⭐️⭐️1/2
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Creature from Black Lake (1976) (USA)
aka Demon of the Lake/Silent Stalker
Two young researchers from the University of Chicago head to the swamps of Louisiana after word of Bigfoot attacks on local fishermen spreads. Despite their professor’s insistence that the North American forest ape has never attacked a human, this southern beast is one violent bastard. We’re introduced to the hairy thing snatching a fisherman off his boat while his buddy (top-billed Jack Elam) flees in fear. The duo of dopes arrive in town and immediately begin to question the citizens. This gets them a warning from the sheriff to forget about any creature and not rile up the townsfolk. They find a younger bumpkin who’s willing to share his encounter with them as long as he gets a ride home. Hit that flashback! His toddler wanders off when the family car breaks down and when his mama goes to grab him the man-beast shows itself. Luckily the family escapes with their lives… briefly. The wrecked wheel forces the car to swerve into a tree and take out the boy’s parents. They drop the man off and once they say there’s a twenty-five dollars reward for any information on the creature, grandpa lightens up and tells them about the bipedal animal roaming the area. Hit the flashback! This time a dog gets tossed and we see grandpa topless. So… win? The Yankees get the boot when they bring up the creature after mistaking the sounds of a mule and they’re forced to sleep in the barn. It’s not a mule that freaks them out that night as something bipedal roars and stalks around the farm. They manage to make it through the night and even catch the shrieks on tape. Undeterred, the dinky duo go out camping that night… even inviting some local hotties to join them. Guess what interrupts their smoochin’. The beast stalks around their tent but the sheriff shows up before anything can happen. Not necessarily a good thing because one of those lovely ladies is his daughter. Oops! The dopes get thrown in the slammer after being smartasses. Jack Elam finally comes back into things when he comes hollering into the police station after being attacked in his swamp shack. He winds up in the drunk tank right next to our heroes and invites the boys to come out by him and hear some stories. They take him up on that offer and he lets them know where to go if they want to find the monster causing so many problems. Finally, the dummies have their own encounter. It’s alright but gets boring in some parts and has an odd reliance on “comedy” that doesn’t always work. The cryptid is pretty cool looking and the Louisiana location shooting helps but it’s still pretty lame. You can just drive past Black Lake and stick to Boggy Creek.
Skinamarink (2022) (USA)
⭐️⭐️
It’s a tale as old as time: kid sleepwalks, kid falls down the stairs and suffers a head injury, kid wakes up to find father missing and access to the outside world has vanished, kid and his sister explore their unsettling home, horrifying entity makes things difficult. Where it differentiates is that the filmmakers decided the best course of action was to frame their scenes like it was photographed by a stoic toddler too focused on a passing butterfly to be bothered to catch much of anything of value. It works to establish a mood and kind of dream logic but it also does nothing to serve as anything more than a curious attempt at filmmaking. It’s an excellent short film stretched out to an ungodly one hundred minutes. Interesting but interesting don’t always equal entertaining. It’s better than a good amount of pompous impressionist horror I’ve seen (admittedly, that’s one hell of a backhanded compliment) but I’ll never watch it again and in the end, when it comes to experimental filmmaking, you have to ask “what was the experiment”? I think here we can answer that it was probably to see how much nothing you could show on screen and still convince critics and viewers they’ve been terrified by tedium. If anybody tells you they loved this movie, never trust them to host a movie night.
Monday, October 12, 2026
Hider in the House (1989) (USA)
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
We’ve all woken up in the dead of night, drenched in sweat and convinced that Gary Busey is in the room. You’re lying if you say you haven’t. Even if it you don’t remember, your lizard brain has envisioned Busey watching you from the shadows. Finally, someone was brave enough to tap into that primal fear and bring it to the screen. Removing Busey from the (I assume) crumbling lighthouse he usually resides in and placing him within the walls of a suburban home. This is horror at its most primeval. Mimi Rogers and Michael McKean… What… Checks notes… yep, wow. Mimi Rogers and Michael McKean move into a new home unaware that a deranged man (I don’t have to tell you who it is) has taken up residence in the attic. Horrific audio of Gary Busey (playing his character’s father) being abusive to his wife and child plays over opening credits and photos of a suburban neighborhood. It ends in murder or fire or something… it’s nothing good. Busey is now the grown child of the abusive parents we heard and he’s got himself a hair trigger and a diminishing bit of control. He wanders around a nice neighborhood and sees a house undergoing construction, bingo-bongo Gary Busey has himself a new home in the attic. Cooped up in a secret room, he spies and obsesses over the family of four as they go about their lives. The curious family dog gets murdered, the little daughter catches Busey wandering the halls at night (years of therapy are in her future), an exterminator is beaten to death for doing his job, McKean ends up being a real prick, a pervy neighbor (scene-stealing Bruce Glover) hangs around and brings a natural level of “icky” ya just can’t fake and Busey becomes a bizarre guardian angel of sorts for the Dreyer family with an emphasis on the lovely Mimi Rogers (don’t blame him there). When papa is out of the picture, thanks to the revelation of his philandering ways, Busey starts envisioning a serine life for himself and his new “family”. Eventually his psychosis takes over which leads to an inability to just play voyeur and this leads to the inevitable tragic consequences. It’s a solid thriller that definitely feels like the TV movie it is but a strong cast keeps it above drowning. It runs a little longer than it should but that Busey sure can play crazy on the edge of boiling over into homicidal.
We’ve all woken up in the dead of night, drenched in sweat and convinced that Gary Busey is in the room. You’re lying if you say you haven’t. Even if it you don’t remember, your lizard brain has envisioned Busey watching you from the shadows. Finally, someone was brave enough to tap into that primal fear and bring it to the screen. Removing Busey from the (I assume) crumbling lighthouse he usually resides in and placing him within the walls of a suburban home. This is horror at its most primeval. Mimi Rogers and Michael McKean… What… Checks notes… yep, wow. Mimi Rogers and Michael McKean move into a new home unaware that a deranged man (I don’t have to tell you who it is) has taken up residence in the attic. Horrific audio of Gary Busey (playing his character’s father) being abusive to his wife and child plays over opening credits and photos of a suburban neighborhood. It ends in murder or fire or something… it’s nothing good. Busey is now the grown child of the abusive parents we heard and he’s got himself a hair trigger and a diminishing bit of control. He wanders around a nice neighborhood and sees a house undergoing construction, bingo-bongo Gary Busey has himself a new home in the attic. Cooped up in a secret room, he spies and obsesses over the family of four as they go about their lives. The curious family dog gets murdered, the little daughter catches Busey wandering the halls at night (years of therapy are in her future), an exterminator is beaten to death for doing his job, McKean ends up being a real prick, a pervy neighbor (scene-stealing Bruce Glover) hangs around and brings a natural level of “icky” ya just can’t fake and Busey becomes a bizarre guardian angel of sorts for the Dreyer family with an emphasis on the lovely Mimi Rogers (don’t blame him there). When papa is out of the picture, thanks to the revelation of his philandering ways, Busey starts envisioning a serine life for himself and his new “family”. Eventually his psychosis takes over which leads to an inability to just play voyeur and this leads to the inevitable tragic consequences. It’s a solid thriller that definitely feels like the TV movie it is but a strong cast keeps it above drowning. It runs a little longer than it should but that Busey sure can play crazy on the edge of boiling over into homicidal.
Scarecrow (2002) (USA)
⭐️1/2
Elderly teenager Lester is the standard-issue weird loner living in a trailer with his momma that gets the wrong kind of attention from his classmates and other local jerks (including a wonderfully terrible history teacher). He befriends the sarcastic daughter of the sheriff but since he is who he is and she is her majesty Tiffany Shepis, she’s smoochin’ far better looking (by comparison) men than the scooter-using creepy dink who looks like he’s already been through two divorces and at least one hip replacement. Well, this upsets Lester when he catches his dream girl locking lips with someone else at a party (she’s drunk and he’s a pud) he’s creeping around, so he runs home (after stopping to abuse a scarecrow and question why he can’t be like the scarecrow) only to find his alcoholic mother getting her bang on with her drunk hookup. Lester’s conniption and interruption is answered by the mustachioed drunk chasing him into the nearby cornfield and strangling him under the watchful and dead eyes of the scarecrow perched there. The murdering asshole makes it look like Lester finally did the expected thing and killed himself but, of course, Lester’s soul has transferred into the scarecrow and now this ugly bastard is hellbent on revenge. As a scarecrow, Lester now has acrobatic skills and lazy one liners that an Indonesian Freddy Krueger knockoff would probably toss into the waste bin. Idiots and assholes wander out to the cornfield and die by the scythe of the wise-ass scarecrow or the scarecrow flips his ass out into town to murder dopes with *checks notes* an ear of corn to the ear, a metal pointer to the skull, a frying pan to the noggin and a face to a grill among other unimpressive techniques. I don’t know if any film in the history of cinema has ever had me siding with the bullies but Scarecrow crafts such an unlikable outcast that it’s hard to root for him at any point before he becomes a homicidal scarecrow. It’s impressive in the worst way possible. The dude even sketches in an unappealing manner… I don’t know if I’ve seen that before. The character pool is tainted with unlikable idiots and the story drowns in humor that I don’t think even it finds funny but insists on cramming down the viewer’s throat. As you know, I happily kneel at the alter of Shepis (and there is nowhere near enough of her in this) and a lame-ass kill-happy acrobatic scarecrow is still a kill-happy acrobatic scarecrow so it was by no means a waste of my time… but please do not take that as a recommendation, I just have very low standards.
Elderly teenager Lester is the standard-issue weird loner living in a trailer with his momma that gets the wrong kind of attention from his classmates and other local jerks (including a wonderfully terrible history teacher). He befriends the sarcastic daughter of the sheriff but since he is who he is and she is her majesty Tiffany Shepis, she’s smoochin’ far better looking (by comparison) men than the scooter-using creepy dink who looks like he’s already been through two divorces and at least one hip replacement. Well, this upsets Lester when he catches his dream girl locking lips with someone else at a party (she’s drunk and he’s a pud) he’s creeping around, so he runs home (after stopping to abuse a scarecrow and question why he can’t be like the scarecrow) only to find his alcoholic mother getting her bang on with her drunk hookup. Lester’s conniption and interruption is answered by the mustachioed drunk chasing him into the nearby cornfield and strangling him under the watchful and dead eyes of the scarecrow perched there. The murdering asshole makes it look like Lester finally did the expected thing and killed himself but, of course, Lester’s soul has transferred into the scarecrow and now this ugly bastard is hellbent on revenge. As a scarecrow, Lester now has acrobatic skills and lazy one liners that an Indonesian Freddy Krueger knockoff would probably toss into the waste bin. Idiots and assholes wander out to the cornfield and die by the scythe of the wise-ass scarecrow or the scarecrow flips his ass out into town to murder dopes with *checks notes* an ear of corn to the ear, a metal pointer to the skull, a frying pan to the noggin and a face to a grill among other unimpressive techniques. I don’t know if any film in the history of cinema has ever had me siding with the bullies but Scarecrow crafts such an unlikable outcast that it’s hard to root for him at any point before he becomes a homicidal scarecrow. It’s impressive in the worst way possible. The dude even sketches in an unappealing manner… I don’t know if I’ve seen that before. The character pool is tainted with unlikable idiots and the story drowns in humor that I don’t think even it finds funny but insists on cramming down the viewer’s throat. As you know, I happily kneel at the alter of Shepis (and there is nowhere near enough of her in this) and a lame-ass kill-happy acrobatic scarecrow is still a kill-happy acrobatic scarecrow so it was by no means a waste of my time… but please do not take that as a recommendation, I just have very low standards.
Monster Hunter (2020) (Germany/USA/Japan/South Africa)
⭐️⭐️⭐️
There’s another world beyond ours and Army captain Milla Jovovich plays a badass who gets transported to the monster-plagued reality with her loyal team after running through some weird-ass electrical storm while searching for a group of missing soldiers. It doesn’t take long for them to court trouble from the colossal creatures that call this other world home. Luckily (well, for Milla at least) they come across a monster hunting Tony Jaa and he’s pretty damn good at his job. Her crew doesn’t fare so well (most of em get taken out by crab-spider-scorpion things) but after a rough (and violent) start, she teams with the monster hunter to get some shit done and get her ass home. Do you wanna watch Milla Jovovich fight dragons? I sure as fuck do. Nothing special but it has monsters and Milla Jovovich. Oh and Ron Perlman is there too... that’s a win in my book. There’s also desert pirates (I think. I mean, they have a pirate ship that rides the dunes) and there’s a cat creature that serves as a cook. I don’t play video games so I had no frame of reference to piss and moan about.
Sharkenstein (2016) (USA)
⭐️⭐️⭐️
I love you, Mark Polonia. I just thought I should get that out in the open before we get down to things. My heart hearts your heart. I can’t quit you. Ok. Now that it’s been said…. The legend of Frankenstein’s monster has traveled through the ages, striking fear in the hearts of mankind. The creature’s heart and brain are indestructible and just keep popping the fuck up to cause further terror. In the winter of 1942 some historically inaccurate Ratzis show up at a lab working with those evil organs and put an end to their experimentations, grabbing the raw organic material and scooting. We know it’s the past because it’s all in black and white. The effects range from digital goofiness to a toy submarine and I’m alright with this. The credits role and modern times come with ‘em… IN COLOR! We end up in the lovely beach town of Katzman Cove and watch as some harbor patrol dude, who looks like he knows his Van Halen, by the name of Duke asks about some missing boaters and does a sweep of the area. Following some fish-eye POV we get a glimpse of the wonderfully silly Frankenfish… looking like he’s all sewn together from different bits. He jumps up on the beach and eats some poor girl just having a little morning stroll. A trio of friends ranging between the ages of 30 and 50, who I believe are playing mid-twenties (I’m basing this completely on how the two male dopes are wearing their baseball caps… the oldest one sporting it to the side like he just discovered 90’s rap from white people) are heading out to the cove to rent a boat (captained by that Earth angel Mark Polonia) and hit the waters. Frankenshark attacks another random idjit, leaving only his feet as it jumps out of the water and snatches all but what’s below the ankles from the fisherman just enjoying his day on the dock. Where does an apex predator like Frankenshark come from? I’m glad you asked. There’s a mad scientist named Klaus who is carrying on the Ratzi dream of super weaponry and is in control of the patchwork shark stalking the waters. Klaus also has his Ratzi hands on the heart and brain of Frankenstein’s monster, which he plans on putting in the body of that delightful shark! Such horrors await! The three friends swim to a nearby island after the boat dies (heading back to shore following a warning from Duke) and stumble across the Ratzi’s lab and his ramshackle crap-shack. They discover the monster shark and the dollar-store-Bud-Cort-meets-Brent-Spiner-in-Independence-Day-lookin’ Nazi and get the world domination exposition from the creepy racist. Experiments go wrong and people get eaten. In between the blissful garbage entertainment there’s a montage of boat tomfoolery, the shock of watching Mark Polonia slowly transform into Vince Gilligan, a pathetic gathering of angry villagers, aging pornstar Bonnie Boom Boom, a brief history of Frankenstein films delivered by our cute heroine, underwater footage that I have a sneaking suspicion was sourced from somewhere else and dialogue delivered with all the excitement of a lazy handjob from a significant other who already broke up with you in their head a few weeks ago. There is good Polonia (those golden days before we lost John and the insane brothers fed off each other like demented genre cannibals with creep-staches), bad Polonia (mainly the stuff that felt like Mark had some bills to pay after the sudden and tragic loss of John and clearly his heart wasn’t in it) and then this kind of Polonia, which may lack enthusiasm but is not without its charms and at least feels like people were having some fun… and in this one the shark transforms into a bipedal nightmare as silly lookin’ as it is cute.
I love you, Mark Polonia. I just thought I should get that out in the open before we get down to things. My heart hearts your heart. I can’t quit you. Ok. Now that it’s been said…. The legend of Frankenstein’s monster has traveled through the ages, striking fear in the hearts of mankind. The creature’s heart and brain are indestructible and just keep popping the fuck up to cause further terror. In the winter of 1942 some historically inaccurate Ratzis show up at a lab working with those evil organs and put an end to their experimentations, grabbing the raw organic material and scooting. We know it’s the past because it’s all in black and white. The effects range from digital goofiness to a toy submarine and I’m alright with this. The credits role and modern times come with ‘em… IN COLOR! We end up in the lovely beach town of Katzman Cove and watch as some harbor patrol dude, who looks like he knows his Van Halen, by the name of Duke asks about some missing boaters and does a sweep of the area. Following some fish-eye POV we get a glimpse of the wonderfully silly Frankenfish… looking like he’s all sewn together from different bits. He jumps up on the beach and eats some poor girl just having a little morning stroll. A trio of friends ranging between the ages of 30 and 50, who I believe are playing mid-twenties (I’m basing this completely on how the two male dopes are wearing their baseball caps… the oldest one sporting it to the side like he just discovered 90’s rap from white people) are heading out to the cove to rent a boat (captained by that Earth angel Mark Polonia) and hit the waters. Frankenshark attacks another random idjit, leaving only his feet as it jumps out of the water and snatches all but what’s below the ankles from the fisherman just enjoying his day on the dock. Where does an apex predator like Frankenshark come from? I’m glad you asked. There’s a mad scientist named Klaus who is carrying on the Ratzi dream of super weaponry and is in control of the patchwork shark stalking the waters. Klaus also has his Ratzi hands on the heart and brain of Frankenstein’s monster, which he plans on putting in the body of that delightful shark! Such horrors await! The three friends swim to a nearby island after the boat dies (heading back to shore following a warning from Duke) and stumble across the Ratzi’s lab and his ramshackle crap-shack. They discover the monster shark and the dollar-store-Bud-Cort-meets-Brent-Spiner-in-Independence-Day-lookin’ Nazi and get the world domination exposition from the creepy racist. Experiments go wrong and people get eaten. In between the blissful garbage entertainment there’s a montage of boat tomfoolery, the shock of watching Mark Polonia slowly transform into Vince Gilligan, a pathetic gathering of angry villagers, aging pornstar Bonnie Boom Boom, a brief history of Frankenstein films delivered by our cute heroine, underwater footage that I have a sneaking suspicion was sourced from somewhere else and dialogue delivered with all the excitement of a lazy handjob from a significant other who already broke up with you in their head a few weeks ago. There is good Polonia (those golden days before we lost John and the insane brothers fed off each other like demented genre cannibals with creep-staches), bad Polonia (mainly the stuff that felt like Mark had some bills to pay after the sudden and tragic loss of John and clearly his heart wasn’t in it) and then this kind of Polonia, which may lack enthusiasm but is not without its charms and at least feels like people were having some fun… and in this one the shark transforms into a bipedal nightmare as silly lookin’ as it is cute.
The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972) (USA/UK)
aka The Curse of the Full Moon
Oh Andy, what the hell have you done? Milligan is back and filming in the UK for a creaky drama about a family of werewolves. Although there’s added rat action thanks to the runtime concerns of his producer William Mishkan. These scenes (inspired by the success of Willard) were all shot in Milligan’s home of Staten Island. Does any of this matter? Not really. I’m sure the same level of brain-draining sludge would be prevalent without Mr. Mishkan’s scuzzy hands over things but here we are. The Mooneys (Damnit, Andy!) call a rural estate in 1900’s England home. The patriarch of the family is a nearly 200-year-old invalid with a serious case of the grumps. Monica is one of his daughters and a sadist with a rat fixation and a hatred for the animalistic youngest son Malcolm. Eldest son Mortimer is a businessman who takes care of the family’s accounting needs and the eldest daughter, Phoebe, takes care of Pa Mooney and runs the house. Everyone yells at each other (I mean, it’s a Milligan film) and Monica relishes in the chaos she causes, especially because Pa refuses to believe she’s rotten to the core. The youngest daughter, Diana, returns home from school with her husband Gerald in tow. Pa disapproves of Diana’s new boy-toy but this may have to do with the family curse and the bloodline’s only chance of breaking it. Father has been doing experiments to fend off the extinction of the Mooney family and he sent Diana off to medical school so she could continue on with the work but her new marital bliss is throwing a wrench in those plans. We haven’t hit the thirty minute mark and all of this has been presented through dialogue… mostly shouted by less than convincing thespians. There’s more talk, we witness animal abuse, Diane reveals she is pregnant, there’s a disfigured (mold-covered?) weirdo who sells Monica rats and rambles on like a talentless understudy given free reign on opening night, action is dropped for a stronger focus on dialogue, Milligan himself shows up as a gunsmith, scenes stretch past the point of reason, there’s more talking and eventually Diane let’s us in on her endgame and the film mercifully ends but we get some more talking before the damn thing finally shuts up. On top of this crap, we get awful family histories, the usual streak of vileness prevalent in the diseased cinema of Mr. Milligan, chicken abuse, mouse abuse and viewer abuse. It all comes off like a play performed so far off of Broadway you just may be in Hell and Andy Milligan is there behind you, his hands on your shoulders, whispering about focusing on the costumes he designed in between telling you every horrible thought you’ve tried to keep secret since high school. The anti-entertainment cinema of Andy Milligan is not for everyone, hell I’m still not completely sure if I enjoy his work or there’s some seed of dysfunction the man has planted in my head through his output, but in between the god-awful rat attacks and shoddy lycanthropy I think my brain lost all oxygen drowning in endless chatter. It’s garbage but it’s garbage unlike anything you can find in a dumpster in this realm of existence.
⭐️⭐️
Oh Andy, what the hell have you done? Milligan is back and filming in the UK for a creaky drama about a family of werewolves. Although there’s added rat action thanks to the runtime concerns of his producer William Mishkan. These scenes (inspired by the success of Willard) were all shot in Milligan’s home of Staten Island. Does any of this matter? Not really. I’m sure the same level of brain-draining sludge would be prevalent without Mr. Mishkan’s scuzzy hands over things but here we are. The Mooneys (Damnit, Andy!) call a rural estate in 1900’s England home. The patriarch of the family is a nearly 200-year-old invalid with a serious case of the grumps. Monica is one of his daughters and a sadist with a rat fixation and a hatred for the animalistic youngest son Malcolm. Eldest son Mortimer is a businessman who takes care of the family’s accounting needs and the eldest daughter, Phoebe, takes care of Pa Mooney and runs the house. Everyone yells at each other (I mean, it’s a Milligan film) and Monica relishes in the chaos she causes, especially because Pa refuses to believe she’s rotten to the core. The youngest daughter, Diana, returns home from school with her husband Gerald in tow. Pa disapproves of Diana’s new boy-toy but this may have to do with the family curse and the bloodline’s only chance of breaking it. Father has been doing experiments to fend off the extinction of the Mooney family and he sent Diana off to medical school so she could continue on with the work but her new marital bliss is throwing a wrench in those plans. We haven’t hit the thirty minute mark and all of this has been presented through dialogue… mostly shouted by less than convincing thespians. There’s more talk, we witness animal abuse, Diane reveals she is pregnant, there’s a disfigured (mold-covered?) weirdo who sells Monica rats and rambles on like a talentless understudy given free reign on opening night, action is dropped for a stronger focus on dialogue, Milligan himself shows up as a gunsmith, scenes stretch past the point of reason, there’s more talking and eventually Diane let’s us in on her endgame and the film mercifully ends but we get some more talking before the damn thing finally shuts up. On top of this crap, we get awful family histories, the usual streak of vileness prevalent in the diseased cinema of Mr. Milligan, chicken abuse, mouse abuse and viewer abuse. It all comes off like a play performed so far off of Broadway you just may be in Hell and Andy Milligan is there behind you, his hands on your shoulders, whispering about focusing on the costumes he designed in between telling you every horrible thought you’ve tried to keep secret since high school. The anti-entertainment cinema of Andy Milligan is not for everyone, hell I’m still not completely sure if I enjoy his work or there’s some seed of dysfunction the man has planted in my head through his output, but in between the god-awful rat attacks and shoddy lycanthropy I think my brain lost all oxygen drowning in endless chatter. It’s garbage but it’s garbage unlike anything you can find in a dumpster in this realm of existence.
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