December 9th, 2015 - Blood Riders: The Devil Rides With Us (2013)

It's not entirely fair to call every ultra low-budget and knowingly stupid film Troma-esque, but that's where my brain goes. Troma with a dense Canadian filter is probably how I would describe Blood Riders: The Devil Rides with Us. Even though there's a lot of tasteless humor and cheap gore, it's a bit more good-natured then I would expect from a wacky low budget horror-comedy.

Janek and Kyle (I think I have the names right) are buddies - they're pretty good guys, but are sick of being treated badly by their peers. So, as you do when you want respect, they attempt to steal a car. But they are interrupted by Dane and Zoey (two "cool kids") and try to walk away. But Dane harasses them, and in order to show him up they successfully steal a *different* car. And the four not-really-friends go for a little joyride. However, when they go to ditch the car out in the woods they find a dead body in the trunk. Zoinks!

December 5th, 2015 - Queen of Blood (1966)

The year? 1990. The problem of traveling to the moon has been solved for many years. Space Stations have been built there, and authorized personnel come and go as they wish. But the moon is a dead world, and the great question about space still remains... does life exist on another planet? 

Well, it turns out Queen of Blood didn't quite get that right. But it's always fun to see how the past viewed the future, now that it's the present. Or in this case, now that that particular present is the past. I guess. Whatever.

Queen of Blood is an interesting movie. Some of the visuals are amazing, and some of them look like crap. But there's some money behind the big shots of outer space - and while I am no film historian, I don't associate American International Pictures with big budget stuff. But after watching the film and doing a little research, I found that the good stuff is lifted from a couple of fancy Russian sci-fi flicks. AIP bought the footage, inserted their own cheap and convoluted story about Mars trip gone awry and a creepy alien race... and voila! One of the more inconsistent films I've come across... maybe ever.

December 3rd, 2015 - The Cutting Room (2015)

The Cutting Room starts off with a very intense credit sequence: black screen with freaky old-timey music, intercut with torture sounds and screaming, and then the visual of a young woman being chained to a table. But after that, the film just sort of twiddles its thumbs for an hour, leading up to a not very rewarding climax. Oh, and it's found footage! So it's another film to add to the ever expanding pile of crappy found footage films, I guess.

November 29th, 2015 - Moonlight: The Vampires (2012)

Yes, it's about a woman trying to solve murders that *may* have been committed by vampires, and much of this action takes place in a graveyard. But Moonlight Vampires feels like a film that kids could watch (a kid that could either read subtitles or understand Chinese anyways). Not that they'd like it… There's a subplot in there about government corruption, and it's kind of slow. But as far as horror goes it feels pretty toothless. It's listed as Not Rated, but other than one scene of general terror (against a couple of young girls) and a vague prison torture scene this is PG easy. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's a very easily digestible film and is occasionally entertaining. But it's certainly not all that memorable.

November 28th, 2015 - The Pyramid (2013)

When a horror film is called The Pyramid, I think it's a generally safe to assume the plot of the film will involve people going into a pyramid, and things not going as planned. Like yesterday's The Pyramid, for example. But today's The Pyramid, despite suspiciously similar title artwork, is not about that. (Although in The Pyramid's defense, I think you are pretty much obligated to highlight the "A" if you are designing that title.) The actual pyramid here is a little knickknack. It's like a crappy version of the little puzzle thing from Hellraiser. And it unleashes pure evil, which is obviously problematic for whoever has it in their possession.

But this The Pyramid uses this framework to sort of have a connected anthology. It's four stories are about how this little knickknack affects the people who have it... how it magically uses them to do it's evil bidding. And maybe even take over the world! As much as a semi-sentient little toyshop pyramid can, anyways.

November 23rd, 2015 - Malice (2013)

Please note: I am not talking about the 1993 Alec Baldwin/Nicole Kidman thriller. This Malice is a feature film pieced together out of a web series (if my IMDB detective work is correct). Which is in and of itself is kind of interesting. We were doing it in the 30s and 40s with serials, and what's old is now new again via the internet. Anyways, you can't really tell that Malice was a web series. It mostly feels like a legit low-budget film on the first watch, and there aren't any obvious breaks in the action or anything like that. It's still not very good though. If I was watching it one 10-15 minute episode at a time, I'd maybe make it to episode three.

It starts with teenager Alice chilling on the roof of her house with an assault rifle (or other big gun), as a crowd of horribly animated zombies close in. The rest of the film gives you the story as to how that happened.

November 20th, 2015 - Treehouse (2014)

Treehouse is good enough to be disappointing. That counts for something, right? It's got a really strong first act, which does an excellent job establishing the relationship of our hero brothers (Crawford and his younger brother Killian) and the world they live in. For the first half, Treehouse reminded me (in a good way) a lot of the coming of age movies I grew up with in the 80's - it's a world where adults are present, but are very peripheral. We experience everything through the brother's eyes, and during the setup of the film it works very well.

Anyways: It's the night of the big town fair (or something). But we find out (actually we see, in the pre-credit sequence) that a teenage girl and her young brother have gone missing, taken by some unseen force. The sheriff says something along the lines of "the disappearances have started again" and is acting all cryptic, so the festival gets cancelled. Crawford and Killian are bummed, but they aren't going to let that ruin their night. So they go out into the woods to party, but when their friends don't show they say "eff-it" and light off some fireworks on their own. But one firework illuminates a treehouse high above the forest floor, and being rascals, they have to go check it out.

November 18th, 2015 - Curse of the Cannibal Confederates (1982)

Like Croaked: Frog Monster From Hell, Curse of the Cannibal Confederates (originally known as Curse of the Screaming Dead) has the dubious distinction of being named as one of the five worst films in the entire Troma library by founder Lloyd Kaufman. And also like Croaked, Curse is a rough-looking, amateurish, regional horror film that is not a "good" film by any means, but one that I found charming nonetheless.

Here's the scoop. Six friends who don't really seem to like each other (three guys and their girlfriends) are heading out on a camping trip. They end up lost in the woods and come across an old church/graveyard - and as you can guess, there are Confederate soldiers buried there. One guy (whose main trait is that he steals things) finds an old journal laying about and takes it. This greatly angers the dead soldiers, as they rise from the grave and go after our heroes in typical early 80s gut muncher style.

November 13th, 2015 - Fraternity Demon (1992)

Really shitty things happened in the world today. I wasn't looking forward to watching a movie, and wasn't really in the mood for anything. So I "meditated" a bit - probably the closest I can get to actually shutting down my brain entirely is by mindlessly perusing through movie titles on Netflix and Amazon. It's almost zen-like in it's calmness... After about 20 minutes, I think I realized I didn't actually care, and eventually landed on Fraternity Demon. I think I just saw "college kids accidentally unleash a sex demon," and on this particular night, that was enough.

And it's not very good! Never mind the fact that its barely a horror film at all. (If I was doing a "dumb sex comedy a day" blog, this would be perfect.) Other than the fact that she's called a "demon" (complete with stupid devil horns), there's nothing even close to horror here. No tension, no atmosphere, no scares, no blood... no one even dies! A couple of guys get sexed by the demon and you *think* that might be the end of them, but it turns out they are just tired. So... there's that.

November 11th, 2015 - Silent But Deadly (2011)

I've been curious about Silent But Deadly for quite some time. I'm not sure if I've seen non-Jay Jason Mewes in anything, and "cheap Canadian Slasher" is not a deterrent for me (in spite of Dark Fields). But honestly? The title kept me away. Not that I'm above fart jokes or anything, but naming your movie that just seemed like a bit much. But, despite being mostly absent of fart jokes/potty humor, it's actually a pretty good name for the film. I mean, it lowered my expectations to the point that I ended up enjoying my time watching it. A lot of the reviews (rightfully) give it a hard time about the CGI kills, but I honestly can't get too upset that a film called Silent But Deadly went the crappy/cheap route. The title all but tells you it's going to. It still falls short of a pleasant surprise though. I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't unwatchable garbage at least, if that makes any sense.

November 10th, 2015 - Woman Who Came Back (1945)

Woman Who Came Back is an old-timey ghost/witch flick with not a heck of a lot going for it. You get a lively opening scene featuring a witch getting on a bus - stop me if you've heard this one - and the ensuing bus crash (which is more entertaining for its model-ness more than anything). It's pretty fun. But other than that, there's not much here to get into. It's never outright terrible, but it's never that good either.

It's about a woman named Lorna Webster, coming back to her hometown of Eben Rock, Massachusetts. Eben Rock has quite the Salem-ish history of witch persecution. A particularly big part of that history was Lorna's grandfather, a powerful judge who was responsible for sending many women"witches" to their deaths. It's long been rumored that one of those "witches" made a pact with the devil and will seek her revenge on the Webster family. And that rumor may be coming true. On her way home to Eben Rock, Lorna encounters a creepy old lady on the bus, who knows her and cackles her way through the Webster family history. If it looks like a witch and talks like a witch...

November 6th, 2015 - The House That Dripped Blood (1971)

Anthology alert! I've said it before - I'm just not too into anthologies. I just find it difficult to get into them. There's never any time to get into any given story. By the time you get to know the characters and really want to dig in... crazy twist/reveal, and then you're onto something else. I don't know if it's a symptom of watching a movie a day or what, but I have a hard time remembering them.

To wit - it's been less than a week since I watched The House That Dripped Blood (I'm running a little behind in my write-ups), and it's taken me a long time to remember even vague details about it. In the spirit of being computer-less (I sometimes write these up in a notebook - usually at a bar - before they make it into blogger), I'll try this without the crutch of the internet.

November 1st, 2015 - Taeter City (2012)

If you're in the mood for cheap and splattery and aren't too concerned with things like story and characters, Taeter City will scratch that itch. It's almost knowingly devoid of any sort of reasonable story. When one police captain-ish guy is essentially laying out the plot of the film, he says ""Don't ask me how, or why, because this is fucking nonsense - fucking nonsense!"" Which yeah, pretty much sums it up. It's just a loose concept that allows writer-director-star Giulio De Santi to do as much gory shit as possible. Faces/heads getting blown-up/smashed/melted seem to be De Santi's calling card. It's all so over the top and cartoonish that it practically begs you to never really take it seriously.

October 30th, 2015 - Lucifer's Angels (2015)

Lucifer's Angels is an effective microbudgeted ($3,000 if you believe imdb) indie that plays to its strengths and hides its weaknesses well. It manages to deliver some decent tension, has a good creepy vibe, and has enough going on story-wise that it moves by pretty quickly - you never have the chance to get too bored over the 60-some minute runtime.

There are quite a few moving parts to the film, but it's far from confusing. It starts out many years ago in a mental institution, where four doctors are arguing over their most violent patients. Several staff members have been killed, and the doctors are trying to find a way to deal with these maniacs. Flash forward to the present day. Four friends head out to the mountains for a camping trip - they manage to get some good partying in, but at one point a local boy stops by and tells them a campfire ghost story about the the large number of people that have disappeared in these very woods, how they may be haunted, and so on. The boy's Pop shows up and tells him to "Git!" but the seed has been planted. But it's cool - Pops likes to drink too, so the party continues.

October 28th, 2015 - Alien Valley (2012)

I was pleasantly surprised by Alien Valley. I'm not sure if it was because of low expectations after being disappointed by Area 51, or if it was how the filmmakers craftily used the blueprints of my "beloved" found footage ghost hunting genre and super-imposed it on an alien flick. Or, just maybe, they did an okay job generating scares and had a unique story to tell. What a novel idea! Whatever the reason, I had a pretty good time with it.

Anyways, it's about a Ghost Adventures-esque show called "Paranormal Mysteries." They go around investigating just about anything "paranormal." But there's not a lot genuine concern amongst them about solving any actual mysteries - it's more about getting ratings than actually discovering anything. (Say what you will about for real ghost hunting shows - the folks on them are nerdy enough that it seems like at least a part of them goes into it with good intentions.) Their producer is actually a pretty big asshole about it, and is clearly most concerned about getting good shots of his attractive cast reacting to rigged scares.

October 27th, 2015 - Tales from the Dark 1 (2013)

Tales from the Dark 1 is a kind of interesting anthology from Hong Kong. There isn't that much of a connecting thread running between the three stories - other than the fact that some people in them can see ghosts, and all three tales are mildly confusing. Each individual story works well enough on its own in a kind of Masters of Horror/long-short film way. And they are all on the longish side (about 40 minutes a pop), so as a whole the film tends to drag a bit. The stories never really go for jolting scares or crazy twists, so that was kind of refreshing. But there just wasn't much of anything that made me think these stories needed to be told together, you know?

October 26th, 2015 - Nothing But the Night (1973)

I guess nothing with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee should ever really be considered a "pleasant surprise," but I think Nothing but the Night would count as one for me. I hadn't heard much about it, and had passed on it more than once because of the PG rating, and the synopsis didn't sound all that interesting. (Although reading it now, it TOTALLY spoils the whole effing thing!) But Nothing is a pretty interesting and well done mystery/thriller. I'd say it eventually ends up in the horror category, but it takes it's sweet time getting there. But it's got a good enough story and has solid enough performances that it manages to be a good time. And I'd imagine there was a little extra effort from Lee and his friend Cushing - this was the first (and unfortunately only) film from Lee's Charlemagne production company.

October 18th, 2015 - Evidence of a Haunting (2010)

While it kind of looks like it's going to be your standard ghost hunting found footager, Evidence of a Haunting has a couple of interesting things going for it. (At first, at least.) At the very outset, there's this text:

October 13th, 2015 - Valley of the Zombies (1946)

Not really even a zombie movie. And not in the White Zombie vein of 'this was before Night of the Living Dead and we don't recognize these things as zombies...' there's just no zombies here at all. (Nor is there a valley, incidentally.) The closest you get is Ormund Mercks (Ian Keith). He's technically dead, I guess, but walks/talks/generally operates like a normal, living person. He needs blood to survive - I'd guess he drinks it, but it's never explicitly mentioned. So I guess if "zombie" is a catchall for "scary dead guy," then Mercks counts.

Anyways, Mercks is at the hospital looking for blood. It doesn't hurt that the doctor who institutionalized him prior to his death is there also - so he can get a little revenge at the same time he gets his fix. Mercks doesn't *want* to kill the doctor, but it just so happens he's got the blood type he needs. And wouldn't you know it? The hospital blood bank is out of it. So murder it is, courtesy of unseen strangulation.

October 12th, 2015 - Coons! Night Bandits of the Night (2005)

Coons! Night Bandits of the Night is a damned silly movie. It's cheap, it's ugly looking, it's sophomoric and tasteless, and very much has the feel of a guy who got his friends together and was like "hey! Let's make a movie!" But the funny thing? Coons! is actually pretty good. Or at least, it's funny enough to be good. Considering how many jokes are in the film, the hit-miss ratio is incredibly good. (Amazon has it listed as a spoof - and the sheer number of jokes would support that claim. Although horror-comedy was my initial reaction.)

The catch? If it's not your style of comedy, it's likely to be insufferable. The characters overact about as loudly as possible, and seem to have the craziest/fakest costumes/looks that they could (cheaply) get away with. Facial hair in particular. Many actors play multiple roles, so the bad costumes (kind of) hide that. And the raccoons are very clearly inanimate and taxidermied - there is no attempt to fake anything else. But Coons! is the sort of movie that uses it's cheapness as a joke. And yeah, hearing that makes me shudder a bit, as most movies that try to do so are really quite bad. But every once and a while it works - and it does here. It's just fun, plain and simple. But I concede that it's not for everyone.