⭐️⭐️1/2
A mustachioed ass-kicker heads to the Boreos jungles after his uncle’s private jet goes missing in the area. Immediately after arriving, he comes across a gang of zombie-like creatures and discovers a curse has overtaken the area. Our hero gets himself in the middle of a power struggle between a beautiful and noble high priestess of the local snake-worshipping tribe and the crooked sleazy high priest Abdullah, who wants her gone so he can further exploit his powers. Our hero and the high priestess naturally fall for each other but when he is forced to return home she places a curse on his lips so if he sleeps with any other woman, that woman will die immediately after. Of course, this doesn’t stop our philandering friend from getting his dick wet and getting lovely young ladies killed. He returns to the jungle to be with his true love and end the tyranny of Abdullah but by this point the audio on my copy went wonky so outside of the magic battle, I’m not sure what went down. There’s multiple scenes of frolicking, plenty of beautiful (and naked) women and even a handful of Kung-Fu battles. Another oddity from the wonderful Philippines that sadly drags for a good portion of the film.
⭐️1/2
A closed off dorm building has been this way for a decade following a tragic fire which claimed the life of a teacher. Said teacher succumbed to the fatal mix of flowing sheets and candles whilst posing for her artist lover who was not present because he journeyed out to pick a flower for her. It’s as melodramatic and dumb as it sounds. The place is supposedly haunted nowadays, but more disturbingly it seems to be the last known location of a now missing student. The rural school has just let out for holiday and this young lady has vanished into thin air. We watch as she follows a spooky voice moaning “save me” to the spooky side of the school. Her concerned friends find her hairpin by the forbidden part of their school. They don’t buy into the ridiculously scarred night watchman’s tales of supernatural shenanigans thanks to the crispy dead teacher but when a woman in a white robe with a partially charred face begins attacking, they come to realize they have waded out into unknown waters. Feeling and shot like a low budget teen soap opera based around a lazy ghost story and structured up by a lazy plot, this Chinese outing doesn’t offer much to indulge in outside of some laughable dramatics and low-effort scares. Cheesy, daft and moderately annoying. Luckily this thing doesn’t mind showing its ghost as much as it can, so it doesn’t get sunk by boredom the whole way through when it really should have been. It’s still boring but at least I smiled when the ghost was floating around and was laughing when it tried really hard to tug at the heartstrings but fumbled anything close to eliciting an emotional rise out of me. Nightmare fake outs, cranky cripples, attractive dopes, piano muzak, angsty dialogue, repetitive name shouting and a twenty minute story dragged out to ninety place this bad boy in the rambling end of supernatural horror but at least its ineptness allows for a few giggles and the dumb as fuck reveal is hilarious. Still, spend your time doing something else.
aka Marble Hornets/The Operator/Marble Hornets: The Operator/Always Watching
⭐️⭐️⭐️
This film follows along the thread previously tugged by the impressive web series Marble Hornets but never really lead to anything else. I consider that a shame as I look back fondly on the YouTube original. As my hero Horace Slughorn would say, “That’s life, I suppose.” A small town news crew comes across a box of discarded video tapes in a locked closet while they’re following around a crew of people who inspect repossessed houses. They soon realize that a fascinating story just fell into their laps after taking the tapes back to the studio and discovering the family who owned the house were not kicked out by the bank, but fled in terror, leaving behind everything and apparently not telling anyone where they were going. They dig deep and uncover the tragic spiral that the family fell down after the death of a child. They also attract the unwanted attention of a tall, faceless entity in a suit called The Operator (the magical Doug Jones) who is into some sinister things well outside the realm of human knowledge. That’s not to say you won’t end up with a case of “the deaths” just the same. Especially since this faceless nightmare has a knack for controlling the actions of humans it infects. Christopher Rodriguez Marquette is the cameraman Milo who is documenting everything and being creepy as he follows around journalist Sara (not just for work) and new producer Charlie. Milo has some mental issues of his own (if the stalking didn’t tip you off) and begins to obsess over the footage of someone watching the family in the background and the paranormal horror they came into contact with. He’s not wrong to, he’s the first to be stalked by the faceless thing in a suit. It may be that my deep dives into Marble Hornets and EverymanHYBRID made me appreciate the terror’s of Slenderman a little more than some folks but I always thought this one was a solid enough found footage flick, even if it is pretty predictable. Again, it may just be my interest in the antagonist and the fact that there’s a really good boy in the cast… but he dies, thankfully off camera. There’s also a cute Angus Scrimm cameo.
aka Blizzard of Blood
Whew. Make sure you don’t have a piss test anytime soon because I don’t care how clean and sober you are, you’ll be testing positive for a full-blown cocaine bender after spending a few minutes with this scuzzy late-era slasher flick. Horrible friends gather for the soft opening of a posh ski resort and you better believe they have a shared dead friend in their past. Said corpse is some dork named Jeff with anger management issues who fell to his death from a cliff while using the age-old aphrodisiac of skiing to impress the woman he loved. It’s fueled by alcohol and jealousy and the aforementioned lady love maybe being a tease. I don’t know these people so I don’t know the group dynamics. What I do know is that I have no desire to become familiar with them. So, dumbass Jeff dies and the action proper picks up 4 years later. The reunion starts off pleasant enough but eventually everyone realizes they hate each other and some dude dressed in the ski clothes Jeff was wearing at the time of his death (this allows for some cracked visor POV) starts picking the clan of dinks off. Is Jeff’s specter back looking for vengeance or is someone amongst the gathering of mentally unstable people going on a guilt-born killing spree. Maybe it’s someone else completely? I’ve seen this thing like four times and I’ll be damned if I can remember who’s behind the mask. Fortunately, despite what my awful memory may lead you to believe, it’s never boring because even between the lame deaths, the despicable humans are a treat to watch. It’s pretty lame but kinda memorable. I’ll take it. The original Wednesday Addams is there to show a little skin and sport some hair that I’m not completely convinced isn’t a dead animal. I also have a nagging suspicion that if the #metoo movement dropped a few decades earlier, this would have been one of the more problematic productions.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Goofy and fun splatter comedy starts off with the murder of the leader of an occultist biker club as he summons a demon. The demon inhabits the now dead man’s motorcycle and that motorcycle ends up in the schlubby hands of likable dispatch driver Noddy. Restored and ready to go, the bike sets out to get revenge on the gang (lead by a crossbow-wielding psycho) that killed the man who summoned it. The damn thing runs on blood and feeds on whoever is around. It eventually gets all the folks it wants and sets its headlight on Noddy. He suspects something is up when he finds the tank full of blood and a severed foot in the teeth-like glass of his bike’s headlight. Eventually his girlfriend, a motorbike-riding and cheeky priest and a garlic-breathed detective join the fight. Some belly laughs and plenty of gore fill out the rather long runtime but there’s never a lack of anything interesting going on. The possessed machine eventually sprouts spikes and can fire bolts (one makes its way up the psycho biker’s poop chute) but still fears the cross. It’s a wild time!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Surprisingly vicious comic book movie focuses on one of Batman’s rogues gallery and mixes in some wonderfully dark humor to go along with the graphic violence. It honestly feels like something that would have been unleashed for the 70s drive-in and revered by folks like me nowadays. The story is as simple as it gets, a young Hollywood star, Matt Hagen (somehow not a Skarsgård), Tom Rhys Harries) sleeps with the wrong woman and is hideously disfigured by the sexy young lady’s crime-boss boyfriend and his goons. Of course he’s screwed over by those few close to him and left with no funds and a face that’s sure to avert some eyes. A desperate scientist working with nanotechnology has lost her funding, so when an even more desperate Hagen comes to her willing to undergo procedures nowhere near cleared by any governing body, she takes the risk and gets to work on restoring our guy’s beautiful face. Miraculously, the man’s mug is eventually restored along with his general health… even more miraculously, it appears that any physical violence he experiences is quickly repaired. Dr. Corr is concerned because of the unknown waters they’re wading through, especially when Hagen injects himself with a copious amount of the good doctor’s miracle juice after his face begins falling apart thanks to the rage that goes along with seeing the folks who ruined your life thriving. Along with the healing factor of everyone’s favorite Canadian short prince, Hagen develops the ability to take on the physical appearance of anyone he comes across and can mold his flesh into various dangerous weapons. So, what’s a mentally deteriorating young man with a whole lotta anger inside going to do to quiet that rage? Well, those folks who screwed him are about to find out and Gotham is about to get its first (maybe) super-powered villain. The doctor has a kill switch, her homicide detective fiancé has his suspicions about her new patient but is also dealing with corruption and the dangerous crime boss, there’s a healthy amount of references to early Simpsons seasons and a whole bunch of icky death in everyone’s future. The “bullshit science” at least tries to sound as convincing as it can in what amounts to your standard body-horror/monster-on-the-loose shenanigans and characters on the sidelines are minorly fleshed out but it doesn’t matter because if you’re here for warped justice and the origin of a monster, you’ll be happy as hell with a very different kind of comic “Year One” story. I know some of those brave heroes on social media asked the question “Who the fuck asked for a Clayface movie?” to which I respond “Who hurt you and I may not have explicitly asked for it, but I’m sure as shit happy someone made it.” We need more ridiculous weirdness in our world. Clayface is exactly that.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Legendary puppet maker Andre Toulon (William Hickey, somehow) comes across an Egyptian formula that grants his already impressive creations life. In order to prevent those damn Ratzis (ruining everything again) from getting their hands on it, he kills himself in his room at the scenic Bodega Bay Inn. Fifty years pass and four psychics journey to the extravagant hotel to investigate an intriguing (and dangerous) mystery. You see Charles Band’s name in the credits and you know those little puppets are still hanging around, about to get up to some murderous shenanigans. Alex Whitaker (looking like a soap opera reimagining of H.R. Giger) is a Yale professor with intense premonitions, Dana Hadley is an acid-tongued white witch working as a carnival psychic, Carissa Stamford can hone in on the emotional history of any object she touches (it makes her super horny) and her lover Frank Forrester works alongside her at the Pensa Research Inc. He also has the ability to read thoughts which should never be a gift of anyone who looks this sleazy. All four of them have been psychically contacted by their former colleague because he’s pinpointed the last known trace of the late, great Toulon. Something they had been working on in the past before Neal (said colleague) ventured on his own, dropping them after he had used them for his benefit. The four arrive and are greeted by their colleague’s wife Heather (and inheritor of the hotel), who explains her husband has committed suicide and requested to not be buried until the four arrived. Heather and Alex fall for each other which sucks because Alex is having strange premonitions pointing towards her death and it may have something to do with her recently deceased scumbag husband. Answers come with consequences and those tiny creations of Andre Toulon are dealing out those consequences with violent glee at the behest of a dead psychic. With names like Blade (no, not that Blade), Tunneler, Pinhead (no, not that Pinhead) and Leech Woman… you can figure out how these kinda scummy (but oddly likable) folks are gonna drop. A low-to-the-ground POV camera opens things up but makes no sense as everyone wandering around in the hotel would have to be blind as fuck to not see the tiny puppet running around like a sneaky lunatic who ain’t all that great at sneaking. It is the series star, Blade, so I guess I’ll cut it some slack… it is a movie about homicidal puppets and I’m here questioning why people can’t seem to notice one of them running around and sniffling like a hyperactive pug. I think I’m the problem. Anyways, the laziness that would eventually come to plague the Full Moon output ain’t here quite yet so there’s at least some effort put into things which at least keeps everything interesting. The ever-lovely Barbara Crampton gets a cameo, stop-motion (yay!) and low-rent puppetry (YAY!) brings the tiny terrors to life, the throwing up of leeches by one puppet is hilarious and disturbing and this may seriously be the most likable batch of unlikable folks I have ever seen.
