VHS Violence: Bootlegged (2022) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

Some dude in a Satan mask watches VHS tapes. Tape 1 follows a woman named Destiny in Vegas with some friends, keeping a video diary of her trip. Cue half-heard conversations, making plenty of faces at the camera and just capturing the completely mundane shenanigans of she and her group. Her friend Shay shares the story of a tragedy at an abandoned gas station which is now supposedly haunted. As she gets drunk and wanders around the desert, weird shit begins to happen. We can kinda see what’s going on. That’s what gives us a hazy glimpse of some dude in a white mask and black leotard combo scurrying around on all fours. There’s a quick glimpse of a truly eerie image involving someone playing the piano in the middle of a pitch black desert and then our hero is confronted by a hairy man who I think is bleeding from his mouth and spits blood all over her. It’s a bit frantic. Destiny is found by Shay and believes she was attacked by a homeless person and that whatever the hell she was drinking fucked up her head. Destiny is freaked out the next day and tries wrapping her head around the scary-ass encounter. After a tearful chat with her camera, she goes on a hike and encounters a different homeless man who grabs her and then someone finds the phone she dropped and records with it. He stumbles upon what looks like a black mass and it doesn’t end well. It’s a bit of nothing but Destiny Soria is solid as the lead and there’s at least one image that stands out. Tape 2 is (naturally) up next and we watch the recording of some Californian in the British countryside. He too is hiking and filming things for his mom… he promised he’d catch a sunrise for her. Sweet kid. He films as night envelopes him and he searches for an ancestor’s farmhouse and marches through the marshy fields… lost, spooked and just a little fucked. He remembers a creepy story his grandpa told him about the field and a couple drowned children who stayed around after death, snatching up folks stupid enough to be out in the dark. He rambles on to alleviate the growing despair which turns to terror when something sinister starts creeping around. He comes across a local who heard him screaming and she offers to take him back to her farm. She lets him know about a local legend involving the sacrifice of virgins to bring about a fruitful harvest. You know where this is going. Throw a man in the middle of a vast darkness and it’s a solid time until it throws out its stinger and it gets a bit daft. Still, it ain’t that bad. Back to ol’ Devil-mask and onto Tape 3. It’s Halloween in 1999 and some young dopes are recording whatever the hell shenanigans they’re getting into while the girl’s (Alexie) parents are away. That includes stealing a handle of vodka and annoying her younger sister. Alexie, her “cameraman” Cody, her little sister Chloie and her friend Caylie head to an old abandoned trailer to get drunk and cure the case of the boredoms they’ve developed. Chloie really doesn’t want to do it and keeps protesting but Alexie is persistent, Cody seems like he’s wrapped around her finger and Caylie doesn’t seem to have much of a backbone. So, they trespass and make their way into the trailer to get their drink on. It’s as exciting as any pre-legal drinking party one would have in an abandoned trailer in the middle of rural nothing could be. We’ve all been there and we’re all lying to ourselves if we seriously think it was the “good old days”. Giggles and stupidity lead to sibling arguments and the revelation of a dead little brother who got hit by a car three years ago on Halloween. A pin is put in the tomfoolery and family drama when a car pulls up and the quartet get freaked out. The place is supposed to be abandoned. They watch on from the darkness as some podunk drags what looks like a body wrapped in a bloody sheet out behind the trailer and then proceeds to beat it with an aluminum bat. When they’re discovered, they flee into the night… Cody and Alexie make it out. They watch as the two others are dealt with. Cody attacks the overall-rockin’ dope and gets his neck snapped for his stupidity. Alexie gives her position away and gets grabbed. It’s alright and may not have the best performances but as a former teenager, I can say they’re not strong at delivering solid performances. It’s slightly unsettling and seems like an actual bit of found footage one would unearth on a vhs tape stuffed away in a box in someone’s attic. Lastly, Tape 4 begins in pitch black with some woman named Janet wondering where the hell she is and then babbling in Spanish. Is she buried alive? Kinda seems like it. She finally gets night vision on and it looks like she’s been crammed into a trunk. She gets her hands on a hammer and talks herself through the predicament she’s found herself in. It’s revealed to be the guy in the Devil mask or maybe? I don’t know. The segment has an ending and it’s a bit limp and I think it leads into a wrap up of the wraparound which feels like a cheat that was just rushed into being filmed because everyone kinda shrugged and said “Sure. Why not? We gotta get home.” Below low-budget found footage may be lacking any meaningful wraparound but the low-fi aesthetic is solid (especially in the last two) and there are a few slices of memorable dread. Even the weakest segment has the beyond disturbing image of a creep playing a piano inexplicably left out in the middle of the desert. Shame it kinda craps the bed in the close.

Zombie 5: Killing Birds (1988) (Italy)

aka Raptors/Zombie Flesh Eaters 4

⭐️⭐️1/2

An incredibly rare woodpecker brings a dream team of bad actors out to the middle of some Louisiana swampland and places them in immediate mortal danger. Separated from their transportation, the LSU Raptor Rehabilitation Unit (LSURRU just rolls off the tongue), is forced to set up camp in a decrepit crap-shack that was the site of vicious quadruple homicide a couple decades ago. A Vietnam veteran returned home to find his wife in bed with another man. He took a knife to both their throats and when he was interrupted by grandma and grandpa returning his infant son, he killed them too. Immediately after dispatching the four poor souls, one of his pet hawks ripped his eyeballs out. This convoluted backstory allows for Robert Vaughn, in hilariously awful disfigurement makeup, to wander around the property until explaining everything in the film’s final minutes. Outside of the stupid backstory that stained the land, the gaggle of idiot college kids have to deal with some ghost zombies (that barely get any screen time) and supernatural fatal accidents. There’s a bit of fun to be had if you don’t ask why but the temptation to nap grows as the minutes tick by.

Weapons (2025) (USA)

 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Justine Gandy (Julia Garner, who continues to be a standout in anything she does) arrives at the grade school she teaches at to find all of her third grade students absent except for one lone boy. The same cannot be said for any of the other classes and Gandy being new to the small town gets many a concerned parents ready to point a finger her way. At 2:17 that morning all of the missing kids got out of bed and ran away into the dark, never returning to their homes. A month later the town is being asked to start healing but that’s not easy at all for the parents of the vanished children. And here, creator Zach Cregger (the man behind the great Barbarian but better known to me from the unmatched The Whitest Kids You Know which points to why the level of dark comedy in this bad boy works so damn well) begins his spiral into chaos. Angry and scared parents are ready to boil over into mob violence but something else is also at play and it’s the kind of maliciousness you can’t just dismiss as humans being the awful beings prone to selfish outbursts that we are. The sympathetic but increasingly frustrated school principal (man, Benedict Wong is great isn’t he?) thinks it best that his teacher take some time away from the school and is further concerned about how emotionally attached she is with her students, especially the one that remained behind when his classmates heeded whatever unknown call they did. Her frustration leads to her inevitable attempt to figure out just what the hell is going on and starting her own investigation. Josh Brolin (this fucking cast) is a grieving father who changes his angry tune once the realization of things being beyond normal finally hits like a hammer to the skull, Alden Ehrenreich (I swear, everyone of these stellar actors are bringing their best) is Justine’s police officer ex flame who offers some minor reprieve from the shit show Justine’s life has become and a perfect Amy fuckin’ Madigan crafts something beautifully off-putting in whatever desperate Hell Gladys crawled out of. There’s a bunch of other familiar faces (Toby Huss, Sara Paxton, Justin Long, June Diane Raphael) getting some screen time and plenty of gruesomeness waiting in the futures of several folks. Every character feels completely human and all the real life flaws make it so much worse when chaos comes calling and people start dying. That’s all you’ll get from me and that was actually more than I expected to be able to write so that’s good at least.

Sleepy Hollow High (2000) (USA)

 ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Five elderly teenage assholes are forced to clean up the woods of Sleepy Hollow under the suspicious eye of their teacher with anger issues (hilariously named Mr. E and looking like he cosplaying as Fisher Stevens in Hackers if he were an accountant). Drug-dealing Z works as the alpha-dink to the group of hoodlums who may be in their thirties but are supposedly high school seniors. To the surprise of nobody, there’s a sword-slinging psychopath on horseback with a pumpkin head making his way around the forest and chopping off the noggins of our unlikable tagonists (pro nor an, but the agony fits). As soon as the opening credits end, a morning (maybe dusk) jogger lets us know that this costumed creep means business. Is it an angry acquaintance using the local legend to dish out a twisted form of justice or is it the actual local legend roaming around and collecting heads? It’ll take plenty of severed domes and even more woods-wandering before they answer that little question. There will be other questions answered as well. What’s the best way to respond to a pregnant girl’s suicide attempt? Offer her soda in an unmarked water bottle. Why are goth chicks so ornery? Because they’re hackers that don’t feel like they fit in. I already knew that one. Why are middle-aged teenagers so easy to sneak up on? I think it’s a mixture of sciatica pain and a loss of peripheral vision. Where did old pumpkin man get his pants? Unfortunately we don’t get a definitive answer but I have a feeling there’s a passed out homeless man Winnie the Poohing it out in the streets of Maryland. Kris Arth and Kevin Summerfield pointed a camera at the ugly heart of troubled teens in 2000s America but when they realized that even the best of teenagers are an awful companion to spend any time with, they injected a backyard slasher into its veins and got it hooked on a video store high from about a decade earlier. Then they somehow pulled George Stover out of whatever hibernation Don Dohler kept him in to make the dozens of folks that actually love this kind of output even happier. Inexperience is overshadowed by the will to make a horror film with anything available to them and manages to plunge a flaming sword right into my Polonia-addicted heart. The Maryland woods are suitably dead and add the right fall vibes for this shit and had me thinking of every Midwest forest I’d get drunk in when I was a younger man.

A Cold Night’s Death (1973) (USA)

aka The Chill Factor 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Five days ago, at Tower Mountain Research Station in Antarctica, Dr. Vogel’s transmission came off as erratic and concerning. Communication has ceased (something they are hoping to blame on a bad snow storm) and two scientists have been sent in to replace the possibly cracking brilliant man. Doctors Robert Jones (Robert Culp) and Frank Enari (an excellent Eli Wallach) arrive at the isolated building (along with a chimpanzee named Geronimo) and discover Vogel has ended his own life by leaving a window open and allowing himself to become a much-respected popsicle. The initial belief of a heart attack mixing with a ridiculous amount of coincidence does not hold up after an autopsy. The two scientists get the facility in working order (cleaning up, getting the heat running and making sure the primates used in their altitude research are thawed and comfortable) but slowly discover that something is very wrong in the isolated station. With the expected awful weather hammering down and no means of exit, the two men must contend with the unknown if they wish to avoid the same fate of their frozen colleague. Vogel managed to leave a recording behind which raises further questions as it’s all blank. Robert begins to scratch the itch as to how Vogel came to his end because all of the questions he’s posing don’t have satisfactory official answers and he’s not content with the idea that Vogel lost his mind up there on his lonesome. Mounting issues have Robert contemplating a possible supernatural answer while Frank refuses to accept there’s anything that can’t be explained away with science and is starting to suspect elevation and isolation may be chipping away at his partner’s mental stability. Maybe it’s all just paranoia, maybe there is something malicious festering in the isolation or maybe there’s something logical at play… unlikely but logical. One of the best TV terrors of the seventies utilizes its chilly atmosphere to perfection and anchors itself with two established leads treating the material with all seriousness. The pervasive dread soaks into every scene (a brilliant use of slow pans and tracking shots) and makes for a satisfying slow burn that feels as spooky as it is inevitable.

Zombie 4: After Death (1989) (Italy)

aka After Death/Zombie Flesh Eaters 3

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

There’s a moment about halfway through After Death (although time becomes indecipherable while watching, so for all I know it could be ten minutes into the film or six seconds prior to the conclusion) where you’ll have to make a decision. You’re in or you’re out. There’s no middle ground, no neutrality. A coin and its two sides. On one side is hate, which will lead to the complete desertion of the film. There’s nothing here for you, and that’s fine. Two choices to be made but there is no right and wrong answer. You’ll forget about After Death in a couple of hours, going on your merry way and never concerning yourself with this late eighties Italian trash ever again. On the other side of the coin is love. If you land here, one bit of dialogue will lead to the singing of a heavenly chorus, promising you such sights to behold. I was fifteen when a bootleg copy of After Death made its way into my life. Fifteen when I made a choice that changed the path I’d be rambling down for the rest of my mortal existence and hopefully well past the point of shuffling off this mortal coil. The film has already been a bit on the wild side leading up to the life-altering dialogue. Witch doctors, an acrobatic demon, heavily armed scientists and soldiers of fortune will have had you grinning like a fool or audibly rolling your eyes by the point that three explorers find the mythical Book of the Dead (conveniently written in English on the cover). As a horror fan, I was already familiar with just how dangerous ancient tomes could be so I knew that it was a shitty idea to read from this book. Of course, it would be one boring-ass time if everyone else was privy to this information. Ignoring the warning within the book, the head dumbass decides to read aloud and here are the dreaded words in their entirety: “If you want to open the doors to hell today. These four words you must say.” This is the turning point. The coin flips and you have to call which side it will land on. These two sentences tore down the walls in a home I had built on a secure belief that I knew what good filmmaking was. I was raised on monsters, I knew Godzilla’s kaiju brawls were a goofy good time, I loved the Gill-man but would hardly discuss him with my Cinema-loving friends, we were into “true art”. Foreign films shot in black and white which tackled philosophical questions as they unwound in eye-catching splendor. I was planning on film school, becoming a “true artist” with a name praised like Fellini, Kurosawa, Scorsese and Welles. Junk films were junk films, I had seen a couple and outside of a few laughs they hadn’t really offered much. Sure John Waters was a subversive genius but he had an exciting vision many lacked. And then After Death… a truly fitting title because the film killed what I was. After those two sentences I emerged from the ashes of my former self, a phoenix now carrying a lust for garbage cinema. I still watch critically recognized flicks, I still enjoy them but I dedicate most of my days to blissful trash. SOV nightmares, Turkish knock-offs, Italian cash grabs and Bollywood fever dreams occupy my time. It’s all thanks to After Death. If you want to open the door to Hell today. These four words you must say. “Put on After Death” works just as well as whatever garbage made it to the final cut. On a small and isolated island, a collection of scientists attempt to master death by figuring out cures for the horrible diseases mankind fights on a daily basis. When they fail to cure a witch doctor’s daughter of her leukemia, the witch doctor gets pissed and decides to unleash Hell on those who are attempting to defy it. The gun-toting scientists come across the pissed-off holy man just as he’s completes his final task. He’s already unleashed a zombie epidemic on the island (hence why the heavily armed men of science are confronting him) but now he has transported demonic powers into his wife and she goes on a warpath. One couple and their young daughter have decided to flee instead of pointing guns in the face of the occult-master native but mom and dad don’t get far when they are overcome with zombies. The little girl manages to escape but ma and pa are eaten up. Years pass and a group of vacationing mercenaries and their babes are passing by the now cursed island. In a case of extreme coincidence (but most likely extreme stupidity) one of the ladies on the speedboat is the young girl who escaped the island years ago. The boat loses power and magically steers itself to the island. Uh oh. Also on the island are three explorers trying to get to the bottom of what happened all those years ago. Dismissing the supernatural rumors as bullshit, the trio march on, hoping to stumble across any bit of evidence they can find. They eventually make their way into a cave and find The Book of the Dead. Reading aloud, they unleash a horde of zombies which proceed to claim the lives of all but one (pornstar Jeff Stryker) of the three morons. The surviving moron eventually comes across the surviving mercenaries who have been dealing with their own problems as well. Even before the cursed tome was read from, there were already some undead bastards hanging around the island. One of them managed to bite a lunkheaded soldier of fortune. This bite led to an infection, which eventually turned him into a zombie. So the problems from within the cabin the mercenaries have attempted to secure and problems from the undead gathering outside is leading to depleting numbers of gun-happy idiots. The future doesn’t look any better because everyone seems to be hellbent on making the worse possible decision they can. Dead mercenaries give way to zombies with guns and zombies with guns lead to more dead mercenaries. The vicious cycle goes on until the two surviving members make their way back into the cave and attempt to end the horror for good. It doesn’t go well. Somewhere beyond the usual stupidity rushed Italian horror flicks wallow in, After Death remains nestled in psychotronic glory. Nothing in this film makes sense and it’s made all the better by the fact that nobody behind this film made it that way on purpose...they just didn’t give a shit. That’s fucking beautiful.

Harvest Brood (2025) (USA)

 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Nearly two decades ago, a series of gruesome killings weighs heavy on a small Alabama town. Interviews with the police working the case and the audio of the brief but horrifying 911 call showcase an October night that erupted into a brutal massacre, seemingly with no reason behind it. There’s local folklore pointing at a long, dark history of humanoid monsters roaming the area and that may explain the masked slasher running around and mutilating whoever it comes across. The local Harkin Chemical plant was behind a spill decades earlier and anyone familiar with the filmmaker’s EonCorp series will know that shady corporations definitely have some very dirty hands when it comes to any and all current awfulness. The always intriguing Joe Meredith (South Mill District) retains his inventive and handcrafted splatter but manages to be more focused than his prior experiments in lo-fi repulsiveness. That’s a boon. Coming off like a true crime documentary shot for the SOV market which somehow bled into a forgotten slasher film that just so happened to be filmed on a cursed videotape, Harvest Brood is an incredible mutation of analog horror and backyard insanity that pares remarkably well with the creepypasta aesthetic. Add in Meredith’s usual very wet special effects and an unsettling soundtrack and sound design to make for something that feels out of its time while also feeling like it belongs to no time at all and successfully hypnotizes the viewer for its brief runtime. 

Summer Horror Day (1988) (UK)

 ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

An evil notebook presents itself to an awkward teenager in the unfinished cellar of the house he just moved into. His buddy reads from the thing and faster than you can say “Evil Dead”, a skull-faced flesh eater in a windbreaker starts doing what homicidal zombie-monsters do best. Eventually the murdered dopes come back as hungry zombies and our lame hero has to fight for his life. Cheap-o fright-masks, butcher shop violence, intrusive sound design and a lack of plot will have your amateur-horror-lovin’ heart singing. It’s under an hour and obviously sculpted by someone with more ambition than talent, just enjoy the ride.

Marley’s Revenge: The Monster Movie (1989) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Two bickering buddies attempt to smuggle in an aunt and uncle from Haiti but draw the attention of a small group of hick vigilantes with a murderous streak. Mistaking them for drug smugglers, the group of low IQ bumpkins take our two heroes to a small island for the purpose of murdering them in peace. When they kill the refugee aunt, her grieving husband uses his voodoo powers to wreak vengeance with the help of some zombified victims of the vigilantes and a big skeletal gator monster. A bit rough going in the first hour (if you are not accustomed to that endearingly lame kind of humor which resides in regional horror flicks) the film picks up considerable steam when Uncle Marley begins to fulfill his quest for vengeance. A lovely giant monster puppet, Coors Lite, CB radio, buttcracks, and a jagbag named Tater all make an appearance. No lost classic but it’s still a somewhat charming do-it-yourself bit of North Carolina horror.

Married to a Witch (2001) (Nigeria)

 ⭐️1/2

Holy fuck. Somewhere beyond boredom, Married to a Witch casts its lethargic spell with weary aplomb. Sermonizing mixes with rambling dialogue then nods off in the back room before waking itself up with its own snoring. The close to two hour runtime feels more like twelve hours of talk radio and offers only minuscule reprieves between more scenes of endless chatter. For a film this pro-Christianity it certainly does all it can to make you lose faith in any kind of sympathetic God. Successful Michael has grown distant from his Evangelical faith. Finally having enough with the church, he pretty much swears it off and goes on with his life. He still has a big family to keep him company and spends his time with them or at work. Trouble swiftly approaches when a coven of witches start hashing out a plan to get some political power. Michael gets swept up in this when they decide his soul should be taken prisoner and the head witch sends her daughter, Disaster, to sink her talons into the young bachelor. Disaster shows up as a foxy young lady going by the name of Alice. Micheal immediately falls for her and invites her to stay at his large home. He has family living there too and they all seem to get along swimmingly. Seeing how much joy Alice has brought into his life, he asks for her hand in marriage. Of course, she agrees. Alice may have been an angel during the courtship but once she is officially the woman of the house, her mood shifts drastically. She kicks out Michael's friends, fires his faithful maid, accuses his brother of attempted rape and even gives his dead sister's daughter the boot. Michael lets her reign supreme and slowly grows to distrust his own family. Luckily, one of his aunts knows that there is some nefarious doings transpiring and has enough faith to save her nephew's witch-whipped ass. With ten minutes left in the flick, Micheal gets pissed on while he sleeps and dreams of fleeing from an angry mob. He makes his escape by flying away and this is realized by some wonderfully awful SFX. There's flying digitally-rendered knives, the power of prayer and it all closes with someone eating their own shit. A fitting end for something this hypnotically bad. Leading up to this, we've been treated to talking spiced up with more talking and if that wasn't enough they throw in a bit more talking caught by the microphone attached to the the video camera. There is a subplot involving a military major and a native doctor in cahoots with the coven but by the time the end credits rolled, I'll be damned if I could tell ya why the hell that had happened. Michael also has an evil aunt who was part of the coven but it's barely dwelled upon so I won't waste your time going into that. There's a certain level of ineptitude that comes with SOV flicks, but this is some other-level shit right here. This film is a screwdriver lobotomy delivered with a complete Sunday mass. Writer Helen Ukpabio founded and heads the African Evangelical Franchise Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries and this script is not the only atrocity she has unleashed onto the world. Through accusations of witchcraft, she has "allegedly" been behind the tortures and deaths of accused children. Even using her film company, Liberty Films, to spread the word on just how dangerous possessed kids can be. Judging her only on the basis of this movie, as I can't substantiate any of the other shit she has done, I'd like to give her a swift kick in the ovaries. One hell of an endurance test that offers only a few moments of minor trash magic.

Toys of Terror (2020) (USA)

 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

As Christmas draws near, a family pays a visit to a secluded mansion with your standard dark past. The building was once a children’s clinic until the death of a child set off a chain reaction of awfulness and supernatural revenge. The folks are planning on fixing it up and flipping it. Teenage daughter Alicia doesn’t want to be there and cops the attitude one would expect from a teenage girl being forced to leave her friends and thrown in a location where there is no working Wi-Fi. Doesn’t help that mom Hannah is her stepmother. Right when they arrive, Alicia sees a little boy’s reflection warning her to run and discovers a toy where there wasn’t one. Nanny Rose also hears whispers warning against staying in the home. As the parents focus on renovating, young Zoe and her brother Franklin combat boredom by playing with a bunch of toys they discover in a toy chest in a creepy playroom. Light spookiness is dismissed by the adults, Franklin wears a dinosaur helmet and whispers creepy shit and Alicia nearly chokes on a spider that makes its way into her bowl of popcorn. Work keeps calling Hannah away from her kids and Rose begins having vivid nightmares about the children in the clinic and the baby she miscarried. She also begins believing Alicia’s claims of a haunting after she’s the victim of a combination attack by a toy dragon and remote control car. She almost takes a fatal fall but when Hannah and David ask what happened, she decides to not sound like a complete lunatic and blames things on a bird getting in to the house. The toys hold a supernatural influence over the children and even talk to them. It’s an insane stop-motion fever dream as the toys, led by a stuffed animal by the name of Uncle Monkey, perform a song and dance for the children. I was not expecting this and it made me insanely happy. Hannah refuses to acknowledge the weird shit going down even when it almost claims her life… she knows a lot more about the house’s history than she is letting on. A bad snow storm keeps them in the house on Christmas Eve, also keeping their contractor stuck with the family. Guess who meets his untimely end first. David braves the bad roads to get his impaled handyman to the hospital but a bumblebee toy plays stowaway, smothers the contractor and causes the father to crash. Hannah confesses the locations tragic history to Rose and the kids destroy all of the Christmas presents under the playful instruction of the claymation playthings. Of course when they’re caught, the toys are just lying there and mom is pissed. She goes to throw Uncle Monkey and, like Chucky before him, he attacks. Deniability is thrown out the window and the stranded women have to put up a fight as the killer toys attack and also attempt to convince the little kids to kill themselves. Let’s hope this ordeal can bring the family closer together. The little kids are pretty annoying but the claymation fiends make up for that fault. Also impressive is how Verity Marks manages to pull off the role of an irritated teenager without irritating me… no easy feat. The opening may have you thinking you’re in for the standard terrible toy nightmare on the cheap but this bad boy loses its god damn mind when it finally shows its cards and I’m thankful for that. The cast is fine with no performance all that weak and outside of those little brats acting like braindead dopes, I was actually rooting for the family. I’m still pleasantly shocked they didn’t go the cgi route and went with green-screen and stop-motion.

The Necrotic (1978) (USA)

 ⭐️1/2

A creep-ass doctor by the name of Steven, rockin’ a yellow turtleneck, a head of hair that may be a helmet and a mustache that screams “I’m a rapist!” brings one of his patients home and awkward “romance”(really stretching the definition of that word) blooms. His new gutter-rat gal-pal insists she doesn’t want to get hung up on a man but our creepy hero is persistent. He also has a fondness for poisoning his patients because why would he just be a pervert? The “hunk” who she was with when she passed out lets her know the doctor lied to him and had him leave while she was under his care. She gets pissed and threatens to leave but the doc says she can have Howie over and he’ll apologize. He serves them coffee and, of course, it’s poisoned. Steven’s sister is around as well, and she catches him smooching the tied up houseguest he just drugged. He drowns her in bath water but it’s her bath water so I guess that ok. It ends with Steven and the two most important women in his life at the moment lying together, dead in his bed… ok. On top of the DOA romance, the head of the medical board is looking into the deaths happening to the doctor’s patients. The audio sucks and when it drops completely, some idiot decided to add metal music that sounds like pure ass over it. There’s wonky jump cuts to surgical footage, an amazingly wretched love song and the general feeling of ambling nothingness stinking up every minute. The whole thing carries a vibe like a homemade stag film you found in your great-uncle’s basement and now you’re an alcoholic because drinking is the only thing that momentarily erases the horrific home movie from your memory.

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018) (South Korea)

 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

We may be witnessing the death of the found footage subgenre. At least the splintered off subgroup of “ghost hunters bite off more than they can chew” because Gonjiam pretty much aces it. There’s nowhere to go from here, it’s done... just go home. Looking to score big with an advertisement deal, the trio of friends responsible for the horror web series The Horror Times get the bright idea to break into a long-abandoned asylum and broadcast their investigation live. They bring in three young women to help them out and a goofy young man to assist with editing and graphic design work. The Namyoung Psychiatric Hospital (also called Gonjiam) has one hell of a history and closed down nearly forty years ago after a string of patient suicides and the disappearance of the facility director. Since that time, strange sounds can be heard originating from the creepy building and entities have been spotted wandering the halls. There’s also a legend about the supposedly cursed room 402. Recently, two teens disappeared while investigating, leaving behind some brief footage and a possible image of a ghost. The group intends on investigating all four floors, culminating in being the first people to actually film themselves getting into the locked room 402. The Horror Times has some planned jolts set up but when they perform a spirit calling ritual, they actually unleash a malevolent force and shit gets real bad real quick. The slow realization that the crew is actually behind some of the creepy crap is pulled off expertly and when the actual haunting commences the tension climbs beautifully. The characters are all likable enough and more than one horrific encounter hits with terrifying perfection. This one is a must for any found footage fan out there.

Vermines (2023) (France/USA)

aka Infested

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Caleb is in the middle of some personal turmoil thanks to cutting ties with his best friend and a shaky relationship with his sister involving the apartment their mother left them when she passed away. At thirty years old, he’s pretty damn aimless but outside of a shady shoe selling business, he finds a certain joy in collecting exotic animals. That’s how a very rare Middle Eastern arachnid comes into his possession. The extremely venomous spider escapes confinement and soon his rundown French apartment complex is infested with the vicious bastards that are not only growing in number but also in size. The place is quarantined off and the residents are fighting for their lives as the big-ass creepy crawlers have a field day with the lockdown feeding ground they’re now calling home. A distinct sense of place really helps this one develop beyond its more than competent creature feature foundation. Characters feel genuinely lived-in with minimal introduction and allow ya to sympathize with the horrific situation playing out as everything goes to hell. Theó Christine and Lisa Nyarko are convincing siblings, hitting the flawed highs and lows of that relationship along with the small group of friends and acquaintances that never ring false. One of my major qualms with any digital interpretation of large insects is that they get the movements wrong, not here. These bad boys actually have that almost otherworldly motion as they skitter across everything and attack. They also don’t get too big, which I’ll always find far more disturbing than something small becoming colossal.

Hinsdale House (2019) (USA)

 ⭐️

“Hey! Fellow morons! Let’s go film a horror flick in an infamous haunted house!” Excited young actors with aspirations of fame and their buff director face a night of barely noticeable terror in an upstate New York farmhouse. Creepy voices and an orb of light (gasp!) spook everyone and then folks start vanishing as a malevolent force does whatever it is malevolent forces do. Camera interference and boredom stains most of the runtime. Surprisingly, the whole thing isn’t presented as found footage… unsurprisingly, it blows.

Island of the Doomed (1967) (Spain/Germany)

aka Death Island/Maneater of Hydra/The Bloosuckers/Island of Death

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Call me old fashioned, but if I were invited to an isolated island occupied by a man named Baron Von Weser and his botanical gardens, I would most likely jump right on the boat and go. Which is why I can sympathize with the six poor saps that head on out to witness the Baron's lovely plants. I may feel some discomfort when I discover the Baron is a dead ringer for Cameron Mitchell, but I would probably bury the nagging dread deep down inside and end up just as dead as most of the other idiots are going to be. The Baron, in his infinite wisdom, has created a tentacled and giant blood-sucking plant that he pretty much treats as a lover. Hey, if I fucked around with science and made something that shouldn't exist I would probably get aroused by the constant reminder of my godlike abilities as well. We never get explicit but I would not be surprised to find out that the Baron has relieved some tension within the loving grasp of his flora nightmare. A fellow botanist on the tour notices something just isn't right with the wacky mix of vegetation calling the island home and begins to snoop around. The other tourists are unsettled when their guide shares a local legend about a vampire stalking the island which caused almost all of the natives to flee. Their fears prove justified when one night at Weser's castle leads to two dead bodies, drained of all their blood. David (our bland-ass hero) slowly pieces together the puzzle in such a way that blesses us with a bicycle chase and the death of a wrongfully accused man. Well done, David. Cameron Mitchell plays the mad plant-fucker (allegedly!) with some scenery chewing pizzazz and there's a nice sprinkling of violence. Elisa Montés and Kai Fischer (as a lovable drunk, cuckolding wife) are very easy on the eyes and the killer mutant greenery is pretty damn fun. The whole thing feels like some lost chapter in Eddie Romero's Blood Island saga and that is a hell of a compliment. Weird, cheap and lovely... just the way I like it.

The Majorettes (1986) (USA)

aka One by One/American Killer

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Pennsylvania-shot slasher from Bill Hinzman (the man who banked on his performance as the original graveyard zombie in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead) and adapted from the moderately readable novel by John A. Russo… by himself… so he has nobody else to blame. A hooded psychopath in camo is taking out large-haired members of a high school cheerleading squad while the small town sheriff with killer sunglasses to compliment his creepstache and a county detective with a perm to compliment his creepstache get their investigating on whilst butting heads. But that’s not all. Wrapped up in the plot is a greedy nurse (naturally named Helga) looking to knockoff her wealthy employer and the old lady’s sweet granddaughter so she can collect on a piece of the inheritance and her creepy janitor son is also hanging around. He has stumbled upon a clue to the perpetrator of the cheerleader slayings thanks to his creepin’ and peepin’ on the high school girls in their locker room. This will be very important for a last-act twist. There’s also the least threatening biker gang in Pennsylvania history calling the town home and definitely getting into malevolent shenanigans, complicating everything and making it hard for law enforcement to prevent further deaths for the youthful dopes. Teen pregnancy, sexual assault, religious confusion and drug pushing also stain the runtime like a Keystone shit smear. Perverts, sadists, rapists, racists, pedos and every other despicable kind of asshole pollute the run time and definitely raise some concerns about just how terrible Pennsylvania was in the eighties. A fascinating level of pessimism about humanity is made sleazier by the inability of the filmmakers to harness professionalism and comes off a bit nauseating in the vibe that Hinzman probably had an erection the whole time he was making the damn thing. That’s all conjecture on my part, but between this and Flesheater, I probably wouldn’t introduce him to any member of my family. It’s not a good film but I don’t want my regional eighties slasher flick to be good, I want to need a very hot shower to clean the grime off afterwards... and this trash oddity delivers on that front. Performances range between “trying way too hard” and “should definitely try harder”… which is probably a good thing because if this flick was anywhere near convincing it would be rendered unwatchable. Slit throats come off as lazy outside of an exception here and there and the splatter never comes close to being over the top… which makes it worse for the soul. It drags a bit when it’s not focusing on the hilariously unconvincing badass bikers (Do you remember the gang of “street toughs” Tobias Fünke hired in Arrested Development after opening up his own club? That’s exactly who they reminded me of.), the local wood-paneled hangouts and the stilted police investigation but you’re always just a few minutes away from “colorful” weirdos getting up to tomfoolery and unconvincing teenagers getting naked and being dramatic. It runs way too long, like some elderly weirdo on an afternoon stroll who continues walking in odd directions but not because he’s taking in the sights and participating in the spirit of adventure. No, it’s because syphilis has eaten his brain and he has no idea what his destination was or where he should be stumbling. He’ll get there eventually but it’s a needlessly long trip. If you’re in the market for a solid slasher, you should look elsewhere but if you feel like taking a swim in a Pennsylvania swamp made of poor decisions and awful humans, jump right in… I’ll join ya for the slasher/biker/rape-revenge stupidity and we can both get an uninvited back rub from some dive bar patron who takes ice in his glass of Miller Lite.

Jeffrey’s Hell (2024) (USA)

aka CHEST 2: Jeffrey’s Hell

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Upon completion of his 2022 film, CHEST, Aaron Irons jumped into his next project concerning the actual Appalachian legends that inspired his found footage flick. He receives a cryptic email with coordinates leading him to a legendary cave deep in the Jeffrey’s Hell area of the Citico Wilderness in Tennessee. Aaron goes missing and a year on, a documentary crew is diving into the story of the missing man after coming across his case on some true crime message boards. Featuring interviews with friends and coworkers and Aaron’s personal footage, the team begin to uncover a deeper mystery as things get downright sinister the more the story spirals out of the realm of reason. A very interesting “sequel” to the unremarkable CHEST presents a narrative that diminishes any of the “reality” behind the prior outing but uses that to make for a familiar but still refreshing followup. At least the first half, that is. The solid establishment of a true crime interest piece shifts when the crew is sent Aaron’s caving footage (discovered in Switzerland and scrubbed from all non Darkweb sources by the FBI) and they present it in all its unexpected oddness. Aaron’s initial calm demeanor works because you get the sense that he may not be all that upset about not having to deal with his mundane life anymore and it’s a more complicated portrayal than I was expecting from a found footage flick. Of course, it kind of falls apart at the end thanks to denouement that doesn’t exactly work care of some exposition-dropping dialogue that is completely unnecessary and awkward as hell… but how great and naturally alien is the cave setting?

Amityville Emanuelle (2023) (USA)

 ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The DeFeo family murders have hung like a millstone around the Amityville community in Long Island since a couple con artists got together and decided to exploit the massacre and make some money. One bestselling novel about the supposedly true nightmare scenario a family faces moving into the site of the crimes changed the face of low-to-no-budget films forever. Since then, the murders of a mother, father and four siblings by a mentally ill man have served as the inspiration for a series of films loosely holding onto the haunted house inspirations and then eventually to any film that decided to tack on the Amityville name no matter how little it needed to be there. This flick opens with said murders but doesn’t focus that much on the violent acts, just the poor man hearing voices and taking a shotgun to his sleeping family. Decades later, a middle-aged woman gets a nice little bonus for something and puts a down payment on her first house. That night while she’s getting ready to go hangout with her friends, a weirdo Asian woman stops by with a box of shit and lets her know she knew her deceased father and has some information she’d probably want to know. Laura asks the strange woman to come back tomorrow so she won’t leave her friends hanging and goes about her night. While this is going on, a group of people are messing around with a Ouija board and the guy has a vision of the DeFeo murders, freaks out and spooks he and his girlfriend’s friends into leaving. Turns out his real father was Ronald DeFeo Jr. and he believes, following his old man’s death, his spirit is reaching out. Back to Laura’s story; she brings the man her friend was setting her up with home and while things are getting steamy, that box the neighbor dropped off starts shaking like an angry poltergeist is trying to break free. A pretty hilarious sex scene follows. The next day the weird woman comes back and she shares the story of her absent father (George Lutz) in a manner so stilted, I was embarrassed for her. So her dead dad owned the haunted house and left her to live with her aunt due to all the chaos his fascination with the occult lead to. Which explains why she was abandoned and why the weird-ass Asian lady, with some of the worst line delivery I’ve ever seen, dropped off an urn full of DeFeo’s ashes. Strangely, DeFeo left the ashes to Laura for some reason. That’s not all of the exposition we’re getting either, turns out the family massacre opened the gates of hell. This whole scene name drops actual dead people who had already kind of pissed all over their legacy but any dry spots are completely soaked now that this flick emptied its bladder on people who actually existed. Laura masturbates in her bed and… Jesus Christ… has sex with the ghost of noted kid killer Ronald DeFeo Jr. This film, at least it’s got no class and isn’t ashamed about it. Laura gets horny as the evil presence sinks its hooks into our hero and DeFeo’s son tries working through his daddy issues in a subplot that made me sleepy. Two dudes Laura brings home for a three-way end up dying at the spiritual hands of DeFeo (after they go to the bone zone) and Laura reaches out to the DeFeo son and lets him know she has his daddy’s ashes. He comes by to grab the urn and they both admit they’ve been seeing the ghost of the murderer and it’s time to figure out how to put him to rest. This gets their friends dragged into things along with a psychic medium who looks like London River and Carmen Electra had a daughter who they never said no to. A séance is performed and DeFeo possesses one of the friends so he can attack… hilarity ensues and the opposite of what you would call a “satisfying ending” plays out. This is trash. This is the trashiest train wreck of two trash trains colliding in the middle of a garbage fire outside of a waste management facility that just exploded in a volcanic shit eruption… and I respect the hell out of the fact there is no god damn decorum in this film. I mean, the abandoned daughter of George Lutz has a brief sex scene with the ghost of Ron DeFeo Jr. This was written, rehearsed, shot and released and nobody gave a damn that there’s actual family members still wandering around and they just took a big ol’ dump on these family names. Disturbing? Sure. Hilarious? Yeah, it is and I kinda feel bad about how much I dig it. There is nobody named Emanuelle in this film but I think it’s just because Laura was super horny, so I’m good with it.

If you too have questionable taste in your genre output, watch it here: https://tubitv.com/movies/100003611/amityville-emanuelle

A Demon Within (2017) (USA)

aka Nefas: The Wicked

⭐️

A mother and her teenage daughter move into a pleasant home in the peaceful town of Crestwick, IL believing this is the new beginning they need. Because the world is a cruel place, their new home is actually harboring a demonic entity by the name of Nefas. Who knew that a small town in Illinois has been home to a malicious demon since the 1800s? I mean, I had my suspicions. Nefas feeds on innocent young girls, so the misfortune of the new inhabitants is working in the favor of the vile creature roaming the halls. A skeptical and depressed doctor is the only one who may be able to help, as he has a history with the house and is all too familiar with the bad shit that awaits the teenage girl as his time spent there ended with the death via mysterious illness of his daughter followed by the suicide of his ex-wife. Dr. Jeremy Miller is gonna have to face his own demons and accept the reality of the one that’s currently feeding on the teenage Charlotte before the home’s tragic history can repeat itself. Standard haunted house tomfoolery and small town mingling make up the build as the doctor’s sad-ass home life lets us know there’s a tragedy shadowing his life. Awkward performances are also there to make the viewer cringe while waiting for the demonic shenanigans. A bad rash, unreliable Wi-Fi, demon POV, demon voice, milky eye contacts, angsty teens, alcoholic doctors, sick children, fatal exorcisms, romantic feelings, tropes upon tropes and the general feeling that none of these people have ever seen humans interacting. This thing feels like an alien race’s idea of what an earth film should be but the only thing they were able to base it on was the world’s worst soap opera and one viewing of a Turkish rip-off of The Exorcist they only kind of paid attention to.

The Haunted Strangler (1958) (UK)

aka Grip of the Strangler/Stranglehold/The Judas Hole

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Haymarket Strangler Edward Styles was executed for his crimes two decades ago. Writer and social activist James Rankin (the irreplaceable Boris Karloff) is working on a book about the notorious serial killer and the man he believes was wrongly convicted. Styles maintained his innocence all the way up to the gallows and Rankin believes he would have been acquitted if he had the means to get himself a credible defense. In proving this, he can show the importance of a solid defense for the accused and change up the justice system for the better. The proof was basically that a one-armed man was behind the murders and Styles was in the unfortunate position of being the nearest one-armed man around. So Rankin and his assistant Dr. Kenneth McCall are working to gather enough evidence to exonerate the dead man and find out who was the actual culprit. The likely suspect is Dr. Tennant, the medical examiner who the author thinks may have buried the murder weapon with Styles after he completed his autopsy and then vanished soon after being placed in a hospital. With folks finding all these admittedly outlandish claims hard to believe, Rankin exhumes the executed man’s body and gets his hand on the sought-after scalpel. But since this ain’t some Oscar-bait drama, Rankin gets his ass possessed by the killer and takes to committing the same crimes or is it a case of a mental rot that’s been laying dormant. Can’t it be both? This awfulness puts the social justice warrior in the awkward position of being some kind of monster and things get more complicated when the police inspector just doesn’t believe the respectable man is some king of deformed mad man. Karloff contorts his face and body to create the horrifying visage of the killer’s evil manipulation and it works unexpectedly well. There’s a house of ill repute called The Judas Hole, champagne spilled on cleavage, a dead woman named Martha Stewart, a romantic subplot that wastes time, some wonderful shadowy shots, benevolent grave robbing and a standout performance from Karloff and Jean Kent as a no-nonsense singer and the original damning witness at the “music hall” The Judas Hole. It drags somewhat but it’s still a fine thriller with a lovely supernatural twist that may not be all that supernatural.

Zombi 3 (1988) (Italy)

aka Zombie Flesh Eaters 2

 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Endlessly stupid Italian zombie flick is nowhere near as entertaining as it should be but still manages to be a decent time waster. When a military sanctioned toxin called Death One begins to spread through the Filipino countryside, shit hits the fan and people get their asses murdered. A trio of soldiers on leave, a van full of “sexy” young people and a vacationing couple group together in an attempt to survive the night. On top of the zombies there is a trigger-happy military cleanup crew shooting anything in their sights. Zombie birds, flying heads, and a zombie baby fill out the runtime. There’s a whole lot going on but it feels as if something is lacking. The film started out as a Fulci project but he had to bow out due to health reasons and that hack extraordinaire (and personal favorite) Bruno Mattei took the reins. Could be this shakeup of talent and anti-talent never allowed anything to meld correctly.

Blood Red River Bed (2024) (USA)

 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

There’s a legend about a murdering ghost who haunts the Illinois River in Oklahoma once the sun goes down. The locals know the score but a group of young adults looking to throw one bitching party on the river after dark don’t cater to folk tales and superstitious old people. So it’s definitely on them when The Red Fern Reaper starts picking them off. One local camps out nearby to mumble to himself about how these stupid kids are gonna die but falls to The Reaper before any of them. The Reaper looks great with the backyard-slasher aura swinging in full force. Long black hair riddled with dead leaves, a questionable skull mask, a blood-covered duster, a big-ass hat, a red bandana around the neck and plenty of sharp instruments… although he is quite fond of his sickle. Darrell and Danny Strickland craft one hell of a solid throwback to those SOV slashers that once stood forgotten but now are greedily gathered up by nostalgic horror lovin’ nerds across the world. And rightfully so, there’s a certain charm about them and luckily for us, this ain’t one of them odes to trash slashers that’s too busy winking and nudging at the audience to deliver the goods. Fake film deterioration is needless because this would have functioned perfectly as an SOV presentation but it’s not too distracting and nowhere near as offensive as some other releases that wanted to be a throwback to exploitation flicks that followed in the wake of Grindhouse. Again, it’s just little things in this bad boy that really tick the boxes for a successful love letter to the era of Polonia, Gallagher and Ritter without forgetting how important the digital-video boom of the 2000s was. I don’t see that a lot and I’m thankful when I do. There’s musical performance by local artists that are presented as dirt-cheap music videos (my head immediately drifted off to Cry Wolf’s extended set in Horror of the Hungry Humongous Hungan and I have no issue with anything making me reminisce about that), folks introduced solely to come to a bloody end, a whole bunch of drinking, death in a toilet stall, conversations between friends that are so damn natural it warms my heart (an amazing talk between two toasted buds about bugs had me flashing back to drunk conversations with Larry and Steve in a basement layered in cigarette smoke and blanketed in the skeletons of empty Miller High Life cans), lo-fi splatter, one or two striking shots, location shooting and the lighting issues that causes, tons of insects hovering around the camera lights and an ambling plot just serves to bring whatever poor soul it lands on into the path of the killer. You can smell the stale beer and the aftertaste of too many smokes and if most of these folks had survived, I can feel the hangover they would have had. Go Fuck Yourself sunglasses adorn the face of a character who can’t be bothered to stop smoking his cigarette while The Reaper attempts to plunge a blade into him and if that sounds like your kind of fun, then you’re in the right spot. The film’s psychotronic brain wanders off more than once to chase the shadow of a story that’s not interesting but it always comes back home to its garbage-slasher aesthetic and it’s bits like this that have it never feeling too sanitized like a lot of the homages to these types of movie. It’s not clean and it shouldn’t be because that’s the only damn way it will feel genuine... and this is genuine.

Grab it here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1726329176/native-american-slasher-movie-blood-red

Bloody Mary (2021) (UK)

aka Summoning Bloody Mary/Curse of Bloody Mary

⭐️⭐️

UK horror icon Chrissie Wunna is the first thing you see when the movie opens. Well played. I love me some Wunna, she’s like the new queen of British trash horror. Unfortunately, since the credits haven’t even hit, I got a feeling she won’t be around long. She and some dude mention that “She” is gone and the duo look a little worse for wear. She watches on in horror as the man she’s with gets attacked by a woman in the mirror and is helpless as his throat is slit (or he’s just coughing up a bunch of blood, it’s not exactly clear). Wunna screams to the heavens and the opening title hits. We join a quartet of young women reuniting for a wellness retreat. There’s already tension between a couple of them, so things are a little awkward even before the conflict kicks in. The four gals hike through the woods and find the posh retreat hidden away in the trees. They’re greeted by Chrissie Wunna (Hell yeah! She’s alive and rocking a red dress borrowed from an escort service closet!) who acts all mysterious and lets the ladies know they’ll have the whole lovely place to themselves. She doesn’t seem to know the first thing about what the wellness retreat should be offering but it’s obvious she’s under the thumb of something evil. The two gals who hate each other bicker and their put-upon friends attempt to mend fences so they can stop making separate plans and get their quartet back in working order. The first night in the building and one of the women removes a black sheet covering an antique mirror but that doesn’t lead to anything thrilling right away. There’s still the drama amongst friends to be discussed and more Wunna acting shady and upset that she has to be shady as the girls do yoga and hike. A leather-bound journal makes mention of Bloody Mary but that’s not much of a concern with teenage shenanigans and backstabbing to be discussed and argued about over wine around a bonfire. Wunna joins the group around the fire and tells the tale of Bloody Mary. The woods they now find themselves in are actually the birthplace of the legend. A witch named Mary Worth lived in the woods and seemed happy with her baby. The baby dies somehow and Mary gets blamed for a string of missing girls. The villagers’ suspicions were actually correct and Mary was in fact collecting the blood of virgins to bring back her baby. As she burned at the stake, she cursed the townsfolk and claimed that if anyone says her name in front of a mirror, she will appear and attack. The girls call bullshit on their host’s story so they decide to do the ritual and prove there’s nothing to fear. Yeah. Bad move. Wunna tries to escape after offering up the girls but finds it impossible and the girls meet bloody fates as Mary makes her way through them, ending in a sliced throat. Some more disposable meat shows up because gals can’t have all the fun. Wunna finally admits her sins and the surviving dopes realize the journal mentioned earlier may hold the key to defeating Mary. Also, strained relationships are restored… bonus! Bloody Mary has caked-on white makeup with some black and red around the eyes and as a fan of cheap-ass 60s and 70s horror, I dug the look. I probably enjoyed this more than most thanks to the “Wunna Factor” so you may not want to listen to me at all. I know it’s cheap and boring but the same has been said about me.

CHEST (2022) (USA)

 ⭐️⭐️

The crew behind the internet series Dark Appalachia went missing back in 2016 filming something about a mysterious box hidden deep away in a patch of Tennessee called “Jeffrey’s Hell”. Their footage is discovered three years later after two police respond to a disturbance call and are attacked by a wild man wandering around well after dark in a quiet neighborhood. He flees after biting the throat of one of the cops and drops his sack which contains the footage… this footage we are watching. A local by the name of Jeff shares the story of his papa and a friend finding the box and leaving it behind somewhere in the mountain wilderness of Appalachia. Papa died of a heart attack soon after and his friend killed himself. There’s talk that the Devil is locked in the box but that’s all just superstition… or is it? The team just can’t resist the story and decide to go looking for the mysterious chest. The man’s crazy granny tells one of the crew that they shouldn’t be going out there and they’re all gonna die. So far, so predictable. The showrunner feels like there’s a much bigger story at play and he hires on the dude to guide them through the woods and get them to the infamous box and creepy cave it’s kept in. After some talk with a local and a bartender, it’s revealed that their guide’s father actually murdered his family and friend and Jeff managed to escape with the help of his grandma. They also warn the house is supposed to be abandoned and Jeff and his granny supposedly fled the area. It’s a nice twist that the locals are so damn helpful and friendly. Against their better judgment (well, one female member has a bad vibe), they decide to meet up with Jeff Granger and continue on with their planned hike. The first night in, after a philosophical chat by the campfire, three hooded folks on horseback stop by the camp and say nothing before leaving. The two witnesses (director and host) decide to keep it to themselves. The next day their guide has vanished, some are spooked and the gang marches on. After ignoring the warning of a random hunter, they discover a mineshaft hidden away behind a waterfall where the spooky cave is supposedly located. They take that as a good sign and a handful go to explore. They get lost but manage to find the crate, wrapped in chains and immovable. Folks turn against each other because they always do. The chains magically fall off the thing after an argument and spooky chanting fills the cave. Outside the cave, things aren’t going well for the duo of people who stayed behind. Demons, possession, murder and a whole damn evil conspiracy revelation follows. There’s an inkling of a great found footage flick here, properly utilizing Appalachian folklore but unfortunately things get fumbled and its inspired plot loses its own thread by aiming for a bit too much.

Zombi 2 (1979) (Italy)

aka Zombie/Island of the Flesh Eaters/Zombie Flesh Eaters/Zombie 2: The Dead Are Among Us 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

“The boat can leave now. Tell the crew.” When her father’s abandoned sailboat is found adrift off of Staten Island, a concerned young woman (Tisa Farrow) teams up with a story-chasing reporter (Ian McCulloch) to find her lost parent. A farewell letter leads them to the island of Matul somewhere in the Caribbean. They hire a boat captained by two Americans (Al Cliver and Auretta Gay) to take them to the supposedly cursed island where her dad was last seen. They all come to regret their journey when they discover the island’s doctor (Richard Johnson) has been trying to figure out the scientific reason behind the native people’s voodoo and the regeneration of corpses and has lost control over the mounting number of the flesh-hungry dead. Fabio Frizzi’s absurd soundtrack is a thing of beauty, Gianneto De Rossi’s special effects are wonderfully icky, there’s nude scuba diving, the beautiful Olga Karlatos has a small role, a zombie fights a shark, bald spots, eyeball splinters, braindead dialogue, Al Cliver’s beard, Richard Johnson’s class, an ill-advised walk through a conquistadores cemetery and did I mention a zombie fights a fucking shark? The film put Lucio Fulci on the radar of many gorehounds when it landed on VHS. Later on we would come to realize just how important Mr. Fulci was when the DVD boom allowed for a wide release of his other films (the essential Don’t Torture a Duckling and his masterpiece The Beyond finally uncut, to name a few). Essential viewing. Zombi was the Italian release name given to Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and this film was given the title of an unofficial sequel to cash in on the success of Romero’s classic. Fulci claims to have not given his consent to the producers for a title change and with how the industry was for so long, I am inclined to believe him.

Screamwalkers (2024) (USA)

 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Long Island (the home of my favorite cannibal massacre) plays host to a new scourge as SOV hijinks plague the place. A masked slasher with a nasty hand weapon is building a body count and delightful CJ Wyatt is somehow at the center of things. Why? Well, I know it may feel like you’re in the early nineties but this is actually pretty new so I will let you find out the exact details. Just know CJ’s friends are dropping and in between the tough bestie, the pube-stache’d annoyance, the silent angsty guy who shares a fresh trauma with our hero and the visiting buddy from Washington, our victims-to-be are treading familiar ground in the character department. No, that’s not an issue. Like Blood Red River Bed, Screamwalkers not only knows its inspirations but respects them enough not to become a dull inside joke. It plays it straight… well, as straight as a tight-budget SOV slasher flick can be. Again, that’s not an issue. Strained melodrama blends well with corny hijinks while the splatter mentality chips away at the cast, all filmed through the washed-out eye of a video camera that’s seen better days. Problematic for a mainstream release but perfect for someone who would much rather watch Blood Cult than whichever Terrifier sequel they’re on. An ancient Egyptian studies class taught by the wonderful Sasha Graham introduces a mummy into the fucking thing and throws some supernatural bullshit (much-welcomed) into the proceedings. A dirt-cheap mask (like Ghostface but a cat), early video effects provided by your older brother’s computer, a no-nonsense detective as stiff as his line delivery (possibly my favorite character), public location shooting, community college set design and a sense of humor that understands the source so it never feels insulting make for an easy hour of comfort food. Andy Rowell brings the Polonia Powa and I am now a devotee. The same goes for most of the cast and writer/director Sean Q King.

Watch it here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nUr4HzbTSK0&t=31s&pp=ygUNc2NyZWFtd2Fsa2Vycw%3D%3D