The Face at the Window (1939) (UK)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Tod Slaughter vehicle finds late 1800’s France being terrorized by a murderer who may be a werewolf! At least, that’s what the majority is thinking thanks to a horrifying face popping up in the windows of various victims. My guess is whoever Tod Slaughter is playing is definitely up to no good. Here, he’s some dope rocking ridiculous facial hair and a cape… so he’s a villain for sure. A Paris bank has been robbed and Tod Slaughter shows up to pull the owner out of trouble by putting a large quantity of gold in his bank. In return, he would like to marry the bank owner’s daughter. The young girl, Cecile, is in love with a poor bank clerk and turns him down. Not one to sit on his hands and listen to the opinion of a young woman, Slaughter decides to frame the man she loves for the crimes and get her all to himself. The young man attempts to prove his innocence and sets out to expose the nefarious businessman behind all the shenanigans. The bank owner ends up with a dagger in his back and Slaughter slimes his way into things with the assistance of his gang of miscreants. Stuffy melodramatics are saved by the usual wonderfulness Tod Slaughter brings to his despicable villains and this one is practically twirling his mustache in every scene. It’s an easy watch that flies by and the day is saved by bullshit science and scheming… so, that’s a win.

Poltergeist Activity (2015) (UK)

aka A Haunting at Pendle Hill/The Unhinged

⭐️⭐️1/2

Having a hard time in the wake of his wife’s death, youthful-lookin’ David Prescott and his teenage daughter Katherine move into a secluded countryside farmhouse. The tenuous relationship between father and daughter is further agitated by a spike in paranormal shenanigans plaguing the house. A strange neighbor is laughed off as just being an old coot when she advises that she’ll pray for them upon their arrival. A creepy porcelain clown doll is found discarded under the daughter’s bed and she catches a disturbing apparition in a photograph she takes of their new home. She also finds photos of herself sleeping on her camera, which is never good, even if it ain’t a ghost snapping some shots. She asks her dad if he took the candid shots but he denies it and Katherine warns that something strange is going on but dad doesn’t want to wrap his head around the idea of displaced spirits roaming their new home. It’s a whole lot easier to blame pipes for phantom footsteps than the unquiet dead. The creepy clown doll keeps popping up to freak out Katherine and the two grow more agitated with their situation and with each other. A hooded and masked (a porcelain baby mask for some reason) specter is seen but dad assumes his daughter is smoking weed and winding him up. He’s super wrong and super in denial. The kind of denial that makes him an obnoxious asshole. Dad comes around after getting attacked by that clown doll in a wonderfully unconvincing bit and Katherine is paranormally raped in a scene that thankfully doesn’t go on too long and happens in between the doll attack. The elderly neighbor gives them the exposition needed as to why the house is haunted and the evil that’s stained the rooms like a trout hidden in drywall. Slaves, slaughter and voodoo will do that to a home. Especially if your original homeowner went by the name Necrosse. Luckily, a somewhat respected paranormal investigator considering retirement from the public eye is in the area and is willing to help out to prove his wild theories involving negative realities. A séance leads to violence and the budget-strained spookiness finally comes to a close in a less than satisfactory manner. The melodrama may be shaky but solid performances from our leads help navigate the standard haunting hoopla. It’s no meager accomplishment to have me sympathizing with a moody teenager but Natalie Martins brings it to the role and makes for a likable protagonist. Lee Bane may not look the part but even his prickish demeanor at the slowly unraveling unknown in his home is believable. Stealing it, though, is Jared Morgan as the paranormal investigator Hans Voltz who has me wishing there were further adventures of his to watch. Also loved the end credits, just name listings and black and white photographs of the whole fucking movie set to some creepy music… really should have opened with that even if it would have given a bunch away. Reminded me a bit of The House of Seven Corpses and I always like being reminded of that.

Blood Surf (2000) (Canada)

aka Crocodile/Amok/Crocodile 2: Savage Island

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Blood surfing is an idea concocted by only the smartest of Reality-TV-addicted brains. You set up a camera, throw chum in the water to get them sharks attracted and then catch some waves with those majestic killers of the sea right below you. Profits are all the small group of entrepreneurs are seeing which is a shame because if they had looked a little harder they may have spotted the big-ass salt-water crocodile viewing them like a Sunday buffet. They get directions from a boat captain with a tragic past (Holy hell! It’s Monster Squad’s Count Dracula, Duncan Regehr!) involving folks getting eaten by said crocodile, who refuses to help at first but once his girl puts up a fuss about the missed payday, Captain John Dirks relents. After a day of successful filming, some crocodile shenanigans get them stranded on an island and more importantly eaten by a giant reptile. They also run into pirates (not the fun kind) which allows for the croc to chomp some folks besides the main cast. Count Dracula, sorry, Captain Dirks comes to the rescue and he’s got a little bit of revenge on the old brain thanks to this beast killing his passengers and ruining his boat adventure business. Dirk’s girl convinces the producer that there’s money to be made in filming the capture and killing of the largest living reptile the world has ever seen. All this will lead to is a diminishing cast. Matt Borlenghi is wonderfully sleazy as the producer, Maureen Larrazabel is incredibly easy on the eyes as a native who falls for the bleach-haired surf addict Jeremy (she gets eaten pretty quickly), Duncan Regehr seems to be having a little fun and the crocodile is delightfully crappy. The head shit-heel goes out in less than stellar fashion, a man gets torn in half and the term “croc-teasing” is used. Is it dumb? Oh you better believe it is but it’s the kind of stupid I like to encourage in my Saturday morning monster watchin’.

You’ll Die at Midnight (1986) (Italy)

aka Midnight Killer/Die at Midnight/Midnight Ripper/Carol Will Die at Midnight

⭐️⭐️⭐️

A violent argument comes from the discovery of a wife’s infidelity and the husband, Nicola, is soon suspected of murder when the woman ends up very dead at the hands of a black-gloved assailant. Nicola storms out of the flat after assaulting his wife when their loud name calling leads to physical abuse and causes the woman to stab him in the hand with an ice pick. Inspector Piero Terzi (the always welcome Paolo Malco) likes the detective with a drinking problem and a violent streak for the murder and he enlists the help of a psychological profiler to aid in proving the man’s guilt. The profiler, Anna Berardi is not convinced of Nicola’s guilt (she knows the man and loved him in the past and she doesn’t believe he has it in him. He’s also already come to her begging for her help.) and thinks that a supposedly dead serial murderer may not have perished in a fire some eight years ago. The inspector highly doubts a ghost could be behind these murders but a growing body count and a twist or two keep him on his toes. Things best get figured out soon because Inspector Terzi’s daughter (and Anna’s student) becomes a target after Berardi shares her suspicions with her students. The killer with an ice pick is also keeping busy with the attractive female population in between stalking targets of with character relevance. Familiar faces abound throughout Lamberto Bava’s perfectly adequate giallo that lacks the splatter one would expect from an Italian 80s genre picture and relies more on the mystery befuddling our heroes. I don’t know if I’m just softening in my old age, but I’ll take that trade even if it doesn’t make for an exactly thrilling time.

Blood of the Werewolf (2001) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

A dirt-cheap werewolf anthology shot in the backyards, backwoods and lazy streets of Michigan or the side streets of New York and released straight to video in the early aughts is something that makes this old heart sing. Don’t worry. I’m fully aware that I am, in fact, the problem. Blood Reunion starts things off with writer Edward Sparrow reluctantly coming back to his hometown looking up an old classmate by the name of Jane Radford following his divorce. He’s disheartened to find the young woman is still under the tyrannical eye of Granny Radford. She warns him that Granny should be home soon and she’s so worried about it she tries to sneak him out before the old bag can see the gentleman caller. Granny is a real bitch and ain’t happy at all that there’s a man in the house. The man takes his leave as the hag pisses and moans. A brief flash of a rubber-mask werewolf follows some in-camera POV effects. The local sheriff stops by the hotel where the writer is staying to question him about a string of animal mutilations going on. Edward being a horror writer and arriving just in time for the mutilations has the sheriff suspicious. Jane stops by soon after. Local drunks/idiots crack middle-aged jokes at Jane as she walks home and the one who looks most like an uncle (in a fucking Red Dog hat, to boot!) stumbles off alone and is quickly mauled. More questions come the sarcastic author’s way from the sheriff and he’s told to not leave town. He and Granny have a confrontation when he comes by to check on Jane and grandma shares the tragic story of the girl’s birth and talks about a family curse and the “sins of the flesh”. It’s like Michigan by way of Bible Belt. Edward decides to leave town and Jane tries to stop him but he’s convinced her grandma is filling her head with bullshit and has had enough. Edward’s love and lust for the woman is just going to lead to tragedy and the revelation of a delightfully cheap lady werewolf. It’s a stretch getting to the climactic amateur bliss but well worth the bland trip. It closes with needless exposition and a cameo by a New York (maybe Michigan) prostitute. Next up is Old Blood and it’s about another doomed romance, except some bible-thumping granny ain’t around this time to put a stop to all the tomfoolery. A lesbian couple consists of one supernatural predator and a mortal woman who wants to join her lover in lycanthropy. The wolf-woman doesn’t want to put that curse on her girlfriend but she is persistent about joining the pack and gaining power she’s only ever dreamed of. Relationship struggles are discussed and conversations about the awfulness of the curse play out like it’s the most interesting thing to ever be caught on camera. The eager idiot ends up regretting her choice and once we see what the beast looks like, we can sympathize with her because I feel bad for anyone who has to wander around looking as stupid as she does. There’s talk of a ceremony and breaking the curse… there’s alot of talk in this one. Everyone is awful and nobody deserves a happy ending. The final segment is Man Beast and features a man being chased by two hunters through the woods because of his “curse”. We hear his inner monologue and then watch as the hunters briefly become the hunted before becoming the hunters again. There’s some butt-metal music playing throughout the extended chase. Camouflage and middle-aged dad adventures play out in some dreary stretch of wilds. The twist is so poorly set up that I don’t know if anything this telegraphed could technically be called a “twist”. And this one just keeps on trucking along. The whole anthology strives to be something deeper than it is and the viewer certainly pays the price for this movie’s pretentious ambitions. What could have been a stupid monster flick starring people just a bit too old to be making stupid monster flicks sinks into a boring stew of character studies with a focus on nobody cares about and action that exists in a realm consisting of material cut for being to dull from a teenager’s home movie. The local aesthetic is right up my alley and the cast of uncles in the bookends makes me very happy. The cheap monsters are also my kind of fun but are barely featured. Stupid enough for one viewing but they’ll be no revisits.

Blood Beast from Outer Space (1965) (UK)

aka The Night Caller/Night Caller from Outer Space

⭐️1/2

Those damn mutant humanoids from Ganymede are after our women! Their species is nearing extinction and they are grabbing Earth babes to breed with… well, they just need the blood I believe… and not even alot of blood or anything! Damn those Ganymedians… Ganymedes? Watching an unknown object enter Earth’s atmosphere and somehow not burn up and more impressively changing course, Dr. Morley, Dr. Costain (John fuckin’ Saxon) and Ann Barlow offer their scientific help to the military crawling around the area where it landed. Instead of the large object they are expecting to discover, they come across a freezing, basketball-sized sphere and probing it with x-rays after bringing it back to their lab, it’s discovered to be mostly hollow, free of radiation and made up of an unclassified silicon composition. Sexy Ann stays late to work on some documentation and is beset by a clawed hand belonging to something that must be rather large and had to have emerged from the sphere. Alien energy bullshit is believed to be behind the impressive transmission of matter and whatever the hell that gnarly hand belongs to manages to kill one of the doctors and steal a military jeep in order to escape the base where the sphere is being studied. A growing number of kidnapped young women points to a sinister plot in the works. These supple young women who have gone missing were answering an add placed in a “Bikini Girl” magazine and it looks like that crazy alien is using the oldest trick in the book to get their claws on some English knockouts. This is how Ann ends up planting herself in harms way to get some answers about the threat currently plaguing London. Incredibly stuffy and talkative exercise in boredom has a bout 20 minutes of dialogue for every scene with a rubbery a monster hand not doing much of anything. John Saxon delivers science jargon much to my everlasting delight and Patricia Hanes is very easy on the eyes as the only female character with any depth (as barebones as it may be) but a 60’s monster movie about an alien using a bikini magazine to kidnap girlies should not be this bland.

Blood of the Vampires (1966) (Philippines/USA)

aka Curse of the Vampires/Creatures of Evil/Whisper to the Wind

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Visiting their father’s estate in a small Filipino village, two siblings learn that their father has changed his will. Papa suffers a heart attack on the night of a ball being hosted at his home when his daughter bursts into the room to tell him about screams she heard coming from the family crypt. Eduardo and Leonor are confused as to why their dear old dad has ordered them to burn his whole damn castle to the ground at the time of his death, especially since the son was promised the vast estate. Eduardo figures out why when he’s shown a secret passageway by his ailing father and is horrified to see that his dear old mother has become a vampire thanks to a family curse. It’s all too late to do much of anything but harm because mama eventually bites her son (he foolishly believes he’s safe around the monster) and he begins to get up to vampiric shenanigans (poor bastard is still reflecting in mirrors so he can see his fangs show up). The fresh vamp attacks and takes a bride on a late-night stroll. He even puts an end to his papa’s life when the family patriarch kills the woman who started all of this. His sister enlists the help of her boyfriend Daniel (who really doesn’t like Eduardo) to attempt an escape but it doesn’t go all that well. There’s a shockingly heavy focus on generational trauma that I was not expecting at all in a Filipino horror flick from this decade but it adds a nice level of weight to the genre dynamics. We still get ourselves some torch-carrying villagers and pointy fangs to hit the familiar notes and a fucking ghost to add a layer of weirdness. Doomed romance, whips, chains, fog and some lovely gel-cap usage keep it all rolling. It drags in spots and holds a bit too closely to the supernatural storytelling that came before it but it’s still a truly unexpected treat for a low-budget vampire flick.