⭐️⭐️
Three years following the passing of her grandparents, a young woman (who looks like what I’d imagine an elderly producer would think when he hears the term “real hip chickadee”) inherits their small island home in New York’s Thousand Islands area. Samantha awkwardly kills time as she seems completely underprepared for her new living situation but it also doesn’t help that her behavior appears to be under the guiding hand of a writer who has only experienced human actions from barely-remembered sitcoms. After she cruises around a bit in her boat while guitar strumming plays on the soundtrack, she meets some creeper who claims he does boat repair. He looks like every New Yorker you’ve ever seen who works in the kitchen of a greasy pizza joint but since it’s the islands, he’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt over his stained undershirt. His name is Mort and I don’t think there has ever been a more synchronous bond of man and name in the history of low-budget horror shot in the Thousand Islands area of New York. Creepy dudes aside, Samantha starts getting freaked out when she hears some strange things on her supposedly vacant property. Maybe. She may also be severely constipated… it’s a little hard to tell. As she investigates (or maybe looks for a laxative) she catches a boat heading away from her home. Now she’s really spooked. The next day she speaks to the sheriff (he’s the one that found her nana and papa’s corpses) and he’s able to slightly convince her that there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to late night visitors on the water. Even if said visitor is the large local named Michael, who definitely had the same acting coach as Samantha and looks like he’d be the janitor at the pizza place Mort works in. I really wouldn’t eat any of those slices. More creepiness (or possible constipation) plays out as Samantha meanders around, looking twelve and fifty at the same time and performing normal human tasks (conversations, drinking coffee, breathing) like it’s causing her great distress. A box with worms is left on her dock, Michael’s boat is found abandoned near her house, the sheriff thinks she may have rubbed somebody the wrong way (he’s also a total dick about it), locals watch her with mistrust (or maybe, they too, are having problem BMs), a mute woman hangs around in the background, Mort neglects the idea of “sleeves”, there’s a significance when it comes to wolves, Mort attempts to be helpful (and fails), the mute woman has a cryptic warning (written out, of course) before vanishing (kinda) and Samantha insists on ignoring reason and standing her ground… which leads to some hilarious action. Usually, when films can’t rely on strong performances or an interesting script, they’ll provide some thrills and splatter to keep things chugging along. Devil’s Island makes the bold choice of being completely content in offering nothing and saying “fuck you!” for expecting any different. For some reason, I can really respect that. It’s bad but it’s the surreal kind of bad that’s begrudgingly entertaining. So piss and moan all you want, I’m kind of a fan. My mom recommended this to me and now I’m thinking I may have forgotten her birthday. Not because I’m busy or anything, because I’m a horrible son.
aka Hell House
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
There’s something very wrong with Andy Milligan and that’s exactly why I love his peculiar library of gutter thrills. If you’ve read Jimmy McDonough’s irreplaceable The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan, then you know how the man’s wretched past inspired his wretched working days and eventually lead to his wretched death. It’s a fascinating look at the power a shitty mother has in developing an awful human who, for some reason, decided to be a filmmaker. Outside of a few dramatic pieces steeped in an odd level of unearned pretentiousness, Milligan stuck to horror that ran through themes of family rot, mental decay and a general nihilism for anything that had the tenacity to breath on this planet. He also utilized handmade period piece costuming, church basement spook show gore effects and scripts that were already pretty dated by the time of conception. It sounds like a train wreck you’re being forced to watch by a drunk nun who is also your uncle in drag… and it is but it’s completely unlike anything else I’ve seen. Well, a Milligan film is like everything else festering in low budget hell but it’s being crafted by Milligan so nothing else is like it. I don’t know if that makes sense and I doubt I should care. I’m sure Milligan wouldn’t have given a fuck, he was probably too busy planning on choking out his nephew. Carnage is Andy Milligan pissing all over marriage. Gay, straight, horse… I don’t think Andy cared. Before the opening credits hit, a groom shoots his wife in the head while they embrace and then the dopey dink turns the gun on himself. They’re in their wedding clothes and in their own home listening to that toe tapping hit The Wedding March. It’s also all consensual and done out of love. Things are not well in Staten Island. Three years pass and a newlywed couple (Carol and Jonathan) move into the home where the murder suicide played out. Fresh starts being what they are, the couple are excited for their new life together… Andy Milligan laughs and spits in all four of their eyes at the same time. There’s something wrong in the house and no it’s not the cluttered interior design and uncomfortable furniture, the spirits of those dead people are doing terrifying things as soon as the couple moves in. Phonographs play by themselves, the stove turns itself on, a discarded bubble bath burps and a home phone hangs itself up… please, just say to yourself “It’s only a movie.” I heard it helps if you repeat it. The couple survive the super exciting supernatural murder attempt of haunted gas stoves and closed windows but blame it on faulty kitchen appliances or maybe Carol’s forgetfulness. She disagrees but she’s also a woman so why would the mustachioed men listen to her? Strange things continue to happen but why focus on that when you can focus on the rocky relationship between Jonathan’s pregnant sister and awful mother. That way you don’t have to produce any dime-store special effects and you can focus your static camera on the arguments. Thanks, Andy! Jonathan (who looks like Albert Eskinazi if he were being played by everyone’s uncle) goes off to work leaving Carol to deal with the spooky shenanigans of the house. Paper slides under tablemats so she can’t take a note, garden shears slide out of eye-line after sliding into eye-line, a candelabra lazily moves across a table, water spills from a fallen teapot… the horrors persist. After a knife falls into her hand and blood spills shoddily, Carol gets worried… kind of. Jonathan (who resembles a well-fed Polonia cousin) just thinks it’s nothing to worry about. Phantom screams in the dead of night do little to light any fire under the collective asses of our heroes. An elderly housekeeper named Rose Novak (hey, the movie thought it was important) is attacked in the cellar by the phantom bride with an echoing voice in an awkwardly staged bit of paranormal stupidity. It’s so shocking she slits her own throat with a straight razor. Burglars who look like budget sex thugs show up too and come to a messy end. Why? Because it’s Staten Island viewed through the trash aesthetic goggles of Andy Milligan and even if you don’t mind wasting time on conversations that hold little interest or story progression, people still have to die messily. After a long stretch of nothing posing as horror combined with humanity at its most agitated and romance that hits with all the eroticism of finding a used condom in your grilled cheese, a house warming party happens and bad things follow. There’s still like thirty minutes left that could be three hundred for all I can tell. There’s still time for a decapitation, city hall research, a priest, cancer, floating furniture and a meat cleaver to the noggin. It’s a diseased dumpster spin on The Amityville Horror with a budget consisting of favors and convenience by people who only read about Amityville during the boring parts of whatever basement pornography they were watching. I love it but there’s no way in hell I’d ever recommend it. Yep. It’s a Milligan!
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Stolen jade and a broken heart are the catalysts for two different men to be hit with the same curse by a powerful Burmese wizard. Sau Au Yeung is a young doctor in Hong Kong whose caring nature has him taking care of a battlefield reporter suffering from a painful and worm-filled bleeding wound on his leg. He comes to find that his father is cursed with the same affliction and tries getting to the bottom of it before his dad and his patient are claimed by said curse. Luckily, a Taoist priest and friend of the family may be able to help but failure could lead to a painful death. It’s a bit jumbled and not as much fun as many of the other HK horrors of the time but it’s still pretty damn rich in entertainment. There’s stock footage, bloody worms, eaten creepy crawlies, and a pretty damn cool magic attack. Odd and goofy enough to be worth your time.
⭐️1/2
Disturbing chatter on lab-created biological agents opens up things and then a news report about a flying object crashing in Mount Spokane leads to unsettling footage caught by some dude filming his lady in the woods. The army claims they’re running some training exercises in the area and close it off to the public. The spot reopens and some local discovers a destroyed camera in the trees… this is the footage on said camera. A man heads out into the area with his buddy to record him deer hunting with his friends. So we get to watch as these real middle-aged dopes run into some unbelievable trouble in the middle of nowhere. Natural leader Brad brings along an AR-15 and the dudes have some fun blowing it off in the woods. As they march on through the forest, they find some odd liquid that Brad writes off as moldy pond water. There’s sad dad drinking, sad dad smoking, sad dad humor, sad dad machismo, sad dad reminiscing and sad dad political views filling up most of the runtime. It definitely fits the characters so it’s all works but if you’ve never been around sad dads, you may find it unbearable. The next day they freak out when they stumble across a camp which looks like it was home to one hell of a struggle. There may be no blood, but everything’s torn to shit and the hunters left their guns… not something a hunter would do. They also discover a game camera nearby and Brad decides they should look at what it caught. The photos show some mutated dude attacking a buck and then coming in for a close-up. Ron thinks it’s bullshit, Steve wants to leave, Tom is spooked and Brad thinks it’s their duty to find out what the hell is going on. Brad’s a blowhard so he acts like an asshole about it. Despite his tough guy bullshit, the group decides to head out the next day. They get ready to leave but Brad makes the decision that the trip ain’t over and journeys out into the woods with the truck keys and his AR-15. The group begrudgingly follow. Folks get sick, feelings get hurt and older white men die… so a standard hunting trip with the boys. It’s like Blair Witch Project but everyone is unlikable and having a midlife crisis and instead of a spooky threat you can’t see, it’s a space virus that mutates organisms into cheap-ass zombies you’ll wish you couldn’t see.
aka The Night Daniel Died
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Florida-shot obscurity is a must for fans of regional horror flicks. Mike, a Vietnam veteran, heads into the Florida Everglades to stay at his recently inherited parents’ old cabin. He’s dragged along his wife, his best friend and his best friend’s ex-stripper girlfriend. Cautioned away by a less than helpful gas station attendant, Mike ignores the warning that the family cabin is in the territory of Bigfoot-like “blood stalkers”. Soon after the vacationing group arrives, they begin to perceive just how much trouble they are actually in. There’s unaccommodating townsfolk, homicidal backwoods poachers, a complaining wife, horrible humor, dopey dramatics, and indiscernible nighttime filming. There’s also some unexpected strong acting (to go along with your usual homespun awfulness) and an amazingly composed climax set to a choir singing Somewhere to Lay My Head. It may feel like a boring slog to some but I’ve always found Bloodstalkers to be a mesmerizing ninety minutes.
⭐️⭐️
Backyard slasher from Iowa runs under twenty minutes and was probably brought to life as a bit of a test run. There’s no dialogue, so it adds more to the vibe that you’re watching some family home movies you were never meant to see. A group of young people do things and title cards let us know who we’re looking at and where they are. Repetitive rock music, the Phantasm score and the essential Halloween theme play out over the scenes where audio was lucky enough to make it in. Film degradation and an empty production budget either bleach the scenes bathed in light or drown everything in shadows… mostly presenting both of those visual issues at the same time. After some smooching and talking, a killer in a tinfoil mask definitely inspired by Quiet Riot begins murdering the cast and crossing out their faces with red marker on various photographs. There’s a decapitation brought to life by damaging the film itself and it’s pretty lovely… at least for something that’s more than a bit indecipherable and done for less than a value meal at Taco Bell. It’s a curiosity piece for sure but nothing you should lose sleep over never seeing.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
At the funeral for Elwyn Clayton, a woman busts into the church accusing the dead man of being pure evil. She’s hushed and escorted out by the reverend who apologizes to the dead man’s twin brother, Dr. Lloyd Clayton. We later learn that their relationship may have been rocky since youth but everything grew worse once Elwyn returned from India. The man became obsessed with demonology and ancient sorcery. Now, all the kind doctor can hope for is that his brother’s troubled soul is finally at peace. It’s George Zucco in dual roles so I’m highly doubtful of a peaceful and quiet afterlife. Lloyd heads to his brother’s home where he burns his books and is promptly attacked by Elwyn’s hunchbacked servant Zolarr (come on now, like you didn’t know it was Dwight Frye) who accuses the doctor of murdering his own brother. He refutes the claim and insists it was self defense. Yeesh. This is some soap opera bullshit. Anyways, Zolarr runs off, but not before letting Lloyd know that awful things are in his immediate future. That night Zolarr digs up his old boss and Elwyn quickly rises from his coffin to get up to no good. Vampiric deaths greet the small village and Dr. Clayton is reluctant to admit that his brother ranks among the living dead and is feeding on the townsfolk. He assumes a confrontation with his brother may be a hallucination thanks to his tired brain but I’m also thinking he doesn’t want to admit that the Satanic leanings of the dearly departed have allowed him some sort of supernatural power to put a stopper in death. Once his beloved niece is targeted by his dead brother (Gayle grows ill after a visit from the creepy uncle as he attempts to make her his servant), he begins to work with the niece’s beau to put the not-so-dead man to rest for good. Sadly, the man believes the good doctor may be the one who is up to nefarious things and goes to the police for help. Pretty fun vampire flick allows Zucco to play villain and hero and I’m so here for that I basically moved in and started paying rent. Predictable and maybe a tad lazy, it still hits the sweet spot I have for these dusty old horrors.
