aka Massacre/Death House
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Memorial Day weekend leaves a large sorority house near empty except for four lovable young ladies and their boyfriends. The building was the site of a horrible murder in which a young man slaughtered his entire family except for one young girl fourteen years earlier. Said psychopath has just escaped from the asylum where he’s been housed for more than a decade and he’s heading home. Beth (one of those lovely ladies) shares a telepathic link with the psycho and tries piecing together the strange visions and nightmares before her and all her friends end up deceased. It’s a minor slasher flick which rises above boredom thanks to an extremely likable cast. The telepathy angle is interesting but everything else feels a little too well-worn. The cast saves the movie but that’s not enough to bring on repeat viewings.
aka Dark Silence
⭐️
Following the tragic passing of his wife, Craig (looking like a Temu CM Punk) and his mute daughter move into a new home to escape the traumatic memories that have turned him into a depressed daddy and his girl into a silent Susan. A new start is hindered when it appears that there is something awful in the home and it has set its malevolent sights on the little lady of the house. Professionals tell the father that it’s just a manifestation of her grief and the terrible trauma she has undergone concerning the suicide of her mother but we know that their is definitely some creepy entity sticking to the shadows. Craig has strange dreams where he somehow fails at walking convincingly and wanders around the woods topless as some “spooky” voice makes threats, cryptic advice is spewed out and his daughter is claimed by the thing she’s been drawing in all her pictures. Dad’s frustration makes him act like an asshole and the poor mute girl just has to look on as he makes a fool of himself. Nightmare conversations with his dead wife, nightmare conversations with his bitchy sister, nightmare conversations with the nightmare entity and nightmare runtime in which all of this can play out. Drama handled by humans who should not be anywhere near dramatics have everyone sounding like they just learned what emotions are and may not exactly be comfortable with the kind of speech found on planet Earth. The boogeyman looks like a broke Full Moon fan cosplaying the bundled up form of the goon from Castle Freak. There’s a couple laughs because it comes off like a theatrical interpretation of The Babadook put on by the teenage residents of a head trauma ward who have never seen the movie and have only been told what the film represents.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
A unibrowed Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Mirakle. He has a sideshow act where he rambles on about evolution with his visual aid/partner Erik the Gorilla (a chimpanzee in some scenes and a man in an ape costume in others). To prove his theory about the kinship between man and ape, Lugosi has been abducting young women and attempting to mix their blood with that of his loyal simian. The experiments have been a failure and the corpses of young ladies are dumped like yesterday’s garbage. A med student is slowly figuring out what’s going on and his girlfriend has caught the eye of Lugosi and his monkey. Lugosi is fun as hell playing the mad scientist and there’s some intense (for the time) fetishized violence on display. There’s a bit of rambling but nothing too offensive.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I know it’s been almost fifty years but if you haven’t seen this one, I recommend watching it before reading on because I spoil the hell out of things and this is one to go in blind on. A young art restorer by the name of Stefano is hired on by the mayor of a quiet village to restore a fresco concerning the suffering of St. Sebastian in the local church. The painting was done by a mentally disturbed painter, Buono Legnani, who was known as “The Painter of Agony” for his work focused on people near death and/or in great pain. Stefano was recommended by his friend Dr. Antonio Mazza who has been looking into the mysterious life and death of Legnani. Supposedly dead for twenty years, no body has ever been found. The artist was also suspected of several murders, perpetrated in a disquieting, dilapidated house with those laughing mouths painted over the windows. Stefano gets to work, even as unfriendly locals warn him against finishing the painting, and Antonio learns some disturbing information that a sudden case of murder prevents him from sharing with his friend. The police are happy to call the doctor’s passing a suicide and Stefano begins looking into the subject his friend was fascinated by. Stefano and a newly arrived teacher, Francesca (gorgeous Francesca Marciano who manages the rare ability to look good in grannie panties), begin to see each other and Stefano befriends a local mentally challenged creep who works at the church named Lidio. This becomes fortuitous when he’s evicted from his hotel and is invited to stay with Lidio and the elderly paraplegic woman he seemingly mentally tortures at an isolated house, hidden away from the rest of the village. The very house was owned by the artist’s sisters who were suspected of aiding him in torturing and killing subjects for his work. So, not fortuitous at all actually. The audio recording he finds in the cellar points in the direction that he really should be afraid of where the hell he has ended up. When the fresco is destroyed with acid, he decides it’s time to get the fuck out of the place and he plans on taking Francesca with him (not forcefully or anything, she wants out). Those plans are put on the back burner when an obviously troubled taxi driver fills him in on some key secrets about the town’s fabled artist and Stefano’s planned exit looks to be too little too late. Deeply unsettling somewhat-folk-horror/giallo/gothic hybrid from the under-appreciated Pupi Avati is hard to forget once it worms its way under your skin. The same way Avati’s interesting take on undead cinema, Zeder, remains hard to shake thanks to the intriguing directions traveled off in to. I mean, what Italian filmmaker makes a zombie movie that ain’t really about zombies in the early eighties? They both carry the same sinister atmosphere but the denouement in this one makes it just a bit more fulfilling. A near masterpiece that may be a bit too slow-going for some and definitely lacks the violent set pieces of the subgenre but that’s purposeful for the ending to hit as hard as it does.
aka House on Terror Tract/Terror House
⭐️⭐️1/2
Realtor John Ritter shows newlyweds a few houses, hoping to get an offer before a 5 PM deadline. At each house he discloses what happened to the previous occupants and it ain’t pretty. In Nightmare a cheating wife and her lover murder her insane husband in self defense after he catches them getting funky with the sexy times. Instead of explaining this to the police, the dude decides to sink the body in the middle of a lake. The woman begins having nightmares of her waterlogged ex coming back for revenge. The dead man’s police officer buddy begins to suspect something is up. Anxiety grows and a set of car keys drowned along with the hubby may spell doom for the unfaithful couple. The next house brings us the story Bobo, which features Bryan Cranston going up against a tiny organ grinder’s monkey that his annoying little shit of a daughter has adopted. Turns out the monkey has a bit of a homicidal streak. American Male himself Buff Bagwell shows up as animal wrangler. The final story is Come to Granny and has an either psychic or psychotic Will Estes talking to a shrink without an appointment and claiming to have visions of the murders the granny-masked killer terrorizing the area is committing. The shrink begins to believe he may not be having premonitions but may be responsible and when he claims he saw her murder fast approaching, she has to decide how to get out of the dangerous situation. There’s a bit of fun and a nice streak of black humor but no story really knocks it out of the park. The second tale is almost completely sunk by the highly slappable child. It’s like HBO’s Tales from the Crypt but instead of a cackling Cryptkeeper you get a wonderful and bearded John Ritter. That’s got to be worth something. Right?
aka The Under Water City/The Swinging Monster/The Night the Screaming Stopped/When the Screaming Stops
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Interesting bit of folkloric horror is filled with beautiful women and cheap gore, yet somehow comes off as a bit dull. Still, it beats a shit-ton of other monster movies and there are some grand times to be had. A cloaked reptile monster is causing problems in a quiet German village. Young women are getting their hearts ripped out and others are getting clawed to high hell. A sexy professor at an all girl school goes to the mayor demanding protection. Enter a hunky hunter with a whole bunch of swagger and the skills that killz. The hunter ends up stumbling across the monster in her human guise as a beautiful woman by the name of Lorelei. Of course they fall in love but as most monster and human relationships go... there’s only tragedy in their future. An under water grotto serves as the beautiful monster’s lair where she guards a treasure and various violent ends come to a bunch of innocent people who could have been saved if the hunter hero was doing his damn job. Acid-eroded faces, blind violinists and various bikinis all make an appearance.
aka The Sawyer Family Murders
⭐️⭐️⭐️
The footage of a murder-suicide is released by the local sheriff department but it shows something more than a family tragedy at play. The captured video points to the disturbing fact that the shocking events had something to do with the return of a centuries-old evil and the focal point of one of America’s most famous paranormal events. No, even though this is an Asylum release it is not about Amityville. The Sawyer family son gets a camera for his birthday and as the gruesome chest cam footage from a police officer shows us, this is definitely going to be used to capture something horrible. Although it tells us that this takes place six hours earlier and then explains that the camera footage is starting on “Day One”. Oh, Asylum… way to pay attention to detail. The birthday revelries at the Tennessee house get a little wild (that’s how you get topless chicks on camera) and we get introduced to a gaggle of seemingly unlikable people that you can take comfort in knowing are not long for this world. We also get some drunk dope explaining how the property this family has moved into has a troubling history. A neighbor’s strange behavior ends the night and it’s revealed that the couple were found dead on the side of the road soon after. Ah. You win this round Asylum. Looks like I jumped to a conclusion about you. Day two begins as most days do with the older sister doing her fashion vlog and her brother filming her from the closet for a scare prank. The days go on and low-effort paranormal activity begins. “Luckily” Brandon is there to capture everything. Mutilated animals are discovered in the woods, older sister Dana begins having horrible night terrors and a creepy specter shows up in briefly glimpsed flashes. Escalation is the name of the game as the dangerous presence ramps up the activity in the house and more people begin meeting unfortunate fates. Brandon and his buddy figure the historical haunting that may be plaguing his family is probably a good subject for a film so they set up security cameras around his house to capture more footage to go along with his handheld work. Also included are collected bits of video from other sources including the hilarious final footage of an electrician… I don’t think it was supposed to be funny.
A shockingly formidable found footage haunting (considering where it’s from) that features a few decent bits of macabre and uses an American legend as a foundation. I can respect that. I can also respect that they throw a little more depth to their characters which could have easily been one-note awful idiots (they’re high school siblings). It’s still something you have seen multiple times but after seeing so many of these damn things, I am always happy when effort is put in and the filmmakers believe in what they are throwing out into the world.
