The Mistresses of Dr. Jekyll (1964) (Spain/Austria/France)

aka Dr. Orloff’s Monster/Brides of Dr. Jekyll/The Secret of Dr. Orloff 

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Franco returns to Orloff or Jekyll or whatever… it’s Uncle Jess, so just go with it. A beautiful orphan named Melissa goes to take care of some inheritance paperwork while visiting the homestead of her scientist uncle and drunk aunt at their sprawling castle in Spain during the Christmas season. Uncle Conrad Jekyll is currently busy because he has inherited a secret formula from his tutor, the infamous Dr. Orloff. This formula can bring life to the dead and allow control over said shambling corpses through the usage of ultrasonics. Jekyll uses this to resurrect Melissa’s dead father (Conrad’s brother, whom he murdered after catching him having an affair with his wife) and put him to good use by strangling strippers and prostitutes. A world of options when it comes to abusing your power over the walking dead and you use it to murder sex workers… dick move. Andros (the newly undead papa) begins to develop his own will after discovering his beloved daughter is now on the property. Melissa meets some dope when she arrives and he ends up dropping her off at her uncle’s place when his pestering causes her to miss her bus. Juan Manuel will most likely have to come to the rescue when shit gets bad, so it’s good he decides to stay in a village hotel to keep an eye on her and drive her back to the train when her trip ends. Dude is desperate. There’s also a couple inspectors hanging around, scratching their heads and struggling for leads. They finally catch a break when Andros murders the wrong woman and some guy who looks like Austin Powers witnesses him dump the body in a canal. Granted, when the witness points to the culprit being a robot, it raises a few more questions than answers. The script may have a few holes and lack answers but there’s still some haunting visuals and a decent amount of weirdness to keep things moving… the attractive women also help. Luisa Sala is delightfully sloppy as the boozy Aunt Ingrid, drowning in regret and stealing every moment she is granted screen time while Marcelo Arroita-Jáureg looks exactly as you would expect someone’s uncle to look.

The Z (2014) (USA)

⭐️

The titular ancient species are the source of zombie legends worldwide and a team of mercenary “badasses” work as humankind’s protection from these ravenous super-killers that are like vampires but way lamer. Impressive as vampires are the lamest of legendary monsters. They make their move at a small time club looking to get at Mars Heflin and his Z-bustin’ team called Protection Incorporated. This leads to a drag queen getting her head knocked off with a bat and the club manager eaten. Somehow, the flesh-eating is less convincing than the digital abomination that is the decapitation via aluminum bat. Protection Incorporated also runs private security for various events that don’t exactly look like they could afford a private security team. That’s okay, they’re definitely not a real private security team. Turns out Mars hasn’t been upfront about the Z to his team but feels they’re more than ready to handle them if they show themselves. They do and the final confrontation is like a cinematic shitting of a pantsuit on a first date. If the opening club scene from Blade had a learning disability, it would be The Z. It’s the type of movie that happens when a group of people who desperately crave badass notoriety and have watched way too many Tarantino movies get their hands on enough disposable income and friends willing to work for cocaine to make a movie… but they also have no discernible talent or convincing charm. The zombies just look like normal folks who have been to one too many raves in the same night and may be even less threatening than our wiener heroes, which is impressive in a completely pathetic way. Nudity is provided by actual strippers and I’ll always be happy that they (hopefully) got a nice pay day for doing what they do anyways. Hilarious performances are the right kind of “bad” and some shit splatter may drag a grin out of you but everything else just blows donkey dick. Zombie makeup appears in a news report about a bunch of folks dressing up for a zombie bar crawl… I mean, what the fuck is the point of this damn thing?

Woods Witch (2023) (USA)

NOTHING! FUCK THIS MOVIE AND FUCK EVERYTHING IT STANDS FOR! THERE IS NOTHING HERE FOR YOU!

There’s a forest out there in the American wilds where folks are known to vanish off the face of the earth and at the very worst, end up very dead. Sensing some quality content, a duo of Internet vloggers journey out into the wilderness to collect themselves some views. James Duval plays a fake Frenchman whose footage opens the film, thankfully he drops the accent right before something sneaks up behind him. We then watch as our heroes Jocelyn and Jonah stumble through comedy and ad-libbing interviews (even Tom Sizemore in one of his final films) before finally making it to the woods. They’re doing a 48-hour challenge in said woods with a couple other idiots and you will feel EVERY FUCKING MINUTE of it. Supposedly some entity called Suicide Sandy wanders around the dark and fucks people up. By the thirty minute mark, I was ready to quit and I couldn’t believe there was still an hour left. Actual actor Robert LaSardo shows up, which only goes to magnify how awful at acting everyone else is in this thing. Eventually, the cool lookin’ boogeywoman shows up and the meaninglessness of all of this gets a little relief. But there’s more annoying nothing to wade through instead of producing horror entertainment. These woods are also full of idiots so, if you’ve considered smashing yourself in the head with a baseball bat… now would be the time. The only good thing this has going for it is kept off camera for most of the runtime and most offensive is the fact that it never feels like they’re actually deep in the woods. Co-written, co-directed and co-starring Coolduder (Shawn C Phillips), I already knew my annoyance level would be running very high. Why did I do it? Well, I love supporting SRS, I’m a sucker for found footage and I’m always waiting for something or someone to surprise me. This wasn’t the film to do it. I guess Coolduder can take some comfort in the fact that he’s surrounded by folks just as annoying as him. It’s not great for us, the viewer at home, but I have a nagging feeling that everyone behind this didn’t give a fuck about us.

Scarecrow Slayer (2003) (USA)

aka Scarecrow 2/Scarecrow: Resurrection 

⭐️

If 2002’s Scarecrow taught us anything it was that sometimes bullies are right to pick on people. That movie’s whipping boy who became a supernatural scarecrow slasher with mad hops was named Lester and he was the wettest of blankets in the form of a teenager who looked like he had just celebrated his fortieth birthday before heading into junior year. Luckily, Tiffany Shepis was there to ease some of the pain but she ain’t here this time. Neither is Lester so I guess that’s a point in the movie’s favor. Top-billed Tony Todd (who may have had to ingest several heavy drugs to get through this skid row production) has a history with the demonic scarecrow as the pre-credits shows it kill his father for some reason. Since that terrible night, he ain’t been all there and has taken it upon himself to guard the evil thing. He’s even written a few books on the subject which have been dismissed as the ravings of a lunatic… the interview he’s doing to open things doesn’t exactly do anything to soften that belief. Two pledging idiots break into the farm to steal the infamous scarecrow for their fraternity initiation but farmer Todd mistakenly shoots one of them dead. David’s stupid soul gets sucked into the stupid scarecrow and now death is in the future of several unlikable college idiots. The dead kid’s friend is an awkward weirdo named Karl who falls into the Lester category of having a face decades older than he acts while stuck on a body that may be pushing thirteen. It’s… unsettling. David’s girlfriend Mary and creepy Karl are probably all that stands in the way of the scarecrow’s tour of revenge that isn’t really revenge because he was just an idiot who really shouldn’t have been trespassing. Everyone acts like the set was blanketed in a thick level of carbon monoxide and character actions exist somewhere in a dimension where brain death is the norm. Ditzy Sheila is the only likable person and she dating the frat president Gavin who won’t shut up about how he’s going to be a marine. Mary comes off like a really high stripper cosplaying as Katharine Isabelle and Karl gives a performance one can define as “why?”. He also looks like what would happen if a Walton Goggins and Andrew Scott amalgamation was sculpted by a drunk Stevie Wonder who decided to give up before the final stretch. Impressive in that it’s somehow worse than the already wretched original but that’s probably something you wouldn’t want to brag about. Shitty cgi violence gets me smiling but in a movie this ass, it’s not much to hold onto. There’s no embarrassing one-liners from the killer scarecrow this time and the “why try” attitude of the movie transfers directly to the viewer.

Creature from Black Lake (1976) (USA)

aka Demon of the Lake/Silent Stalker 

⭐️⭐️1/2

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.

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.