Friday the 13th (2009) (USA)

⭐️⭐️1/2

There’s an issue at the heart of the Friday the 13th remake which doomed it from the start. It’s not the only issue but it’s so damn noticeable that it cuts deeper than a machete swung by a buff psychopath with mommy issues. That’s not to say it’s a bad flick, I happen to enjoy it quite a bit. I saw it three times in theaters, that’s only two times less than the transcendent Jason X. Anyways, if a film is being remade there are a few factors at play. Most importantly, there is only one rule for the viewer and it's impossible to follow if you’re already going in prepared to hate something. If that's how you go into any form of entertainment, you’re doing it wrong and you are an idiot. There’s a lot of hallowed ground when it comes to us horror film lovers. I grew up on Jason but still managed to go in not really giving a damn, after all, why is it so bad to see a different creator tackle someone else’s work? Hell, Carpenter’s Halloween is a bonafide masterpiece but I was willing to suppress any judgement when going to see the remake. Granted, afterwards I wasn’t that happy because Rob Zombie took a dump on the horror genre and filled it with more cameos than a season of Family Guy with the hope that you wouldn’t notice how much of a turd it was. All I’m saying is wait to judge something till after you see it. It makes movie watching far more enjoyable. Now, it’s not just your responsibility because if a filmmaker can’t hold up their end of the bargain then that’s on them. They’re remaking a film because A) they want to hit on the theme of the original but wrap it up in a different fashion, B) they want to update something for a new generation, C) they want to fix mistakes in the inspiration and you can rest assured it all comes with a different emphasis placed upon D) how much money thete is to be made. I’m not saying you have to stand strong in any of these reasons, as I’m bloody well sure mixtures of these variables are all at play but this is why familiar sources are mined. The problem with Marcus Nispel’s Friday the 13th is that it presents a refreshing variation on the familiar boogeyman but spends way too much time fan servicing the franchise faithful to do a damn thing with it. Young Jason witnesses the decapitation of his mother back in 1980. After this very brief scene we jump ahead twenty years or so to a group of sexy young people camping near the sight of the decades-old awfulness. Rumors of a pot farm has made Camp Crystal Lake the destination of this gaggle of idiots. When two leave to explore the ruins of the campground, the single one of the bunch goes off wandering to leave the other couple to get their sex on at the campsite. He stumbles upon the marijuana surplus and immediately meets the business end of Jason Voorhees’ trusty machete (the same one used to kill his momma). Jason dispatches the others except for one young woman who kind of resembles his dead mommy. We jump once more in time to six weeks later. A group of more attractive idiots are off to stay at the head idiot’s lakefront family cabin. We also meet Clay Millar (Supernatural’s Jared Padalecki) who is traveling around town trying to dig up any hint as to where his missing sister is. Clay has a run-in with Trent (the head idiot) and because douchebags are gonna douche, they almost come to blows. Luckily Trent’s sympathetic girlfriend Jenna manages to calm things down before it escalates beyond some snarky comments. Clay goes off to search some more and the group of friends head off for some beer, drugs and sex. Eventually Clay finds himself at the door of Trent’s house and although Jenna attempts to be as helpful as she can, that old dickhole Trent is having none of it. This leads to a pissed-off Jenna heading out with Clay to help him search for his sister. They come across the abandoned Camp Crystal Lake and the bulky homicidal maniac that calls it home. There’s several revelations that come to light as the snooping duo make their escape. First, Jason has built some sort of underground tunnel system connecting it all over the stretch of land that is Camp Crystal Lake and he has it rigged with trip wires and bells. Second, and most important, Clay’s sister is still alive and being held captive by the lumbering psychopath. Clay and Jenna manage to make it back to Trent’s house to warn everyone of the danger they’re in but unfortunately Jason has already started picking off the gaggle of goofs. The points of interest, at least for my weird ass, are the new additions to the Jason mythos and I wish they had remained focused on that shit. It sets it up so it would seem Jason has farmed the cannabis for its many natural benefits but also as a lure for idiots. The underground tunnel network and crude alarm system are perfect explanations for his ability to pop up anywhere on his stretch of land. It sort of fashions him as a pot farming survivalist with a lethal stance on protecting his property. Derek Mears is definitely an imposing figure and the agile savagery he brings to Jason’s movements set him up to be so much more than the goalie-masked lump of murderous nothing the original series made him out to be. Sadly, none of this receives much focus and were left treading familiar waters. Most of the deaths are your typical acts of slasher brutality but a couple do stand out. There’s an incredibly nasty roasting of a victim within a sleeping bag that still makes me cringe (got a thing about fire) and a giallo worthy impalement is gifted to the head asshole and stands as the film’s best death. There’s atrocious dialogue and paper-thin characters but that should be of no surprise. It’s a good enough time waster but also hints at something that could have been which makes it more of a failure than anything.

Dead Voices (2020) (USA)

⭐️

Sara refuses the marriage proposal of her boyfriend Lucas because she doesn’t want to be forced into the role of “military wife”. Adding further awkwardness, her sister records the whole damn thing because she figured there would be a happier ending. Lucas ships out to Iraq with a broken heart and is presumed dead after his unit gets hit by an IED and his body is never found. Sara moves on but her sister Emily is about to open old wounds for a college project she’s working on. Reluctantly, Sara gives Emily permission to seek out a medium who can contact Lucas in the beyond and find out just what happened to him overseas. They eventually find a dude who can do just that but Mike is told by mysterious voices that Lucas may not be dead and there’s a connection to a family mountain cabin located in the middle of nowhere. The shoddy news report that opens up the film, delivered by a “news anchor” who may still be in high school, lets us know the sisters are missing, so we are already well aware that their trip out to the property with the medium doesn’t end well. They discover signs of Satanism and encounter disturbing shadow people and inhuman shrieking in the surrounding woods when nightfall hits. Mike has a vision of some horrible shit going down at the location which culminated in a couple nasty murders. Sara forgetting her medication is ominously mentioned, Mike has goofy psychic fits that border on incredibly painful constipation, the camera glitches often, nobody is particularly good at conveying any character trait outside of “annoying”, Lochlyn Monroe embarrasses himself as a psychic who refuses to help the girls out when he stops by for a reading and gets freaked out, nobody has any chemistry which is sadly impressive for a movie with such a limited cast and it’s a chore to get through all 80 of these minutes. It’s definitely bad… there’s no “but” here, it’s just definitely bad.

Freddy vs. Jason (2003) (USA/Canada)

aka A Nightmare on Friday the 13th

⭐️⭐️1/2

The Dream Slayer and Mama Voorhees’ Baby Boy finally meet and the results are… well, they’re just kind of ok. You can’t really expect more from something that had several iterations spend so much time in development hell that it was almost as forgotten as that razor-gloved crispy coot. The Springwood parents have finally figured out how to beat the supernatural slasher and all they had to do was dope up their children with a dream suppressant (Hypnocil, which Dr. Funke's 100 Percent Natural Good Time Family Band Solution had no affiliation with) and lock up the folks who had encounters with him in the mental ward. You stop dreaming, you forget the monster and then you can no longer dream of something that has faded from memory. Sure. Why not? But ol’ Freddy has been plotting in whatever Hell he calls home and he figures he can use the easily-manipulated murder machine that is Jason to strike fear in the children of Elm Street and get that old Freddy Krueger spark lit once more. Freddy’s power grows as our heroes begin to remember but the problem is, the hockey-masked beast is incredibly efficient at slaughtering so Mr. Krueger is suffering from the slasher equivalent of blue balls. So, the fight is on and it gets downright silly when we enter the dreamworld and Freddy finally has a chance against that tank Jason. The group figures they need to get Freddy into the real world and throw Jason at him, which leads to a climactic throw down akin to a hardcore match between a couple wrestlers who really hated each other and went out there to fuck some shit up… basically New Jack versus New Jack. Katharine Isabelle graces us with her presence but like most of the other recognizable faces in this bad boy, (Zack Ward, Brendan Fletcher, Lochlyn Munro) is given very little material to work with. Monica Keena and Jason Ritter are easy enough on the eyes as the heroes if not all that memorable and Christopher Rodriguez Marquette garners some sympathy as the requisite nerd amongst the group of survivors. There’s also some lame-ass pothead who really wants to be Jason Mewes and the less said about Kelly Rowland’s grating performance the better. It will always be great to see Robert Englund. Still, it’s fun enough and knows exactly what it wants to be which doesn’t make for much awkwardness in its slasher blueprint. It also gets pretty damn ridiculous in its fight scenes, wire stunts shouldn’t work this well when it comes to two legendary slashers throwing down but I’m here smiling like an asshole.

Touch of Death (1988) (Italy)

aka When Alice Broke the Looking Glass

⭐️⭐️1/2

Lester Parson is the type of middle-aged gigolo who targets women viewed as past their prime. That’s just fine for him because their money allows him to live comfortably and his habit of butchering them in brutal fashion allows him to collect macabre trophies and feast on their flesh. Yeah. He’s that kind of guy. He’s portrayed by Brett Halsey who is having a fucking blast playing around in a pitch-black comedy from the wonderfully sardonic Lucio Fulci. It makes the most of a script that seems to be stolen from H.G. Lewis and better suited for at least two decades earlier. But, the demented charm of the damn thing makes it as watchable as the more entertaining of the Godfather of Gore’s output. It’s also harnessing professional performances that would completely rub all charm off of any of the basement splatter Lewis threw out into the world. Anyways, Parson is introduced eating a hunk of human, sharing it with his cat, dismembering said human’s corpse with a chainsaw in his cellar, grinding down the meat and feeding bits to his pigs. He’s happy to comment that everyone gets their fair share. He longingly speaks to a portrait of his dead wife, bets on the horsies and talks to his radio about his concerns on being caught. Disturbingly, his radio speaks back to him and assures him not to worry. Uh oh. Al Cliver shows up as Lester’s scuzzy bookie and throws things off by not sporting the blonde mustache I’ve come to know and love. Supporting his gambling habit has Lester diving into a woman pool that’s less than aesthetically pleasing but there’s bills to be paid and bets to be made. So moles, deformities and facial hair will have to go ignored. Botched homicides, blackmailing vagrants, disagreeable corpses, vanishing mental stability and deepening debts complicate our lunatic lothario’s life. Fulci’s later output was never as well-received as his string of essential splatter flicks or his accomplished giallos from his earlier career but I have a soft spot for when the maestro just put up two middle fingers and let his demented humor take the wheel of a car careening towards his final days (unless your talking about Sodoma’s Ghost… that movie can go fuck itself). I’ll always defend that man’s output which is only ever an uphill battle when discussing the late eighties and early nineties batch of final flicks. This isn’t one of the prime examples, as it’s kind of a one-note joke but a goofy lead and cheap-jack over-the-top splat make it watchable. Plus, the fresh-faced Al Cliver variant is worth a look too.

Dead Things (1997) (USA)

⭐️1/2

High-ranking drug dealer Kris gets sent out to make a payment and collect on “50 pounds of uncut shit” by his boss Rico. He meets up with the supplier Arch and his crew, acting like idiots and watching porn. As soon as Kris leaves, the sheriff’s department shows up to raid Arch’s place. Nobody in Arch’s crew makes it out alive and Arch is ready to give up his whole operation. Kris has a romantic dinner with his fiancée, Arch lets the asshole sheriff know what’s going down and eventually Rico and Kris are picked up by the lawman with a Kraft Macaroni & Cheese box full of uncut drugs. During transport, they manage to escape along with two other prisoners. They kill their sole guard and flee in the transport van. The sheriff makes it his mission to bring the scum in but the quartet of fugitives are in for way more trouble than they thought. Their transport dies and they flee into the nearby woods to get to their hideout but instead they cross paths with a clan of psychotic and satanic hicks. Bloody torture follows. Papa looks like Dan Haggerty’s twin brother who was born a few months premature, his son is mentally challenged and wears a dress, his daughter is mentally challenged and carries around a babydoll with a hook in it, and granny resembles the usual representation of Mrs. Clause but if Mrs. Clause grew up in Alabama. The sheriff and his deputy catch three of the felons (Rico has already been snatched up by the bumpkins) but their car gets tampered with and soon everyone is fucked. As is expected, they plan on eating them. They’re also offering up a few sacrifices to their god. The usual garbage dialogue, casual racism and graphic violence makes its way to the screen as Todd Sheets brings another vision of aggressive stupidity to life. Thankfully, it’s shockingly lacking the usual butt-metal that litters his output but that’s only a slight reprieve from the excessive shenanigans. It’s like Midnight meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre with none of the talent and everyone is Franklin. Brain stabbing via clothes hanger up the nose, dismemberment, tongue severing, abuse of the term “city boy”, bludgeoning, nails in the mouth, wood paneling and an unlikely alliance drag us towards a climax featuring shit digital effects, mondo clips, zombies and the Dark Lord himself. The final ten minutes are pure backyard bliss, sadly it’s one hell of a miserable trip getting there.

The Meateater (1979) (USA)

aka Blood Theater/Phantom of the Bijoux

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

If you were ever curious as to what would happen if the mysterious awfulness which plagued many a movie theater floor would look like as an 84 minute film well, Bubba, the answer is here. In a world populated with unlikable humans and covered in a few feet of grime stands The Crest Theatre. A run of bad luck has had the place closed down for years but it ain't empty. The lone inhabitant is a rat-eating burn victim with a Jean Harlow fixation and some new tenants are about to disturb his sad existence. Mitford Webster is a miserable shoe salesman with dreams of running a theater. Much to his delight (and his wife's consternation) the low offer he put in for the abandoned junk-hole that is The Crest has been accepted. He moves the wife and two kids out and gets ready for the big time life of a movie THEE-ATE-HER owner. Promising G-rated fun for the neighborhood, he opens up after some brief renovations. He hires the derpiest projectionist he can find and gets his miserable kids and wife to work for him. Opening night is a complete success... well, no... it's a fucking disaster. King Derp electrocutes himself after the Meateater sets a trap and when the film-stock burns, a view of a secret room behind the screen is offered up to the rowdy audience. Rowdiness turns to terror when a hanging corpse is discovered to be the occupant of the hidden room. Lt. Wombat (a vulgar, beef jerky obsessed scumbag) shows up and gets down to investigating. There's also a creepy neighbor with a speech impediment hanging around who seems to be attempting to share a secret with Mitford's rightfully upset wife. That secret has to do with a twin brother who we already know is hanging around the place, attempting to sabotage the extremely unlikable Mitford's dreams. I can't say for sure why The Meateater exists. Not in the way where you ask yourself "how the hell did this get made?!" but more so as a question of what is it trying to do. My hunch lies that the film's sole reason for being is to sell hotdogs. "Hotdogs?" You may ask. The film is obsessed with the damn things. It gives love to other meat products as well but it obsesses over hotdogs like a crispy villain obsesses over the long dead platinum blonde Harlow. They talk of wieners, they sing about wieners and they celebrate wieners. It's not all wieners, mind you, the majority of the movie is concerned with the plight of the highly unsavory family but there's enough wiener concern to get the eyebrows raised. And if that were the case; how fucking great is that? Hotdogs aside (go on, put it down), the whole cast looks to be the human form of those processed beef snacks... but worse at acting. It seems to be going for laughs which just works to make the whole thing way more unsavory than it would have been if it had stuck with its horrific plot thread. Things are further helped by the rough flood of scuzz that drowns everything in stank. You don't just watch The Meateater, you feel it. The climax hits when the bitchy daughter is kidnapped by the charred killer because she kind of resembles the target of his affection. A kid (who resembles a beta test Napoleon Dynamite) is murdered, Wombat shaves, locals place their food orders and the audience is treated to uncomfortable closeups of people who probably shouldn't have a camera pointed at them. I hope ya have some hand sanitizer, your eyes will need it. If you were to wrap an oddball burrito in soiled blankets, you'd be somewhere in the ballpark of The Meateater. It's off. It's very off. But so are hotdogs... and sometimes those mystery meat concoctions really hit the spot.

Jason X (2001) (USA/Canada)

aka Friday the 13th Part 10

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

My favorite entry of the whole damn series (in the right mood) has no shame in not only sending our hockey-masked slasher into space but into the fucking future as well. Things get started in the year 2008 where the finally captured Jason is being held in a Crystal Lake research facility and studied for his impressive inability to die. The head scientist prepares the unstoppable killing machine for cryogenic suspension but her greedy peer (David fuckin’ Cronenberg!) goes over her head and comes to remove Jason for more research. It goes wrong (obviously) and Jason wipes out most of the facility before he and Dr. Rowan (smoke-show Lexa Doig) are frozen and willfully forgotten by the U.S. government. Now, a few centuries later, Earth is uninhabitable but is still a field trip destination for the human race that now occupies a distant planet in another system named Earth II. Along with some marine grunts, a small group of students and their professor stumble across the frozen doctor and her subject and decide the best course of action is to bring them aboard their ship. Idiots are gonna idiot and it doesn’t take long for the thawed monster to get into his old habits and for the spaceship full of youngsters and soldiers to start dropping. Dr. Rowan warns them that they’re not safe but the scheming professor sees a gold mine in the undead slasher and by the time they realize the shit they’re in, it’s already way too late. Kane Hodder throws it all into his final outing as Voorhees and gets plenty to do as he roams around and brutally dispatches any dope that is unfortunate to be breathing in his presence. There’s a female cyborg (Kay-Em 14, naturally in love with her creator) for him to tussle with, a couple creative deaths to gasp at (that liquid nitrogen bit is brutal), a hilarious holographic representation of Jason’s usual prey, Peter Mensah being his usual wonderful self as the marine sergeant and an upgraded look for our future Jason (nanotechnology repair reassembles his blown-apart ass with his favorite machete) that kicks so much ass I’ve been smiling about it since walking out of the theater more than two decades ago. There’s not a serious bone in its body and it works so damn well because the filmmakers knew just how ridiculous it was. If they hadn’t leaned into it, it would have been a failure. They’re also smart enough not to resort to that “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” crap that makes Troma films so unbearable but weave the stupidity around a plot that treats the threat seriously while seamlessly building a slasher film around a 1950’s B-Movie template. It’s fucking ingenious. It also features one of the silliest/greatest endings to a slasher film in the history of the subgenre.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) (USA)

aka Friday the 13th Part IX

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wonderfully, a trap is set and Jason is blown to pieces in the opening of this ninth entry to the long-running slasher series. Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a movie if this kept the hulking psychopath down. The essence of his evil lives on in his black heart and when a coroner is supernaturally compelled to consume that heart and the black viscus fluid within it, he is possessed by the hockey-masked monster. This leads to more death, as the spirit of Jason jumps from body to body and hunts down his half-sister (I’m just as surprised as you), his niece and her newborn daughter. He’s gonna need her to get himself reborn into this world (I know, I’m still just as surprised as you). A bounty hunter (Steven fuckin’ Williams) shows up to lend his expertise, collect on 500,000 bucks (the man knows his Voorhees) and help the woman and her family put an end to the Jason curse for good. There’s a slimy news anchor hanging around (he offered that 500,000 dollar bounty) and the niece’s boyfriend (cleverly casting John D LeMay from the TV series of the same name that had nothing to do with one of America’s favorite slashers) is being fingered for the murder of Jason’s half-sister (after all, the cops think the big man is long gone). That charming pixie-of-a-man Leslie Jordan is there, we get to see the old Voorhees house (way larger than I thought it would be), a man gets bound and shaved (less sexier than I thought it would be), the Necronomicon shows up, a dude melts, necrophilia is implied, violent ends hit a good amount of folks, we get some bewbs and a familiar glove makes an appearance. I appreciate the different spin on things and Steven Williams is fan-fuckin-tastic as the obsessed man who knows how to end things for good, stealing every scene he’s in. A little extra effort goes a long way in adding some spice to the franchise and I’ll always love me a “magic” dagger (ya got to put it through the heart, ya know). There’s a lot of forgettable characters, the niece of Jason being the most damning, and as intriguing as the direction is, it still feels a little underdeveloped.

Ghost Eyes (1974) (Hong Kong)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Fate proves unkind for Bao Ling, a young salon worker, when a fiendishly sexy stranger comes into her life. Breaking her glasses on her way home from work, the stranger offers her discounted contact lenses if she stops by his optometrist office. His kindness proves to be anything but when the young woman’s life takes a turn into strange and dangerous territory after she wears her new contacts for the first time. Her life force begins to drain and she is beset by horrific apparitions as her physical health withers away. Worse yet, the evil optometrist is a vampiric ghost who burnt to death three years prior and is now feeding off the young woman to sustain some semblance of life. Much to Bao Ling’s horror, he has grown tired of her and wants her to start offering him her friends. Finding little help from her skeptical but concerned boyfriend and a Taoist monk, Bao Ling readies herself for an all or nothing final battle with the surprisingly powerful psychic monster. Wonderfully odd but restrained Shaw Brothers production may be a letdown for fans of their crazier output. I found myself digging the weirdness and it kicks into high gear in the final thirty minutes as the shit hits the fan for everyone involved. Have a good feeling this will get better with each viewing… not that it wasn’t a good time on this initial watch.

Blood Massacre (1987) (USA)

⭐️⭐️1/2

A particularly scummy-lookin’ fella (George Stover, who you’ve seen in other Don Dohler flicks) walks into a dive bar, cops an attitude with everyone, assaults a waitress, gets his ass kicked by a bouncer and then waits around in the backseat of said elderly bouncer’s car and garrotes him. He then makes his way to the bar and murders the homely woman he was talking to earlier. It’s all set in what looks like a broke 80’s industrial band’s idea of a diner that exclusively plays their B-sides. So, abrasive lighting and a cigarette stank that sticks around. Rizzo (our schlubby murderer) goes and meets up with his buddy and fellow vet Jimmy. Jimmy and Rizzo are planning a bank robbery along with Jimmy’s brother and his girlfriend whom Rizzo seems to really hate. Rizzo is fucking awful. While this is going on, some pleasant young woman rents a room at the farmhouse of a family that’s obviously up to something but the two young gals seem to get along just fine. These two groups of characters will meet up after Rizzo loses his cool while casing a shopping center and walks into a video rental store because he just can’t wait. He and the gang rob the joint and its customers and a young girl ends up shot dead. The cops show up and the lieutenant follows close behind because it looks like a crime wave is in the works. The lieutenant could be the father of the Polonia brothers, so I’m all for him saving the day. The criminals run out of gas thanks to a bullet nicking their tank and they end up at the farmhouse after kidnapping one of the daughters when she stops to offer them help on the road. The criminals make themselves at home and let pops, his wife and his daughters know who is in charge. That doesn’t last because this family of farmers have some unexpected eating habits and a four course meal just forced their way in. Meandering is probably the best way to describe this one as an obvious low budget and apathy plagued the runtime… that ain’t how Dohler usually does things but it’s almost like he begrudgingly had to make this one… which is kind of the case. Investors can be real bastards and apparently they were so bad here (a forced reshoot on lower quality film, stealing the finished product, etc) that Dohler retired from movie making for nearly two decades. You can sense it in every small morsel of slag this thing has. There’s a little fun to be had with some wacky characters and awful humans cramped together in a claustrophobic house but the scenes that somehow don’t drag still feel hastily put together. You will see more of Rizzo’s tongue than anyone would ever want to and Papa Polonia gets more than one scene so I’m happy about that. He also ends up badly mutilated, which feels appropriate. True garbage that I’d never recommend but still can’t hate, no matter how much I want to. The last act is some trashy fun (no, it never stops dragging, even when it gets… I guess “good” will work) but it’s an arduous journey getting there and we spend way too much time with the films most unlikable character (yes, Rizzo) who they play off as the hero of the thing as we draw to the close. It’s not a great move.

Unknown Island (1948) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Adventurer Ted Osborne convinces his fiancée to fund an expedition to an uncharted island in the South Pacific. Not only is the allure of unknown land calling to him, rumors of prehistoric monsters roaming the Pacific place is one hell of a beckoning call to any human with the inclination for exploration. The idea of getting his hands on some specimens helps as well. Along for the trip is a tough, alcoholic steamer captain by the name of Tarnowski whose malaria is causing bouts of insanity (never good for a ship’s captain) but his big-ass boat is perfect for the transportation of wild animals, especially ones as big as Osborne saw during his time in the war when he accidentally came across the mysterious island. Osborne’s interest is science. Tarnowski’s interest is money. Carole Lane’s interest is financing her soon-to-be husband’s dreams. The addition of a man who has actually survived the island, John Fairbanks (Creature from the Black Lagoon’s Richard Denning), gives them a leg up on the expedition. He may be an alcoholic mess thanks to the PTSD of his misadventure (something ate all his friends) with no interest of returning but Tarnowski can be very convincing when he needs to be. Adding on to the issues of navigating to an uncharted island based on the memory of one man and the monstrous trouble that awaits, the crew of locals are not happy about the mythical location that is there destination and plans of mutiny begin to boil over. They attempt it but it’s squashed almost immediately… almost as if it was an unnecessary subplot. Soon after, they arrive at the island and immediately witness a brontosaurus just chillin’. Off to explore they go and as dangerous as colossal monsters may be, the hairy beast hanging around harnesses a bit more intelligence and a bit of a savage streak. After some rubbery dinos eat one of the crew, those talks of mutiny stir up again. Osborne’s zeal turns a little obsessive, Fairbanks proves a better hero than initially expected, Carol realizes this dangerous adventure shit may not be for her and Tarnowski’s mind starts slipping deeper into a lunatic fog. Incredibly fun monster adventure features a game cast and some wonderfully cheesy creatures without wasting almost any time on melodramatics.

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) (USA/Canada)

⭐️⭐️1/2

Jason hops aboard a luxury boat carrying a graduating high school class to New York City. Final girl Rennie has a fear of water and recurring visions of a young Jason Voorhees reaching out to her. She also has a piece of shit uncle on board being a dick to pretty much everyone. Jason sinks the ship, leaving a small amount of survivors fleeing for their lives through the streets of Vancouver... I mean New York. A parade of cannon fodder is marched along without really giving us any memorable victims outside of “guitar girl” who exits almost as soon as she shows up and “boxing boy” who gets a bit of screen time and eventually gets his noggin knocked off by Jason. The nightly toxic waste dump in the New York sewers (Sure. Why not?) does away with the unstoppable slasher. Plenty of death, almost no substance and a lovely helping of stupidity combine to make for a weaker entry in the series. Although, Jason himself seeming to take in the fact that he’s in Times Square (hey, the budget allowed for a few scenic shots) is pretty damn hilarious.

The Howl of the Devil (1988) (Spain)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Mr. Wonderful himself, Paul Naschy, portrays stage and screen actor Hector Doriani who spends his days in an isolated countryside mansion, convinced his life is in the shadow of his deceased twin brother, the famous horror star Alex Doriani. Alex’s young son Adrian now lives with Hector and is prone to fantasizing about his father visiting him in the various guises of the characters he played while alive. Of course that’s not all that’s going on. Young women are being paid by Hector’s butler (formerly Alex’s and played by Howard Vernon) on his behalf to partake in some sadistic sex games at the mansion where Mr. Naschy likes to be in character. Once the sexy times have been had, the women get the boot and mostly end up dead. When Hector isn’t dwelling on his kinks and being an asshole to the so-called whores he has over, he spends his time being an asshole to his nephew and lusting after his housekeeper Carmen (Don’t really blame him, it’s Caroline Munro). The village priest has a local drunk spying on Hector for reasons that will remain hidden for a bit but an exposition-filled chat at the cemetery points to suspicions that Hector may have murdered his brother and made it look like a suicide. He then took the life of his brother’s cuckolding wife. Hector’s behavior is about to catch up with him though, as his brother’s ghost seems to be gaining more power and there’s some sinister machinations afoot. Minor sadism mixes well with minor perversion and even though the makeup may be pretty damn cheap, it’s still fun as all hell seeing Paul Naschy throw down as several famous macabre characters. There’s plenty of bewbs, some graphic splat and Naschy just being Naschy, outside of that it’s nothing special.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Mopey telekinetic teenager Tina tries using her powers to bring back her drowned daddy (she accidentally Carrie’d his ass when she was a wee lass) but only succeeds in resurrecting the dormant Voorhees from the lake where the much-missed Tommy Jarvis left his lumbering corpse in the previous installment. A house full of partying teens occupying the place next door to Tina’s lake house, where her scuzzy psychiatrist and poodle-haired mother have taken her to fix her brain, are there to fill out the body count. Kane Hodder makes one imposing Jason, the victims are easy on the eyes but don’t leave much of an impression, J.V. manages to get his decaying mitts on an assortment of killing implements and Dr. Crews (played with gusto by Terry Kiser) is one enjoyable scumbag. Tina gets sweet on the boy next door and the murders are nowhere near as graphic thanks to the forever unwelcome presence of studio censors. Still, the psychic powers versus psycho slasher angle is fun and I rarely regret any time spent watching a slasher do what they do best... especially one that ends with a zombie papa assisted victory.

Blood Hook (1986) (USA)

aka Muskie Madness

⭐️⭐️1/2

More proof that the dangers of fishing contests far outweigh the joys of sitting on your ass in open water, drinking some crispy boys and waiting for aquatic creatures to nibble on your bait. I’ve tried preaching of the terrors for years but all my warnings seem to fall on deaf ears. It’s a hill I’ll die on and luckily, I can always point to this weirdo late-eighties comedy/slasher flick as proof that my message has depth. Muskie Madness is the name of the contest and the lake is packed with hopeful fishermen looking for that big catch. All these master baiters are soon gonna feel like prey though because a madman is dragging them to bloody ends with the usage of a big-ass fishhook. Damn shame that a group of young idiots are up at the lake at a family vacation house. The young man’s grandpa was hit by a stray bullet (shouldn’t fish with guns ya damn idiots) whilst fishing on his dock and it went right in his spine seventeen years earlier and the young man hasn’t been to the house since. The caretaker is a real grump with a white beard that may be painted on and it’s hard to focus on anything else with just how gross it looks. The locals are kinda weirdos and some are even assholes… ya know, real “characters”. An annoying family from Oak Park, IL are also around taking up screen time. A super hawt local girl who probably shouldn’t be a mother almost loses her son to the hook-wielding mad man… it’s not really important but I really wanted to mention the smokin’ hot 80’s fitness buff chickadee. The cops have their hands tied due to the community spectacle and that leaves the group of friends frustrated when one of their own turns up missin’. The murders take a backseat to the serious concern of cheating in the competition. It all has to do with a metal plate in the head and the sweet sounds of the cicadas driving a veteran insane. The lead looks like David Tennant if his not-too-distant relatives shared some of the same DNA… or if he were born in Florida… same thing, I guess. There’s another asshole who looks like Anthony Edwards if he never lost his baby fat. It’s very Midwestern, which immediately places it in my good graces, but it’s also a little more boring than anything else and it’s got a lameness to it which is sometimes charming and sometimes annoying… just like a little cousin who wants to hang out with you and your friends as you drink stolen Milwaukee’s Best and light off firecrackers found in your uncle’s garage.

The Parish (2019) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

On the heels of her husband’s tragic death, Liz and her daughter move to a small town looking for a fresh start. The teenage girl has a bit of a justified attitude to go along with the uprooting but the angst turns to terror when some spooky spookiness starts spooking. Mom is already plagued with nightmares about her dead spouse and has replaced her faith with a bit of the booze. Shit changes when her husband’s spirit shows up and tells her to “Help them” after a creepy nun appears on her front lawn being all creepy. Solid leads (most of the time) successfully pull off the grieving mother and daughter portrayal (no easy task) and Bill Oberst Jr is there as the local pastor. A giant janitor stalks around, there’s a secret at the daughter’s new school and ghosts act like ghosts. Perhaps the power of faith can wrap everything up in a neat little package? Most likely. BOJ tells a great ghost story (dude has always been a scene stealer) and Angela DiMarco is really good as the mother with a plate full of shit on her table. Sadly, the movie kind of lets her down. It’s not as creepy as it should have been but Angela DiMarco and BOJ make it worth a cursory glance.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A drop in graphic splat is made up for with a stronger than usual script and extremely likable characters. Tommy Jarvis royally screws the pooch in attempting to destroy the corpse of Jason Voorhees and ridding himself of his own personal boogeyman. In a moment of excusable trauma-induced rage, Tommy forgets the gasoline he’s brought along and rips an iron bar from the cemetery gate. He proceeds to stab away at the body of his enemy. When lightning hits the iron, it manages to resurrect the wormy corpse of that ultimate camp-counselor-annihilator. Tommy flees and tries warning the Crystal Lake (now called Forest Green) sheriff but he thinks Tommy is insane thanks to his run in with the slasher in the past. When corpses turn up done away in a Voorhees fashion, the sheriff believes Tommy is going to extreme lengths to get everyone to believe Jason has returned. Complicating things further, the sheriff’s rebellious daughter, Megan, has fallen for the young man her papa has locked up in his jail. Jason returns to his old stomping grounds and this proves fatally disastrous for the new group of camp counselors (one of them being Megan) who just got the batch of brats they’ll be monitoring over the weekend. With the censors already neutering the naturally violent slasher genre, part 7 puts a bit more effort into its script and is all the better for it. It leans more towards humor, some of which fails but some of which lands (counselor Cort’s explanation of Indian markers still kills me) and has a refreshing sense of humor about itself. The cast is likable and you end up wishing you got to spend more time with the counselor cannon fodder, which is always a good thing. Thom Matthews is great as Tommy Jarvis and I wish he had stuck around for a few more installments. Jennifer Cooke plays her character with the right amount of rebellion and doesn’t come off as annoying... also I’ve harbored a major crush on Megan for decades so I’m more than a little biased. David Kagen as the sheriff is one of my favorite authority figures to ever grace a slasher film and shows just how helpful it could have been to have a strong police presence in more of these teen-driven murder movies. It’s a damn fine entry in the F13 series and a damn fine piece of late 80s horror.

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) (UK)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Awaiting his execution, Baron Victor Frankenstein discloses his tale to a chaplain. The chaplain was called, not for any religious comfort or absolution, because the Baron couldn't think of anyone who would have come if summoned. Victor confesses his involvement in dabbling where man was not supposed to dabble. Victor and his tutor, Paul, began experimenting with restoring life to dead animals. Frankenstein's thirst for knowledge, leads him to attempt creating man from spare body parts collected from the recently deceased. His ultimate goal being to give life to something which never lived. This quest of his gives way to him butting heads with his former mentor and completely losing himself to his obsession with creation. This leads to murder, a damaged brain and tragedy. Hammer's first foray into gothic horror helped save the genre from the steady decline it was experiencing. Watching it now, nearly seven decades after its original release, it's easy to see why. The Curse of Frankenstein is remarkable. It's a perfect storm of every filmmaking aspect. Fisher's assured direction, Sangster's exciting script, acting, set design and the overall mood. Peter Cushing plays the Baron perfectly. A man far too concerned with science to worry about the emotional side of being human. He can pretend for appearances but all that matters in the end is knowledge. Any other actor who lacked Cushing's class would have made the Baron contemptible. Christopher Lee's creature is excellent. With no dialogue, Lee's eyes speak volumes about the confusion and rage at work in his damaged mind. The lab sets are perfect, the scenery plays to the cold and creepy mood of the film and there are sprinkles of unexpected (and shocking for the time) gore. It all combines to produce a perfect horror film.

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Jason may be dead and gone (yeah, sure) but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t money to be made. The kid that ended his life, Tommy Doyle, is now a mid-thirties-looking teenager (at least I think he’s supposed to be a teen) and mentally disturbed. He’s the new resident at a halfway house whose mission is to get him ready for the outside world. When an anger-prone inhabitant of said place brutally murders an annoying roommate, things steadily go from bad to worse. It seems that old hockey masked son of a bitch is back and is just as efficient in wiping out under developed characters as he ever was. The mystery is set up to get the audience asking if Jason has returned or question if maybe Tommy has donned the goalie mask but that’s all bullshit because it basically tells you who the killer is in the very scene they introduce him. Random folks wander into the picture (a couple of 80’s greasers, some backwoods ma and son combo and an ambulance driver with a horny waitress girlfriend and a cocaine addiction) to fill out the body count. This surely would have been the dregs if it weren’t for some interesting touches. First there’s punky new-wave girl Violet who blesses us with some sweet dance moves which would make any person swoon before her uncalled for death. There’s also the older brother of a young kid whose grandpa works at the place named Demon who dresses like Thriller-era Michael Jackson, lives in his van and gets some nasty diarrhea from car-cooked enchiladas. The insanely cute Robin who doesn’t do much of anything and the usual violence which cuts away at the right time, making you believe you’ve seen more than you actually have. Like I said, the identity of the killer is given away right off the bat but if you were coming into a F13 sequel anticipating a mystery, well, you’re doing it wrong. There’s enough oddball touches injected into this standard slasher fare to make it an enjoyable time. I can’t stress this enough: stay away from anything cooked in a car.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Picking up in the aftermath of Part 3-D, Jason comes back to life in the hospital morgue, kills a horny ME and a nurse and heads on back to his old stomping grounds. The victims-to-be are a vacationing family of three (mom, daughter and monster-mask-loving kid brother Corey Feldman), a group of partying teens renting the next door vacation home and a lone wolf type dude hunting down his sister’s killer. Various sharp objects pierce through the majority of the cast and Tom Savini delivers some of his best special effects (possibly only overshadowed by his excellent work in Day of the Dead). If you go into a slasher flick from the standpoint of wanting to see fetishized graphic violence, then this is the F13 for you. I really don’t believe there is a better example of the excessiveness the slasher genre became infamous for and this fourth installment of the franchise displays it with a sadistic glee. The violence is explicit and impressive, the killer in nigh unstoppable, there’s some female flesh on display and an abundance of cannon fodder. There’s nothing wrong with this at all. It definitely was my favorite of the series during those teenage years (now, depending on mood, I shift between 2 and X) and it remains one of the best examples of excessive eighties horror to ever grace the silver screen. Extra points rewarded for Crispin Glover’s sick dance moves.

Trail of Blood (1997) (USA)

⭐️

Populated with no likable characters and nothing of much interest, this serial killer flick based off of the real life exploits of the Green River Killer that took place in the Pacific Northwest for more than a decade, is one butt-numbing drag to get through. The annoying-voiced killer strangles prostitutes as the cops continuously fail to nab him. There’s a drug trafficking ring whose bald leader knows who is behind the murders and is attempting to cover it all up. The Klan also shows up in the opening (guess who those morons blame) but that plot develops into a big old pile of nothing. Characters pop in and out and nodding off becomes a method for survival during this nearly two hour long snooze-a-thon.

Totem (1999) (USA)

⭐️1/2

Full Moon (uh oh) teams yet again with David DeCoteau (oh no) to unleash even more tiny terror (ah crap). This time around, six folks randomly show up at a dinky cabin in the middle of nowhere. They’re not sure why but they somehow made their way to the unfamiliar place after being called there. Escape is futile thanks to an invisible barrier which keeps the dopes trapped. There’s a graveyard nearby which is located in the only direction they can walk. Of course, within is a carved stone monument… or totem pole if you’d like to stick to a loose definition of the term. One idiot decides the best course of action is to destroy the ancient thing. He finds it impossible when it seems to be protected by the same strange force field keeping them from exiting the area. They look around the cabin after making a hasty exit from the graveyard and discover some disturbing crap. Human blood, a decayed and severed hand, an old-ass bible and antique family photographs pointing to troubling times at the cabin. They discover their own cheap headstones outside and stone creatures emerge from the totem pole to push those deadly fates along. On the subject of fate, it seems some malicious force is pulling the strings and nobody is in control of anything. Three shall die, three shall kill and we’ll be spending time with these selfish idiots for way longer than acceptable. Performances better suited for plotless pornography are recognizable for anyone who has dipped their toes in the choppy DeCoteau waters and Charles Band’s budget-conscious obsession with miniature monsters has only shifted in how much he’s willing to pay… or not pay in this case. The only relief comes when the stiff monsters show up on screen and that inexplicably does not happen nearly enough. It does contain one of the shoddiest and lamest exposition-heavy flashbacks I have had the privilege to witness… I’ll give it some credit for that. This shit is bad and a prime example of Full Moon at its laziest.

Turtle Island (2013) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

Friends should never let friends become documentarian filmmakers. At least, that’s what the found footage subgenre has taught me. There’s only two endings available, really. In one the filmmaker gets obsessed with a supernatural subject and vanishes trying to bring it out into the light. Then all his or her friends have to talk about them in the inevitable documentary on the missing documentarian that follows. Worse, the second option has the eager filmmaker actually dragging along his or her friends to whatever end awaits them. Now there’s nobody to directly talk about you in the documentary about you because those closest to you have ended up just as dead as you. Bummer. The illusive Bigfoot of Vermont becomes a point of interest for scumbag filmmaker (we’re introduced to him cheating on his girlfriend with his best friend’s girlfriend) named Daniel and even though he is constantly proving himself untrustworthy, he manages to convince his friends to journey out to the wilds of Turtle Island and hunt for Bigfoot. There’s a short video floating around the web concerning a supposed bear attack that doesn’t look like any kind of bear. The dude who sent him the video seems awfully eager to get Daniel and his friends (exploitation targets) out to the island. The plan is to catch it all on camera and make them those sweet, sweet reality tv buckaroos. Interspersed footage of what looks to be a torture room and bound women doesn’t bode well. The distress of the group isn’t inspiring much optimism either. The road trip out has everyone building their character history up which is fine for the other three (two interchangeable girls and a young Tom Pelphrey) but the ever-present Daniel sucks all the likability out of almost everything. So it’s a long stretch of having to deal with Daniel and his gang of dopes. There’s also interviews with folks who have had encounters with the North American forest ape on the island our heroes are heading to. Driving in, they have an encounter with a local weirdo after one of their number checks to see if she’s okay when they see her stumbling on the side of the road. Other local flavor is encountered and the quartet finally make it to their destination. Before they get there, they already begin agitating each other. Oh goody. Camping and drinking takes place and the excitement of outhouse exploration is experienced. Dark woods are navigated as something big is seen running through the night. Performances are solid, the camerawork is suitably shaky, the minimal Sasquatch action is pretty fun (Fuck you, Daniel. You had that coming.) and they are delightfully goofy looking. The clips of torture-lite action don’t come into play and seem unnecessary but what do I know? Take it or leave it, won’t matter in the long run.