⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A sadistic Union Calvary major by the name of Aaron Parker is executed for his heinous crimes. As he stands ready to be hung from the neck until he is dead, he refuses to recant his wicked ways before the end and throws out your usual curse on the descendants. More than one-hundred years later, a group of amateur magicians (they may be professionals but leader Powell looks like he’s pushing sixteen, so I’ll call them amateurs) attempt one hell of a magical feat by raising the dead. The time and alignment of whatever astrological and astrophysical bullshit seems perfect for them to complete their task. They succeed but they bring back Major Parker and he’s hellbent on dishing out violent revenge to the ancestors of the men who hung him. He takes out two of the five dinks immediately and Powell (who I’m now realizing resembles Uncle Fester cosplaying as Mark Hamill) panics. The surviving three dump the naked bodies of their former friends in an alley and drive off. Sultry Marisa (well, Tucson sultry) seems to be handling this with the levelest of heads, she knows they have to get their stories straight and they have to banish the evil entity before real damage is done. The other girl of the group wants to go to an expert magician by the name of Donald Graham but Powell feels they don’t need him. They definitely do but like I said, they’re amateurs and assholes for the most part. Although, Donald looks like a disheveled Larry Hankin (or a cracked out Wes Craven) so maybe Powell is right to try to handle things on his own. They go to Donald anyways and admit they fucked up but the bodies are already dropping. Donald and Powell butt heads, Marisa looks like she’s constantly holding in a fart, an elderly police chief is one badass grandma and a reporter looks like Tito Santana if he never hit the gym. Some naked magic allows the unnamed chesty chickadee to see what happened in the past with Major Parker and give the group a heads up on the threat they’re facing. They take action but Parker is one dedicated bastard and no matter how much they try to help, people are still ending up cut down. Tucson, Arizona shot weirdness is packed with saber violence, magick fixations and a surprising amount of nudity considering the paychecks these “actors” were bringing home. Access to the local civil war reenactment society’s costumes, a town willing to help out their homegrown filmmakers and a special effects team that knew what the fuck it was doing add a level of professionalism to this backyard slice of regional horror. It’s right in that sweet spot between competency and blind enthusiasm.
⭐️⭐️1/2
A brother and sister troublingly have the same strange dream where their mother, a well-known practitioner of black magic, is hanging from a tree. More disturbingly, she warns them not to come to their village where she lives. The next day, while talking over their concerns, they receive a call from their uncle that their mother committed suicide. Not listening to the more than just circumstantial nightmare warning from the spirit of their mama, they head out to the isolated community along with the sister’s husband. Further trouble arises when the siblings are suspiciously eyed by the locals for their mother’s sins. Apparently she was blamed for the large amount of suicides in the area, collecting the souls of the poor folks who hung themselves to build her power. Things get worse when a new string of suicides have the villagers holding Hari and his sister Eka responsible for the awfulness. Curses, man. They’re a real pain in the ass. The strained family relationship works on the protagonists, already wearing them down mentally before the supernatural kicks into gear. Their sleazy uncle is also causing problems by making claims of a will and property rights now that their mother has passed. He wants Hari to sell his mother’s house and give him half and his sister thinks it would be best just to get rid of the place and the memories that go with it. Hari is feeling guilty though about pretty much abandoning his mother no matter how strained their relationship was. The folks that will talk to them deliver the same message that they should get rid of the damn house and just leave, their mother’s only friend stirs the pot when she hints that she never would have killed herself. Eka and her hubby Adi decide to leave, Hari decides to sell but the appearance of two hung corpses (Not like that! Hung from a tree ya dirty dog!) and with a storm stalling any way out, the trio are forced to spend more unwanted time in the house. Adi starts acting strange (speaking and looking like he suffered a bad head injury that would place him in special courses at school), a megalith is discovered in the forest (not a good sign) and an elderly local fills Hari in on the unsettling folklore and its connection to his family. Melodrama and moody piano try to present a dour time before we get to the creepiness and it comes off a tad bit forced. There’s some solid bits of freakiness and some unfortunate unintentional giggles spread through the much-too-long runtime as it strives for an atmosphere that just never feels natural.
⭐️⭐️1/2
The town of Edendale is a small neighborhood in Los Angeles built on what was once a film studio by the name of Mixville. The place was the personal studios of the film industry’s first cowboy star Tom Mix. Following his tragic death in a car accident in the forties, Mix slipped into obscurity and now the only claim to fame he has is the gully he crashed into being named The Tom Mix Wash. Into the area move Kevin and his girlfriend Rachel (getting lucky when their friends seemed to abandon the house to do missionary work) escaping unhappiness on the East Coast with plans of chasing that Hollywood dream through the great American screenplay. Instead they find something else completely when it seems a force outside the realm of the natural world has taken possession of Kevin. Rachel sees apparitions hanging around the house but Rachel has a history of seeing things so could it be that it’s all in her head? What do you think. Rachel returns from a modeling gig in Boston to find Kevin a different man, seemingly fully gone native with his healthy living and lack of unique personality. All their neighbors are in the industry and maybe hiding something sinister. A missing neighbor and a bullshit cover story gets Rachel digging into shit as her world and sanity spiral out into troubled waters and Kevin becomes harder and harder to get along with. Working like Rosemary’s Baby without the budget, the baby or an expert cast and crew, Edendale weaves the angle into a Hollywood ghost story and banks on a interesting yarn holding your attention and allowing you to overlook its limitations. The cast may not be strong but they’re dedicated and Paula Ficara is affable enough to garner some sympathy as everything goes to hell and the past plays its hand in the present. Silly ghosts don’t help elicit any scares but it is oddly intriguing and works fine considering it’s obviously threadbare production.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
The crisp Muzak playing over the aerial-set opening credits had me questioning if I had fallen asleep and woken up in a plastic surgeon’s waiting room located somewhere on an early-90’s soap opera. The two men killed by arrows whilst working on a development project in the mountains lets me know that no, I am in fact here on planet trash. Marital drama between a sloppy large man and his elderly wife leads to a tree-climbing flashback. The young man who is now a much larger man falls from the tree and breaks his arm but when his pissed off dad gets angry at the tree, the boy refuses to blame the tree. Ok. Where the fuck am I? Another dude chopping down trees for the sake of development is murdered. A man with a sword and a woman with a crossbow are to blame. Enter a dopey forest ranger (looking like a DJ Qualls prototype) talking to his horse for COMEDY. Boardroom action hits with stiff delivery of government jargon and some slight sleaziness. Why they’re having this meeting in the dark with one light gel-capped to look like a nightmare scene from a very cheap Freddy’s Nightmares episode I cannot say. I just know the crabby business-head in a wheelchair is up to no good. So many aerial shots. In comes a journalist who would like a story more worthy of her talents than fashion nonsense. Mountain murders are pretty big time. Her hair is stellar. Missing workers has the development crews getting nervous, the extreme environmentalists look like catalogue models cosplaying as survivalists, that beefy lawyer with marital problems is trying unsuccessfully to get an injunction placed on the development, the main corporate stooge definitely smells like hair gel and his blonde super-secretary is hawt in a cigarette-blanketed dive bar kind of way. Lawyer man’s flashbacks to caring about nature seemed to have all been shot right before a bad storm rolled in. His daughter is worried about him. Aerial shots! Corporate coverups! And my favorite journalist sports one hell of an “interesting” hat. All these characters will come together in the mountains and it will come to a head in the most lethargic way imaginable. If the acting class that gave us Blood Cult decided to bless the world with a braindead environmental message hidden in a bodycount flick that forgets it’s a bodycount flick halfway through, you would have Mountain Fury. That’s just a fancy way of saying this is my kind of anti-entertainment. It’s an action/thriller hybrid shot through a thick pool of molasses and featuring neither action nor thrills. Windbreakers, questionable comedy “Lenny! Hold that bake-off story. This is BIIIIIIIIIG.”, endless dialogue to match the constant aerial footage (hey, you did rent the helicopter, might as well make it worth the money), a local bar that is my kind of watering hole makes a cameo, weekend warrior hijinks serve as extensive training, the leader of the dangerous environmentalists goes out like a complete chump and that Canadian “aboot” blesses my ears frequently. “Listen kid, ya got your mother’s looks but your father’s balls.” Amen.
aka Slasher/The Sorority House Murders
⭐️⭐️⭐️
It may directly lie to your face with its claims of being the first SOV horror film with an eye strictly towards the home video market but thats what we’d expect from our derpy little cheapskate friend. He may be a rapscallion and lack a few morals here and there, but we know his heart is in the right place. Also, he may just be a little too dim to have any malicious intentions. Now there’s no denying Blood Cult’s importance in the pantheon of lo-fi splatter but has it really stood the test of time? Well, it hasn’t stood the test of time as much as it just begrudgingly refused to move because it couldn’t be bothered to fucking do so. Elderly co-eds are getting their asses murdered and their limbs are getting taken in and around a central Oklahoma college. The only hint at the culprit are gold medallions left behind on the bodies. On the case is senator-to-be sheriff Ron Wilbois as he brings a certain geriatric charm to his investigation of the murders. His daughter Tina (she who works at the college library) and her head of possibly sentient hair helps out as an “old witch cult” carries on with its slayings. There’s a vast conspiracy in the works and our hero Ron may not be coming out of this case in one piece. Hitting you with the pace of a coupon-loaded grandmother on a Sunday supermarket stroll, the drag of this flick is almost impressive. It’s slow-going and doesn’t seem to care that you’d like something… anything to happen. Even while something is happening… does that make sense? What I’m saying is, it somehow even fails to invoke tension in its scenes where it’s presenting the slasher goods. Like I said, it’s oddly impressive. It’s not all on the cast whose performances range from dead-eyed check-out counter girl reading a receipt for fun to grandfather telling a scary story to his grandson but not really wanting to make it too scary but they do help slow things down. Ron narrates like he’s reminiscing about an uneventful vacation to the Finger Lakes, dialogue is bumbled yet the film insists that there needs to be a whole bunch of talkin’, the world’s least-convincing victim is bludgeoned with a severed head, there’s a bunch of talk about the election coming up, Arby’s is enjoyed, the most nauseating scene concerns Tina making out with her boyfriend who looks like he’s cosplaying Fabio from Giallo in Venice if he were played by Ted Raimi in the reincarnated form of an evil Puritan minister and everything is weirdly cozy for something focused on the graphic collecting of severed limbs for occult activity. It’s a slasher film that’s the equivalent of a rainy Friday at your grandparents’ house and I really wouldn’t change anything about it.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
An American ballet student arrives at a prestigious German dance school and it does not take long for some supernatural malevolence to upend everything. Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper bringing a perfect level of innocence to her role) is dragged down into a horrifying pit of impossible horror as the paranormal presence festering within the school brings about brutal ends to those unfortunate to be in its way and works to its sinister goals. Suzy seems heavily affected almost as soon as she begins her studies in the Art Nouveau/German Expressionism geometrical nightmare she calls a school. It ties into the location’s history with a dangerous coven and the horrifying folklore of “The Three Mothers”. Is it flawed? Of course it is but if you’re going into an Argento film (not even focusing on it being a supernatural outing of his) concerned about a depth in character motivation then I’m sorry, but you’re the fucking problem. A gorgeous experience thanks to Luciano Tovoli’s breathtaking cinematography combining with a stellar art and design department earning their paycheck and containing some truly visceral set pieces along with a level of uncanny horror that’s still impressive nearly fifty years on. Goblin’s wonderfully abrasive soundtrack is pure nightmare fuel that resembles an electronic score performed by the most violent inmates at a local insane asylum made exclusively to be played at the funeral of a Romanian sadist. Maggots rain from the ceiling, a seeing eye dog attacks its master and Udo fuckin’s Kier shows up to share some history and introduce our hero to an expert on witchcraft. The story takes a backseat to the instability of the whole situation and I love every minute of it.
aka Prime Evil
⭐️⭐️1/2
Decades ago, in the Romanian Carpathians, an illegal expedition in an abandoned mountainside church (suspected to be built over the entrance to an extensive cave system) causes a landslide and the supposed deaths of every man there. Now, a scientific team uncover an underwater cave system while excavating the area and call in a respected and cutting-edge cave diving team (run by the always welcome Cole Hauser) to assist. Dr. Nicolai and his associate Dr. Jennings (hell yes, her majesty Lena Headey) will joint the group as they explore and document the untouched ecosystem. Things go wrong when a violent species unknown to man begins to make its presence known and even more dangerous is the parasitic life form behind all of the unpleasantness. I mean, of course the Templar Knights built an isolated church over a cave to keep something away from the rest of the world, that’s just Horror 101. Our man Cole gets his handsome ass infected and we see the parasite get to work on transforming whatever biological host it inhabits into a carnivorous monster or in his case, a convenient super hero. A fate which befell those folks all them decades ago (they’re now the winged creatures who reminded me of the creature from Graveyard Shift just less impressive) and even further back inspired all them stories about those Templar dopes fighting monsters. Anyways, our heroes have also managed to get themselves trapped so they need to find another way out which, naturally, forces them deeper into the caves and deeper into enemy territory. A solid cast (sexy Piper Perabo, sexier Morris Chestnut, Daniel Dae Kim and Eddie Cibrian join in on the hijinks) adds some class to the silly survivalist/monster nightmare. As usual, human ego, inhuman appetites and general agitation make up the drama but the script is pretty humdrum and lets down the effort and setting. Still not a bad way to spend a rainy afternoon.
