aka Blood Church/Fallen Angels
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Fuckin’ Ohio. A single papa, Paul Henson, purchases a small town newspaper in Copperton, OH and drags his teenage daughter along with him for their fresh start at life. Welp, that ain’t gonna be happening because a cult of Satanists (the kind of awful people who wear sunglasses at night) have a stranglehold on the town and the discovery of a freshly disemboweled corpse has the former Chicago Tribune reporter intrigued. Reverend Donovan (Nick Baldasare from Beyond Dreams Door) leads the evildoers and Linnea Quigley pops in as a seductress under his employ. He wants her to do what she does best and seduce the newbies into his flock so he can collect their souls. Of course, she gets naked in a graveyard after her quick introduction. No complaints here. His new reporter (also taking a break from her big-time newspaper) looks into things and struggles to emote as she quickly uncovers some evil bullshit is in the works. The sheriff is pissed because the paper’s stories about the satanic conspiracy is causing panic and a growing body count. Getting help from nobody in town, a little hope comes along with the arrival of an old-fart reverend by the name of Kane who read Henson’s articles and knew that he was needed to combat the malignancy in the small town. Quigley is the daughter’s teacher (both rock a skanky style of fashion that belongs somewhere in the mid-80s or a sex club that specializes in the fashions and aesthetics of early 90’s pornography) and she’s trying her damndest to get her to join up with Donovan’s congregation. Reverend Kane goes out way too early to be of much consequence but he does have some negatives stashed in his hat which may just expose the cult. An ex cult member offers some paranoid warnings at a dive bar and has a disgusting beard and an issue with over-acting… it’s ok, he gets his face blasted off by a shotgun. There’s a gravel-voiced metal head named Dobson who killed a bunch of kids and now spends his time in a cell and fails at acting, a fire pit with the remains of burnt children, an awkward sex scene, “the drinking of salty blood”, intimidation via nut cracker, a hero who looks like Rick Moranis and Booger from Revenge of the Nerds had a baby and raised him right, a trip to a local watering hole I really wish I had the chance to visit and a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top! I kept getting Blood Cult vibes from it but it’s way more competent than Christopher Lewis’ ass-dragging (but still well-loved) shot-on-video satanic slasher flick. Non-threatening villains, explosions of cheap splatter, Nick Baldasare having a blast and Linnea Quigley being hawt make it all worth your time. Hard to believe this one almost stayed lost to the ravages of Ohio… at least, I assume Ohio is to blame.
⭐️⭐️1/2
Mexico's legendary Headless Rider returns and this time there's many a dangerous secret spelling out trouble with a capital T. A tight-knit group of soldiers, who once served under General Villa, are called to their comrade’s home by his doctor. There, they get sworn to an oath of protection by their dying friend. He puts them in charge of guarding a mysterious black box with Aztec markings on it. The contents are unknown to the men but it is said to be the head of Pancho Villa himself which carries some strong magic with it. As easy as it should be to guard a severed head in a box (trust me on this one, I know) things are complicated by a hooded-cult looking to get their hands on the cabeza of Pancho Villa. As the men charged with watching over the box begin to disappear, one of them calls in a friend for protection. He's already gone by the time Reynaldo shows up with his chubby and cowardly sidekick. Reynaldo sings his way into town and manages to stop a kidnapping attempt of a beautiful young woman by the cultists. He finds out this woman is the goddaughter of Eduardo Jimenez, one of the men who were given the box. He decides to stick around and dig a bit deeper into the mystery. Reynaldo figures the best course of action is to get all the men who have not vanished together in one place. He offers his assistance and goes to personally deliver Eduardo's letters to his men. Unfortunately this leads to Reynaldo arriving in the right place at the wrong time. Those cultists have set a trap and Reynaldo supposedly perishes in a dynamite explosion. Curious that right after Reynaldo is turned to ashes the Headless Rider comes to offer his assistance. Presented in three chapters, The Head of Pancho Villa, definitely feels like an old serial. The weirdness usually prevalent in Mexican genre cinema is, for the most part, completely absent. There's plenty of cultists running around and we even get a faceless old woman creeping about the Jimenez hacienda but nothing ever really reaches any level of exciting. Exposition-heavy dialogue and a lack of any monsters helps to keep the Headless Rider adventure from being anything but forgettable. Still, I can’t hate anything featuring a headless cowboy kicking some black-robe-wearing cultists’ collective butts.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Two horny dinks meet a couple of hotties while clubbing in Barcelona and due to the bed situation at their hotel, they go to one of the girl’s family home which has been abandoned for a bit but the beds still work. Of course, it’s a trap. A bitten penis leads to the two dudes and the non-cock-chomping female itching to leave. They realize they’re locked in and then the power goes out and they scramble through the house, looking for a way out. The boner-biter is possibly a murderous spirit who was raped and murdered by American tourists and she is ready to spill some blood. Shot completely on the iPhone of the more unlikable of the duo, so we get plenty of his insufferable narration… but then the shit hits the fan and the thing gets pretty damn fun and surprisingly bloody. Character likability levels shift, the killer lady dons a creepy-ass mask and the seemingly level-headed one of the duo becomes a real prick. The first act works to convince the viewer they are in for one annoying time but once the rug gets pulled out and things go to hell, you’re thankful for the joke the filmmakers played on you. It gets a little lost as it rolls to the end but one of the guys looks like he could be a relative of those magnificent Brothers Polonia so that’s a win. A completely worthwhile addition to the subgenre.
⭐️
The older brother of that annoying shit-stain Gregory, who pretty much brought about the doom of himself and his buddy, looks into his brother’s death and the viral video that documented the disastrous project the two dead college kids were working on. Chuck (writer/director Clay Moffatt who also portrayed human cold sore Greg in the previous outing) just wants some answers but he inevitably ends up falling down the same dark hole that claimed his younger sibling… it’s just going to take a long stretch of nothing to get to that point. Wine consumption, soup sipping, hammock goofin’, window washing, fruit teasing, reflection recording… everything somebody who hates themself would want from their found footage thrills. It’s less annoying thanks to an absence of Greg but it’s still annoying because Chuckie is a chore to be around. Basically a one-man show placed in the hands of somebody who we should probably keep away from a video camera. Better than the first but that means almost nothing.
1/2
A detective opens things up with a press conference and lets us know our two heroes are fucking dead and there was a video camera found on the premises. This is the footage… Gregory and Brian are the two college derps who live together and their final project for their film class consists of them doing field work to tell an intriguing story. Luckily for them, the area they call home has some interesting local lore. That night, they head to an abandoned orchard where workers supposedly began losing their minds after spending too much time on the grounds. Gregory annoys, Brian is there and they wander around in darkness trying to add substance to the random crap they come across with rambling dialogue. The next night they head to a mountain (Silly Mountain) where a ghost supposedly pushes hikers off to their deaths because he fell to his death and now he’s a dick in the afterlife. More wandering in the dark and unscripted dialogue follows. There’s also something that was supposed to be comedy but I would never call it that. They find a small wooden box after Brian takes a tumble and when they open it they discover it’s filled with some fruit they came across in the orchard. Brian attempts to recover from his minor injuries but Gregory goads him into continuing their work on the project. They think they’re onto something because they are the only people to discover a connection between the two spooky spots. Even if that connection is just some moldy fruit. Internet research leads to them discovering the fruit is dangerous to consume so, of course, Gregory eats one. Minor poltergeist activity follows immediately. Gregory starts acting weird and we, the viewer at home, are begrudgingly dragged to a limp climax. You’ll definitely be bored and if you’re not, we really need to talk about where you find your entertainment. Take a nap. You need one.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Twenty years ago a group of Ghanaian film students made the mistake of invoking an African vampire spirit in order to make their own Blair Witch Project. Instead of throwing actors into the woods and trickling in the script, they went with the hook of diving deep into reality and enlisted the help of a sorcerer to place the spirit of an Obayfio into some homeless man. Foolish, yes but the popularity of that damn movie and the windfall of money it made is a good enough reason for me to suspend some disbelief and accept that these young dopes at least figured they may have a reason for partaking in this particularly dumb endeavor. Anyways, like most things inspired by Blair Witch, it ended in tragedy. Now, a film fan (who kind of looks like Alfred Molina if Alfred Molina tried really hard to look like Rob Halford enjoying a quiet Sunday at home) by the name of Julio, his lovely special lady and his bestie/cameraman set out to repeat the ritual that led to a massacre and catch it all on film. Why? Well, because Mexican morons with cameras are just as dumb as American morons with cameras. And as usual… “WE HAVE TO RECORD EVERYTHING”. Julio and his gf Carol are goobers but in the adorable way while cameraman Carlos fares a lot better than most of the cameramen who have stained this subgenre since it proved a cheap enough way for inspiring dinks to make a spooky movie and unleash it onto an unsuspecting world. Julio proves to be an asshole to the surprise of nobody and things go to hell immediately after they do the damn thing they really shouldn’t have done. Decent locations help spice up the standard first-person tale and an unfamiliar supernatural threat allows for a ritual you don’t see all that often but ends up being like any other entity that possesses folks and gets up to violent mischief… I’m still a sucker for the shadow creatures that dwell outside of the Western world and I’ll also throw some points its way for having a camera strapped to the flesh vessel and bouncing back from that camera to the cameras of our protagonists. Just saying, I probably enjoyed this more for all the little things sprinkled in that veered just far enough left of a script that’s well-familiar by this point. Camerawork may give you a headache but it makes more sense as framing a shot would definitely not be on my mind whilst dealing with burying a corpse and escaping the threat of a hungry vampire-spirit inhabiting the body of some poor sap who needed some money and the aforementioned frantic movements of said hyperactive threat.
⭐️⭐️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.
