Amityville Vampire (2021) (USA)

aka Red Moon Lake

⭐️1/2

No. It’s not a sequel but the Amityville name has some marketable power and no copyright because it’s an actual place and supposedly based on truth. Without any IP claims causing lawsuits, any independent filmmaker can add a little luster to their garbage film by sticking Amityville in front of it. Does it work? Well, they keep getting thrown out there with a threadbare connection if there’s any at all. I doubt the returns are much of anything but I’ll never squash the happiness of some horror buff (or money fan) getting their movie seen by at least this dumb fucking genre lover. We open up with a cleaning crew in the infamous house with a quick flash of some infamous murders (no names are mentioned and the only indication we have of this being the evil piece of Long Island realty is those old familiar windows). A quick possession turns one of the female cleaners into a vampire and she does away with her coworkers. With that out of the way, we join a couple of idiots getting to know each other with a tattoo discussion and some smooching. The dude proves to be a complete dick when he attempts to force himself on her and gets all aggravated when she turns him down. Dude leaves her in the middle of nowhere and she ends up getting bit by some chalky vampire woman. We then meet a retired DJ discussing his plans to propose to his girlfriend Fran during a camping trip at Red Moon Lake. Fran is a timid young woman who has an annoying “strong-willed” sister. She attempts to talk her out of her relationship with the former DJ, Johnny, and the possible marriage proposal coming her way. The boring couple’s romantic getaway commences and Johnny shares the history of their destination with Fran. It involves a full blood moon, a billionaire named Lilith A. Thanos, her orphan employee named Gloria Standard, a Thanksgiving cabin getaway between the two lonely women, a fur-clad psychopath and Ms. Thanos’ true intentions when it comes to her pretty dinner guest. Then we get another story from Johnny about an old man named Caleb and his dying wife. Fed up with the string of tragedy hitting him and his family, Caleb makes a deal with an obviously evil woman who comes a-knocking with his dead daughter at her side and promises to heal his wife. Of course, he gets eaten. The anthology-ridden car ride (endurance test) ends and the two begin their little camping trip. They set up their tent right next to the parking lot (roughing it) and as night rolls in, so does a van full of rapist punks. As one attempts to rape Ms. Thanos, the other two wander off to investigate a car alarm. This is bad news for the newly engaged Johnny and Fran. Eventually the rapists get what’s coming to them and the film blesses us with finally ending. There’s a whole bunch of talking between people who developed their acting style by watching soap operas, 90’s pornography or 1963’s Blood Feast. Cheap splatter and the kind of sexiness one used to find on the USA network after midnight offer a few reprieves from the butt-numbing tedium but that only gets you so far. There’s an enjoyable ten minutes of film here but unfortunately the damn thing is just a bit over ninety.

Cry (2018) (Canada)

⭐️1/2

Jay and his crew make some money by faking demonic hunting excursions and posting them on YouTube. This is the horror genre so eventually these shitty tactics are gonna come back to bite the collective asses of Jay and his team. Could not happen faster to this aggravating piece of shit. The team arrives at a Toronto hotel which is supposedly haunted by a demon and they set up in the room where the demonic activity calls home. I doubt I have to tell you where this is going and if you need a little help, the opening text about this footage being found at the hotel should push you over the finish line. YouTube ghost hunters are annoying as fuck at their best and this host manages to capture the obnoxiousness of that sub-sub-sub-category of entertainer but it still doesn’t make for a good time. Digital glitches stand in for scares in the early going and when the high strangeness begins, the team has trouble accepting that it’s not the usual hijinks manipulated by the crew or natural phenomena. The group of four disagree on whether the supernatural is to blame for the weirdness and Jay decides that even if there is an actual entity on site, they need to stay and collect more evidence. That quest for views is gonna get them killed and Jay is the one who pretty much has the blood on his hands. A raspy demon voice hisses “Cryyyyyyyyyy.” and that’s where we get the movie’s title from… just in case you were wondering. A maintenance man shares the truth behind the haunting of the room with the group and a medium who has a history with the room is called in to help the team… she fails. The power goes out, one of them gets violently ill and the door won’t open which causes everyone to start bitching at each other. Paranormal Activity serves as a bunch of inspiration for some bedtime shots and the expected Blair Witch confessional hits towards the end. It all goes to prove that the advice of “Don’t knock it till you try it.” shouldn’t always be followed. A few passing moments of fun and unintentional comedy make it not a complete wash but no one will blame you if ya skip it.

The Dark Tapes (2016) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Interesting found footage anthology structures itself around one man’s dangerous ambitions to catch a trans-dimensional entity on camera. That’s the basis of the wraparound titled To Catch a Demon which picks up with his research partners discovering their barebones lab-space unsecured, in disarray and their research partner missing. They check out the footage on the rolling camera to see just what the hell happened. The whole idea is that time fluctuations are where these entities labeled demons and spirits kind of exist between our known realities. The plan is to harness the human’s REM state (the closest match to the actual time fluctuation where supernatural things dwell) and allow one to view said things that go bump in the night. While this is going on, we dip into other encounters that have a tenuous connection to the researcher’s film and spooky shit happens. In The Hunters & the Hunted a husband and wife move into a fully furnished house in the hills. Their excitement turns to horror when some creepy shit starts up. Phantom footsteps, spooky knocks and moving objects get the husband thinking they should have a camera rolling at all times to document the strangeness. They bring in some paranormal investigators as things get aggressive. The ghost hunters see this as a ticket to hitting it big but the malicious nature of this haunting has some other plans in store for the trio of investigators. Some genuine chills and a satisfying ending make this pretty damn solid. After an awesome creature reveal in our anchoring segment and revelations of a pretty big problem, we hit up the next entry with Cam Girls. A cam girl is having blackouts as she and her girlfriend party hard with the money they’re making off of their shows. Things escalate as manipulation leads to physical violence and physical violence leads to one horrific revelation as to just what our concerned leading lady’s new girlfriend is actually up to. Flashes of cheap-looking fright makeup may have you rolling your eyes but the manipulation of the sad guy watching the show is the right amount of depressing. It all feels a little bit like a high schoolers short horror film that had some input from a teacher who knew what they were going for but didn’t want to take the reigns. It’s not too offensive but it’s definitely the weakest entry up to this point. Another revelation awaits our team of scientists as the head of the experiment realizes that no matter what things you uncover as you look where man was not meant to look, there’s always something worse just waiting to get in. Finally, Amanda’s Revenge hits and we watch a young woman slowly unravel the strangeness enveloping her life following an attempted rape at a friend’s party. Seems this was a trigger incident because there’s some bizarre crap in her past involving her mother murdering her father and intense weirdness. She crashes by her friend’s house and asks her three friends to watch over her while she sleeps. Telekinesis, aliens, self defense, friendship and sulphuric acid in water balloons all have their part to play as the drama unfolds. It’s all pretty fun and features a couple likable leads. Our main story comes to a close, time gets a little wonky and there’s a few bad ends in store for people. Outside of the shaky middle story, Dark Tapes is a winner which manages to keep things interesting and utilizes the found footage format to get past budgetary constraints.

Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan (2013) (USA)

aka Bunyan

⭐️⭐️⭐️

A group of somewhat likable first-time offenders discover the American legend of Paul Bunyan is true and way more horrifying than folklore has us believing during some boot camp rehabilitation program in the Ohio wilderness. Along with the five young criminals looking to get out of jail time is a hard-ass corrections officer and a sheltered social worker looking to reform the kids with counseling instead of punishment. It all goes to shit when the giant shows up with murder on the brain after one of the dinks desecrates the grave of his beloved bull. People get squished, sliced in half, decapitated, dismembered and impaled as the giant goober dishes out vengeance. One of the girls is the spitting image of the gal Bunyan loved more than a century ago and therein may lie the key to the survival of the remaining delinquents. Her sheriff father is also in the area, trying to get to his daughter before the big ol’ dummy does. The green screen work brings about some serious giggles and the cgi is your usual SyFy channel awkwardness and it all makes for an enjoyably idiotic monstrous slasher flick. Dan fuckin’ Haggerty pops in to fortuitously take a shit while his logging camp is murdered by a deformed lumberjack with an axe. His bowel movement awards him some extra time on this earth before he meets the conveyer belt o’doom. Of course, Joe Estevez is a crazy old coot with a penchant for scenery chewing and silliness (so, Joe Estevez) and knows the true story behind Bunyan. Bewbs, blood, Babe the blue ox and beards all get their time in the spotlight along with unearned melodrama and a lot of screen time for the lumpy giant. No complaints here.

Beware! Children at Play (1989) (USA)

aka Goblins

⭐️⭐️⭐️

A disturbed, woods-dwelling teen brainwashes the children of a small town and turns them into zombie-like cannibalistic killers. A writer and a sheriff eventually discover the awfulness but do little to block the flood of blood. The film opens with a camp outing between father and son. They eat some fish, sing terribly, play hide and seek and then papa steps in some kind of varmint trap and fucks up his ankle. Typical camping trip with dad, really. Days pass and nobody comes looking for them. Rations dwindle, papa loses his mind as insects feed on his leg wound, dad eventually succumbs to his wounds and the kid eats his innards. This is the origin of the teenage weirdo. Ten years later, the writer John (an author of books on paranormal phenomena) and his family visit his old friend in the New Jersey boondocks following the disappearance of the man’s daughter. A helpful Bible salesman lets them know the area’s dark history and about a recent spate of missing kids, when they stop to see if he needs help with his stalled car. Convenience in action. Not so convenient is when he ends up getting cut in half by someone with a scythe. John’s old buddy, Sheriff Ross, explains how they have no leads on the missing kids and is hoping his friend can lend him a bit of assistance, hopefully figuring out what the hell happened to his daughter and the other missing kids. The town doctor struggles emoting as he questions the author’s authenticity and the small town is getting fed up with the lack of answers. John brings a psychic in to assist, a religious dude in old-man makeup knows there’s some evil shit going down, an obnoxious reporter stirs shit up, the sheriff’s wife is losing her shit and John’s wife thinks his books and beliefs are absolute bullshit. Hilariously, the psychic (who abuses the term “deary”) is lured out into the woods and murdered before she can do anything to help. Like I said, our heroes know something strange is going on, they’re just really slow to figuring things out and there’ll be a bunch of bodies piling up before anything is done to put a stop to the awfulness. That “stop” is the backwards and overly-religious townsfolk taking action and wiping out the tiny terrors with brutal efficiency. It’s undoubtedly stupid, very cheap and charmingly fun… when there’s more than town dramatics happening on screen. The cast looks like they all drink together in a very dark bar with wood-paneled walls and one dollar mystery shots. My kinda people. If it was meant to be taken anywhere close to seriously, the climatic child massacre would probably be unwatchable… and I don’t even like kids. “Tear it to pieces! Bite through the bones! Gulp the blood! Gobble the flesh!”

Amityville: The Awakening (2017) (USA)

aka Amityville: The Reawakening/The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes

⭐️1/2

The lovely Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a single mother who moves into the infamous house with her three children under the guise of saving money to pay for the comatose son’s medical expenses. After the miraculous recovery (well, I mean, it’s a step up from being a vegetable) of her twin brother James (Cameron Monaghan), bitchy Belle (rocking some asscheek-revealing underwear around the old homestead which is quite concerning considering her age at the time of filming and the Weinstein taint of the production) begins to believe her mother is up to something else when it comes to their new residence and James may not be himself anymore. A fellow student lets her know how fucked up her house is and spooky shit begins cementing that fact. Nightmares pointing to a grim recreation of the DeFeo murders, Emma Swan showing up as the aunt, the original Amityville Horror getting watched by Belle and friends, cgi flies and Thomas Mann as a classmate obsessed with the supernatural history of the house and working as that character that usually shows up as an expert who delivers all the necessary information our hero needs to thwart the evil and move the plot along. Kurtwood Smith graces us with his presence as the family physician and that’s at least something nice to hold onto. There’s just not much else going on except for a few welcome faces. I don’t get to see a lot of Jennifer Jason Leigh nowadays and it’s a damn shame she got her wonderful ass stuck in such a damp squib of a movie where characters are either unlikable or forgettable and the script is lazy as all fuck.

The Amityville Terror (2016) (USA)

⭐️1/2

A young married couple and their teenage daughter (they must have been six or seven when they had her) move into a lovely Victorian house with the husband’s recovering alcoholic/drug addict hippie-dippy sister. The daughter, Hailey, hates the house and is having issues with a clique of high school bitches (but she’s also finding love), Aunt Shea seems to be targeted by some malevolent force eating away at her mental health and mom and dad are arguing more and more. The house has a bad wrap in town and it’s looking like it’s a well deserved notoriety. A history of murder and creepy shit plays into the oncoming tragedy and the whole town is definitely harboring some secrets. A clunky and shitty stew of either annoying or boring characters (except for the sultry oddball property manager played by Tonya Kay), bad dialogue, worse shocks and poor decisions. Hilarious accidental incest, the aforementioned Tonya Kay, and laughably awful acting save the viewer from catatonia but by the time the painted up and possessed villain comes into play, you’ll be focused on something else, like replacing lightbulbs or dusting cabinets. It’s all more fun than dealing with this shit smear of a movie.

The Alien Dead (1980) (USA)

aka Swamp of the Blood Leeches/It Fell From the Sky

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

There are plenty of reasons you shouldn’t own a houseboat even if you don’t reside in Florida. Outside of people automatically assuming you’re a divorced rapist or drug smuggler or both, they’re easy targets for meteors. I would know. I’ve seen Alien Dead. Some Floridians reside on a houseboat (Yes. They are the exact kind of people you would envision residing in a houseboat) in the swamps and a meteor crashes into their floating residence, making their already sad existence much worse. Instead of just granting them the sweet release of death, they turn into zombies and once the fauna population dwindles, they turn their hunger towards the nearby town. As the small town residents end up eaten, the sheriff (Flash Gordon himself, Buster Crabbe) suspects a large gator (along with the rest of the town) but we know that ghouls are on the prowl and all hell is breaking loose. A journalist exposes the story (catching the eye of a blonde cutie with some cutoffs covering her booty) and a whole lotta bumpkins end up dead and/or walking dead. A game warden also doesn’t buy the story of a renegade gator. Pappy blames chemical warfare and giant possums… now that’s a movie I’d watch the hell out of! Fred Olen Ray makes some trash movies but he makes these trash movies for people like me so you won’t hear me complaining. The state of Florida may be an infected butthole on the corpse of America but the genre output (especially in that sweet spot of the 60s - 80s) is some of the greatest braindead backyard terror to ever grace this planet. It’s no different here. Performances come off like Mr. Ray picked his cast from folks who couldn’t cut it in a dinner theater run by a former pornographer and the zombie hijinks ain’t at all convincing but that’s why they warm my idiot heart. Dinky bars, a local band, Floridians with Californian accents, underwater (pool) action, barren sets and the Florida wilds further endear. There’s plenty of drag and nobody is all that likable (except for maybe the topless chick but she doesn’t do much but get topless, go for a dip and get eaten. Still. She seemed nice.) but it’s Florida so that tracks. But for every bit of lag there’s something just a bit special (the zombie attack set to a folksy country song comes to mind) and that’s all I ask for.

Turn Over (2014) (Malaysia)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Another Malaysian short from the 3 Doors of Horrors extended universe has our security guard hero Azman Hassan return. This time he’s getting to the bottom of a haunting at a gym or it may just be a building that houses a basketball court. Is that a thing? The place is plagued with power outages and phantom dribbling as it seems this spirit just wants to get a game of hoops going with anyone. Bad news for the young man who has been ditched by his buddies and is now shooting hoops on his lonesome. Did I say Azman is getting to the bottom of things! Yeah? Sorry. That was a lie. He’s there in the beginning to notice that something odd is going on but then leaves to go get a drink. He’s my kind of hero. This one was solid and has a nice sting to bring it all home.

The Tunnel (2011) (Australia)

aka The Tunnel Movie 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A journalist and her hesitant crew look into a possible government cover-up concerning the tunnels underneath Sydney. An abandoned water project and missing homeless people get Natasha’s reporter senses tingling and she drags a small crew down into the cavernous halls below the Australian city. Instead of a career-making story, she and her crew come face to face with a murderous subhuman. Presented as a documentary built around the footage from their excursion underneath the city, The Tunnel is one hell of a suspenseful ride. One of the better examples of found footage horror out there.

The Wild Man: Skunk Ape (2021) (USA)

aka The Florida Monster

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Well, an opening bit cutting between semi-hectic shaky-cam footage and our lead apologizing to the camera lets us know that things probably don’t end well. A documentary crew heads to the harsh awfulness that is the Florida Everglades to dig into the legend of an especially smelly cryptid. Missing folks has their curiosity piqued and locals have various ideas of what the hell has been going on. Sarah (a solid performance from Lauren Crandall) and her two-man team look into the disappearance of several young girls with some people thinking murder, some people thinking human trafficking and some people pointing towards a Bigfoot-type wild man roaming the woods. There’s a skunk-ape-tracker/conspiracy-nut by the name of Dale who believes a bunch of crazy shit, has a tendency to frequently purchase shovels and rope and has the build of someone who could definitely snatch up young women. Interviews and speculation can only get you so far and when they hook up with scenery-chewing Dale himself, he offers to take them out to the woods and see the beast for themselves. Sarah is gung-ho for the idea but her two partners need some convincing. Some ignorant dinks (it’s Florida, remember) threaten them to get the hell out of town but this just makes Sarah think she’s onto something big. So into the wetlands they go and it doesn’t take long for them to realize there is definitely something out there. They make it through the night in one piece and decide to return to the woods and get their damn footage. They encounter the beast but it doesn’t take long after that for them to uncover a deep conspiracy… the kind of conspiracy that people in power are willing to kill to keep a secret. One of their number goes missing and a fire is lit under the ass of our documentarian. A couple “free thinkers” are willing to help the filmmakers get inside a top secret facility and right into answers they’re not prepared to handle… and a mustachioed Michael Paré shows up. The performances that kinda fail are somehow charming and the bits of comedy that make it in actually had me snickering. The fact that they’re editing as they go allows them to make shit look like a Netflix special and they ape the style well. It also keeps things interesting by going a route that isn’t expected as it races to the end and taking the POV from several different cameras to showcase a skunk ape on a rampage. It doesn’t ever become as exciting as it should but that just may be because the budget isn’t what was needed and it cheats with camerawork which is a bit of a bummer… it’s still more entertaining than I thought it would be because it aimed outside of the comfort zone. It even throws in that “we’re the real monsters” message I’ve loved hearing since the 1950s.

Siccîn 5 (2018) (Turkey)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The series gets a bit of its fucked up charm back in this fifth entry. A young albino girl has awful nightmares concerning her vanished father and a violent ritual. She also talks to herself in a raspy voice and tortures her favorite doll. There’s obviously some past awfulness hidden in the family closet as her mother and grandma hang around all day at their crap-shack making moody eyes at each other. Her aunt seems to be the only stable one, she’s just started a job she likes and is in a relationship with a jewelry store owner who may already be thinking of marriage. Sadly that family strife buried out of sight is about to rear its ugly head and make life miserable for everyone. Disturbing visions and demonic bargains cause a shit-ton of depression and death. After the less than impressive previous entries, part 5 brings back a bit of an edge and offers up some proper wickedness. There’s still a lack of focus slowing things down but it’s pretty much been that way since the opening act.

Death Ph.D (2024) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

A night in a haunted house will lead to early graduation for a batch of parapsych PhD students. All they have to do is record and collect evidence… and live to see the morning, of course. Sounds like a simple and fine time as we watch some sexy college kids die by supernatural means in the infamous Sugarland House. It could have been, but as soon as I saw “itn distribution” when I started it up I got a little nervous. Let’s just say their track record may speak for itself, but it’s in the voice of an idiot who just got bludgeoned with a hammer and can no longer piece together the already incoherent thoughts pouring from his mouth like diarrhea born of a two-week-old chicken quesadilla you found laying on a space heater at your former roommate’s place. Sorry. Where was I? Itn Distribution often leads to revelries of the past as I look for any excuse to avoid what’s playing on screen. The course professor is alerted to the availability of the house by a university head who is obviously up to no good. She’s excited for the opportunity, her semi-elderly students are a mostly annoying batch who (I think) are trying to be charming but just coming off as the kind of folks I would not have taken the time to get friendly with. So, this batch is going to the house instead of completing their dissertation (which, yeah, I’d go for that) with the risk beyond being locked in a haunted house is if you leave before the allotted time, you’re dropped from the class and pretty much fucked. But I guess no future with a chance of finding a different path is better than no future because you’re fucking dead. After some debate amongst each other and minor quibbling to awkwardly build characters, our victims are sorted. I wonder if that rascal student with the rad attitude who is also the estranged cousin of the professor is going to make it till the end. It’s also mentioned by her cousin that she better remember to take her pills so she doesn’t hurt anyone again. Hmmmmm. The caretaker (with his snappy dress vest, bowtie and power-beard) welcomes the students by appearing from behind a tree and swiftly motioning them in. He’s my favorite. He shares the history of his history with the place in his boisterous Jamaican style and I fall deeper in love with him. He warns them to be on their best behavior and collects the names of all the students from the delightfully fey Mr. Jarvis (who is my favorite student). There’s plenty of space and food on hand but cellphone reception is trash, the place was built long before that was a concern. The caretaker makes his exit and my heart feels heavy, probably as heavy as the “kids” because he warns that he has to get the hell out before night falls. Jarvis decides to scoot as well before there’s no turning back and at about forty minutes, I’ve lost both characters I had built any kinship with. That’s also forty minutes of dick-all happening but now that the team is stuck, looks like shit will pick up. Right? Wrong! There’s still a chance for “comedy” before anything of interest happens. And when the “comedy” is done, there’s still poorly-performed melodrama too! Wow! Itn, my cup runneth over. The hungry Asian woman dies whilst eating and hysteria (that feels more like slight discomfort due to moderately bad gas) sweeps through the group. Sadness follows and boredom is close behind. Child voices creep folks out, the cousin with attitude grows more annoying, disfigured ghost kids finally show up and they’re adorably goofy and resemble something you would see in a cutscene during an episode of Ghost Adventures. They mercifully get rid of that annoying chick first… these little ugly bastards are doing great work! The early stretch is one hell of an endurance test and it runs almost an hour but once those ghostly goobers show up, things get a little better. Its cheap ridiculousness is exactly what was needed but it still drags on way longer than necessary. A terribly-paced mess with a few trashy gems hidden in it and an ending that may hold the title of “Wait, what? This is dumb as fuck.” That’s a plus in my book. It’s like an Andy Milligan film without the scummy aesthetic which is problematic when it comes to entertainment value but those goofy ghost kids make their time on camera must-see garbage.

Death Walks on High Heels (1971) (Italy/Spain/UK/France)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Following a successful heist, a jewel thief is murdered on a train. His no-nonsense stripper daughter Nicole (knockout Nieves Navarro who we’ve seen in Death Walks at Midnight among many others) is gathered up by the police who are hoping she knows where her now deceased father stashed the diamonds. She’s unable to assist. Agitated cops are one thing but the masked man with striking blue eyes and voice box who breaks into her apartment and threatens her because he too is after them pesky diamonds is a more dangerous beast. She seeks comfort and protection in the company of her boyfriend Michel (Simón Andreu, whose fiendishly handsome ass we’ve seen in The Killer is One of 13, Death Carrie’s a Cane and others) but after discovering some contact lenses in his bathroom, thinks he may be a dangerous man to be around. What’s a stripper to do? Go to the horny married doctor who has been hitting on her after being captivated by her less than enjoyable acts, of course! She asks Dr. Robert Matthews (Frank Wolff who would sadly kill himself around this film’s release but if you’re here you may just recognize from The Wasp Woman and Beast from Haunted Cave) to journey with her to London and, he being an idiot with a medical degree and a boner, agrees. They stay in a cottage at a small seaside village populated with super suspicious locals. While there she poses as the doctor’s wife. The masked man follows close behind and bad things start happening. Looks like the romantic cottage getaway with the unhappily married man is going down the shitter with fatal results. Who is the madman? Where are the diamonds? Who is peeping on Nicole? Why is she so proud of her pancake butt? Is that priest also using a voice box? What the hell is with this small village? Why is a mysterious woman paying Nicole a shit-ton of cash? Can you really trust a French stripper? Holy shit! Did he just get shot?! We’ll get answers to all the important questions, except the pancake butt thing. Scotland Yard will get involved and the doctor’s wife Vanessa (dude has Claudie Lange at home and still ain’t happy, what a chooch) will also come into play. Nicole performs one of the worst strip routines I’ve ever seen and it’s not just because it’s racist to all hell. Although. That doesn’t help anything. She then follows that up with another routine that is fortunately not racist thanks to her not rocking a wig and slathering her body in bronzer but sucks all the same. But, despite her questionable talents in her line of work, Nicole is breathtakingly beautiful, so I completely understand the appeal. As a woman, she’s fantastic. As a stripper, there’s a lot she needs to work on. But what do I know? I’ve never been to a Paris strip club in the early seventies, so I could be off the mark completely. She also seductively eats fish with her greasy fingers which is not a thing and even her royal hotness cannot make look like a thing. Although it may not have been fish and been a bowl of fruit but it followed so quickly behind the doctor making a big deal about buying fresh fish that my distracted brain couldn’t help but connect them. Still. Ewwwwww. It’s an odd film without feeling like it’s trying to be and the same can be said for the other giallos I’ve seen from Luciano Ercoli. They may take a bit to get going but they’re filled with enough quirk to make me happy to take the long path to the more exploitive portions. There’s some genuine surprises along the way, one cheap yet effective butchering, out of place comedy adding to the charm and the title refers to the only thing a blind witness can offer up the cops.

Amityville Scarecrow (2021) (UK)

aka Amityville Cornfield/Scarecrow’s Camp

⭐️1/2

A caravan campsite is located on some bad land which is supposedly the same land where that infamous house once stood. There’s now a scarecrow set up there and some abandoned camper-vans. Welp, that scarecrow be alive and that scarecrow be a fan of murder by scythe. Two estranged sisters have inherited some land following their mum’s passing and begrudgingly meet up with their families in tow to discuss what to do with the property. One wants to sell and one wants to reopen and everyone is pretty unlikable. The one sister who slept with the other sister’s husband wants to use the land to honor their mother and rebuild a relationship with her rightfully pissed-off sister. She’s given a year to turn the land around before selling it off. It doesn’t even bother to hide that it’s not taking place anywhere near the titular location but that’s probably because it has nothing to do with the Amityville series and may not even be the same Amityville because when you’re looking for distribution whats a lie or two matter. At least, I assume, I’m not going to do any research because it’s already pathetic enough I’m just not turning this bad boy off and doing something worthwhile. Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah; so the cousins begin rebuilding their friendship and stumble across a shed where there’s photos of children with X’s drawn over their faces… so far, so normal for an RV campsite. There’s a whole lotta talkin’, a good amount of walkin’, a lame score to go along with the lame drama and some past trauma to go with the family secrets. Luckily, the scarecrow stuff is kind of fun in a cheap-ass horror way and it saves the movie from being complete ass. The thrills just won’t come and even at 88 minutes it feels like it runs 30 minutes too long.

True Accident Property/Really Scary Residents (2022) (Japan)

aka Residents of Evil/Devil’s Residents 

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Himeko is an aspiring actress and in a publicity stunt encouraged by her agent, she joins two YouTubers in a ghost hunting challenge. The team moves into an apartment building supposedly plagued with the spirits of gruesome murders back in the 80s and while there, they are tasked with catching proof of the haunting. They guarantee they will not leave until they catch a ghost on camera. A spooky viral video of a girl who vanished shortly after was filmed at the spot and thats why the team is calling the apartment home for the summer. The likable YouTubers (I guess they do exist!) and the actress out of her element make for a fine trio to deal with the escalating awfulness. The YouTube psychic they have on hand delivers the horrible history of the place (severed flesh clogging the drains, occult activity, sawed flesh) and promises he’ll help them out and stay with them in the small, abandoned apartment. Their irresponsible manager drops them off, wishes them luck and goes on his merry way but that’s social media for ya… I guess. Multiple spirits pop up and not all of them are malicious. The actress wants out after a troubling first night but her useless manager tells her it’s going to take at least two days to pull those strings. Unfortunately, a disturbing truth will be revealed before that. The “psychic” never shows, the spookiness seems to be more willing to show itself to Himeko, there’s a few striking scares mixed in with the boring ones and a scene of cheap, graphic violence is jarring but memorable. Standard stuff but likable leads help and once it gets mean and nasty, it gets interesting… even if the movie is almost over by that point. I don’t think I’ve ever had a movie win me over in the last twenty minutes like this.

Death Ship (1980) (UK/Canada)

⭐️⭐️1/2

A creepy and unmanned freighter rams a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, sinking it quickly. A small group of survivors climb aboard and come to realize it may have been better if they drowned. The freighter was some sort of WWII Nazi torture vessel and now all the evil that happened aboard has brought the ship to life and it’s hungry... hungry for blood! Survivors are knocked off one by one by various stupid means and the cruise ship’s forced-into-retirement cranky-ass captain, George Kennedy, is slowly possessed by the evil aboard. The set up is there for one trashy-ass time but the whole thing somehow manages to be pretty damn lame. There’s a blood-soaked shower and Richard Crenna has a beard. It’s like my great grand pappy used to say: “You thank your lucky stars sonny boy! Because if those Ratzi bastards had learned how to master the supernatural and used that harnessed evil power to bring sentience to a creepy torture freighter, ya wouldn’t just be dumb and ugly, ya’d be goose-stepping every Sunday to church!”

Dark House (2015) (USA)

1/2

A young couple travels to Chicago to help out some friends and catsit for ‘em. The opening shots of a woman’s hair blowing in the wind in slow motion and blood dripping in a bathroom as wind chimes blare on the soundtrack and a sinister voice hisses “remember” tells me that this catsitting adventure probably doesn’t end well. Quick flashes of ambulance lights, dialogue about evil houses and spirits and black and white shots of some wiener touching walls and looking around the interior in sunglasses lets me know we’re dealing with film school sensibilities and knowing plenty of Chicagoans who had me sit and watch their class projects… well, I’m not excited for what’s coming. Following that barrage of nothing is some screen text that advises us newlyweds Sam and Isabelle have come to a reportedly haunted house to watch a cat and we’re about to see what happened. It’s not found footage but that just means it’s awful visuals have no fucking excuse. Lake Michigan, ants, familiar streets, focusing issues, NUTS ON CLARK™️… I’m flashing back to nights of PBR and assurances that “this is the best movie I’ve made so far.” This is not reminiscing, this is a reminder of how many pretentious dopes I knew in my younger days. So, the couple arrives to find one of the cats dead. Not a great start. False scares and a bathroom I think I may have thrown up in leads to spooky noises and Isabelle staring at nothing in a kitchen I’ve definitely thrown up in as a thin dude in a plaid shirt pops up in the background to look at her menacingly. The next day this thin dude is seen walking back and forth from outside of the apartment. I think it’s him. He’s thin and wearing plaid so I think it’s him. He knocks on the door, trying to make his way into the house saying he needs to use the phone. Sam doesn’t let him. Intense music plays over Sam and Isabelle having a conversation about marriage during a walk. Why? I don’t fucking know. The text told us they were newlyweds but here Sam is complaining about them always talking about kids but never talking about getting married. Great attention to detail. The thin plaid man watches them. We watch them as they walk and talk. Intense music continues. Hilariously, the plaid man peaks out from behind a tree. I doubt it’s supposed to be as funny as I find it. Pot and booze is partook in and Isabelle has a vision of plaid guy stabbing her husband. Maybe? This leads to an overexposed shot of kids running, Sam walking by a fence, Sam stabbing plaid guy and saying “The monster is dead.”, Sam rambling on about staying alive and then saying the very high-school-angsty line of “Being awake is nightmare enough.”, Sam and Isabelle stuffing dead plaid guy in a bathtub and maybe time is no longer working as it should. Or it could just be a lack of experience complicating things. There’s still forty minutes left in this short film and I’m losing patience. After that batch of nonsensical stupidity ends, the grating Sam has Isabelle grab a camera so they can communicate with the spirit of the dead cat. The dumbest séance follows and if you don’t want to slap Sam right across his face by this point, you’re a better person than me. Isabelle tells a ghost story about a family cabin that rings true with how fucking boring it is. Sam tells a story too about a bus accident and it also bores. They go to bed and are creeped out for some reason and Sam freaks out Isabelle when he doesn’t remember saying that he’s psycho. There’s more flashes of violence. Unsettled by next to nothing at all, the duo of dopes decide to perform a cleansing ceremony… it leads to tragedy. I think. There’s still more that involves a curse and a virgin sacrifice or some bullshit. The cat, a cameo by an N64 console and the familiar architecture of youthful apartment living spaces save this from being the drizzling shits. Usually when some amateur horror flick is only an hour long, I can say “Well, if you cut out twenty or so minutes, you’d have a solid short flick” but here… here, this one just shouldn’t fucking exist. Writer/director/producer James Israel has not made a movie since this one, that was a good call.

The Amityville Theater (2015) (Canada)

aka Amityville Playhouse

⭐️

High schooler Fawn Harriman inherits a rundown theater in the town of Amityville, following the tragic death of her parents. Her dead folks had plans to get rid of it but she’s hesitant to sell without looking it over. She and a couple friends spend the weekend there, surveying the building that just fell into the young girl’s lap. Fawn’s teacher begins researching the property and discovers a disturbing link to Amityville’s dark past while Fawn and the annoying dopes she calls friends begin to encounter the supernatural. They also run into a homeless goth chick who is crashing in the theater and claiming squatter’s rights. She lets them know that weird shit is going down in the place all the time. She’s also kind of a bitch and does not look anywhere near homeless. Unless makeup and a Hot Topic dress code are now how homeless folks dress. I don’t get out much, so this may be the case. The gaggle of goofs decide to order a pizza and discover none of their phones work. When they try to get outside for better reception, they’re frustrated to find themselves sealed in the place. Remember, Ron DeFeo blamed demonic voices as the cause of his family murdering and those demonic influences seem to be back when it comes to one of the dinks. A major idiot amongst them just so happened to bring a Ouija board which they use to get some answers about what the hell is going on. Emoting is not a strong point for any of these people, so as panic sets in, things get pretty hilarious. The teacher’s investigation appears to be happening in real time and it’s about as exciting as watching a high school teacher read up on an old building. After about 400 hours, the minimal spookiness increases from a 1 to maybe a 3.5 and the youthful idiots start meeting their maker. There’s also a conspiracy in the town concerning the primitive evil that was unleashed unto the community during the settlement of the place. One of guys insists on calling people “butt head” for some reason. Sick burn, dude. It may not be the most boring of the Amityville films but it’s definitely up there. As a further insult, this damn thing runs just over 100 minutes. I take it back, this may be the most boring Amityville flick.

The Dark Side of Midnight (1986) (USA)

aka The Creeper/Blood City

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A quiet California town is besieged with terror when a homicidal maniac, who goes by the name The Detroit Creeper, begins to target the citizens after moving on from the streets of Michigan (probably shouldn’t call him by that name anymore). The small town police force and their mustaches do what they can to catch the killer and calm the residents of Fort Smith. A slew of actors turned away from a basement-porno casting call awkwardly attempt emoting as The Creeper uses his bare hands and other lame-ass weapons to murder children and young girls. Police chief Ned is forced to hire a professional criminologist to help him on the case. Brock Johnson arrives after Ned uses the threat of violence and photos of violence to convince the penny-pinching mayor to put the funds through and pay for Brock’s time. Supposed youngster Brock (he claims to be in his twenties but somehow manages to look at least forty and maybe twelve at the same time) falls for Ned’s daughter, who upon initial viewing I assumed was Ned’s wife because they are definitely the same age. This causes Ned to shout at himself about the situation concerning his daughter and the young criminologist who reeks of the kind of sexuality one finds in a dumpster behind an Arby’s everyone forgot about. The mayor and a scuzzy police lieutenant (who may be the physical manifestation of somebody’s hazy and wrong memory of Tom Selleck) team up to scheme against our heroes because public image and the construction of a new university are way more important than protecting the townspeople. The scumbag mayor looks like someone slapped a mustache on a poorly made Taiwanese action figure of Tom Bosley and everyone else is equally roaming the uncanny valley where they belong. The creeper looks like somebody mixed the DNA of Svengoolie and Brion James and then gave their godless creation gigantism because the world wasn’t quite cruel enough. There’s an especially annoying kid who gets his throat slit named Timmy whose ginormous melon is a set-piece in and of itself and remains the most horrific thing that turns up in this movie… even more-so than the nauseating mustaches on parade. As far as a thriller goes; it misses the mark completely but as an exercise in watching people who were all probably on their community’s record-setting bowling team; it’s essential viewing. Trash horror that holds the title without even trying thanks to the important mixture of inexperience, apathy, inanity, family BBQ charisma and a dash of natural insanity. I love movies like this and yes, that makes me the problem.

Dark Harvest (2004) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

My advice to any young people is to never inherit any property. Your excitement for your unexpected luck in life will quickly turn to terror when you discover the family curse which has ripped through the bloodline for generations, the family lunatic whose been locked away in a secret basement, the family ghosts who need you as a sacrifice to get back into this realm, the family who faked their deaths to get their hands on the inheritance or (in this case) the family scarecrow who is more than happy to slaughter. On top of the pants-shitting terror you have to endure, if you’re young enough, you’ve probably brought a gaggle of friends with you and now their lives are forfeit all because your dumbass couldn’t tell that no matter how free something seems, there’s always a cost to the riches an unknown family member left ya. The dope this time out goes by the name of Sean (who resembles Jon Bernthal’s younger, less-talented brother… we’ll call him Don Bernthal) and Sean has been left some farmland with a sinister past. Back in the 30s, when a horrible drought was plaguing the area, the place had one hell of a booming crop. It was thanks to human sacrifice and the discovery of said sacrifice led to the town sheriff taking a shotgun blast to the chest and the farm owner being gunned down shortly after. So now Sean has inherited this place from a biological father he never knew and because Sean decided to not listen to me, he takes his buddies (well, his girlfriend’s buddies) out to twenty-five acres of land in West Virginia. Not how I’d choose to spend my last week of summer but I’m not big on bugs and well water. I also wouldn’t spend that amount of time with a group of people that seem to barely tolerate each other but this is an early aughts horror flick and for some reason every filmmaker believed friends were people you wanted to strangle. The locals warn Sean that the property is best avoided and that his grand pappy had some demons of the literal variety. With the harvest moon in full effect, killer scarecrows begin wiping out the dopes because it’s time for retribution or some shit. At about fifty minutes, Sean realizes the shit-storm they’re in but it’s too little too late because the pretty cool-lookin’ cheap-ass scarecrows are making their presence felt and introducing scythes (and other sharp farming equipment) to warm flesh. “Spicing” things up along the dull path to the climactic scarecrow slaughter are vanishing octogenarians, stilted dialogue delivery, bare butts, natural bewbs, a disgusting swimming hole which will definitely lead to a UTI, believable lesbians, domestic beer drinking and a general lack of any action that plagues a lot of movies of this ilk. It’s kind of boring but the friends actually become closer as things spiral out of control and those last thirty minutes are some cheap fun. One character toasts “To Sean! Our intense, weird, not-so-fun but good friend.” I would say “To Dark Harvest! Our dull, somehow fun and amateur (but still worth watching) friend.”

Trilogy of Trash (2021) (USA)

⭐️⭐️1/2

Tales of terror from SOV garbage auteur Damian Bishop (the brain behind the wonderful fever dream E.T. and the Hooker Go to Space) has a dude with a digitally altered voice and a cool-as-fuck Devil mask introducing us to the trio of nightmare scenarios. Up first is The Lovedoll and we follow the annoying shenanigans of some dope-heads as they score some Satan-hippie drugs from a crooked cop. After some hilarious drug abuse, the addicts are paid a visit by the blow-up doll the drugs were smuggled in. Their friend’s head is exploded by the rubber nightmare and they’re a little too fucked out of their gourds to do much of anything to stay alive. As much as I’m not a fan of sober people acting high, it’s still the right amount of weird and garbage that Mr. Bishop is known for. Popcorn follows and it’s the name given to a young couple’s newly arrived pet bird. The husband has some issues since his return from Kuwait. The avian verbally and physically assaults the wife but the husband doesn’t think the little bastard can do any wrong. The wife worries about how much time her husband is spending with the new pet and the bird and man seem to be assimilating as Johnny’s mind deteriorates. It ends in tragedy and is somehow disturbing even though it involves an immobile dollar-store bird putting on a goofy voice and whispering horrible things to its owner. You can blame it on the off-putting sound design and zero-budget aesthetic always prevalent in the Dungeon Entertainment catalogue. Last up is Fat Gas, where a new guy’s first shift at a gas station under the tutelage of a burnt out old pro gets weird when he hears a voice from a drain in the back room telling him that it requires flesh and bone. It also spews black smoke, so that’s not good. They begin feeding customers to whatever the hell is residing in the drain. Wigs, fake backdrops and a shit-ton of laughter compliments the ad-libbed dialogue and absence of human behavior. More low-fi weirdness that feels like half-formed thoughts you had while reading the journal of someone who was in the end stages of neurosyphilis.

Axeman at Cutter’s Creek (2020) (USA)

aka Axeman: Redux

⭐️

A local legend puts an end to the shenanigans of some annoying twenty-somethings (maybe thirty-something) during their vacation. The film opens with a trio of criminals holed up in a nice cabin with a bunch of cash. One of them is the goddess known as Tiffany Shepis and the other two have some nasty scars. A bank robbery went bad and innocent people died but you can forget about all that because this trio isn’t around long. Some dude who looks like Jason Mamoa on meth, takes out the three right-quick. Enter the vacationing friends checking out their digs… the very same cabin where we lost the only reason I decided to watch this thing in the opening minutes (RIP Queen Shepis… I miss you already). The friends get situated and we get introduced to the chubby annoying fellow in the group who I imagine is supposed to be viewed as hilarious but within two seconds I was already dreaming of his death. There’s a lesbian couple who are horny, a drunk dude who is having issues with his girl thanks to an ex being around, a girl with bangs who’s now with the girl’s ex, a drunk girl with red hair who quotes Fat Bastard from Austin Powers, a guy who grills and another dude who makes out with the red head after she throws up in his mouth. They have conversations that suck and mostly act like they hate each other. Grill-guy struggles through the telling of the terrible history behind the cabin concerning The Axeman and the trail of bodies he left in his wake. Chubby guy talks to his penis and then gets his throat slit and I cheer to the heavens that he perishes first. The next morning nobody seems to notice but there’s some poorly written and performed drama between some of the idiots, so I guess their heads are elsewhere and they don’t give a shit about the missing fat guy. I’d be pretty thankful that he wasn’t around to bother folks. When they stop to question his absence, they begin to think the lore of the area may have something to do with it. They split up to look for him and we learn that even in death, Chubbs McCormick is ruining people’s lives. One person dies who isn’t even looking for the missing friend and then the partying continues. There’s some nudity and then more death. Insufferable or unmemorable people get murdered by a killer who can’t even be bothered to wear a mask or stick to using an axe. Man, fuck this movie. One star for Shepis and Brinke Stevens showing up as the sheriff.

Silence of the Prey (2024) (USA)

⭐️1/2

Desperate for work so she can ensure a comfortable future for her daughter, an undocumented immigrant takes a caretaker job (through an agency that helps place people in her predicament) in the middle of nowhere for an eccentric older gentleman. Nina and her little kid Isabella have an encounter with a man in distress on the way up, her agency rep tells her to ignore it and not to get involved. Luther is hesitant to take in a mother and daughter but eventually relents when he finds out that there’s nobody else around who would miss them… I mean, take them in. Sorry. So weird they made a point of him checking on that during the initial interview. After a tour of the house where Luther talks about hunting, maintaining traditions and the kindness of trimming the herd… huh, weird they made a point of focusing on that, he mentions a festival coming up that the whole small town takes part in and Luther is excited that Nina and her kid will be able to attend. He also warns against going in the basement, insists on her drinking a special tea blend for her health, cures his own meats in a backyard shed… and there’s so many red flags less than 15 minutes in that if Nina wasn’t in the dire situation she’s in, I’d be saying she really should have grabbed her kid and ran. I mean, she still should have but I get ignoring a bunch of the obvious warning signs. A stranded motorist shows up and more stupidity performed poorly plays out. Awkward performances mingle with scene compositions that range from stale to braindead and a predictable plot helps nothing. English may not be Nina’s first language, which is never a problem, but it seems that “human” may not be part of that equation either and it leads to a performance that screams “head injury”. Luther, on the other hand, comes off like Tobin Bell if he had almost none of the talent and most of the hamminess. I guess it’s noble that all those folks in the head trauma ward got a paying gig. Solid bits of wit when it comes to ignorance may land here and there but the whole thing is like a train wreck but instead of carnage you can’t look away from, it’s just a menagerie of cringeworthy performances/filmmaking you don’t want to watch but find it hard to take your eyes off of. I’ll give it points for antlers because I always find people wearing antlers creepy as fuck… not sure why, there’s probably something repressed I may not want to shine a light on. At least the annoying racists getting up to bullshit come to messy ends. I can dig that.

Siccîn 4 (2017) (Turkey)

⭐️⭐️

Money problems force a family of four to move into grandma’s large home. Granny fell ill shortly after grandpa passed away and is now watched over by a sinister housekeeper. Of course there’s also a supernatural presence in the home slowly working a revenge angle on the family matriarch and targeting the mentally fragile young son. The badly burnt specter pops up from time to time offering mostly failed jump scares and papa begins to crack under the pressure of his failing business. There’s also a hawt young fella wandering around the outskirts of the film preparing for a religious battle we just know is coming. Dad cracks and mortal harm seems an inevitability as we wait for the sexy young man of God to come to the rescue. Diminishing returns begin eating away at the Siccîn series. It’s not insulting but it sure as hell has lost its edge. Whereas the third part was weighed down by how jumbled and vague it was, this part just treads familiar waters and adds nothing new.

Cruel: The Cross Village Encounter (2024) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

A group of filmmakers are intrigued by the story of a dogman attack in rural Michigan. After speaking to the young woman who supposedly managed to escape the hairy and clawed clutches of a beast (her boyfriend was not so fortunate), the quartet head out to Cross Village to uncover the truth… this is their footage. Built around the recording of the young couple before tragedy struck and interviews with the few people willing to talk a year on after the occurrence, the film starts strong and lays the groundwork for an interesting found footage piece. There’s ties to a local family and a conspiracy that may be in the works when it comes to dark Michigan secrets and that violent man-dog roaming the woods. The quartet ramble as they meander through the woods and the usual bickering makes the short runtime feel even longer than it is. Not much happens between the mildly interesting opening and climax that’s at least a little spicier than it could have been but still doesn’t feel all that worth it. Still, it did try to put a little more meat on the bone.

The Mummy’s Curse (1944) (USA)

⭐️⭐️1/2

Final entry in Universal’s Mummy series doesn’t offer much freshness outside of the Louisiana swamp setting but does contain an admittedly creepy scene of the bog-lady-like Princess Ananka returning from the dead. Twenty-five years after Kharis met his quicksand ending in The Mummy’s Ghost, an irrigation project in the bayou unearths rumors of the mummy returning and shambling around the swamplands. Two doctors arrive from the museum to find the remains of Kharis and Ananka and return them to be displayed and studied. The Egyptian doctor, Zandaab, is one of the long line of head priests and before you know it Kharis is up and at it once more. Ananka awakens as well but thanks to the regenerative powers of the sun and a quick march through water, she comes back looking much better than her decrepit lover. Ananka (the incredibly hot Virginia Christine) eventually joins up with Dr. Halsey from the museum and this brings everyone on a collision course with Kharis. It’s the same damn plot as all the others but offers enough mummy action in its one hour runtime to be inoffensive.

Twisted Nightmare (1987) (USA)

aka Ancient Evil 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

It's 1987 and slasher flicks are nearing the end of the boom period. Various killers and horny "teens" have collided and all sorts of sharp objects have done ungodly things to human flesh. It's been done. That is why I can forgive people for brushing off Twisted Nightmare. Young(ish) folks head to a camp and an unstoppable killer does what unstoppable killers do. Yeah. You've seen it, but let me tell you something; this flick should not be slept on. No sir, there's a lot to love in this little nugget. I mean, if you're into the kind of films I'm into. If Friday the 13th (the franchise) was an actual entity, imagine said entity smacked its head and concussed the hell out of itself. Now imagine this entity never went for help nor did anything to fix the brain damage and just went on with its life. If this were the case you'd have Twisted Nightmare. It's like The Burning's little brother who was born with a third copy of chromosome 21. A group of old-looking twenty-somethings receive invites to Camp Paradise, a place they used to frequent as a group. The group has drifted apart because of a tragic accident that happened at the camp two years ago. Laura's mentally handicapped brother came into contact with some sort of ancient evil (represented as a blinking red light) and soon the young man was set ablaze. Although the body was never found, everyone just assumes he died. And as the old saying goes: “Never assume, because you'll soon find yourself confronting a crispy killer with supernatural powers.” There's a vast variety of idiots all gathered at the cabin, happy to reconnect and get their drink on. Even Laura has shown up with her new boy toy and everyone seems to be having a good time. Well except for Dean, Dean is some sort of alpha douchebag and generally has a problem with everyone. There's also a caretaker named Kane who doesn't want the idiots around but you can't really blame him for that. Anyways, the partying is commencing and beer is flowing. It doesn't take long for the herd to start being thinned down. Kittens in the barn separates the first duo of morons. Soon they've been sent to whatever reward their actions on this rock have warranted. Convenient excuses separate all of the group into tinier subgroups far easier to knock off. Buff weapons enthusiast Tak takes Laura's guy hunting, a quartet of dummies go off to the camp sauna (two of those sentient pieces of dead meat go off to bang under a dangerous old farm tool), Dean and his (probably) abused girl try to leave but have to walk back after their car dies and so on. There's a whole bunch of meat on the butchers block and thankfully the deaths are spaced out enough to keep your mind from wandering. The killer is mostly some burnt hulk with super strength who likes to get his hands dirty. I say "mostly" because there's a few scenes where the large maniac is portrayed by a completely different actor who more-so resembles a timid goth kid. Emoting is none of the actors’ strongpoints so you get a lot of robotic dialogue... it adds to the charm! There's some fun violence thrown in (an elderly sheriff gets his head ripped off, a throat is slashed by the killer's claw) but most of the damage goes down off screen. There's plenty of memorable characters (beef boy Tak, dickhead Dean, budget store Madonna, crazy eyes Laura, and some dude who looks like an Eric Roberts action figure got left out in the sun) to enjoy at the slower points. Something this lazy should not be this good. But much like all its emotionless actors, it sits comfortably in some sort of trash world where talent isn’t at all necessary for entertainment. Good gawd! It’s a grand low-rent slasher! 

Deep Evil (2004) (Canada)

⭐️⭐️

A top secret underground lab in Alaska has been a research site for an alien microbe which touched down in Siberia sometime in the 1950s. The detonation of a nuclear device on American soil and a survivor with a story that is shadowed in secrecy and intrigue gets the US government involved. Eventually the survivor tells his interrogator what he can. Bad shit immediately followed the successful cloning of the microbe and a team of scientists and army boys are sent in to investigate when communication drops completely. The scientists remain tight-lipped, much to the annoyance of the military team, and when they enter the underground faculty they find it eerily abandoned except for some slime. Predictably, the alien presence infects folks and radiation is the only cure. Contamination is the name of the game and the small group of idiots slowly go to whatever Heaven they believe in. Lorenzo Lamas (introduced tied to a chair, experiencing a less than stellar striptease from his superior’s daughter) is the cocksure weapons and explosives expert. The alien costume is pretty cool but doesn’t show up early enough. Your usual under-budget production features a good amount of chat, iffy digital effects, capable actors and a cheap enemy that stays well within the spending confines of a stretched budget. It’s all just kind of there and doesn’t have any pulse. It ain’t horrible but it also ain’t memorable.

Pledge Night (1990) (USA)

aka Death Night/Pledge Class 

⭐️⭐️1/2

Braindead cash grab filmed at Rutgers University manages to squeeze out some enjoyment due to just how inept the whole damn thing is. Hell week turns fatal for a small group of pledges and their annoying fraternity elders when the vengeful spirit of Acid Sid comes to claim lives. In the late sixties Sid was the victim of a hazing prank gone bad and now he is slinging wisecracks and dealing out supernatural death. Some incredibly awkward sex and acting will have you shaking your head and the jaw-droppingly stupid ending is a lovely slap to the face to any viewer that stuck around. Load up on booze and you just may enjoy this ninety-minute supernatural slasher.