⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Obnoxious influencers join forces and journey to the abandoned stomping grounds of a satanic cult. The place is called Devil’s Manor and the history there is a violent one. Spicy Steve specializes in supposedly haunted and abandoned buildings. Chad Ryan is one of those extremely annoying prank specialists who just suck at life and really need to get punched. He recently pranked Spicy Steve during a ghost hunt which led to embarrassment of the pants-pissing variety. Going along with Chad and Steve is the makeup tutorial couple of Spennifer… that’s Spencer and Jennifer. There’s also the Benson Brothers who are currently in the middle of a prank war with Chad Ryan. They haven’t been invited along by Steve but they may not be passing up the opportunity to get one over on Chadpion. Can’t say I blame them. So, this group of dopes are chasing them views and Spicy Steve seems like he may be a little off his game thanks to Chad getting one over on him. The whole cast is really good at turning the irritation up a few notches and playing some truly convincing social media “celebrities”. If they failed there, this movie would have broken both its ankles before even starting the race. So, I don’t often congratulate folks on being annoying as all hell but kudos to this group. We spend some time with the quartet doing whatever the hell it is they do before finally arriving at the Louisiana plantation which housed a cult formed by a man with a penchant for axe murdering. It’s not known what happened to the cult but the house still stands and the legend makes for some interesting fodder to get that viewer engagement going. Shades of Logan Paul in Japan plays out when a hanging corpse is found in the attic and the increasing views inspire dumber and dumber decisions. Spennifer want out after the desecration of the corpse and grab the car keys before making their exit. Blowback from viewers gets Steve regretting his action and Chad decides to start his own livestream, keeping things sleazy. Steve goes back for his hat and the body is gone. Spicy Steve thinks he’s getting his ass pranked again but it doesn’t take all that long for the viewers to see that the shit is about to hit the fan. Spennifer decide to head back to the house when views keep flowing in and they’re called out as being boring. Well, Jennifer wants to jump back in, Spencer just wants to hit up a hotel and call it a day. When it looks like Steve gets attacked, Chad is convinced he’s teamed up with the Bensons. It’s easy to see why they’re all gonna meet the business end of an axe. The movie reaches the usual endpoint about fifty minutes in which leads to a last act that delivers a few comedic beats that had me laughing pretty hard and a expert shift into a slasher flick but from the POV of a social media addict. It’s all well pieced together from various devices and just as idiotic as the videos it’s aping. It’s fun, it’s clever, its humor is dark and there’s some expertly crafted bits of found footage thrills. I dug it, and I did not think I would.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Carl Kolchak turns up in Seattle (as well as his ever-suffering editor/friend Tony Vincenzo) and goes up against a 144-year-old alchemist collecting the blood of women to maintain his immortality. Of course Kolchak proves to be a stick in the craw of the Seattle police department and faces another conspiracy of silence. The reporter’s second outing shows Darren McGavin already wearing the Kolchak character like an expertly tailored suit, Simon Oakland losing his cool and cementing one of my all time favorite love/hate relationships and cute as hell Jo Ann Pflug as a belly dancing undergraduate helping the reporter out when no one else will. The villain is a decaying civil war doctor haunting the Seattle underground and cameos include Al Lewis as a hermit with plenty of ailments, Wally Cox as a helpful records keeper at Kolchak’s new paper, Margaret Hamilton as an anthropology professor/occult expert and John Carradine as Kolchak’s no-nonsense boss. Its premise is similar to the landmark original but seems to be having a bit more fun with everything. A superior sequel to an already excellent original.
aka Kolchak/The Kolchak Papers
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Legendary made for television movie follows Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin who, thanks to this role and his turn as The Old Man in A Christmas Story, is a permanent hero in many a monster kid’s eyes) as he tangoes with the centuries-old vampire Janos Skorzeny in Las Vegas. The dead women drained of blood are a major problem but the bigger issue Carl has to navigate is the conspiracy of silence playing out within the local government and police department. If he can survive the vampire, it seems the higher-ups may just eat him for breakfast. McGavin is a treat as the sarcastic and intrepid reporter who believes the people have the right to know what dangers are out there above all else. His long suffering editor, Tony Vincenzo, is portrayed by Simon Oakland who beautifully plays his character with a stubborn respect for the thorn-in-his-side employee. Their chemistry is fantastic and it’s no wonder Tony followed Carl to Seattle for the next film (The Night Strangler) and then to Chicago for the short-lived but much-loved television series. Recognizable guest stars fill out the cast and the film races on towards its surprisingly downbeat ending. A must!
aka 1974
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A leg up from the start, 8mm film not only plays well with the time of occurrence but adds an extra spike of atmosphere to the found footage shenanigans. Filmmakers, take note. Altair and Manuel are happily married new dog owners with an active social and sex life. Everything seems hunky dory in their new pastoral home as Manuel captures the good times on trusty Super 8. Attitudes change when school teacher Altair grows distant soon after her birthday. This wouldn’t be all that concerning on its own because it happens to everyone, what’s concerning is her new fascination with using black-painted bricks to build a doorway in the couple’s bedroom and basement following intense dreams and hearing voices. Even more concerning is her claims that it’s a sure-fire way of communicating with God, at least that’s what the angels have told her. Grainy news footage opens things up and there’s talk of screams, explosions and four missing people. A journalist tries to get a word from a psychoanalyst hurriedly leaving the home with a box full of super 8 film and the camera that shot it all. The doctor rudely brushes him off and an interview with a farmhand paints a picture of a nice young couple who seemed to be frightened of something. Welp, no question that bad things are coming to everyone. Picnics, puppies, birthday celebrations and bedroom role play paints a healthy picture of two likable young people in love but erratic behavior and odd events has the unease expertly seeping in and dragging things to the inevitable awfulness. Manuel gets his friend involved to help investigate and Altair’s sister and her childhood doctor (the man we saw leaving with the footage in the opening) also eventually get dragged in as the girl acts stranger and stranger. A haunting? A demonic possession? Or something, somehow worse? I won’t tell ya but I will say it’s nice to use the word diabolical and actually mean it. Sinister soundscapes keep the viewer on edge before the more nefarious scares hit and it’s the kind of gradual terror I can really get behind. Even more unsettling is how quickly everything just slips out of control. It’s not often I can overlook some nagging questions whilst sitting through a shaky-cam nightmare but I was so immersed in this one I never once asked “why are they still filming?” or “why did they add music?” and that’s the hallmark of some quality nightmare fuel.
⭐️1/2
Nap-inducing thriller follows a young Australian couple and the three days of slowly increasing terror they experienced after moving away from the city into a secluded orchard surrounded by bushland. Things immediately unsettle when the beloved family cat goes missing and everything goes downhill from there. Strange notes warn the couple to leave, an unstable hunter and his young protégée creep around and someone is definitely watching them. Loosely based on the spooky experience of a New Jersey family and a mysterious note-leaving presence, 3rd Night only comes alive when the cat-costumed sledgehammer-wielding weirdo enters at the climax but it’s far too little too late to drag this boring flick into the realm of watchability.
⭐️⭐️1/2
It’s Polonia time, so get ready for fulfilling flashes of oddness and stupidity running head on with boredom and meandering, all presented with Northeastern United States sensibilities. The Hayden family (Mark Polonia and his loved ones) buy a new home with a disturbing past and something awful in the basement. The disturbing past is a nasty murder and the something awful is a goofy-ass puppet monster with a taste for flesh. The whole town of Whispering Bluffs has a bad wrap; the ground is rumbling, holes are being found in basement walls and locals are getting themselves slaughtered. A local priest fends one of the silly boogers off with a cross and begins to believe there’s a deeper meaning to the appearance of the beasts. His curiosity leads him to discovering the creatures can speak telepathically and have been around since the age of dinosaurs. The night crawlers supposedly destroyed a nearby town a long time ago and the old timers still talk about the underground monsters in whispers. Of course, modern father Mark Polonia doesn’t believe in such bullshit and his family may end up paying the price for his ignorance. The discovery of his boss’s corpse and the murder of his buddy leads our mustachioed hero into the mysterious tunnels and has him crossing paths with that curious priest. Heroics are in order and the destruction of an MS Paint spaceship just may save the day. Polonia flicks from this time always come off like your dad telling a half-remembered campfire story after polishing off a couple cases of Schlitz. They’re kinda lame, sometimes rambling and every so often slip off into an odd aggressiveness. Mark Polonia rocks a windbreaker, still photos set the scene and the monsters look like the unholy offspring of those turd-ants from Things and the whole discount section of a Spirit Halloween store. We all win but we also lose… classic Polonias.
aka Liza/New Demons
⭐️⭐️⭐️
If you have ever wondered what it would have been like if Fulci embraced the SOV style (this film was shot on 35mm film but it has always given me that shot-on-video vibe) look no further then this unjustly maligned anti-classic from the man himself. The ghosts of Devil-worshipping nuns, murdered by concerned villagers, wreak havoc on a group of archaeologists excavating their final resting place. The amazingly dull Liza seems to have a psychic connection to the malignant forces and the locals are terrified of what may be unleashed by the disturbing of the cursed grounds. Team members and villagers begin dropping like flies and the professor leading the expedition becomes a prime suspect as gory death follows gory death. Al Cliver’s beautiful bearded face makes an appearance along with Lino Salemme’s beautiful un-bearded face, Fulci shows up as the lead inspector, there is plentiful blue light, inane dialogue, death by cat, death by harpoon, eyeball violence, torch-carrying villagers and a young boy not only witnesses his father being split down the middle but kind of causes it. The effects are cheap, the characters are forgettable but I’ll be damned if I don’t champion this stupid little gem. Comes nowhere near to touching Fulci at his best but this, along with his head-slappingly inept Aenigma, make for an idiotic good time.
