December 1st, 2015 - The Big Bad (2011)

The Big Bad is an intriguing indie film that occasionally comes close to being ruined by its own indie-ness. Visually the film can be pretty brutal (the first 20 or so minutes have this weird haze in the picture), and there are some performances that are bad/off enough that they threaten to derail the whole thing.  But there's enough zest and energy to things that it ends up mostly working, and it builds up a pretty interesting world for our hero Frankie to journey through.

It starts out kind of rough... You've got some pretty shaky camera work (and that weird haze) as Frankie goes about town, clearly looking for a dude. She settles into one of the diviest bars I've ever seen and sort of befriends this drug-addict lady, and they do the typical indie dramatic yammering thing for a while. After about 15 minutes, it's still not clear what the film even is or will be. A dark and dramatic character piece about these two? A crime thriller of sorts? I actually stopped it to make sure that this was a horror film about 15 minutes in. But what Netflix says, goes, so I continued on with the film.

October 16th, 2015 - Nightbeast (1982)

Not sure why they went with the 80s cop
show font, but what can you do?

Nightbeast is a pretty fun independent monster movie from the great Don Dohler (of Galaxy Invader and Fiend) fame. I don't know what it is about his films - they've got a cheap, regionally shot, straight to home video feel... but there's some heart and love of the genre in there too. They are not "great" in the traditional sense, but there's enough passion and effort on display that I find his films extremely charming and hard not to like. When I think "cheesy monster movie," I naturally look back to the black and white creature features of the 50s and early 60s - your Attack of the Crab Monsters and Giant Gila Monsters of the world. But there were still spiritual siblings of those films being made long after that - which is where Nightbeast fits in. While it's a little more gory and the effects are (a little) better, it's heart is in the same place... which is why I think I liked it so much.

Nightbeast starts like so many a creature feature - an alien spacecraft crashes in the middle of a small town. The titular Nightbeast (not actually called that in the film, as far as I can remember) wastes no time and starts to kill off the townsfolk. He's got this chintzy looking laser gun that can disintegrate who or whatever gets shot with it in a flash of cheap animation. (Or at least as it fits in with the story - it doesn't disintegrate walls or rocks or anything, but it will take out a car and the people inside. That's alien technology for you!)  But don't worry - Nightbeast can also rip people in half if he has to.

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.

September 24th, 2015 - Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies (2014)

Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies is a shitty, shitty movie. Shocking, right? It seems like it was made solely to cash in on less-than-discerning and/or stupid wrestling fans (I may be both of those things) who just see a couple of big names and check it out. And I guess this does have a decent cast of rasslers. If you don't listen to me and see this film, you'll get to see "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan, Matt Hardy, Reby Sky, some (presumably) well-known indie names, and a cameo by the Olympic Champion himself Kurt Angle. (Who incidentally is one of my all time favorites, but after this and River of Darkness seems to be movie poison.) Pro wrestlers are seen as not being good actors - and no one here does anything to dispel that. Not that the script ever gives them anything "actorly" to do. Lest you forget, it's called Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies. "Rowdy" Roddy Piper is the exception and has a significant role - he *almost* manages to pull the film up from the muck on the sheer strength of his charisma and innate likability. But not even "Hot Rod" (Rest in Peace) can make this thing watchable.

The main gist of the story? "The Franchise" Shane Douglas (who is also listed as a producer) is kind of a dick, and seemingly kills a guy in the ring on purpose with a piledriver. I think because he saw his opponent making out with his lady before the match? Anyways, Douglas seems to be in the hero role, but writer-director Cody Knotts makes the interesting choice to make him and unlikable asshole. I mean, save Hacksaw and Roddy Piper, every name wrestler in this film seems like a hateful idiot. Not what you really want from you "star," I think.

September 22nd, 2015 - Deadhouse (2005)

Ripping on DeadHouse feels a little mean. It's such an obviously low budget and amateurish number that you kind of want to cut it some slack. But it sucks so bad that you can't, in good conscience, do that.

Basically, your story is: Three friends (one dude and two sisters) are driving on a long trip to a relative's house. They almost run over a guy wandering on the side of the highway, and offer to give him a ride as payment for nearly killing him. The four of them seem to be a bit lost... and in a twist of bad luck, their car gets stuck in the mud! So they hoof it to go find some help.

September 4th, 2015 - Ninja Zombies (2011)

From the time I purchased this DVD (for $1.50 - big ups to Family Video in Worthington, MN!) until the moment the title screen came up, I *swore* this thing was "Ninja vs. Zombies." Which would have been an entirely different - and probably better - film. I was hoping for some nice solid ninja action; maybe some well choreographed splatter and some decent fight scenes. But nope, we've got Ninja Zombies: a really cheap-looking and amateurish "bromaction horror comedy" (their term, not mine) that isn't as clever as it thinks it is. I mean, Lloyd Kaufman is involved in an extended cameo, so I guess cheapness shouldn't be a surprise. In fact his pull quote on the DVD box - "better than Avatar" - is literally my favorite thing about the film. Ninja Zombies wallows a little too much in it's low budgetness - and it just isn't funny enough, or well-acted enough, or compelling enough to get over the fact that it's just plain bad. I know low-budget/Troma-inspired films like this are an acquired taste, and seem to be very hit or miss depending on the viewer. This one was a miss for me.

Ninja Zombies is about a nerd named Dameon - you know he's a nerd right of the bat because he's got an anime poster up in his room, a Serenity DVD under his alarm clock, and he hosts a (terrible) youtube show where him and his nerdy friend debate nerdy stuff. Nerd. Anyways, he starts having terrible nightmares about some ninja stuff, and comes to find out that he is a part of a long line of protectors of a magic sword (I'm ad-libbing here). A sword that some ancient/immortal Ninja warlord wants to steal. Apparently, the sword just been hanging out in his basement for several years - it's just now that's he's turned 25 that he has (magically?) received a scroll telling him of his destiny: to protect the sword from the Ninja warlord.

July 28th, 2015 - Gatekeeper (2008)

Gatekeeper is not very good, but it's pretty hard to hate entirely. It's clearly a very, very cheap independent film, and it has the feel of a group of friends saying "hey guys, let's make a movie!" Ignoring the fact that they may not have the resources to make it happen. While it's pretty bad all the way around, there is a certain charm to it, and it doesn't feel like anyone involved is treating it like a joke. But that still doesn't make it worth watching. And honestly, it could have just been the accents (it's a Welsh film) that made me *kind of* want to give it a pass. Something of this caliber in American English may have left me with a very different impression. Also, I can't figure out why there is picture of what seems to be the Gingerdead Man on the box art on Amazon...

Anyways, it's mainly about a group of hockey players traveling through the Welsh countryside. (Other than the fact that they have hockey sticks, their profession has no bearing on things whatsoever.) They get in a car crash - maybe the worst I've ever seen on film - with a couple of military types who happen to be escorting an ultra badass soldier who went AWOL. (Of course, from that car only AWOL guy survives - luckily for the hockey team, he's actually a good guy.) One dude who lives in town is trying to help, and gets run down and injured by *another* car, driven by a douchey guy and a girl on their first date.

June 29th, 2015 - Back to the Beyond (2011)

Even when judging by more lenient indie horror standards, Back to the Beyond is pretty rough to watch. It's greatest quality is that it is really short (about 66 minutes without credits), which was a great help for me today, as I was awfully tired. But "short" is not necessarily what you're looking for in a film.

The main plot/story isn't all that bad. It just fails in every other possible category. Bad sound, bad acting, bad music, bad effects... and again, you take these regional indies with a grain of salt... but Back to the Beyond is still borderline unacceptable. And while the idea of the story isn't too bad, it's not well executed and doesn't make up for the bad stuff.

June 26th, 2015 - Rise of the Scarecrows (2009)

Watch out! We've got some Manos-style driving footage to go with our credits! Although at least Rise of the Scarecrows has the decency to put some credits over that footage. But that's about the best compliment I can offer Rise of the Scarecrows. When you can honestly say "I would rather watch Manos: The Hands of Fate" you know you've just seen a bad movie. At least Manos has Torgo.

I feel like I've watched and enjoyed enough ultra-indie fare that I'm willing to give obviously low-budgeted films a fair shake. I mean, just because something is shot with a consumer-grade video camera doesn't mean they don't have an interesting story to tell, right? Unfortunately, the story the filmmakers here have decided to tell is that "swearing is funny, domestic violence is funny, and fat scarecrows who *clearly* can't see out of their shitty sack-masks are scary." It would be an ugly, mean-spirited film if it weren't so poorly made. As it stands, it's just really bad.

June 2nd, 2015 - City of Lust (2013)

The box for City of Lust (aka Yellow) claims that it's a "modern Giallo horror film" - but I don't know if that does the film any favors. It kind of sets a highish bar that it just doesn't need to. I really like giallos, and just name dropping it gives is kind of a "for us (horror fans), by us" attitude that sort of raised my expectations. (I mean, even knowing that the subgenre exists is something - is "giallo" even a known thing outside of horror or film circles?) I think I would have been into it more had I just known it's a "horror movie" and watched it unfold rather than (kind of) knowing what to expect. Also, I have always associated giallos with a kind of style and slickish production. Sadly, City of Lust doesn't have the budget for that. It's still pretty decent - especially for a small indie - but with the "giallo" attached I had hoped for something more. Oh well, at any rate it probably got more eyeballs on the film.

Arianna (Margaret Grace) is a young woman who has recently moved to Chicago. It's pretty clear that she's running away from *something*, and she's having a hard time getting used to life in the big city. It doesn't help that she's prone to strange anxiety attacks, where she'll see some bizarre, bloody visions and occasionally black out. Also, her nose bleeds a lot. She likes her job as a hair stylist, but works with horrible people, and doesn't have anyone she could really call a friend. But that all changes one night when Arianna decides to call a phone sex line (1-900-SEXCHAT - which I'm sure is a real number) and is enticed by Jackie's pre-recorded introduction: "I'm here for the same reason you are - to make a connection." Arianna becomes increasingly dependent on Jackie, talking to her for hours until she feels like she's found someone she can trust. Eventually, the two meet and start a romantic relationship. At the same time, some of the "problem people" in Arianna's life are being violently dispatched of. Coincidence? The cops - or rather, cop - is onto Arianna, but who is the guilty one?

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 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.

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 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.

February 25th, 2015 - Legend of Sorrow Creek (2007)

The last movie I watched from one of my Echo Bridge budget packs (Disturbed) was a big indie stinker, so I was a little hesitant about The Legend of Sorrow Creek. My fears intensified early on in the film when we have a scene where a cop and an anthropologist are roaming through the "deep woods." It's likely just a neighborhood park - you can see traffic moving in the background. It's got a pretty poor shot-on-video look too. But once we get to our main story, I was actually kind of impressed. Despite it's obvious cheapness, The Legend of Sorrow Creek is decently acted and manages to be unsettling at times. It won't win over anyone who is on a steady diet of slickly-produced studio fare, but to me it was a pleasant surprise.

We get not one but two prologues. In our first, we're way back in the olden days, if the sepia-toned picture is any indication. It's annoyingly dark most of the time - as in most of it is just audio with a black screen. Maybe they shot it normally (there are glimpses of footage there), but it didn't look convincing enough... Anyways, you hear a woman creepily saying bible verses and it becomes apparent that she is going mad. She hangs herself while her husband knocks on the door and yells frantically. He bursts in, just yelling "my wife! my wife!" in case we couldn't figure it out.

February 21st, 2015 - Everyone Must Die! (2012)

Everyone Must Die is a little confusing at first. Okay, it's a lot confusing at first. You can tell right off the bat that it's a very indie production ("it looks like a home movie," my wife said), but it seems like it's trying to be serious. A masked killer, all in black, is chasing a bunch of people out of a house. It's just so poorly edited that you can't really tell what the hell is going on - is he actually killing people? He strangles a woman for like 3 seconds, but then I guess she's dead? Is the non-masked dude stabbing the killer or the woman? It's all very unclear. But then the "hero" gets out the lawn mower and runs the killer over, starting a trend of people dying off screen with blood flying up everywhere.

Later, the law gets involved, and you start to wonder how serious this is all supposed to be. The acting and dialogue is super cheesy, but that's just how these things go, right?  Then, the next batch of victims is four people camping, and you begin to realize that Everyone Must Die! is meant to be a joke. Sort of winking at the camera and saying "hey guys, we're making a stupid horror movie!" And as far as those sorts of things go... it still isn't very good - but it could be worse.

February 20th, 2015 - The Battery (2012)

I remember hearing a lot about The Battery when it first came out in 2012. Zombie fever was at an all time (obnoxious) high. Zombies had hit the mainstream in a big way, and movie after movie after movie was coming out with very little new or exciting to offer. The Battery works so well because it's a decidedly different take on the zombie apocalypse - it's much more of a character-driven film. There isn't much by way of gut-munching or head splodin' action. Instead, you get an up close and personal look at two people who are dealing with the loneliness and isolation that comes from being two of the last people on earth. The Battery is more concerned with the tension that comes from that mental strain, rather than your typical "we're trapped and zombies are everywhere!" scenario. And because of that, it's much more relatable, and to me, more realistic - everyone has felt alone or hopeless at sometime, right?

Ben (writer-director Jeremy Gardner) and Mickey (Adam Cronheim) are two survivors of an unseen (and mostly undiscussed) zombie apocalypse. You never really figure out just what happened, but you know that these two are amongst the very last non-infected people on the planet. Their plan is to keep moving through the countryside - they figure they are less likely to get attacked if they stay on the move. Ben takes a more proactive approach, playing the alpha of the pair - he's a survivalist type who seems to enjoy foraging for food/supplies and smashing skulls in. Mickey is the more sensitive of the two, and is having trouble adjusting to this new world - he mostly just further isolates himself by listening to his discman and sulking.

February 12th, 2015 (Trip Day 6) - Disturbed (2009)

Trip Day 6.

January 29th, 2015 - Ghostlight (2013)

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

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

January 2nd, 2015 - Night Feeders (2006)

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