aka The Hallowed/Media Studies
⭐️1/2
The labyrinth of tunnels under a sleepy town hold an incredibly disturbing secret. Three Media Studies students working on their end of the year project put themselves in mortal danger when they dig into the disappearance of a local girl. Raz (taking the annoyingness of found footage cameramen and placing it in-font of the camera), Jess and Charlie start their project with a focus on cyber bullying and their teacher points them in the direction of a runaway by the name of Rosy Clarke who ran off after being cyber bullied. This draws the attention of some strange masked figure who we saw getting up to some violently awful shit in the opening. Charlie receives a message supposedly from the missing girl and the police let her know that it’s from a sick prankster who has been sending the same texts to the family and friends of the missing girl. Allegations of grooming, kidnapping and another missing girl with a similar story have the trio thinking they’re onto something bigger than expected. After further investigating, they end up at an abandoned army barracks hidden away in the middle of the woods. Because dummies are gonna dumb, they make their way inside and run into a couple sinister folks. Shockingly, they make it out of there alive. Unshockingly, they don’t count their blessings and keep on scratching that curiosity itch. It doesn’t end well. Sorry. Spoiler. It’s found footage… you’d have figured that out anyways. It’s not as annoying as some the others of this vintage and every actor seems at least capable but it doesn’t really offer much of anything new. The Tunnel provides better tunnel action (you’d hope so, carrying that title) and there’s a slew from psychological serial killer shaky-cam flicks more worthy of your time… Creep, Poughkeepsie Tapes, Megan is Missing, etc. Hell, bullying was even dealt with in the far more interesting Unfriended. Poor film didn’t even stand a chance… or maybe I watch way too much found footage.
⭐️⭐️1/2
When she was just a little girl, Sarah Hardy witnessed her insane mother commit suicide shortly after her father’s passing. Fifteen years later, the newly married Sarah (Sela Ward) moves back into her mother’s giant waterside estate, The Pines, with her husband Austin. It doesn’t take long for her to start hearing mama’s voice, receiving strange phone calls from the dead woman and experiencing different levels of troubling supernatural tomfoolery. Has her mother come back from beyond the veil to torment the pretty young woman or is there something more grounded in reality and way more sinister afoot? If Morgan Fairchild were hanging around anywhere near my husband, I’d assume there’s some scheming afoot. I don’t care if she’s been my friend since grade school… it’s Morgan Fairchild. Fairchild is a soap star named Lucy and seems to be concerned about her bestie but, again, it’s Morgan Fairchild. Sarah begins to worry she’s going insane like her mother (something she shares with Lucy) and she reaches out to her old friend Alan (who is now a psychiatrist and still has some romantic feelings for the young woman) for some help with the anxiety of history repeating itself… not to mention all the crazy shit she’s experiencing. A miscarriage following an encounter with a knife-wielding (possible) spectral mother pushes things over the edge as depression joins Sarah’s anxiety/insanity dance. She asks for a divorce, worried about what she’ll be putting her husband through. She listens in on a phone call Austin makes and gets a little suspicious he’s up to something. Of course he is and of course Morgan Fairchild is his partner in crime. They want everything she has and they plan on staging her murder to look like a suicide. When Sarah vanishes before they can stage her suicide, a suicide note has them thinking she’s done the job for them. An empty vial of pills found on the beach has everyone thinking she went out just like her mother. We know better and we also know that turnabout is fair play. TV movie thriller isn’t anything new but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. Think an updated episode of Thriller and you’re in the right ballpark. Terrible ending, mind you.
⭐️⭐️1/2
Filmmakers Vera and Kendall Whelpton are asked to come out to a remote hunting lodge in the Georgia wilderness and look into paranormal activity which has plagued it for more than a decade. The owner Dan is desperate for answers as the activity is freaking out customers and spooking him as well. He wants this shit documented and figures some documentarians are the best bet at catching something on camera. The two are joined by paranormal investigator Jon Dougherty who has experience with the house and adds some blind faith in the paranormal so outrageous claims can be made by someone. That’s just ghost hunting so never you mind. There’s noises, phantom footsteps, pseudoscience, personal accounts, a brief history lesson, bugs, dust, a (sigh) psychic medium and all the other usual pieces that make up any ghost hunting show or movie you’ve ever watched. Vera has a personal experience, convincing her the place is haunted and it doesn’t take long at all for Kendall to feel the same way. The psychic claims aliens can help them and they catch shinning lights in the tree line... GASP! It’s a pretty hilarious scene if you’re in the right frame of mind but nobody really seems all that sane and that’s perfectly fine. Everyone is likable; from the southern folks who have been spooked to the filmmakers who may be unprofessionally quick to believe anything and the batshit insane psychic medium who I definitely fell in love with. That gives it a leg up on all those other eye-rollin’ experiments in the silliness that is the field of paranormal investigation. There’s also a scene-stealing kitty cat and I’m good with that.
⭐️1/2
That ridiculous human Steven “Prozak” Shippy and that delightful psychic medium Cindy Kaza combine their fictional professions and investigate a haunting that terrorized a family back in the 70s. Conclusion-jumping and hilarity ensues. In the small farming town of Merrill, Michigan, the Pomeraning family is terrorized by a demonic entity and police reports make their way into the hands of ol’ Shippy. Since he’s from the neighboring town, Ship-Dip decides he should investigate this haunting. He meets up with the two surviving family members, a couple of brothers who remind me of the kind of old-timers I would end up chatting with for a few hours in a dive bar with Hamm’s on tap. They’re my kind of folks. The Shipster goes back to the hell house (I believe he made another film about the place but all these ghost things just keep merging together) with his psychic friend who I’ve seen in various programs, wandering around spooky buildings and receiving messages from dead people who probably (definitely) aren’t there. Kaza thinks there’s a shapeshifting entity on the site which gets Ship-Ship all excited to bring out the pseudo-science tools of the trade. Anyways, the duo decide to reawaken the entity inside the home by setting up pictures and playing the audio recording from ‘75 when all hell supposedly broke loose. The spoopy action consists of blurry orbs, EVPs captured outside that sound like nothing until our investigators tell us what we should be hearing and then even after it’s a bit of a reach, re-enactments which fit the budget, devices going nuts for whatever reason these people really want them to be going nuts for and it’s all mixed with interviews with police officers, interviews with extended family, interviews with one of the original paranormal investigators, a story about a hair-eating witch-neighbor being up to no good (now that I’m saying that, I think this was definitely something I’ve seen before), an audio recording of spontaneous combustion (sadly, not of the human variety) from ‘75 and a whole lotta talkin’. The Ship-man resembles Uncle Fester wearing a disguise to blend in at a New York cop convention and it’s hard to take him serious… at least not as serious as he takes himself. Be ready for plenty of narration from Shippy Longstocking as he does the research and shares it with us in great detail. One of the re-enactments involves an attack by the most vicious of household predators… the pillow. It’s from the Shock Docs series which is unquestionably a series but can only be charitably labeled as shocking and loosely called a documentary.
aka Cry Demon/House of Evil
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A psychologist (Richard Crenna, looking great with a beard) and his doctor wife (smoke-show Joanna Pettet) purchase a dilapidated but beautiful old mansion to refurbish and open up as a clinic. They have their friends and associates come out to help them fix the place up (among them one of my favorite genre actors Andrew Prine) and, of course, all of their lives are on the line thanks to something old and very evil already calling the place home. Once Crenna opens up a hidden cellar buried under loose earth in the basement, the group starts dying and they get trapped in the building. The opening supernatural murder of the drunk and spooked caretaker lets us know that this house ain’t fucking around. During the initial walkthrough, where we get some history of the place, Dr. Carol believes she sees a ghost wandering around. Some of the ceiling falls and the landlord lets them know that there’s a few folks in the town who would like the place left abandoned because tearing it down is impossible with its historical landmark status. They buy it at a steal and get to work. Carol keeps thinking she’s seeing things (an excellent moving statue bit use to scare the hell out of me) and it doesn’t take long for fatal “accidents” to begin chipping away at the cast. There’s a malignant presence in the basement and as much as Mr. Crenna dismisses his wife’s claims of a paranormal force at work, eventually he’s going to come face to face with something his scientific brain can barely comprehend. I have a soft spot for this film thanks to those video store days of picking out random rentals and just hoping for the best. Cheesy special effects only endear it to me more and ya can’t beat Victor Buono having a blast in the last act reveal of the Devil himself.
aka Raiga: The Monster from the Deep Sea
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Global warming disrupts the Earth’s ecosystem, unleashing various prehistoric monstrosities from their watery slumber. As would be expected, Japan is a prime target for these colossal creatures, led by the electrically-charged super-beast Raiga. The Deep Sea Marine Life Research Center has their hands on one of the so-called “Devil Fish” popping up in the Sea of Japan and it’s not as dead as believed. The scientist studying the prehistoric monster finds this out the hard way. Along with the murder, an exploded boat and a submarine’s encounter with a ginormous beast has the Taito Defense Force getting antsy. While the main narrative is going down we also meet a widower and his three daughters who are constantly making sure he stays loyal to their mother’s memory using their… super powers? It’ll be important later… maybe. Anyways, back to the plot. Under the tactical command of eye-patched Kito, the small and drunk-filled town of Asakusa is turned into a battleground once evacuated. The beast puts up a fight but eventually the might of the Japanese Air Force puts a stop to the terrifying tomfoolery. Months pass and things go pretty much back to normal. The widower is illegally selling commemorative monster merchandise along with his daughters and the Town Planning Committee is getting ready for their annual festival. The relative calm is disrupted when those nasty “Devil Fish” pop back up, jumping out of the river and chowing down on some poor locals. Raiga soon follows. The military hits back but this time it looks like that big-old sea reptile ain’t backing down. The film zips along, never shying away from rubbery monster loveliness (fuck, there’s a monster clash during the god damn opening credits) and sprinkled with humor (a couple white guys mistaking Raiga for Godzilla had me laughing way too hard) and bizarre characters doing things just slightly off enough to make them interesting. Oh, and it ends with a monster marking his territory and wandering back into the sea. Standup routines, people acting like idiots, a callback to Reigo (filling out some time with footage from that lovely flick), green screen hijinks, the head-scratchingly odd subplot with the three daughters which involves hefty appetites, pop star idol dreams and super powers keep things off. Another low-budget kaiju winner from Shinpei Hayashiya.
aka Lord of the Living Dead
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Hey there, Olaf Ittenbach… it’s been awhile. I wonder if you’ve changed… no? Well, I guess there’s something positive to say for predictability. Historical epics and horror don’t often mix well and normal-minded folks probably wouldn’t even try it but we’re sitting down with Mr. Ittenbach and there is nothing normal here. Premutos is the first of the fallen angels (so you just go and eat a dick, Lucifer) and his main goal is to rule over the world and all its denizens both living and dead. Throughout history his son had cleared the way for him and is recognized as a monster, although he’s just kind of a well-meaning dope in over his head. In present-day Germany, a young man is having flashbacks to his past lives as the son of Premutos. We get a lot of this through narration and various acts of graphic violence play out on the screen and we also learn of some outcast in the 1940s attempting to use witchcraft to bring his deceased wife back to life. He buries something and even though he has only a portion of the recipe for whatever dark potion he’s working on, he moves forward anyways. It kind of works but seconds after she gets back up, she tears her face off and explodes. It’s at this time the locals come to slaughter him but a couple get taken out by a ridiculous pickaxe accident and a reanimated skeleton before finally gunning down the poor bastard. They then burn the shack down but because they’re idiots, they also set fire to the mayor’s son (the mayor was the idiot who got a pickaxe to the noggin)… oops. We’re not even fifteen minutes in. We finally jump to the present and join klutzy Olaf Ittenbach (not looking all that different than he did in Black Past) as he goes about his day. Ittenbach’s papa (not Premutos, his human papa) is celebrating his birthday by doing some planting and he happens to dig up that crate we saw the outcast bury in the opening of the flick. Inside this crate is a strange old book and some kind of yellow potion. Ittenbach goes to play some football and gets his penis injured while playing goalie. I mention this, because after he arrives home he struggles with the pain of his injured manhood and accidentally spills the yellow potion on himself. They never mention this scenario when talking about the importance of genital protection during athletic endeavors. Of course, he transforms into a mutated monster and brings an army of the undead with him which is bad news for the small gathering at the family home for papa’s birthday. The horrific violence is edged out by some hilarious line-reading and acting (at least, in the English dub which I was advised was way more enjoyable) and some ridiculous comedy that either works or fails so hard that it somehow works more than it should. It’s inspired insanity from a man who would be considered dangerous if he wasn’t laughing at himself as he lets his splatter love play out in front of the camera like Bruno Mattei if he were a German forest sprite. Now, there is a bunch going on but it’s still way too long and spends plenty of time with characters we just don’t give two shits about and even though the wet action is prevalent, it’s still awkwardly paced and just a bit too stilted to be called thrilling. Even with that working against it, the enthusiasm is so thick you can taste it so it’s much easier to forgive. I guess what I’m saying is; it’s just as good and exhausting as every other Olaf Ittenbach flick you’ve seen… so sometimes predictability is just what ya needed.
