Acacia (2003) (South Korea)

aka Root of Evil

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Disintegration of the family unit is the name of the game in Ki-Hyeong Park’s unsettling film. After failing to conceive, a young couple decide to go the adoption route. They bring home an artistically talented and distant six year old boy named Jim-sung who immediately forms an obsession with the acacia tree in their backyard. We’ll later find out that he believes his birth mother had turned into a tree after she died and is now convinced said tree is the one in the yard of his new home. When his adopted mother unexpectedly gets pregnant, the first cracks in the happy family begin to appear. The child is born and there’s a dangerous jealousy blooming within the older brother. Before anything awful can happen, Jin-sung runs off and vanishes and then shit begins to unravel. Insanity and death come to the forefront as a twisted secret is revealed. Slow burner works for the most part and develops some sympathy among its characters. Patience is rewarded with a suitably unsavory reveal but the minimal supernatural aspect of the whole thing may just hamper your enjoyment. The relationship between Jun-sung and the odd neighbor girl adds some sweetness to the mostly sour mix. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for tossing it in the trash can.

Killer Kites (2023) (USA)

⭐️⭐️1/2

The wind brings death along with it after Abby’s inheritance comes with ownership of an old kite. Loud and obnoxious people surround her, so I guess it’s fortuitous that the kite is bloodthirsty. The damn thing even ties back to the occult bullshit those damn Nazis got up to. She hands the kite off to her brother who is inexplicably excited about owning a kite with history and after he does some research, he realizes there is something very wrong with the world’s least entertaining outdoor activity. He dies soon after, leaving Abby a message that they need to talk. She’s visited by a specter that night and he warns her against interfering. He advises if she lets things go, the kite will continue killing but will leave her alone. The next morning she discovers it wasn’t a ghost because the guy is still in her house and he’s pretty hungry. He’s elusive as to why she needs to let the kite thing go but continues to warn her against pursuing all of it. He vanishes shortly after. Soon, incredibly inept special effects bring death to random dopes. It’s pretty great. Abby knows a supernatural kite is behind the evil and that the necklace she also inherited (I think it’s the head of a spoon) is connected to all of it. A horny coworker decides to help her out but how much help he’ll be is questionable. This leads to a bread festival (kites love bread, everybody knows that), the revelation that the kites are multiplying and a massacre that gets folks believing in the danger of kites. Coupons are clipped, a team of heroes is formed and a shirt design is blurred for copyright reasons. Yes. It has a title track. Yes. There is kite pov. Yes. It’s a solid thirty minutes stretched out to about seventy that somehow delivers comedy that works… even if some doesn’t. And, yes. Kites are communists. Abby is a likable hero, some of the idiots are endearing and it’s ridiculous enough to get me smiling in between rolling my eyes. “It was a festival of bread, now it’s a festival of dead.”

Hatyarin (1991) (India)

aka The Perilous Witch

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

I'm not going to pretend to be shocked if you end up disliking the horror output of India. I get it. I really do. Triple-digit run times, musical numbers, failed comedy and long stretches of tedium can take out even the strongest of constitutions. So, I understand but I also disagree. I think we've known each other long enough for you to have established what I'm into and no matter how many of these things I watch, I just can't help but grin. Indian horror is the best kind of culture shock. I'm always happy as hell when something just feels the right kind of wild. Insane by most standards and cheap as hell, India's output just tickles my fancy. Karma proves to be a right fatal bitch for three family men in this wildly entertaining early nineties monster flick. A lovely wedding night is spoiled when a dressed-in-white, smokey-eyed beauty pops up before the couple can consummate the marriage. The husband has his throat torn out and the bride is hypnotized, trapped by a living tree and the woman in white proceeds to use a ceremonial blade to spill her blood into the mouth of the evil wizard buried at the tree's base. With the virginal bride murdered, the cackling woman in white turns into a lumpy-faced monster with ping pong eyes and fangs. The sins of the father (or fathers in this case) are going to carry a hefty price for a good amount of people by film's end. A while ago three life-long friends hired an evil wizard to use his black magic to convince a young couple to sign over their fortune. After getting their ill-gotten gains, they let the wizard murder said couple. The woman's spirit returns and stabs the magic man but he places a curse on her before she dies. Now she is some weirdo zombie-witch-thing and she has to make blood sacrifices to the corpse of the dead wizard using the virginal members of the greedy trios’ family. Luckily, for at least one young woman, she's engaged to a dashing police inspector and he's ready to fight. There's abuse of stock footage lightning (something pretty damn common in Indian horror), fat sidekick comic relief (also pretty damn common), wonderful musical interludes (one sung by a recently roofied woman), a children's toy competition that ends about as badly as any children's toy competition could (in ridicule and death), and a final battle which involves weapon summoning, dismemberment and a giant projectile tongue. Without subtitles it's pretty hard to follow but luckily Tim Paxton's publication Monster! filled in most of the details. Hatyarin is a magical time filled with cheap-o monster goodness and the usual wild shenanigans one finds in this region's horror cinema. A little more brutal (well as brutal as strict censorship and zero funding can be) than the majority of this time period's output it just makes the film feel a bit more sleazy. You may not like it but I'll sure as hell treasure it till the day I'm hung from the killing tree.

The Ice Demon (2021) (Russia)

⭐️1/2

Two campers dealing with the harsh Russian winter uncover a body buried under the snow in the middle of the frozen wilderness. They move the corpse so they can camp down a bit more comfortably. You may find that disrespectful but the intense winter storm has left the campers very little options. As they attempt to sleep through the worst of it, the believed-to-be corpsicle shows up in their tent, scaring the living hell out of one of the women. The other lady shows up creepily opening the tent from the outside with half her face frost-bitten to high-hell. As expected, that’s a great time for the music to swell as the title card hits. We then join a game of Russian roulette for the ownership of a stray dog between a group of idiots and a young girl who is moody. Sounds Russian enough. Her stepfather responds to the gun firing and takes the girl (and her new dog) home. We rejoin that corpse we saw in the opening, lying on a coroner’s slab, ready to be autopsied. The doctor makes his first incision and is horrified to see the supposed long-dead corpse begin bleeding. He immediately has his assistant run off for medical aid… this stiff is alive! Sounds Russian enough. The stepfather and daughter are part of an unhappy family, with mother being the chief of medicine at the local hospital. This not-so-dead corpse is her missing husband and the three of them rush to the hospital when they are made aware of his shocking reappearance. It’s another chance for these folks to be all moody and cranky. Sounds Russian enough. Folks wish to study this unique case of survival (the dude’s been frozen for probably close to ten years) but his ex-wife demands to take his comatose ass home. She gets her way and it doesn’t take long for the slow-burning creeps to kick in. The daughter researches comas but in the form of pseudoscience, so think more astral projection as opposed to minimal brain activity. She attempts to contact her father through spooky “science” and there’s definitely something hanging around the house that’s a bit out of the ordinary. Step-daddy begins (more like continues) to act like a real prick, mama just pouts and broods and the daughter uses children’s blocks to speak with her vegetable papa. Following a mini-stroke for the stepfather, mom starts acting like an asshole as opposed to her usual vibe of distant and constipated. A flashback fills in the tragic pieces of spousal abuse and nothing of interest happens as we, the viewer at home, fight off sleep. A doctor gives the unlikely diagnosis that the comatose man is mostly a puppet for something and is working towards some nefarious ends. Russian doctors are pretty cool. Mama gets possessed or something and wields a meat tenderizer, minimally terrorizing the cast for a couple minutes. The thing then decides to drag on past an acceptable end point to deliver the tired message that mental illness is, in fact, the real monster. Suitably cold and awkwardly dubbed (but everyone is gravel-mumbling like Christian Bale’s Batman so I guess it doesn’t matter), Ice Demon would probably hit a solid level of unease if it weren’t so focused on melodrama and sad-sackary. There’s atmosphere but it’s a bit wasted on the limp story, long takes and stilted dialogue. Even if it were in its original language, it would still feel like a wannabe European crime drama lacking a stellar cast to bring it all home. For a slow-burn thriller to work, there has to eventually be fire. Leave it to fucking Russia to forget that.

Terror at Bigfoot Pond (2020) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

Hippie college goobers stumble upon the territory of Bigfoot in lovely New Mexico and that hairy son of a gun is none too pleased about it. Luckily (unfortunately) our heroes have GoPros and all the “action” is caught on ‘em. Said action consists of awkward skinny dipping in a scuzzy pond, wood knocks, thrown rocks, a bargain-bin Bigfoot costume, food theft, veggie burgers, nudity (shocking, considering the cast was probably paid in veggie burgers), campfire tales, extended topless dancing around a fire pit, visible crew members, a sex montage with eroticism ranging somewhere between stubbing your toe and being forced to accompany someone you don’t like on a shopping trip to Target and the kind of excitement one finds in a film where friends got together to camp and made a movie with no script. The soundtrack is composed of the music one would find in an office training video circa 1994 and a riff on the Jaws theme and there’s an opening credits roll that lasts forever, comprised of the admittedly beautiful New Mexican landscape. This is backyard filmmaking at its most inept. Should you love it? No, probably not but I’m an idiot and I’m just happy that it exists, even if it runs out of steam (or whatever this caliber of entertainment can call forward progression) and just keeps on keeping on. As usual, I really don’t know how to rate these films that are on a level of terrible so deep, they just become surreal and it goes beyond my understanding. This shouldn’t be available for consumption, it should be rotting in some dude’s attic, only viewed once by friends and family after one too many drinks were had at a wake. Oh yeah, Bigfoot puts on a GoPro, just thought you should know that.

The House That Jack Built (2018) (Denmark/France/Sweden/Germany/Belgium)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

My relationship with the films of von Trier is strained to say the least. I’ve always felt that there are great movies in the works but his humongous ego usually drowns everything in a thick layer of pretension... ruining any chance of enjoyment on my end. Somehow, defying all logic, THTJB has finally allowed me to enjoy one of his films. It’s pretentious as all hell but through Matt Dillon’s tour de force performance and a fascinating look into the sinister machinations ticking away under the surface of our serial killer, it somehow comes out unspoiled... well, mostly unspoiled. I still have issues, but knowing von Trier that’s exactly what he wants. The focus of the film is failed architect Jack and his random, heinous slayings. As he journeys along to his final fate, he attempts to explain to his guide into the afterlife just what made him tick... or he may just be breaking the silence because he likes to hear his own voice. Gruesome, hilarious and boring in equal measure, I’ll be damned but somehow it all works.

The Phantom of 42nd Street (1945) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

When the millionaire uncle of actress Claudia Moore is found murdered following the opening night performance of the play Black Friday, New York theater critic Tony Woolrich gets dragged into investigating it by his editor… much to his chagrin. With the help of a hard-nosed detective, he starts digging into things and falls for the lead actress in the process. She’s worried about the safety of her father and wants the critic to help her convince the ailing man to retire from the theatrical scene for his own good. She also lets Tony know that a mysterious woman is hanging around outside their home, causing further anxiety. There’s some family secrets at play and a ticking clock because Tony suspects that Claudia may be next on the chopping block. Tony’s wisecracking taxi driver Romeo is along for the ride, offering up plenty of advice that nobody has asked for. Gorgeous Kay Aldridge (in her last film) is easy on the eyes and has one hell of a presence which makes it easy to stay firmly in her corner. I’m a sucker for fast-talkin’ heroes in suit coats and hats, so David O’Brien is the exact kind of protagonist I ask for in mysteries of this vintage. It’s an interesting yarn, more procedural than thriller, but still entertaining if you know what you’re in for.

Without Warning (1980) (USA)

aka Alien Shock/It Came Without Warning/Alien Encounters/Alien Warning

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A cool-lookin’ alien stalks some California woodlands, making life hard for hunters and campers in the area. It shoots out these little toothy flesh-discs that suck the blood of whatever target they make contact with. Sandy and Greg are two teens heading out to camp with their friends despite the warnings of a creepy gas station owner (in all fairness, I probably wouldn’t listen to Jack Palance either) who tells them that it’s a bad idea to be hanging around the lake during hunting season. They discover a stash of bodies (their friends included) and head back to town for help. Help is found in the untrustworthy form of wild-eyed war vet Martin Landau (whose dismissed tales of aliens are now given some substance but his deteriorating mental state is also a fine reason as to why nobody listens to him). Cranky-ass Jack Palance is also wandering around, hunting the alien and being a little unhinged. We also get some brief roles for a few ill-fated celebrities (well, I’d call them celebrities) and an especially wiener-ish role for a very young David Caruso. It’s a win all around. If only we got more time with that badass alien costume.

The Passing (2011) (USA)

aka The Bloodline

⭐️⭐️

Three siblings/idiots inherit a vast estate from their dead granny and, because they’re on the youthful side of the life cycle, they invite their friends and throw a party. There’s a stipulation in the will that the children have to spend the first weekend after her death in the house without parental supervision. Only granddaughter Elizabeth is left an ancient heirloom because she’s definitely in line for something special and probably awful. Red-tinted POV spies on ‘em and Elizabeth gets some weird vibes but a party is a party no matter how old your friends look. Her brothers convince her the party is a fine idea but then smoky specters bring about shakily rendered digital deaths and it kinda puts a damper on things. We then skip ahead as Elizabeth seems to be the sole survivor and is getting interviewed by a game Paul Gleason as an eccentric detective. The needless time jump proves pointless and we catch up to what happened as Elizabeth explains the chain of events which lead to the death of her brothers and their friends. She also explains the family secret which places her in an important role and explains the smoke demons ruining everyone’s day. A deformed dude shows up, awkward sex is had, an elderly butler stalks around the place and Elizabeth details what happened with a startling wide-eyed lack of talent. There’s a handful of wet deaths and at least the damn thing tries to be a little more than a modern take on the “old dark house” tale but the mind does wander every so often no matter how much the film is trying. It’s better than I expected but I honestly wasn’t expecting much. A little alcohol would probably help push this over into moderately enjoyable time-waster territory. Plus, a dude gets pulled into a toilet and I guess that’s not something I see too often.

The She-Creature (1956) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

Past life regression becomes a sleazy hypnotist’s key to murderous revenge when he uses his abilities to call forth the prehistoric sea-thing his lovely assistant was centuries ago. The gorgeous (and badass) Marla English finds herself in monstrous shoes yet again (a year later she’d be transformed into the titular Voodoo Woman) in another American International cheese-fest. Dr. Lombardi runs his show out of a carnival and his predictions gain the attention of a local philanthropist who sees a way to make some money off of the doctor’s forecasts. The businessman’s daughter is kinda seeing the young doctor who thinks Lombardi is complete bullshit and is giving a bad name to hypnotism. The police look for his assistance in nabbing the hypnotist because the man seems to have an alibi for everything. The doctor and the assistant fall for each other and maybe love can conquer all the monstrous shenanigans… yeah, right. Hypnotism, chatter, more hypnotism and then a bunch more chatter take up most of the runtime. It’s a shame that a monster costume as wonderful as the one featured here is stuck in such a boring-ass movie.

Party Night (2017) (USA)

⭐️1/2

Three couples ditch the official after-prom party and have their own celebration at the secluded lake house of one of their uncles. In between all the angsty teen dramatics, a large bohunk in a blank mask with a big-ass machete starts picking ‘em off. It’s your standard stalk and slash with the added bonus of completely unlikable protagonists. The kids stick around waiting for their friends to turn up, plenty of red stuff spills and the mystery behind a string a disappearances in the area is solved. A dull 70 minutes.

Shadow in the Cloud (2020) (New Zealand/USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

In 1943, an injured flight officer (Chloë Grace Moretz) hops aboard a B-17 called The Fools Errand, carrying some top secret contraband with her. The crass crew ends up being the least of her worries when something begins terrorizing the flying fortress. Held up in the ball turret, shit starts getting weird and pretty damn claustrophobic. Of course, the bat-like gremlin creature and cloud-camouflaged enemy airship are making her time in the belly of the aircraft increasingly unpleasant. What’s in her bag? What’s with the monkey-bat-rat thing? And what’s our female badass’ secret? Oh man. This movie does not let up once it gets started. Ms. Moretz is wonderful in what is nearly a one-woman show contained in small quarters for a good amount of the runtime and there’s a fantastic vibe of weird bubbling under everything. Is it ridiculous? You bet your baby-in-hand, plane-crawling ass it is but it’s one god damn fun time.

The Decedent (2025) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bella Brady is a young mortician at her family funeral home in south Pittsburgh and she’s in for one hell of an experience when the body of a recently deceased serial killer unleashes a supernatural hell storm in the cozy family business. The corpse has been embalmed but thanks to the self-inflicted gunshot wound that ended his life, Bella has restorative work to accomplish before his wake on Monday. Of course, she doesn’t know about the man’s unsettling past but as the night drags on, she’ll be learning things she didn’t want to know about the dead man in her care. A disquieting suicide note causes a chain reaction of unpleasantness and the claims of something needing “one hundred” that the dead man couldn’t finish points to an unfortunate fate coming our hero’s way. When she lets her police officer ex know about the suicide note that comes off more like a confessional, his discovery at a location named in the note has the local authorities claiming the corpse as their property pending further investigating. Bella is told to sit tight but the presence of something malignant that has been around for a long time is now haunting the building and is going to make that an impossible task. Control is lost and innocent (and some not-so innocent) people will end up dead. The nightmare is caught on the large number of security cameras her father has insisted on putting up (a few break ins have him worried about the local teens smoking his embalming fluid because teenagers will always be idiots) and the tutorial footage she is shooting with her own camera. Zoe Graham is terrific in the lead and brings a lovely charisma to her immensely likable protagonist. Her relationship with her father rings true and for the brief glimpse we get, it’s pretty damn cute. It only suffers from a possession angle that we’ve seen many times before but any boredom just fades away thanks to its cast and solid script. Andrew Bowser (who shows up as the funeral home maintenance man with a helpful knowledge of true crime and an easy chemistry with Bella) delivers a found footage flick that is both spooky and playful as it lets its dark narrative breath within the handful of hours it takes place in, finally boiling over into some nasty violence.

Phantom Brother (1988) (USA)

⭐️1/2

Four elderly youths journey into the forest and come across an abandoned house that seems like the perfect location to bump some uglies. One of the girls gets the vibe that the place is dangerous and decides it would be in her best interest to wait outside. She is correct because it doesn’t take long for her boyfriend to meet his end via throat violence. Prior to that, the other couple consisting of some incredibly expressive doofus from Brooklyn with a disgusting head of hair and his gal who looks kinda smelly but does have some nice sweater canons to go with her beefy butt are sent to their maker with a kitchen knife brandished by a dope in a kinda cool mask and hood combo. Their screams are what brought the smart blonde’s boyfriend into the house. The smart girl runs off to find and comes across a helpful young man named Abel. He knows a bit more than he’s letting on. The house was his family’s and his family perished in a car accident in which he was the only survivor. His mother and sister now haunt the area and his “phantom brother” loves nothing more than to slaughter any trespasser who comes across the house. It happens more than you would think because Abel’s dad supposedly hid a bunch of money somewhere in the place. Abel isn’t happy with the actions of his spectral family and he develops feelings for the girl who got a bad feeling about the location. It’s further complicated when the girl refuses to just ignore the fact that her friends have disappeared and plans on doing some digging around the dangerous house. There’s also a few subplots taking up time and trying the viewer’s patience. A terrible doctor who believes Abel to be very dangerous is determined to get him back in protective care, a film crew of idiots attempts to shoot a cheapjack horror film at the abandoned home and Abel’s horrible adoptive family attempts to get their hands on the money. In between all this marginally interesting action is a whole bunch of talking and humor that couldn’t have been all that humorous even at the time of release. The emphasis on comedy that rarely lands and hair that’s more nauseating than any violence has this SOV slasher flick bringing a healthy amount of groans to the viewing experience. Awkward human interactions and aggravating performances will numb your ass as it seems each fucking character tries to be more abrasive than the last. Even the fucking ghosts have you wishing you could hammer some foot-long nails into your ears. The killer has a cool look, the splatter is my kind of cheap, the ill-fated Dawn has a bodacious body and there’s enough oddness reverberating throughout to keep me from turning it off but this bad boy is mostly a fucking drag.

Burial Ground (1981) (Italy)

aka Zombi Horror/Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror/The Zombie Dead/Zombie 3: The Return of the Zombies/The Nights of Terror

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

An archeology professor uncovers an ancient Etruscan crypt and the zombies that call it home. His protests of “Stand back! I’m your friend!” fall on deaf ears which may be decomposed into nothingness anyways and he ends up eaten. This is unfortunate for three couples of varying degrees of sleaze and one child firmly dwelling in the uncanny valley thanks to being portrayed by an Italian midget in a toupee. They have just arrived at the manor where the esteemed Professor Ayres was staying while working on the discovery that lead to his untimely death. They don’t know he’s gone or that a large number of shambling corpses are now prowling the area but considering this group of folks have the combined intelligence of balsa wood, I don’t think they would have been long for this world even if the living dead weren’t about to lay siege to the manor they find themselves spending the weekend in. Zombies grab weapons to help thin out the cast (I think one uses a railroad spike with impressive marksmanship), the creepy kid tries to get sexual with his mother (the completely alluring Mariangela Giordano, but that is no excuse for incest), some of the greatest dialogue in horror history blesses our unbelieving ears (“You look just like a little whore, but I like that look on you.” “Mother, this cloth smells of death.”), there’s plentiful nudity from trashy women, plenty of man flesh you would rather not see without clothes, morning J&B drinking, cheap zombie masks, a good amount of maggots, nipple chomping and about one functioning brain cell amongst seven protagonists. It’s a bonafide trash classic that does not shy away from unconvincing graphic splatter or wallowing in the awfulness of its human heroes… “heroes” is definitely a stretch. It’s the cinematic equivalent of discovering the fatal car accident you caused only claimed the life of a family of Nazis and I’m pretty sure if you watch it without protection it may give you VD. Yes, that is a recommendation.

Holy Virgin vs The Evil Dead (1991) (Hong Kong)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Professor Shiang and his all female class are in the wrong place at the wrong time when a school trip puts them in the path of a glowing green-eyed man who has just exploded out of the earth. Adding further strangeness, the full moon has turned blood red. The professor fights valiantly but is over powered and all of his students end up butchered. He’s the prime suspect (especially in the eyes of a tough female cop with a fondness for the word “idiot”) but as the murders continue, the police begin to suspect a more supernatural threat at play. Professor Shiang begins to do his own investigating which leads him to Cambodia and the beautiful princess/warrior of an ancient tribe. Together they will fight the Moon Monster and a sinister white suite (and cowboy hat) wearing crime boss in cahoots with the glowing green-eyed lady killer. Oddly restrained for a film containing a human sacrifice plot, a mustachioed goddess, full frontal nudity, lovely wire work and a hell of a lot of kung fu. Luckily it kicks into high gear when the magic sword carrying princess comes into play. Interesting stuff full of guns, death and bewbs!

She-Wolf of London (1946) (USA)

aka The Curse of the Allenbys 

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Phyllis Allenby, a young heiress, is terrified that an ancient family curse is causing her to turn into a wolf and murder poor saps in the nearby London Park during the night. Torn throats and constant howling has hindered her wedding plans with the handsome young Barry and when she wakes up with mud on her slippers and blood on her hands she is certain that lycanthropy has struck her. Her “aunt” takes care of her as her depression sinks in about her current state and her cousin attempts to get her out of the house. Scotland Yard believes it’s the work of wild dogs (except for one likable inspector who suspects the supernatural) and family melodramatics take the reigns as suspicious actions and family secrets come to light. A fog-shrouded good time with very little monster action, so plan accordingly.

Holy Moly (1992) (USA)

⭐️⭐️1/2

Evil forces take control of a priest named Holy and force him to get into some malicious tomfoolery. The ponytailed priest (who looks like Tim Heidecker if Tim Heidecker’s parents were first cousins) walks around the neighborhood and chats with his parishioners in a carefree manner. So, he’s that kind of father. He delivers a sermon to a near empty church (one kid is reading Fangoria) and meets some dude named Vile outside of his church who was in the audience for his sermon. He wears sunglasses, a duster and looks mighty pale. He’s obviously evil. While the father is walking down an alley, Vile jumps him and forces him to come with him. He lets the priest know he has been chosen and he’s gonna be forced to help them spread their evil legion whether he wants to or not. They part ways, the priest ignoring Vile’s claim that he will be killing for him and there’s nothing he’ll be able to do to stop it. That night, the priest has a dream which looks like it takes place in a haunted house set up in someone’s garage who had access to a few cool masks and some color gels for a spotlight. It’s my kind of jamboree. Anywhoozle, the priest wakes up and wanders around all out of sorts. The usual locals he comes across on his wanderings all appear to be off (some dude reads GoreZone and suddenly wears a budget Halloween mask, some dude lazily dressed-up as a large-breasted woman shows off her vomiting baby who has the face of our hero Holy and some dude in a bald cap has sharp teeth). Holy flips out, throws up and grows some gnarly teeth because now he’s a vessel for evil or something. Poorly edited murders soon follow. Bald-cap-guy (he looks like someone remembered they were going to Comic Con the day of and had no other cosplay option but Dr. Phil) gets his fingers cut off with pruning shears following a dopey beating and is then stabbed to death in the church bathroom. Holy cleans up and disposes of his body once he wakes up in the bathroom following his malicious fugue state. More walking follows and Holy encounters even more props picked up from a Halloween store which were most likely bought on mom’s credit card. Vile returns to be all menacing in a high-school-bully-who-just-discovered-true-gore-tapes kind of way and Holy begins drinking after talking to his fish. I don’t think that’s an important story beat but let’s face it, I don’t think any of this is all that important. Holy drinks himself to sleep and has a nightmare where the now non-dismembered zombie of Dr. Phil rises from his grave and asks him “Why?”. I don’t know, Dr. Phil. I just don’t know. Drunk Holy acts drunk (poorly), throws up (professionally), transforms into a demon (maybe?) and then realizes his fingers are missing (possibly). It was all a head fuck and Vile shows up at Holy’s house for a final confrontation. He takes his true form and another lame physical altercation goes down. Is it fun? Sure. It may not have enough to fill its 40-minute runtime but it’s a bunch of buddies making a movie over a few weekends who had a shit-ton of spooky decorations and a minimal story. Music cues drop out completely so the actors can shout and the graphic violence isn’t convincing but I don’t think it was ever meant to be. They just wanted to show someone’s spine being pulled out of their ass and they did it to the best of their ability. It’s backyard cinema that had just a little more money than usual and access to more sets than a family member’s house where they couldn’t get any fake blood on the carpet.

Panic in the Forest (1989) (Mexico)

⭐️⭐️

Roberto “Flaco” Guzman stars as a head park ranger with his hands full when a heavy-breathing killer begins doing whatever it is heavy-breathing killers do. Things go from shit to shit-storm when his nephew gets lost in the woods while playing a game of hide and seek with his grandma. Worsening the situation, a trio of drug-fueled criminals begin to terrorize the park. There’s a solid hour of nothing and even when something happens, we spend very little time with the mouth-breathing madman. There are mucho mustaches and a few moments of blissful stupidity but it’s a sadly dull experience all around. Sourced from a VHS with some tracking issues (joyous nostalgia punch!) and non-subtitled (you’re lucky you got the film at all), Panico en el Bosque is a sleep-inducing ride. It may have been hampered by my limited understanding of the Spanish language but I doubt the dialogue would have saved this film. I do love the afterthought of an ending, though.

The Other Hell (1981) (Italy)

aka The Presence/Guardian of Hell

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

My Italian dream team of Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso tackle the combined genres of Satanism and nunsploitation with their usual trash-tinged and brain-damaged vibe. We start strong with a young nun wandering lost through the catacombs of her convent. Looking more like a torture dungeon than a place of God, the young lady grows frantic as she passes hundreds of skulls and a glowing-eyed something that is rocking back and forth in a chair for some reason. It’s too dark to really tell what’s going on. Finally, she comes across the corpse of one of her sisters lying on a slab, naked except for a towel covering her naughty bits and her habit. I guess, even in death, the habit stays on. The convent embalmer, Sister Assunta, enters into frame and yells at the poor, scared girl. She goes on to let her know she has to purify the dead nun which she does by cutting out her genitals and going off on a tangent about the vagina being the door to evil. So far, so modern day conservative Catholic. Assunta is obviously fucking insane and she hammers this point home by stabbing the lost nun to death after explaining about the Devil impregnating a nun, an abortion and the Devil’s spawn still living in the convent. The glowing eyed cheap-ass paper maché Satan head pops up and that leads to the stabbing. Between this, we’ve seen Mother Superior (my favorite spaghetti nutbar Franca Stoppi) exchanging longing looks with the convent gardener (Hell of the Living Dead’s Franco Garofalo). Or, it’s possible she’s just constipated and he’s just horny. The respected Father Inardo arrives shortly after the two nuns die (the embalmer perishes immediately after slaughtering her sister in Christ) to look into the supposed evil and exorcise it out of the place. His findings are disturbing and when he reports it to his superiors they hand the case off to another man of the cloth, Father Valerio (Carlo De Mejo who you probably know from City of the Living Dead amongst other Italian splatter flicks). Not long after his arrival, Inardo is immolated when The Devil performs the most brutal “Knock Knock” joke ever told. “Who’s there?” “THE DEVIL!” and Inardo goes up in flames. Anyways, a dead padre, talk of the Devil and supposedly supernatural murders within the flock get playful Father Valerio investigating. He’s sure of a rational explanation (his belief is that “The Devil” exists purely in the mind) and he’s kind of right in that the biblical idea of the Devil doesn’t have much to do with it but to call anything happening in this convent “rational” is a completely foolish act. A nasty case of stigmata, a lazy case of possession, an attic full of child mannequins hanging from the ceiling, rotting corpses, a boiled baby (don’t fret, the noticeable doll prop makes it way more hilarious than unsettling), inevitable maggots, animal cruelty (what, you thought you were safe because this wasn’t the jungle?), a tape recorder that magically and suddenly plays video (yes, it lazily makes sense in the end when the ESP angle is half-ass’d into things and it does answer all of our hero’s questions… not that it saves him from a knife to the thigh), last-minute zombies, last-second alchemy and a big ol’ secret concerning Mother Superior and her naughty loins are all in the mix. Undeniably stupid (that ending is just beyond what anyone with a normal functioning brain would expect) but Mattei is gonna Mattei and I love the man for the amount of Mattei he brings to everything.

Night of Vampyrmania (1993) (France)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Weirdo French shot-on-video anthology with its stupid heart in the right place. A priest on the hunt for the last son of Dracula (a young man in an ill-fitting bald cap) shares two stories with the audience about the dangers of vampirism and the uselessness of non-believers like the police and doctors. In the first tale, Red Christmas, a super-powered cannibalistic Santa Claus attacks a small Christmas Eve party where a bunch of morons ramble on and a drunk former soldier shares graphic tales about he and his families exploits during various wars. Hell Taxi tells the tale of a skeptical young man, in a hat which reads “SUPER MACHO”, who becomes a believer right-quick when a taxi-driving vampire with a knack for dungeon dismemberment picks up the cute new neighbor he has a crush on. A cameo from a SEGA Genesis, inaudible mumbling, failed comedy, fright masks, machine-gun sound effects and a general ineptness in every aspect of filmmaking should bring a smile to your face. It goes on a little long but it is still a wonderfully braindead ninety minutes as only those fan-fueled SOV movies can be.

Panzer (2013) (Spain)

aka Panzer Chocolate 

⭐️⭐️1/2

Sexy archeology student, Julie, is convinced there’s some undiscovered stolen art hidden by those bastard Nazis somewhere in Pyrenees. With the help of her teacher friend, a young photographer and library employee, they manage to narrow down the location of a supposedly secret bunker called Valhalla. Well, they find it and unfortunately it’s guarded by a large, chain-wielding Nazi ghoul. That’s a hell of a problem in itself but there’s more going on as it turns out the Frankenstein-like beast is serving an underground cult of Nazis aspiring to bring about the fourth Reich and staying young thanks to the consumption of blood. Our favorite foxy archeologist ends up on the sacrificial alter and those crafty Nazis may just be victorious by the time the end credits hit. This flick has its heart in the right place but for every bit of fun involving Nazi chocolate and torch-lit blood rituals ya get some annoying characters, stupid decisions and shitty digital effects. There’s some lovely exploitive times involved but they aren’t as prominent as they could have been.

Hollywood’s New Blood (1988) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A cabin in the woods near Hollywood has been closed off to movie studios since a horrible accident caused the death of the Glouster clan. Drunk explosives rigging leads to the Glouster home being blown to high heaven and supposedly claimed the lives of all eight members. Well, an acting seminar is being held at the spot and a trio of stumbling backwoods burn victims are prowling around. The aspiring actors begin to meet their maker at the hands of the hellish hillbillies. Nearly bloodless (although the violence does kick up a little near the end), completely boobless and showcasing some laughable villains, I still can’t help but love this slice of late eighties cheese. Bobby Johnston and Francine Lapensée (both of Demon Wind fame) lead the cast of likable dreamers. A younger me fast-forwarded through most of this film but nowadays I’m just grinning like a fool at the nostalgia.

SheBorg (2016) (Australia)

aka SheBorg Massacre/SheBorg Puppy Farm Massacre 

⭐️1/2

An alien-robot-lady-outlaw crash lands on earth after murdering her would-be executioners. She makes it to a puppy farm where some awful experiments are going down and gets her canine slaughter on, turning some poor humans into cyborg henchmen in the process. Our annoying “anarchist” lead behaves like your usual rich white girl who lashes out at boredom and seeks attention but she must be an anarchist because she has a shirt that reads “ANARCHY RULEZ”… so what the fuck do I know? Her dad is the head of the police force and her mother is dead and it all kind of fits the picture. She’s supposed to suck, I think, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with her dumbass. Anarchy girl has a friend who is also annoyed by her but isn’t that great to be around either. To impress the musician she has the hots for, she decides her and her favorite anarchist will join him in a raid on the puppy farm. There’s also a nerdy girl who watched the alien ship crash and is doing some investigating, living out her sci-fi dreams. The music is grating and sucks so fucking hard it makes me wanna jump in the boxing ring with a pissed-off kangaroo just so I can be knocked unconscious. The alien tomfoolery is kind of fun but sunk completely by the gaggle of characters so awful, they’d be more comfortable languishing in the abyss of your standard Troma film. The animal violence would be hard to watch if the effects were even minimally impressive, so instead it just comes off like a lame-ass child trying really hard to prove how sadistic they are. Anyways, it’s like a Troma film with forced messages, less anal probes, people I don’t recognize and no bewbs… which makes it somehow worse than a Troma film.

Squatch Junkies (2023) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

I think the last thing an already agitated Sasquatch needs is moonshine and meth. Unfortunately those are the exact substances that hillbillies bring to the equation. Joe is unable to deliver “the product” to a local crime boss because whatever is out in the woods has taken his supply. This pisses Biff off immensely and he doesn’t exactly buy into Joe’s claims of a hairy monster getting its big ol’ claws on the meth and moonshine. Biff’s wheelchair-bound partner Ned is a little more understanding of the situation. Biff thinks some hillbilly is tipping them off so he, Joe and Ned head out to the woods to get their product back before having to talk with their supplier Jethro. Of course, Biff insists they read Tarot cards first and this leads to Mr. Beelzebub showing up in a suit and tie, bathed in red light and speaking in a smooth southern accent. He warns them that one of “their” entities has escaped and to stay away from “their forest”. He’s ignored by everyone but Joe. A horny Sasquatch shows up at a woman’s tent and she’s less than impressed by the size of his dong, this pisses him off and she’s bludgeoned to death by his hairy fists and a solid elbow drop. The trio make it to a locked red cabin and break in, looking to get their hands on some Ozark moonshine and wait on whoever (more like whatever) has stolen from them. Joe is anxious, Biff is irritated and Ned is curious. Ned’s curiosity leads them to a glowing party light hidden in a dark room and is convinced it’s how the creature communicates with whatever otherworldly beings it communicates with but instead of focusing on that, they all get high. We meet Jethro, we see how Ned (maybe doing an Adam Sandler impression?) came to be in his wheelchair, we find out why Sasquatch is no longer hidden and Bigfoot finally shows up and that rubber limb carnage I crave gets some time in the sun. An extended game of pool where one plot point is fixated on hits almost immediately and if you laugh at how ridiculous it is, you should be in the right headspace for this kind of creature feature. On our way to the climax we’re treated to rambling, hot pink drenched visuals, audio hissing that definitely hits you with heavy hands of SOV nostalgia, some hilarious dialogue, a few bits of fever dream analogue heaven, authentic audio/visual issues and stretches of time lost in a haze of pointlessness. It’s exactly like it used to be when you’d spin the chamber and take a shot on some VHS tape found on the bottom shelf of the video store horror section. Have you ever had a head injury? I’m sure if you did it’s not something you would reminisce about. It’s more-so a traumatic memory that’s best left forgotten or at the most used to ensure the same mistakes don’t play out ever again. Squatch Junkies is a head injury but one you look back fondly on.

Orloff and the Invisible Man (1970) (France/Spain)

aka The Invisible Dead/Secret Love Life of the Invisible Man/Dr. Orloff’s Invisible Monster 

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

It may not be one of his films but you’ll definitely get the Jess Franco vibe from this goofy little slice of Eurotrash. A new town doctor is summoned to the castle of the infamous Professor Orloff by the mad doctor’s daughter. She’s convinced there’s an invisible presence wandering the halls of the family estate. Agreeing to help her, the young doctor confronts her father (Howard Vernon) and is immediately given an info dump by the crazy scientist. He’s created the invisible beast with the endgame of world domination and there’s a bit more backstory involving conniving servants and his wrongfully declared deceased daughter. Soon the helpful young man finds himself imprisoned in the castle dungeon and trying his damndest to survive and save the lovely daughter of Orloff. Cheapjack effects rule the screen and there’s a certain air of madness permeating the whole runtime. Plenty of female nudity is on display and by the time a laughably inept gorilla costume makes an appearance, I was completely sold on the film. Stupid Eurocine fun for undiscerning film lovers.

Blood Lake (1987) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The last vacation I took with "da boyz" was probably 5 years ago. Just a handful of idiots getting drunk till the sun came up and the bonfire was reduced to a lump of smoldering remains. A little fishing, a few gallons of cheap beer and a chance to get away from the people and jobs driving us crazy. We didn't have a care in the world. We also didn't have a Lil' Tony. It was our loss. After the poorly staged murder of a groundskeeper, Blood Lake begins its assault on your idea of vacations. Opening credits roll to the hard rock sounds of Voyager. Bleeding Skull's Joseph A. Ziemba described the music of Voyager as "butt metal". In the history of music there has never been a more spot on genre label. A traveling montage and Voyager combine to completely turn you off to the notion of Blood Lake being an accomplished 80 minutes of filmmaking. Luckily, we're not here for accomplished filmmaking. We're in SOV country, and I will tell you right now that this country is vast and full of wonder. Grab your buds, bring your babes, and prep your boat. Some prime property for a badass vacation just became available. To quote our hero it's "a real party house". It's actually just his girlfriend's father's lake house but with enough beer, any house can be a real party house. Test it out. It's true. They have their beer and they have their place to drink it in but they have something you never had… Lil' Tony! He's our hero's younger brother and he's a mullet’d piece of shit. But in the best way possible. Lil' Tony has a sex fixation and no filter. Lil' Tony is that person you knew in 7th grade who was always on the hunt for porn and talked endlessly about boobs. Sure he could be annoying but he also had some damn funny jokes. It was the perfect mix of wanting to slap the shit out of him and wanting him to be around because he was completely out of line. This is Lil' Tony and this is his movie. The characters have been introduced and we have had glimpses of the bearded, cowboy boot wearing murderer. The vacationers are doing exactly what they planned on doing. Drinking beer, making sexual innuendos, participating in frat boy humor and experiencing the excitement of unloading a boat.... in real time! If you're thinking this sounds boring; don't worry, you're about to be hit with a water skiing montage. And do you know what a water skiing montage means? MORE VOYAGER!!! The kids are feeling good to the sweet sounds of Voyager's Feelin Fine. After that ends we are not allowed to catch our breaths as we get hit in the face with a game of quarters, also played in real time! Blood Lake doesn’t give a shit. You are a part of this vacation whether you like it or not. Sadly, the party must always end. This party is no different. Two boys that befriended the group of vacationers and have joined in on the revelry and drinking are the first to fall. After water skiing they noticed a fat, bearded man checking out the "real party house". These two skinny wieners somehow managed to scare him off with shit talk. For this, they die first. Slightly inebriated and pumped up about their toughness, they make the mistake of stumbling home. They never arrive. But they do leave us with this small piece of dialogue to remember them by:

Blonde wiener: "Man, next time we come down here we need to bring some chicks with us!"

Other wiener: "Yeeeeeaaaaah. That'd be great. Sure as hell wouldn't be out here fishing."

Blonde wiener "No shit! We'd be diving......MUFF DIVING!"

Godspeed, you angels. Your time on this earth was far too short. Those first murders take place at almost fifty minutes into the runtime. Sure, we saw the groundskeeper get his but it happened off screen and is pretty much forgotten by the time Lil' Tony shows up grinning like the smartass he is. The core group is targeted next and the "real party house" is to blame. Apparently the bearded, cowboy boot wearing fat man is owed money for the sale of the place. Daddy never paid. It's another case of real estate debt leading to murder. Becky (the girlfriend) and Lil' Tony end up hanging from a rope in the shed out back, held at knifepoint. Luckily, our hero comes to the rescue. The struggle that ensues is as exciting as you'd expect from a film where real estate debt is the motivation for murder. More importantly, we learn that Becky is an afterthought when it comes to the safety of Lil' Tony. I can't say I disagree. The supposedly dead killer vanishes and we cut to a scene of a cowboy hat wearing man surveying where the lake once was. Voyager plays over the man walking as the camera shoots the dried up lake from various angles. Before the end credits roll this text appears on the screen:

Dry lake special visual effects by An Act of God

SOV films are to be enjoyed with a certain level of understanding. Some of us find the lack of scripting and "family vacation tape" quality charming. Some of you will not and will probably hit me many times if you tracked down Blood Lake because of this review. I apologize for nothing.

The Household (2025) (Australia)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A small film team works on a documentary about an urban legend and some tragic murders surrounding it. The search for truth spirals into unfamiliar territory for the duo of investigators and a deeper conspiracy is uncovered, placing the crew in some serious danger. The opening has the male half of the documentarians explaining that everything went to hell and seeing him still breathing explains why the movie ain’t strictly found footage and is in the realm of mockumentary. The story of some sinister cabal called the Household involves nine missing kids, child torture-murders, a convicted man who may not be guilty and a conspiracy of silence involving a murder cult. There is also a rumor of another group investigating the Household that disappeared and all that remains is a short bit of unnerving footage. I could see the lure of this weirdness inspiring a struggling filmmaker to tackle it all and make a name for himself. In the process of running through the history of the town’s secret and strangeness, Patrick and Sarah run into some answers and a whole bunch of questions. Interviews, archival evidence and on the spot investigation piece together one hell of an interesting nightmare where two likable enough people (the dude is kind of a dick but I get his frustration) find themselves well outside of their depth. Tensions grow (thank god it’s not found footage because I imagine it would have been dragged far past the point of tolerable), Patrick refuses to let things go despite the danger closing in and an unfortunate inevitability hangs over everything. Impressively utilizing two hours and rarely feeling like it’s dragging, The Household works pretty damn well thanks to its conspiracy-minded narrative but loses a bit of momentum and doesn’t offer up much of a payoff.