⭐️⭐️1/2
On the remote island of Saipan, a building developer and her small team meet up with a business broker and his local guide to scout out some prime land for the location of her company’s new resort. Drone footage reveals a mysterious bunker and it’s decided that they need to investigate it for any structural issues it may cause. The discovery of some mummified corpses unsettles but the small group will soon find out there are far worse things waiting in the decrepit WW2 Japanese bunker. A 1670 prologue has a local shaman cutting the face off of a would-be Spanish conquerer and throwing him in a cave. A curse is born and a trap is set which will trickle down for generations. The curse seems to have been unleashed when its sinister influence began working its way into a Japanese soldier stationed in the bunker. A little digging leads to a sort of time looping hell. Now the group of surveyors have to deal with the physical manifestation of their own personal demons as well as the growing madness amongst them. The acting may be hammy, the story may be predictable to all hell but there’s a nice mean streak and some suitably creepy-ass ghouls roaming around the decrepit bunker. The villain looks like a chubby Jon Moxley and I’m all about that. Oh and Lance Henriksen talks on a phone, shows up for a post-credits joke and collects a paycheck.
aka House of Evil/Seven Sisters
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A prank goes incredibly wrong, leaving a cantankerous house mother very dead and the sorority girls renting her house in a tough position. Because they’re mostly idiots, they go forward with a party they were gonna throw unaware that their crime was witnessed by the landlord’s big ol’ secret hidden away in the attic. If you’ve seen any slasher film in the last sixty years, you should know where this is going. It follows the standard stalk and slash thrills of the sub-genre but it has a developed backstory for its killer, likable ladies in distress, some cool slayings, death by cane and an amazing slasher costume to make it one of those prestige slasher flicks that have everyone looking so favorably at the eighties output. With the corpse disappearing and degrading mental disorder in the cards, it opens up the idea that the angry old gal wasn’t as dead as believed but we know better. I love this film, I’ve loved this film since seeing it at the tail-end of an all-night movie marathon held in my basement with a VCR nearing the end of its life and I will love this movie until I collapse in a heap in front of my fridge looking for leftover nachos I probably shouldn’t have eaten anyways.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
William Castle classic with Vincent Price at his wicked best and Elisha Cook JR bringing his bug-eyed A-game. A handful of people are invited to a haunted house with the promise of ten thousand dollars if they can survive the night. The house with a murderous history may not be the only thing the folks have to worry about thanks to being caught in the middle of the venomous relationship between Price and his wife played by blonde knockout Carol Ohmart. Fun the whole way through. A bonafide camp classic.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
In Feudal Japan, a samurai named Taro heads out to the fabled Agi Bridge to dispel the rumors of a mountain demon claiming residence. It’s all due to the sinister schemes of a few ass-bags who lust after the man’s wife. Taro heads out on his Lord’s best horse, despite his wife’s warning of some dreams that spoke of an ill fate for the man she loves. Taro comes face to face with the dreaded apparition but manages to make it home. He and his wife’s relief is short-lived, as the demon shows up in the form of his brother and eventually bites Taro’s head off after transforming into its true slimy and monstrous form. The Lord decides the best course of action is to destroy the evil and commands his men to hunt the demon down… a task that is easier said than done. It is a shockingly beautiful presentation for something that draws filmmaking parallels to the quickly approaching cheap-looking V-cinema vibes, nodding to the beautiful early days of eerie Japanese horror but not forgetting the splattery nightmares that it’s decade of release we’re so damn keen on. Solid ground becomes unattainable as nightmare and reality blur together and all hell breaks loose.
⭐️⭐️
Big Al Decker (who looks like the product of some mad scientist mixing the DNA of Ray Romano and Fred Stoller) is a vicious serial killer. Bunny also enjoys killing and is a fan of the man. They decide to team up and go on a killing spree. When they aren’t murdering, they’re having boring conversation or enjoying long stretches of butt-numbing silence. It basically serves as a centerpiece for nasty gore which is to be expected when your director is a special effects man. The opening sees Big Al rape a woman in front of her bound boyfriend as he unconvincingly shouts “Hey. Hey. Hey. No. Stop.” It’d be disturbing if you weren’t so busy laughing at this poor dude trying to perform. The violence is excessive as Al repeatedly stabs the woman until her head comes off and then tosses it around the wood-paneled house. Again, it’s the work of a special effects guy so it may not be exactly realistic but it still hits pretty hard. Al and Bunny “meet cute” when he breaks into a house to slaughter some folks and finds her fiddling around with the corpses of her victims in the bathtub. They awkwardly decide to go grab a drink. Bunny sings Hotel California, they drink in uncomfortable silence, make uncomfortable small talk and then finally pull the trigger on being comfortable and murdering together. Interrupting a lethargic striptease, the duo put an end to a hotel hookup with violent efficiency. The poor girl gets her man’s blood rubbed all over her as she’s forced to lay spread eagle on the hotel bed, looking bored the whole time. Bunny puts a curling iron to sadistic use and it may have been put together with the budget of a quick trip to Ace Hardware but it’s still hard to watch… luckily the victim can’t do more than muster what sounds like dull sexual pleasure as a reaction. And that’s just how this thing goes. A character gets introduced, this character gets tortured and then there’s stretches of nothing. Severed breasts, TV watchin’, Bunny’s idiot brother, house cat cameos, a ludicrous amount of cocaine, a severed penis and the only ending that was possible for this troubled couple will stir you from the nap you’re taking. This film would be damn near unwatchable with competent actors but instead the vicious violence is muted by poor performances… thank God for small favors. Instead we have a semi-interesting but mostly boring talent reel for an SFX artist with a mean streak.
aka The Trap
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Four bank robbers discover their safe house and getaway car have been destroyed. They travel on foot through the woods and come across an abandoned factory. Deciding this would be a good place to lay low and let their gut-shot companion rest, they head inside. It’s a bad choice because the place is crawling with shoddy cake-faced (in some cases, most of the time there’s no makeup whatsoever) zombies. Now the action is on as the lovable idiots attempt to escape with the four million euros and their lives. Amateur horror with its heart in the right place offers up plenty of laughs (I particularly loved that most of the zombies were wearing trash bag smocks to save everyone from some cleanup) and a general enthusiasm I find so damn endearing. Drags midway through as the criminals fight off zombies and each other but once the Edward Furlong-looking ninja triplets and the mad scientist rocking a power glove come into the picture everything becomes pure backyard awesomeness. Poor digital effects and cheap gore sweeten the pot.
⭐️⭐️
A documentary filmmaker does what he’s trained to do and documents his move from London to a smaller city. As he films his surroundings, a paranormal presence makes itself known in his new house. The footage was found on Nick Greene’s (our filmmaker) hard drive… so you can guess it didn’t end well for him. He’s got a new job lined up at a university, he’s got a cute neighbor who works at the same place and he’s looking forward to filming everything so he doesn’t get rusty. He hears knocks in his house and something messes up his freshly made bed… THE HORROR!!!! He finds a mysterious file on his computer which is disturbingly footage of him filming around town. So add that to the spooky noises you find in every haunted house and Nick’s intrigue outweighs his fear (at first) and he lands on a new reason to keep documenting things. Digital glitches show a man in a mask and hoodie combo pay a visit to Nick while he sleeps, forcing Nick to have a very British “freak out”. He kinda sighs, says “This is very strange” and instead of running out of the house screaming, he has some tea and makes some nosh. Bad dreams and escalating terror starts fucking with his head and a tarot reading by his neighbor points to some nefarious shit. I don’t know, it’s not necessarily a bad movie it’s just not all that interesting. If it was my first found footage movie it may have been good enough but I’ve seen hundreds of these damn things. Granted, it’s better than a lot of the shit that’s floated to the top of my Tubi queue.
