The Red Monks (1988) (Italy)

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Surveying his recently inherited castle, a middle-aged man follows a naked woman wandering the halls into the cellar. When he approaches, she brandishes a bejeweled sword and quickly decapitates him. We then flashback fifty years earlier (we are told this by a voiceover which never makes another appearance) to the past owner of the castle finding a young woman treed by his loyal German Shepard. Naturally, they fall in love and are quickly wed. After she moves into the estate, she begins to grow suspicious of her husband as he refuses to consummate the marriage, is quick to anger and is obviously hiding something in his cellar dungeon. Could it be that a mysterious group of red-robed monks have demanded of him a virgin sacrifice? Yep. That’s pretty much it. Fulci produced this old dark house style fright flick, which is low on splat but has enough going on to somewhat entertain. There’s a good chance your mind will begin to wander as a defense against dullness. Those fake-ass tarantulas from The Beyond make an appearance and that pleases me.

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) (USA)

aka The Secret Beneath the Lake/It Drinks Hippie Blood/What Killed Sam Dorker?

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Six months following a nervous breakdown, Jessica is released from the psychiatric institution where she resided and moves into an old farmhouse in upstate New York with her musician husband and their buddy Woody (he definitely looks like someone who should be named Woody). They plan to restart and live a peaceful existence as apple farmers. Jessica’s recuperation is threatened by several factors; the townies don’t seem all that welcome of the young strangers (in defense of the elderly townsfolk, the trio drive a hearse and are pretty annoying) and there’s talk of a woman who drowned in their backyard lake. A woman who now wanders the countryside as a supposed vampire. This goes along with the mysterious fates of the Bishop family who use to live in their new home. Pretty spooky shit for someone with an already fragile mental state. They also discover a young red-headed woman named Emily squatting in their new home but since they’re hippies, they see a kindred spirit and decide to let her stay. This definitely ties into the local legend because of course it does. Jessica has visions and hears voices but she keeps this to herself and doesn’t tell her husband Duncan because she’s rightfully terrified of going back to the hospital and Duncan seems to be attracted to Emily which is causing further stress. Is Jessica going insane or is the supernatural actually taking root in the peaceful rural farm? Wonderfully eerie horror never feels forced and just plays out like it’s reveling in a natural and highly unsettled corner of the American subconscious. Like all the fears one has about picking up stakes and leaving the hustle and bustle of the city for a calmer countryside environment are justified and so much worse. A taut mixture of sinister sound design (it may be the most off-putting auditorial experience in seventies horror), striking visuals and slightly off-kilter performances piece together something special. A truly amazing independent horror flick from a decade well known for ‘em. Usually inner-monologues bother the hell out of me in films but it works well here and further hammers home just how unreliable a narrator Jessica may be.

Rock-A-Die-Baby (1989) (USA)

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A rock band struggles to come up with a song for a new horror flick, their manager has put them on the spot by promising whoever the hell he answers to that the tune will be ready within 24 hours. But forget about that for a bit. A tired mother nods off, watching Night of the Living Dead with her young daughter. Deciding it’s a bit boring, the little girl asks mama to tell her a story she’s never heard before. The first yarn opens up in the ‘Nam with a quartet of soldiers separated from their platoon. They make their way through the jungle, hoping to catch up with the rest of their team. They split into two groups to cover more ground. One group finds a dismembered soldier in an abandoned village, abandoned except for a topless woman running around the place. The other group snatches up a Vietnamese farmer and takes him prisoner. The groups meet up and the woman seems quite weary of the farmer. The farmer attempts to murder the girl while the soldiers argue but is gunned down for his trouble. Slowly but surely the female prisoner unfurls her game of seduction and murder because she ain’t quite human. It’s alright and it leads to the song Spooky Lady by that rock band we saw in the opening, which is just wonderful. The daughter asks for another story and mom obliges with a yarn about a group of college kids playing strip poker (and judging by the tape degradation during this scene, whomever held the master copy of this print was a lonely individual). The group quits playing and decide it’s time to pull a prank. Their idea involves attempting a séance to scare the shit out of one of their acquaintances. The plan is set to scare the living hell out of the poor girl but the dorks fuck up when they contact a recently deceased math professor but for real and it all goes to hell. Ya got some boobs, some booze and a cheap-ass boogeyman on the prowl, it’s all pretty damn fun. We then get more Spooky Lady… nice. Mom’s getting tired but her daughter manages to get one more story out of her. This time she reflects on the day her and her husband got married. They have their taxi driver take them to the local lovers lane and bang in his back seat while their driver sits in the front and drinks. This affords him the opportunity to check out his rear view mirror and notice the new bride casts no reflection. Her hubby has no idea she’s a vampire (although she’s practically wearing a neon sign that says she is) but he has a secret of his own. Sure it’s a bit lame and telegraphed to high-hell but whatever. The whole thing is a mildly enjoyable time.

Black Swarm (2007) (Canada)

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Hawt widowed deputy sheriff Jane Kozik moves from Manhattan to the small town of Black Stone where she grew up, looking for a safer place to raise her daughter. Yeah. Great plan. Looks like a scientist (Robert Englund) has whipped up some genetically modified wasps for the army and some of those big bastards have gotten free and now he’s in town trying to fix his mistakes. Local pest control heartthrob Devin Hall has noticed the weird insects but he’s on the way out of the slowly dying town so he ain’t stressing it. At least, he wasn’t until his sister-in-law/crush Jane moves back into the neighborhood and that old flame gets rekindled. That’ll have to take a backseat because not only are these super-wasps tough as all hell and homicidal, their victims have a strange habit of coming back from the dead. A hawt entomology professor (Dr. Katherine Randall) comes to town looking into the deaths and sets her lusty eyes on Devin. The daughter befriends the scientist, the wasps use human bodies as homes and we learn Devin is Jane’s dead husband’s twin... which makes things kind of creepy on the whole romance angle. The daughter becomes the new queen of the wasps (don’t ask), wasps fly out of a priest’s mouth (don’t ask), a blind woman gets attacked by wasps in a cornfield (don’t ask), Robert Englund has a “wasp whistle” (please, do ask) and Uncle Sam comes to clean things up and ensure their new secret biological weapon stays secret. There’s a lot going on but somehow it mostly feels like nothing is happening. It hits the right kind of stupid more than a few times... just not consistently.