Imprint (2006) (Canada/Japan/USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Probably the most infamous of the Masters of Horror releases (getting banned will do that), Takashi Miike’s turn at the wheel is definitely a strange and uncomfortable experience. In the 19th century, an American journalist (a lovely leading role for the much-missed Billy Drago) returns to Japan looking for the strange Japanese woman he loved but abandoned years ago. He promised to return to the love of his life and is now attempting to live up to the promise he made of bringing her home to America, tracking her to an island run by less than savory individuals and surrounded by the bloated corpses of the dead. A deformed prostitute (who may be insane) lets him know the woman he is searching for is dead and he asks her to share her story with him instead of doing the things hookers and their customers do. Unlike most lives of 19th century deformed woman forced into prostitution… it ain’t a happy story. It also fills out the pieces of the puzzle to what happened to the man’s love and holy fuck, it may have been better to just not know. Drowning in sickness, perversion and death, Imprint focuses on physical and mental torture with an upsetting vibe of a corrupted fairytale covered in rot that eventually loses its mind as it reveals what it’s playing after and may be just a bit too stupid to be worth the trip. A visually striking but very ugly (purposefully so) tragedy that sticks with ya no matter how much you wish it wouldn’t. There’s a VD joke in there but I’m too depressed to make it right now.

Haeckel’s Tale (2006) (USA/Canada)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Is there love after death? There is but there really shouldn’t be when it comes to the physical corner of that question. No matter what Jörg Buttgereit might say about it. John McNaughton (the excellent Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and the equally excellent but for way different reasons Wild Things) tackles a Clive Barker short story concerning a desperate widower drowning in grief and the necromancer he visits about bringing his wife back. The cautious woman shares a warning with him in the form of a horrifying tale about a brash medical student and forbidden knowledge. Ernest Haeckel comes from the Frankenstein (who gets a mention) school of med student where instead of mastering acceptable ideologies of his chosen field, he’s becoming slightly obsessed with the idea of resurrection and the reanimation of the dead. The body man he works with points him in the direction of a necromancer by the name of Montesquino (Jon fuckin’ Polito rocking a wonderful mustache) who claims to have the ability to restore life to that which no longer has it. Being a man of science, he’s not so trusting of the man who claims a mastery of the dark arts but a demonstration with a very dead dog has him curious. Even if what comes back ain’t exactly normal. It’s enough to bring the aspiring doctor back to the possible con man to figure out how Montesquino seems to be able to do what he does. Before he can dig any deeper into the mystery, Ernest receives word his father’s illness has taken a terminal turn and he’s forced to head home to speak with his dad before it becomes too late. He camps near an old cemetery when night falls and a storm hits but is invited by an elderly man to stay in his home, as it would be foolish to spend the night near the dead… especially this night. Ernest is happy to have a warm bed, some hot soup and wine but he also becomes enamored with the man’s lovely young wife. Something the old man seems to enjoy prying into rather playfully. There’s definitely some perversion going down in the house but it is a warm bed and at least half of the perverted weirdos are attractive, so the young man doesn’t flee into the rainy night. Unsteady sleep has him waking up to see Montesquino arrive and then watch as the man’s wife runs off into the darkness following some unknown calls, leaving her child behind. The old man warns Haeckel not to chase after and that the child is not his. He also assures the young man that the necromancer is the real deal and only awfulness awaits him if he goes looking for answers. The old man is right and the sights which await Haeckel are something no sane mind is prepared for. A very simple but very well-crafted bit of the macabre makes me wish McNaughton tackled more straightforward horror during his career. Although, I would not want to trade his shockingly mature vision of exploitation but why couldn’t we have both? So, many thanks to Masters of Horror for showing this side of the director.

Blood Vessel (2019) (Australia)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

In late 1945, somewhere in the North Atlantic, a small band of survivors float directionless in a lifeboat following the torpedoing of the hospital ship they were on. With food and water gone, the desperate batch of mismatched folks are willing to risk passage on a large Nazi minesweeper as opposed to starving to death. They make their way aboard and find it seemingly abandoned, which is fortuitous because the whole lot of them are people that the Nazi’s would rather see dead than taken prisoner. Their luck ends there though, because this ship is full of vampires and these vampires are hungry as hell. Some of the survivors are helpful, some are assholes (lookin’ at you, New York), some may have a secret or two and one of them looks like Phil Collins in disguise as Ringo Starr. All of ‘em have scars both mental and physical. Before everything goes to hell, there’s troubling corpses to look over, the realization that any means of escape were destroyed for some reason, egos to clash, a boiler that needs to be shut down before it explodes and a pale Romanian child who is sticking to the shadows. A horrifying tome is found in the captain’s chambers along with his crispy corpse and the little girl seems excited to introduce the gang to her family. Fuck that. Nazi gold, an ominous box of holy relics, the well-documented Nazi obsession with occultism and a strange infection keep everyone on their toes before inevitably going off to meet their maker. A solid cast helps move things along and brief glimpses of the reasoning as to why the nightmare creature aboard works a lot better than it would if the film just shrugged and said “vampires on a Nazi boat.” It all helps make the time before we meet our monster just a bit more interesting. He’s also got a bat head on a bipedal body and I’m all for that. It’s fun but it also feels like it could have been a little more substantial than it is… still recommend a watch.

The Norliss Tapes (1973) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A disheveled looking David Norliss calls his publisher and tells him he will not be able to write the book he’s been given a sizable advance on. His idea was to write something debunking the supernatural but now he’s too terrified to get anything down on paper. He asks his publisher to meet with him but no-shows the lunch. Concerned after his writer drops out of contact with him and the rest of the world, Sanford (Mr. Publisher) stops by the Norliss house to check up on the man. He doesn’t find him but he finds a collection of numbered tapes. Looking for some clue as to the whereabouts of Norliss, he pops the first tape in and listens to the story which got the skeptic entangled in the world of the supernatural. After successfully disproving the work of a couple paranormal charlatans, Norliss investigates a case where a widow is claiming her recently deceased husband has been coming around and continuing his sculpting. As spooky as supernatural artistry may be, things get a bit grimmer when folks start getting themselves murdered by the rotting sculptor. Norliss and the widow work together to unravel the mystery; there’s an Egyptian ring (naturally buried on the husband) and the sculpting of a demonic figure involved. You’ll get plenty of Kolchak déjà vu but that’s technically not a bad thing. Roy Thinnes is likable enough as the hero thrown into the shadowy deep-end of a world he is not prepared to acknowledge and Claude Akins pops in as his usual crotchety lawman attempting to coverup the more awful aspects of the murders plaguing his jurisdiction. Another pilot that never got picked up, which is a shame because it’s a fine time involving some supernatural hijinks.

Lycan Colony (2006) (USA)

⭐️1/2

A small town is home to werewolves and the newly arrived alcoholic doctor and his family are going to have to deal with this shit while performing at a level of competence somewhere below pathetic. The doctor moved his family to the nowhere location after having a revelation at his big city hospital (green-screened in) and his wife resents the hell out of him for taking her to the ass-end of America. She’s not ashamed to drag his ass down in front of their teenage sons either. Some old friend of the family who looks like he may have provided the dong in some Barely Legal volumes wants his dad to start going to AA meetings. The son listens to music and complains about his father not loving him. That’s fine, the derpy neighbor girl seems interested in his lanky ass for some reason. If family melodrama doesn’t do anything for ya… well, I’ve got some bad news. Piss-poor special effects offer the only break to tedium and they don’t hit nearly enough. The younger son gets bit during a graveyard romp with that gothy neighbor chick and begins to transform into a werewolf. He grows fangs while butt-rock plays. Two siblings arrive searching for their father who went missing in the woods around the mountain town and it turns out the doctor knew the man. The bartender who looks like Bret Hart during his WrestleMania match with Vince McMahon has their father’s medallion so the siblings know immediately that something is rotten in the town. They chase the man into a basement and they corner him which forces him to talk like he’s from Jersey and admit the father is dead and the secret ingredient to the meat they just ate. Jersey Bret Hart transforms and kills the brother before making his hasty exit. We’re thirty minutes in and I already wish this shit was over. There’s benevolent werewolves and parental issues when it comes to dealing with your monster teenager… literally. The doctor thinks he’s just dreaming about all the monstrous nonsense and water tainted with silver is shown to control the hairy transformations. Dialogue stretches beyond a reasonable breaking point, scenes join dialogue in dragging the viewer to the breaking point, comedy stumbles before dying a quick death, audio issues persist, neck tattoos are overlayed on characters because I guess nobody had a marker, the werewolf costumes are charmingly all levels of ass, fight choreography should be taught in classes on how to not choreograph a fight, the special effects belong on fire in a dumpster, characters have all the charm of an agitated Piers Morgan (I guess that’s just Piers Morgan), a two-hundred-year-old witch who looks like multiple porn stars from New York melted into one person tells the history of the werewolf population, the world’s worst transformation plays out before our eyes, boring werewolf politics are talked about, more boring werewolf politics are discussed and then the werewolf politics come to a head and shit gets taken care of with a minimal cast and no budget for action set pieces. There’s alot of stank on this film and some of that stank is dementedly charming but most of it will try your patience and irritate you to no end. It’s like finding a used condom in your hamburger and deciding to just eat around it.

Bloody Murder 2: Closing Camp (2003) (USA)

aka Halloween Camp

⭐️⭐️1/2

The usual youthful idiots close down Camp Placid Pines for winter and, as these things go, they are not long for this world. Nightmare-plagued Tracy had a brother who went missing in the area and his disappearance is blamed on local legend Trevor Moorehouse. Sure as shit, Trevor (he’s switched the hockey mask this time out for a bleach-white masquerade number) is back and he’s in a slaughtering mood. Better acting, better violence and her majesty Tiffany Shepis bring things up a notch but it loses the braindead charm of its predecessor. The Dutch angle is abused and there’s a dude named Elvis who gets killed in those awful camp showers while the lights flicker. Did I mention Tiffany Shepis?

Tomb of Torture (1963) (Italy)

aka Metempsycho

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Late to the game Italian Gothic manages to be offbeat enough to make for an enjoyable watch even though it’s treading familiar waters. Anna and her doctor/father return to dad’s old stomping grounds after Anna continues to have nightmares involving the death of a lookalike countess who vanished twenty years ago. Returning to the village, papa hopes to shake his daughter out of these nightmares. They arrive just as a couple of young girls have been murdered by a deformed creep stalking the hidden passages and dungeon of the castle where the vanished countess used to live. Anna and her new reporter boyfriend attempt to figure out what exactly went down as the castles new countess looks for treasure and a suspicious Swami looks for the body of his missing lover. The film is predictable but there is a looney monster, some badass opening credits and strange story beats. Slightly above average.