Sunday, February 8, 2026
The Bloodstained Lawn (1973) (Italy)
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Lunacy and wealth are an already dangerous mix but if you add deviance to the equation, you’re just asking for trouble. A group of well-off weirdos pick up the kind of folks who won’t be missed and bring them back to their fenced-off villa. Initially the random-ass houseguests (a prostitute, a gypsy, a drunk and two hippie hitchhikers) are treated well by the odd brother and sister duo and the sister’s somehow weirder husband who is mighty keen on sporting ridiculous neckerchiefs made to look like ridiculous bow ties. Along with his interesting fashion choices, the husband is an inventor/scientist who specializes in robots and something that has to do with bloodwork. He’s all too happy to collect a sample from the young hippie girl when she pricks herself on something in the guest room couch. He lets her know that he has researched the evolution of plant and animal and has concluded that nature is flawed and it’s on the human race to modify and repair themselves. Of course, the only way to do this is to bring together man and machine. I’d be concerned if I was spending the night in this man’s home. On the first night after the hippies light some incense, smoke their Devil’s lettuce and start getting frisky, the drunk interrupts and takes the hippie dude on a little tour. It ends with him showing the stoned man the gypsy girl, tied up with a rope, buck naked in her room. The creepy brother tells them she’s family and she has epilepsy so it’s for her own safety. The drunk protests but is dismissed for being… well, a drunk. I think if the homeowners got rid of the viewing windows they have on the room doors, this could be avoided but then I guess the creepy sister couldn’t spy on them. A narcotics agent is on the trail as an unsettling amount of missing people have been reported. After discovering wine bottles being shipped out filled with blood, he knows there’s some sinister shit afoot. Let’s just hope he can follow the trail and make it on time to at least rescue one of the slowly vanishing houseguests. An outdoor oven contains a skull, attractive people get naked, a “perfect man” is created, there’s a champagne infused naked dance party in a room of mirrors, sexual hang ups, a whole lotta wine, bickering spouses, a hilarious janky-ass blood drinking robot (fuckin’ thing has a cape) that’s about as threatening as something a bored child would piece together in their stepdad’s garage, a basement secret that we’ve all seen coming from about ten minutes in and a last act reveal that’s somehow disturbing and hilarious in unison. It is one strange flick that despite its giallo title is nowhere near that particular area of film. Stretches of boredom hit more than once but the main thrust of the story is so unexpected and off-kilter that it’s worth waiting around for.
Saturday, February 7, 2026
Paranormal Surveillance Camera (2012) (Japan)
aka Caught on Camera! Death on Security Cameras
⭐️
A team of paranormal investigators scour over hours of security camera footage, analyzing for proof of the supernatural. This is the footage which offers up the best proof. A somber man narrates the footage and an opening warning lets us know that they are not responsible for any awfulness that follows viewing this disturbing shit. If that blanket statement doesn’t cover boredom, I just may sue their asses. The first bit is a camera overlooking an intersection which captures a voice reading the sutras and showing a mysterious woman who appears and disappears followed by camera glitches. If that doesn’t sound interesting to you but you figure it could thrill maybe a small child or an idiot, I apologize for not stressing enough how uninteresting it is. A taxi driver shares a story about stopping to pick up a woman in white who ended up not being there. He tells the story in full and then we get to watch the dashcam footage of the incident… more than once. They show another angle of the camera pointing towards the driver’s back seat and we watch the door open by some phantom hand. My eyes are getting heavy. It just goes on like this, supernatural occurrences boring enough that you could believe someone is pushing for this to be taken seriously but obviously not because, ya know, ghosts aren’t real. But hey, they tried so I guess that’s something.
⭐️
A team of paranormal investigators scour over hours of security camera footage, analyzing for proof of the supernatural. This is the footage which offers up the best proof. A somber man narrates the footage and an opening warning lets us know that they are not responsible for any awfulness that follows viewing this disturbing shit. If that blanket statement doesn’t cover boredom, I just may sue their asses. The first bit is a camera overlooking an intersection which captures a voice reading the sutras and showing a mysterious woman who appears and disappears followed by camera glitches. If that doesn’t sound interesting to you but you figure it could thrill maybe a small child or an idiot, I apologize for not stressing enough how uninteresting it is. A taxi driver shares a story about stopping to pick up a woman in white who ended up not being there. He tells the story in full and then we get to watch the dashcam footage of the incident… more than once. They show another angle of the camera pointing towards the driver’s back seat and we watch the door open by some phantom hand. My eyes are getting heavy. It just goes on like this, supernatural occurrences boring enough that you could believe someone is pushing for this to be taken seriously but obviously not because, ya know, ghosts aren’t real. But hey, they tried so I guess that’s something.
The Parish (2019) (USA)
⭐️⭐️
On the heels of her husband’s tragic death, Liz and her daughter move to a small town looking for a fresh start. The teenage girl has a bit of a justified attitude to go along with the uprooting but the angst turns to terror when some spooky spookiness starts spooking. Mom is already plagued with nightmares about her dead spouse and has replaced her faith with a bit of the booze. Shit changes when her husband’s spirit shows up and tells her to “Help them.” after a creepy nun appears on her front lawn being all creepy. Solid leads (most of the time) successfully pull off the grieving mother and daughter portrayal (no easy task) and Bill Oberst Jr is there as the local pastor. A giant janitor stalks around, there’s a secret at the daughter’s new school and ghosts act like ghosts. Perhaps the power of faith can wrap everything up in a neat little package? Most likely. BOJ tells a great ghost story (dude has always been a scene stealer) and Angela DiMarco is really good as the mother with a plate full of shit on her table. Sadly, the movie kind of lets her down. It’s not as creepy as it should have been but Angela DiMarco and BOJ make it worth a cursory glance.
On the heels of her husband’s tragic death, Liz and her daughter move to a small town looking for a fresh start. The teenage girl has a bit of a justified attitude to go along with the uprooting but the angst turns to terror when some spooky spookiness starts spooking. Mom is already plagued with nightmares about her dead spouse and has replaced her faith with a bit of the booze. Shit changes when her husband’s spirit shows up and tells her to “Help them.” after a creepy nun appears on her front lawn being all creepy. Solid leads (most of the time) successfully pull off the grieving mother and daughter portrayal (no easy task) and Bill Oberst Jr is there as the local pastor. A giant janitor stalks around, there’s a secret at the daughter’s new school and ghosts act like ghosts. Perhaps the power of faith can wrap everything up in a neat little package? Most likely. BOJ tells a great ghost story (dude has always been a scene stealer) and Angela DiMarco is really good as the mother with a plate full of shit on her table. Sadly, the movie kind of lets her down. It’s not as creepy as it should have been but Angela DiMarco and BOJ make it worth a cursory glance.
Arpie (1987) (Italy)
aka The Harpies
Another Super 8 slice of heaven from Fabio Salerno focuses on a young woman named Veronica who has a monstrous secret. She’s some sort of harpy-demon-thing who spends her free time murdering men who come into her home. The disappearance of a store clerk brings two detectives to her door but they dismiss her as a suspect almost immediately. One of the cops drops his keys and when he goes back inside he discovers a basement full of bodies. Veronica takes him out with an electric knife but his partner manages to gun her down. He believes the nightmare to be over but when he sees her on the street a few days later he realizes the shit storm has just begun. Fabio Salerno scores another winner with this weirdo monster flick that manages to be more charming than terrifying. Cheap but awesome special effects are sprinkled throughout the runtime as Veronica does mortal damage to various folks she meets. A severed head pops up in a woman’s bed, looking like a badly burnt potato with glowing eyes, the same woman gets a knife to the noggin for her troubles. It all climaxes with a Demons-inspired body breakout by the titular creature. Backyard fun of the highest (well, lowest) quality.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Another Super 8 slice of heaven from Fabio Salerno focuses on a young woman named Veronica who has a monstrous secret. She’s some sort of harpy-demon-thing who spends her free time murdering men who come into her home. The disappearance of a store clerk brings two detectives to her door but they dismiss her as a suspect almost immediately. One of the cops drops his keys and when he goes back inside he discovers a basement full of bodies. Veronica takes him out with an electric knife but his partner manages to gun her down. He believes the nightmare to be over but when he sees her on the street a few days later he realizes the shit storm has just begun. Fabio Salerno scores another winner with this weirdo monster flick that manages to be more charming than terrifying. Cheap but awesome special effects are sprinkled throughout the runtime as Veronica does mortal damage to various folks she meets. A severed head pops up in a woman’s bed, looking like a badly burnt potato with glowing eyes, the same woman gets a knife to the noggin for her troubles. It all climaxes with a Demons-inspired body breakout by the titular creature. Backyard fun of the highest (well, lowest) quality.
The Screaming (2000) (USA)
aka Scream Again
Strapped for cash, anthropologist student Bob Martin rents a room from sultry Crystal Traum with the promise of a large grant the university is sending his way. Bob plans on studying in the general quiet of his new digs. His new landlord lives next door and is into healthy living and immediately works on getting him into her odd new-age-religion/self-help-group named Crystalnetics. The opening murder of a young girl by some stab-happy black-robed goons clues us in that the Crystalnetics cult is up to no good. The girl nearly escapes but just as she’s about to taste sweet freedom some awesome-looking monster snatches her with a gore-soaked tentacle… nice. Bob watches the… uhm… well-built landlord stretch before a jog and falls under her spell. Bob chain smokes, fantasizes about Crystal and acts like an ass on the path to his masters. His professor isn’t happy with his work and his grant money is withheld until he starts showing some promise. While this is going on, we see the cult get up to blood drinking and sacrificing to their goofy monster overlord. They also have some sinister plans for Bob in the works, they just got to get him cleared of all his nasty habits before the next lunar cycle or some shit. The more than 2,000-year-old Crystal begins working her magic and Bob begins living a better life. He begins focusing on Crystaltology and his professor warns him of the dangers of the offshoot religion. The professor advises him to stay away from the temple and Bob takes his warning to heart. A German detective shows up (the Crystaltologists were kicked out of Germany after a bunch of bodies drained of blood turned up) and he’s digging into Crystalnetics and the trail of corpses they seem to be leaving in their wake. A chance encounter with the snooping sleuth further wisens Bob up to the evil machinations afoot. The clock runs down and Bob has to figure out how to defeat the centuries-old malevolence looking to fuck things up. More low-budget goofiness from the hit or miss Sterling Entertainment (the Things anthology series and the persistent Camp Blood “franchise” among what feels like thousands of others) features a likably unlikable (does that make sense?) hero that looks like some unholy grunge version of Geddy Lee, a sometimes-claymation-sometimes-puppet monster, obvious years between filming, bewbs, cheap gore, footage I’m pretty sure I’ve seen elsewhere and ancient aliens. Jeff Leroy (Werewolf in a Womens Prison and The Witch’s Sabbath) adds another winner to his cheap thrills resume. It may lack the pure sleaze of those aforementioned bits of fun but it still works thanks to its enthusiastic plot and game cast. This is one David S. Sterling should be proud to have in his catalogue.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Strapped for cash, anthropologist student Bob Martin rents a room from sultry Crystal Traum with the promise of a large grant the university is sending his way. Bob plans on studying in the general quiet of his new digs. His new landlord lives next door and is into healthy living and immediately works on getting him into her odd new-age-religion/self-help-group named Crystalnetics. The opening murder of a young girl by some stab-happy black-robed goons clues us in that the Crystalnetics cult is up to no good. The girl nearly escapes but just as she’s about to taste sweet freedom some awesome-looking monster snatches her with a gore-soaked tentacle… nice. Bob watches the… uhm… well-built landlord stretch before a jog and falls under her spell. Bob chain smokes, fantasizes about Crystal and acts like an ass on the path to his masters. His professor isn’t happy with his work and his grant money is withheld until he starts showing some promise. While this is going on, we see the cult get up to blood drinking and sacrificing to their goofy monster overlord. They also have some sinister plans for Bob in the works, they just got to get him cleared of all his nasty habits before the next lunar cycle or some shit. The more than 2,000-year-old Crystal begins working her magic and Bob begins living a better life. He begins focusing on Crystaltology and his professor warns him of the dangers of the offshoot religion. The professor advises him to stay away from the temple and Bob takes his warning to heart. A German detective shows up (the Crystaltologists were kicked out of Germany after a bunch of bodies drained of blood turned up) and he’s digging into Crystalnetics and the trail of corpses they seem to be leaving in their wake. A chance encounter with the snooping sleuth further wisens Bob up to the evil machinations afoot. The clock runs down and Bob has to figure out how to defeat the centuries-old malevolence looking to fuck things up. More low-budget goofiness from the hit or miss Sterling Entertainment (the Things anthology series and the persistent Camp Blood “franchise” among what feels like thousands of others) features a likably unlikable (does that make sense?) hero that looks like some unholy grunge version of Geddy Lee, a sometimes-claymation-sometimes-puppet monster, obvious years between filming, bewbs, cheap gore, footage I’m pretty sure I’ve seen elsewhere and ancient aliens. Jeff Leroy (Werewolf in a Womens Prison and The Witch’s Sabbath) adds another winner to his cheap thrills resume. It may lack the pure sleaze of those aforementioned bits of fun but it still works thanks to its enthusiastic plot and game cast. This is one David S. Sterling should be proud to have in his catalogue.
Alien Beach Party Massacre (1996) (USA)
⭐️⭐️1/2
Aliens steal a weapon called DEATHSPHERE™, which looks like a volleyball, from a malevolent race of warmongering creeps. This becomes important when the fleeing extraterrestrials are shot down by their pig-faced pursuers and their ship crash lands on earth where a group of idiots are having a beach party. The only survivor amongst the crashed benevolent-ish aliens is a clumsy janitor named Nagillig and he’s tasked with finding the volleyball... sorry... DEATHSPHERE™ and keeping it out of the clutches of the evil Odem and his gimp-masked assistant. There’s a ponytailed scientist tracking the alien, a virginal girl and her prickish jock boyfriend (“he’s a pitcher, ya know”), spoiled Tina (it’s her beach party), a couple surfers, a nerdy cutie and some dude in a WASP shirt who constantly has his hair in his face. When a group goes off to smoke pot in an abandoned house, the evil aliens begin picking off the cast. Before that there’s a shit-ton of unfunny hijinks and aliens spying. It does pick up when the low-rent horrific elements kick in but it hits just a little too late to make it must see amateur fun. Californian accents clash with the high pitched gibberish/clucking language of the aliens bringing about an intense longing for deafness. There’s a hilarious death by immolation that I’m still laughing about, shitty digital effects randomly rear their wonderful head and the surf-rock vibes are provided by the hip sounds of Insect Surfers.
Aliens steal a weapon called DEATHSPHERE™, which looks like a volleyball, from a malevolent race of warmongering creeps. This becomes important when the fleeing extraterrestrials are shot down by their pig-faced pursuers and their ship crash lands on earth where a group of idiots are having a beach party. The only survivor amongst the crashed benevolent-ish aliens is a clumsy janitor named Nagillig and he’s tasked with finding the volleyball... sorry... DEATHSPHERE™ and keeping it out of the clutches of the evil Odem and his gimp-masked assistant. There’s a ponytailed scientist tracking the alien, a virginal girl and her prickish jock boyfriend (“he’s a pitcher, ya know”), spoiled Tina (it’s her beach party), a couple surfers, a nerdy cutie and some dude in a WASP shirt who constantly has his hair in his face. When a group goes off to smoke pot in an abandoned house, the evil aliens begin picking off the cast. Before that there’s a shit-ton of unfunny hijinks and aliens spying. It does pick up when the low-rent horrific elements kick in but it hits just a little too late to make it must see amateur fun. Californian accents clash with the high pitched gibberish/clucking language of the aliens bringing about an intense longing for deafness. There’s a hilarious death by immolation that I’m still laughing about, shitty digital effects randomly rear their wonderful head and the surf-rock vibes are provided by the hip sounds of Insect Surfers.
Friday, February 6, 2026
Rigor Mortis (2013) (Hong Kong)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A supernatural shit-storm is unleashed upon a public housing tenement in Hong Kong shortly after a burnt out actor moves in and attempts suicide. Before death can claim him (and some nefarious entity that has been waiting for a prone vessel) a vampire hunter past him prime in boxers and a robe smashes his door down and slices the noose. Yau successfully saves the life of Chin Siu-Ho and exorcises the entity. Now that Chin Siu-Ho has come close to whatever Hell awaits and pierced the veil but lived, he is now privy to the spooky shit residing in the massive apartment complex. And holy fuck is there a bunch of malicious insanity going down. Spectral tenants, hungry vampires and unrestful dead all call the place home and many of them are not content with sticking to the shadows. The death of an elderly man leads to his desperate wife asking for paranormal help from a magic man who lives in the building, a resurrection ritual is performed but rules are not followed thanks to impatience and a whole big can of worms is opened. Yau takes Chin under his wing to help fight the situation spiraling out of control. Unexpected death, expected death, impressive action sequences, fantastic set pieces (those damn twins) and a whole batch of awesome nightmares make the extended runtime fly on by. Cop out ending aside, it’s a wonderful show of love for the classic hopping vampire cinema that turned many a people into fans of HK horror and starring more than a couple folks from the essential Mr. Vampire series, there’s just a whole lot to love when it comes to this bad boy.
A supernatural shit-storm is unleashed upon a public housing tenement in Hong Kong shortly after a burnt out actor moves in and attempts suicide. Before death can claim him (and some nefarious entity that has been waiting for a prone vessel) a vampire hunter past him prime in boxers and a robe smashes his door down and slices the noose. Yau successfully saves the life of Chin Siu-Ho and exorcises the entity. Now that Chin Siu-Ho has come close to whatever Hell awaits and pierced the veil but lived, he is now privy to the spooky shit residing in the massive apartment complex. And holy fuck is there a bunch of malicious insanity going down. Spectral tenants, hungry vampires and unrestful dead all call the place home and many of them are not content with sticking to the shadows. The death of an elderly man leads to his desperate wife asking for paranormal help from a magic man who lives in the building, a resurrection ritual is performed but rules are not followed thanks to impatience and a whole big can of worms is opened. Yau takes Chin under his wing to help fight the situation spiraling out of control. Unexpected death, expected death, impressive action sequences, fantastic set pieces (those damn twins) and a whole batch of awesome nightmares make the extended runtime fly on by. Cop out ending aside, it’s a wonderful show of love for the classic hopping vampire cinema that turned many a people into fans of HK horror and starring more than a couple folks from the essential Mr. Vampire series, there’s just a whole lot to love when it comes to this bad boy.
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