⭐️1/2
City stresses send a group of Atlanta friends out into the remote wilds of Pine Hollow Forest. A helpful phone conversation opens things between Nia and her sister about how Nia needs to take this camping trip to do some healing. So she, some lovable lunk named Ken and her two lady friends ignore the warnings of a seemingly insane forest ranger (hearing voices is never a good thing) and proceed into the infamous area. The ranger’s cabin looks suspiciously like a well-kept downtown apartment and is also occupied by the intense ranger’s saucy wife. Camping can be a shitty time in the best of situations but it’s even worse when the supernatural (maybe) is creeping around and everyone in your little group seems like they packed for a night over in a city hotel as opposed to the middle of nowhere. Stories of missing bodies and Satanic rituals are well known and ignored. Also, the ranger’s warnings of whispers and spirits ain’t getting in the way of Nia’s birthday camping experience. Nia keeps saying that this is exactly what she needed and it’s her birthday… me thinks we hear so much of the same shit because the script simply read “ad-lib here”. They immediately hear voices in the dark and decide to call it a night and not to worry about it. It’s her birthday, so they follow her advice to get some sleep. Nia has intense nightmares/visions, someone dressed in black watches the quartet, the dialogue is a rambling mess, their attempt to leave after the first night is halted by a car that’s not going anywhere and one of ‘em vanishes during the second night. Mia shares her real reason for wanting to come back to this spooky area of Georgia and it has to do with a séance and a mysterious death of a good Christian boy. A two-year time jump closes things on a baffling note and then hits you with a second flash of stupidity. It fits well with the complete pointlessness of everything. This feels like a group of people on vacation realized they had a camera and a setting to film a movie. I’m fine with that, that has lead to some amazing low-fi curios. Unfortunately, it also feels like nobody had any idea what they wanted to do and just had a ninja costume from a big and tall shop to use as a “special” effect. A lack of enthusiasm and abundance of abrasive people put the viewer in a strangle hold that almost leads to tapping out. There are some golden nuggets of dialogue like: “That’s what the woods does. It woods.”, our main character pronounces “therapy” in the best way possible (in one scene she blesses our ears with it multiple times) and cheapjack charm like that ninja-suited villain is hanging around and getting a grin out of me every so often but it’s all mostly an ambling excursion into the boredom that most camping trips offer. You won’t believe it’s only an hour long and not in a good way.
aka Revenge of the Colossal Man/The Terror Strikes
⭐️⭐️
Following his giant ass tumbling down into the Hoover Dam, most believe Glenn “The Amazing Colossal Man” Manning to be dead. His sister Joyce believes otherwise and feels a string of missing food trucks may point in the favor of her belief. She is proven right, Glenn did survive his 700-foot fall but he is now brain damaged and facially disfigured, feeding off of stolen food trucks unfortunate enough to pass through his stomping grounds in Mexico. A giant footprint seals the deal and the military steps in to get the giant back in their hands. They drug a truckload of food and capture the 60-foot man, then bring him back to the USA. The government pretty much washes their hands of the situation, pointing at every other department as being in control of the situation. This leads to them storing the poor sap in an unused airport hangar as they try to figure out what to do with him. After an extended flashback of how we got to this point in big man’s life, utilizing footage from the prior entry, the dude escapes and unleashes some superimposed damage on the airport. Luckily, they put him down before he can cause too much trouble and chain his ass up in manacles, keeping him under close watch. A doctor is flown in to see if there is any hope for the monstrous former military man but all tests seem to point to it being a lost cause. Of course, the colossal man escapes again but doesn’t really get into that much trouble. The poor guy gets reminded of his humanity by his sister and finally puts himself out of his misery as the film limps to its end. There’s not much action in this one but it’s not without the usual Bert I Gordon charm, it even shifts to color as the skull-faced lug electrocutes himself on some power lines.
⭐️⭐️1/2
A short horror that was attached to the 3 Doors of Horrors stream on Tubi. A security guard at an industrial site is haunted by a little ghost girl who needs his help. He sees her around his home and then psychically sees her past which wasn’t a good one. Luckily, with the little specter’s assistance, he’s able to bring her closure and make sure the scumbags responsible for her early ending are held accountable. It ain’t much but Azman Hassan is a likable lead and everything is properly wrapped up by the close.
aka Mutant Assassin/Evil Beast
⭐️⭐️
Already dealing with a tough and thankless job, a group of utility workers face further hardship when they get trapped in an abandoned hospital’s underground tunnel system with a scientist who has been screwed over by his badly burnt benefactor. Dr. Leech has been injected with his own serum by the rich psychopath’s goons to make sure it works. It’s supposed to regenerate the crispy dickhead’s skin but he wants to be sure there’s no ill effects. Said serum will literally turn you into what you eat (it also makes you really hungry) and this scientist happens to be locked in a tunnel where the only thing to feed on is a rat and a dog. This turns him into a mutant rat-dog-man. How does this science work? Shut up. That’s how. So the rat monster is roaming around and hungry as fuck, which is bad news for Tom Sizemore and his cleaning crew who are scavenging the abandoned hospital because the city doesn’t pay them enough. What they’re doing ain’t legal, so the best way to get access into the hospital buildings is through the underground tunnels connecting everything. Now you know why Sizemore, his niece, his second in command and the prank-playing teenage dope that works for him find themselves in the tunnels with rat-dog-man. The rich prick’s goons also head down there (under the command of the sociopathic Kendal and her cold, dead heart) looking for the mutated doctor. Throw in a Jamaican homeless man and the burnt billionaire waiting in a limousine just outside. Kendal makes sure to lock up the tunnels because there’s a no witness order in place. Violent ends meet most of the cast as claw renders flesh and Dr. Rat-Dog chows down on people. The worst part of the film (Jamaican homeless man) gets plenty of time to deliver his awful performance which I think was supposed to be comic relief but never approaches anything close to that. Kendal looks like Dana Scully if you got Dana Scully off of Wish and then accidentally washed her with some chemical compound that makes something duller. The monster is of the slimy man in a suit variety and Tom Sizemore actually puts a little oomph into his role… not much but more than this deserves. The script is as witty as a braindead 90’s action flick but nobody can really nail the delivery of the lines so it just feels really fucking awkward… like children imitating something they have no understanding of. It’s a dumb monster movie that doesn’t aim to be anything more than a stupid B-movie… and there’s nothing wrong with that.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
A creepy mortician played by the always awesome Clancy Brown, tells a young prospective employee (at her behest) the strange fates that befell a few of his customers. What follows is some fun EC style shenanigans and a nice little (albeit predictable) twist in the framing tale. A thief at a house party comes across something monstrous when she lets her curiosity get the best of her. Unprotected sex bites a womanizing college kid on the ass when a one night stand leads to a whole lot more than a rash... which he gets... but oh boy it’s so much worse. A man decides to end the suffering of his ailing wife (and his own) with the help of the family physician. The traceless pill-poisoning does not go well and the husband finds himself in a nasty situation that is progressively slipping out of control. A babysitter and an escaped mental patient cross paths as Sam (the young job seeker) shares the reason she has come to the spooky mortuary. There’s some nasty violence and a lovely streak of black humor... as there should be. It’s treading familiar waters but sometimes that’s all ya need to feel right at home.
aka Amityville 8
⭐️⭐️1/2
Bill Martin builds a new house for his family (teen son Todd, pre-teen daughter, new wife, her uptight wiener son, his mouse… Bill’s son’s girlfriend is always hanging around too) and soon after moving in, he finds a detailed replica of the infamous Amityville home stored in a rickety old shed left on the property. Bill decides it’s a stupendous idea to gift his daughter the dollhouse he found in a creepy-ass shed for her birthday (kinda has to, evil dollhouse shenanigans cause the family car to roll over the bike he was gonna give her) and it doesn’t take long for bad shit to start going down. The daughter gets sick, her New Agey aunt and uncle recognize something amiss with her gift and then Bill’s new son-in-law starts seeing his dead dad and the rotting corpse has some troublesome plans in the works. A tarantula shows up in a piñata, a big-ass wasp returns from the dead and enters Todd’s ear, mom gets horny for her new son, Bill has troubling nightmares and the family fireplace works as a portal or some shit and plays right into the ridiculous demon-heavy climax. A small bit of sleaze throws some fuel on the smoldering embers of this shockingly long-running franchise but the stupidity is what makes this one more enjoyable than a few of the prior entries… and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s always nice seeing Lisa Robin Kelly (as Todd’s gal) whose time on this earth was way too short.
1/2
A team of “scientists” may be inept to all hell but they do manage to catch the legendary chupacabra. The chupacabra here is some rubber-masked goon in a ragged robe. It is both cheap and lovely. The creature is held at the team’s secret facility which just so happens to be set up in the Amityville house. Yes. They have built a secret facility in that infamous piece of Long Island property. Don’t question it. It has happened and we just have to deal with it. Biohazard stickers are placed on clothing and cheap lab materials so we know it’s a fucking lab set up in the Amityville house. “Scientists” stiffly discuss tests in the backyard, on a porch swing. They explain that they’re testing the effects of paranormal energies in the proximity of their captured monster. This is why they have rented the Amityville house. See! There’s all the reason you need! One young scientist has a psychic premonition on the colleague he has the hots for being chased by the chupacabra. He doesn’t warn her but he does ask her out and she accepts. Unwarned, the Spirit Halloween fiend manages to escape after puking plastic bugs on the girl who was supposed to be prepping it for the next experiment. Looks like that coffee date won’t be happening. The scientists argue about one of their number being a spy and that’s concerning but more concerning is the escaped monster roaming around the house/lab. What follows are boring conversations performed by a few generations of AV club members in the cramped setting of a suburban home while footage of a Halloween store monster roaming around randomly hits. The head of the program arrives and she is one cold bitch with a stick up her ass and a problem with annunciating every fucking thing she says. She’s demanding a sit-rep before she sends in a clean up task force. Neck tattoos, comfortable living room seating, lockdown protocols that make no sense, heavy breathing, a security guard with a “S.W.A.T. cop” hat, dialogue written by a possibly mentally challenged AI program, lab coats, repeated plot points, action presented through dialogue, the world’s most pathetic storage room, a very loud tattoo-covered hunter with an eyepatch, melodramatics by gunpoint in a laundry room, a pathetic knife fight and some truly unlikable people (way to kill off the only likable idiot first, you stupid fucking movie) add up for one ass-numbing experience. Seventy minutes end up feeling like four days in the hottest moments of August spent in a small room with people you hate and no air conditioning. A boring, irritating mess. If you fast forward through the majority of the film it still blows donkey dicks. Saved from the oblivion of zero stars thanks to its cheap-ass monster (that rarely shows up), the last act “evil” return of the only likable character and plenty of wood paneling.
