential cameos were lost on me), and Mo accidentally causes a ruckus when he knocks out a supermodel with a volleyball. This causes rich guy's two bodyguards to chase after them, and shortly thereafter all four of them are in jail, hurling insults at each other from separate cells. And that's when the zombie shit goes down.

May 12th, 2015 - Killer Mermaid (2014)

Honestly, making a good horror movie about a mermaid seems like a nearly impossible task. Tonally, there is just too much baggage with the mythical creature to really make it work. I mean, if you call it something stupid and spoilery (like Killer Mermaid), no one is going to take it seriously. You're pretty much destined to be taken as camp silliness, regardless of your intent. On the flipside, if you shoot for serious tension/horror and keep the mermaid as a reveal, people will probably scoff. "A mermaid is your monster? Pfffft..." You can't win. But there are moments where Killer Mermaid seems to want to be taken seriously... but it just can't be done with that moniker strung around it's neck. And even though I wanted to like this thing, the whole "trying to be serious" thing kind of hampers it - it's too stupid to be taken seriously, but too well done to be stupid fun. It's stuck in this no-man's-land that it can't quite get out of.

It's about two American tourists who travel to the Mediterranean for some fun in the sun. The two aren't very well defined - Kelly (Kristina Klebe) is our obvious final girl, as she is more serious and scared of water. You see, her brother drowned when she was a kid. So an island vacation is the obvious choice for her. Her friend Lucy (Natalie Burn) used to date Alex, the guy they are visiting, and she wears really, really short shorts. We actually spend quite a bit of time trying to get to know these two before the mermaid shit hits the fan, but it's kind of amazing how little we actually learn. Lucy is bummed when she finds out Alex is engaged to be married to Yasmin, so there's a little drama there. When the four of them are bumming about town, they run into a friend of Yasmin's named Boban - he's the sexy, rugged type who wants to take the Americans on an adventure out to the mysterious abandoned island off the coast. A crusty old fisherman/harbinger tells them to stay away... that going there means certain doom. But of course, they ignore him, and head out to the island the next day. What do they find there? If you guessed "Killer Mermaid," step up and collect your prize.

May 11th, 2015 - Under the Bed (2012)

Under the Bed reminded me a lot of The Hole from about a month ago. It's got a kind of similar vibe: kind of more of an 80s style, kid-friendly adventure/horror mash up rather than an outright horror film - Under the Bed doesn't really earn it's R-rating until the end. And both feature brothers fighting off some kind of unseen/undefinable evil, emanating from... a hole and under the bed, respectively. (Both share a lack of creativity in the title as well).

Under the Bed is a little less "fun" though. It's about two brothers, Neal (maybe late teens) and Paulie (maybe 12-13). Neal has been living out of state with an aunt for a couple of years, after he (maybe accidentally?) burned down their old house, accidentally killing their mother in the process. See, fun! His dad is having him come home to meet his future stepmother Angela. But being home brings back some bad memories for Neal - mainly memories of an ACTUAL MONSTER that lived under his bed and tried to kill him on numerous occasions. Of course, no one else except Paulie has seen this creature, and with Neal gone, the monster has turned his attention to the younger sibling. And now that Neal is back home, the monster seems angrier than ever before. The brothers decide they need to finish him off, once and for all.

May 10th, 2015 - Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

Based on the title, I had assumed that Let's Scare Jessica to Death would be some sort of prank gone wrong film. But that's far from the case. (Really, aside from being memorable, it's a pretty bad title.) I can't get too far into it without treading into spoiler territory, so sorry if this is brief. But it's a solid flick that I think fans of moody 70's horror (like me) could easily get into.

The film is about Jessica (surprise!), a woman who has recently been released from an institution following a nervous breakdown of sorts. The film gets us into Jessica's head right away - we hear her narrate her thoughts as she and her husband Duncan, along with their groovy pal Woody, move out into the country to escape from a hectic life in the big city. Duncan has sunk their life savings into an abandoned apple orchard, and the three of them are planning on getting that up and running again. But the small town the orchard is in doesn't take too kindly to strangers - they are super rude to them and basically call them hippie scum. (Although they seem too old to be hippies. While the middle-aged hippie is probably a thing in real life, I think they are underrepresented in movies.) Before they even *get* to the orchard, Jessica is seeing strange things and mysterious people... can the others see them? Or is Jessica just going crazy? Given her recent institutionalization, she's hesitant to share her experiences.

May 9th, 2015 - The Mirror (2014)

The Mirror is a pretty good found-footage film that is elevated from being just average by a couple of things. You get some pretty decent, realistic performances by the three main characters (all flatmates - it's British, so maybe I'm predisposed to liking it), but mainly? It's a found footage film that doesn't take place in a haunted house/abandoned asylum or some other creepy location (the woods, caves, catacombs, whatever). It takes place in an apartment (or "flat," if you will), but unlike Apartment 143 or the Paranormal Activity series, it's not a previously haunted place that's being investigated. Your getting into these folk's lives *before* the shit goes down, so while it's a little slow at times, you get a good feel for the calm before the storm. And in this case, the storm takes the shape of, um... a haunted mirror.

Before you start laughing - it's actually treated pretty seriously. (And looking into it a bit, there are quite a few films about haunted mirrors... not sure if it's quite a sub genre, but still.) Basically, the found footage aspect is that these three flatmates (Matt, his girlfriend Jemma, and his friend Steve) are planning to win $1,000,000 in the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge - a real contest run by the James Randi Educational Foundation. Their plan is to provide video proof of the paranormal after they purchase a haunted mirror from an eBay-ish seller online. (The real contest would not accept video-only proof, but whatever.) They've done their research and think they have the real deal - they've got some fancy-ass cameras to catch the haunted mirror in action (one static camera that just sits facing the mirror, a nice handheld, and a go-pro). And of course, since this is a horror movie, the mirror *is* actually haunted, some scary shit goes down, and things spiral out of control.

May 8th, 2015 - Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland (1989)

While Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers was markedly different from part one (far more of a comedy, no mystery), part three is really just a rehash of part two. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. All of the little things that worked in part two work here - they're just a little bit diluted from having been done before. It's a little slower, and the kills are not as frequent (or quite as good). But it was still nice to see Angela back at camp again, killing bad kids.

The set up here? Angela (Pamela Springsteen) somehow knows of a camper getting ready to head out to Camp New Horizons. It's a new camp (built on the same grounds as camp Rolling Hills, where Angela killed a bunch of kids in part two) with a unique premise: they get a bunch of teens from the upper class and a bunch of teens from the lower class, and over the course of camp-time they'll (theoretically) learn to overcome their differences and work together. Angela kills one of the lower-class kids (subtly running her down in broad daylight in a semi-truck) and takes her spot at camp. It doesn't take long for her to get back to her old camper-killing tricks - the dozen or so campers are conveniently split into groups of four, so Angela can pick them off relatively easily.

May 7th, 2015 - Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990)

I really wanted to like Tales from the Darkside. I watched Creepshow a while back and rather liked it, and while I was checking out some info on that film, I read that Darkside was a sort of spiritual sequel to the Creepshow series. Far more than Creepshow 3 anyways, which is not held in very high regard. And while I can kind of see some shared DNA between the two (Darkside definitely has some of that Weird Tales/comic-booky feel - at least as far as content goes), Darkside is just not as well made. The effects are worse, it just feels kind of cheap, and there isn't enough of the playful vibe that made Creepshow so enjoyable. It's never mean-spirited per se, it's just kind of dull.

Our wrap around story is about a young boy who is about to be cooked for dinner for some sort of evil dinner party. He's being kept in a dungeon/cell hidden in a woman's (Deborah Harry!) pantry, and to keep him busy while she preps the rest of the meal, she's given him a book of stories. While she readies the oven, he tries to stall her by reading three tales from the book.

May 6th, 2015 - River of Darkness (2011)

River of Darkness is a really, really shitty movie. If you told me that before I watched it, there's no way I would have believed you. I mean, check this out: (my favorite) professional wrestler Kurt Angle stars as a small town sheriff investigating several gruesome murders. It turns out they are being committed by three vengeance seeking ghosts who kill their victims in slasher fashion! Oh, and two of these three axe-wielding ghosts are none other than pro-wrestling's "Psycho" Sid Vicious and "Big Sexy" Kevin Nash! HOW COULD ANYTHING GO WRONG!

Well, for starters, it's poorly made and really boring. Even though the synopsis sounds really awesome, it's executed very poorly. River of Darkness looks cheap and is very blandly shot, and a lot of the scenes just sort of linger on for much longer than they need to. Most of the film's boring, poorly acted conversations take place in drab, visually uninteresting locations. Plus, some of the editing choices are baffling. You get a lot of scenes where it looks like the people must have not been on set on the same day, but then at the very end you'll see they were. What the H.? 

May 5th, 2015 - Deadball (2011)

Yesterday I praised Wolfcop for being ridiculous but fun. But sometimes a film can get just a little too ridiculous for its own good, and that's what happened with Deadball. It cranks up the slapstick/gore/craziness to unbearable levels. The Japanese film industry has long been at the forefront of insane-goofball-horror-comedies, but I think it's possible to out-extreme yourself. At the root of it, there still has to be some semblance of a story and characters you kind of care about, and Deadball just throws that stuff aside for ass-jokes and geysers of CG blood. I mean, a few of the (numerous) gags work, but it's so over the top that after a while you just kind of go numb and it becomes a slog.

It doesn't take long for Deadball to distance itself far from reality and get completely fucking ridiculous. A kid and his dad are playing catch, and the dad says "Throw a fastball, Jubeh!" He obliges, saying "okay... I'm not going to hold back dad!" At which point, he magically launches himself hundreds of feet into the air and whips the ball down from the sky, while it burns like a comet entering orbit. Dad apparently didn't know about Jubeh's wicked heater, because he's not prepared and is killed by the ball. Jubeh promises never to play baseball again.

May 4th, 2015 - Wolfcop (2014)

Werewolves shooting guns. Who would have known that such a simple concept could be so great? It's one of those things that I didn't even realize I was missing from my life until it presented itself to me in Wolfcop. I guess I'm pretty easy to please. Unsurprisingly, Wolfcop is a pretty ridiculous movie that doesn't really reach for anything beyond the mashup promised in the title. Not that you'd expect it to. But it's made with enough care and has a goofy enough sense of humor to be a winner in my book. Also, it's the perfect length - Wolfcop knows what it is and doesn't overstay its welcome at a scant seventy-some minutes.

Our titular wolfcop is Lou Garou (Leo Fafard). Garou starts out as drunkcop - as in the kind with a permanent five o'clock shadow who brings a fifth with him everywhere he goes and unabashedly drinks from it at crime scenes. The small town police force he's a part of (a captain, Garou, and the overachieving Tina) are getting geared up for the annual "drink n' shoot." This event sees the townies get wasted and go hunting for a regional mythical beast out in the woods. Sounds safe, right? But there have been a series of vicious crimes lately, culminating in the murder (staged as an overdose) of a local politician. But when Garou goes to investigate another potential crime out in the woods, he runs afoul of some satan-worshipping folk, and blacks out. When he awakens, he has a heightened sense of smell and hazy memories of a bloody (and hairy) evening the night before.

May 3rd, 2015 - Mischief Night (2013)

The general idea behind Mischief Night seems to be "home invasion, but the person at home is blind." And that's not a horrible idea, as long as it's well-executed. And Mischief Night mostly is. It sort of undercuts its own basic premise by having most of the third act revolve around a sighted person - it's almost like they liked the blind-victim concept but couldn't come up with a satisfactory way to wrap things up without resorting to a more generic finale. Regardless, it's mostly well-done, has good lead performances, and does what needs to be done to make it an adequate home invasion flick.

Emily (Noell Coet) is a high-schooler who suffers from psychosomatic blindness (i.e. doctors cannot find anything physically wrong and believe it's a mental block thing). She blames herself for her mother's death 10 years ago - she was in the car when her mother crashed it and died. She has just moved into a new house with her father, and it's really nice. There's tons of space, a nice open layout, and isolated from any neighbors. As we find out in the prologue, it also happens to be a really nice spot for a murderer to break in undetected. Apparently, there's some masked guy who likes to break into this house on Mischief night and murder people. Mischief Night, for those of you not in the know (like me), is the night before Halloween where people go out and cause mischief (TP-ing, egging, flaming bags of poo on the front steps - generally not murder).

May 2nd, 2015 - The Phantom Creeps (1939)

I had a passing familiarity with The Phantom Creeps based on its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000 - it was presented as a series of shorts in the earlier seasons of the show. (And I guess it *was* originally a 12 part serial, but here it's stitched together as one film.) I remember certain things - the freaky robot, the fake spiders - but didn't really have an appreciation for Bela Lugosi at the time. So I was glad to get the chance to see it as an uncut film, courtesy of the 50 Tales of Terror budget set. And honestly, it's kind of fun. Lugosi is pretty classic as mad scientist (hard to believe, I know) Dr. Alex Zorka. He gets a lot of power-mad dialogue and just seems really committed to the role. Don't get me wrong - The Phantom Creeps is no classic - it's pretty cheesy and kind of feels like fluff, but it passes the time okay.

The element Zorka has discovered can do just about anything - from making a death ray to incision-free surgery - although he seems most proud of the fact that it can put anyone in a state of suspended animation. He does this by putting a little cracker on a person (coated with the element), and then has a spider thing - the titular creep, which is attracted by the element - crawl to it. So you get a lot of comically fake spiders the size of tennis balls crawling around, which is nice. When the spider gets to the wafer.... BOOM! A little smoke and the person goes into a coma. It sounds pretty stupid... and it is. But that gives you a general idea of the science in The Phantom Creeps, and you just have to roll with it.

May 1st - Crimes at the Dark House (1940)

Crimes at the Dark House is another film from the 50 Tales of Terror budget set featuring the one and only Tod Slaughter. And much like The Crimes of Stephen Hawke, it's an above average story elevated even further by Slaughter's over the top performance. The man just knows how to be a good bad guy, and luckily the filmmakers of the era knew it. It's not all that common to see the villain as the main character, but it's par for the course when he's around.

Our story starts with the scoundrel Slaughter sneaking into a tent and brutally murdering Sir Percival Glyde. It's certainly not a gory death, but conceptually it's pretty nasty - he hammers a spike into his ear while he's sleeping. (Despite seeing him strangle a kid in Hawke, the level of violence still surprised me here.) Anyways, Slaughter (his character doesn't have a name) finds a letter addressed to Glyde, saying that it's finally time for him to come home. His last relative has passed away, and the family fortune/estate has been passed onto him. Slaughter figures it's been long enough that he could pass as Sir Percival Glyde, and gives it a go. His impostering works on most people, and all he has to do is murder a couple of people who aren't buying his act. Easy enough, right?