Wilderness Tapes: Volume One (2026) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The wilderness claims many folks all over the world and a lot of those people are never seen again. Now, the majority can be written off as nature just doing what it does and people just being the flawed dopes that we are. But what about the cases that can’t be explained away? Brandon Walker (the man behind the interesting Ghosts of Hiroshima and Himalaya but also the regrettable Stay) looks to answer that question with the found footage format he seems pretty comfortable with. Looking to be an anthology of sorts, the first outing is Prospector Pete. A host introduces us to what we’re gonna see and explains how it’s his mission to release as much discovered footage as he can from different devices found discarded in nature. The titular vlogger went looking for gold in an abandoned mine, filming it all for a YouTube video that was never uploaded. Loner Pete trespasses on private land and makes his way into the dangerous caverns. Pete and his magnificent beard narrates his journey and since he’s solo, it’s not as annoying as these found footage cameramen tend to be. Way to go, Pete! He shares some history about the closed mine and also opens up as to why he’s immersed himself in what many would consider a needlessly dangerous hobby. Discovering a small amount of gold gets him pretty damn pumped and adds some sense to why he would make this nighttime expedition. I mean, I still think he’s an idiot and judging by his fate, I’m not wrong. He finds a skull ring and an old torn photograph featuring the man who once wore the skull ring but he doesn’t buy into any supernatural bullshit so on he marches, deeper into the darkness. There’s definitely someone (something) in there with him and unfortunately Pete is about to come into contact with the reason this auriferous mine has been left alone for the last century. Simple, short and way less annoying than it could have been, it’s decent enough to be inoffensive but a bit too familiar to be all that recommendable. Love the setting and the bookending narrator gave me fond flashbacks to that Tales From Darkside opening speech that use to freak the fuck out of me when I was just a little weirdo, so I will definitely join along in the other releases if they make their way out to the masses.

Killdozer (1974) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

A small construction crew working to get a site-base set up for an oil company on an isolated island begin to meet violent ends at the slow-moving wheels of a killer bulldozer. A meteorite struck earth and brought with it a blue glowing presence. The alien entity jumps into the bulldozer and goes on a spree of violent destruction. Goofy fucking TV flick runs out of steam but it’s still fun enough to keep you entertained. The cast of old hands play it surprisingly straight and the lumbering nightmare is far more silly than threatening. A good time.

Flesh Freaks (2000) (Canada)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

In Central America, a research expedition unearths a corpse buried in a Mayan temple. Unbeknownst to the team of archaeologists, the corpse is home to a strange worm-like alien parasite that has the ability to bring the dead back to homicidal life. Barry returns from the expedition in Belize that went bad when his fellow students and professors were murdered. His buddy Stan wants to help him get past the after effects of the trauma he’s obviously enduring but Barry just wants to unwind. That’s gonna be tough because it looks like the worms have made their way to Canada with Barry and one cool-lookin’ cheap-ass corpse is already up and walking. Blood splats, the dead start growing in number and we learn that the alien creatures have plans for the warm and livable bodies of the human race. Utilizing vacation footage, Conall Pendergast crafted a cheap zombie flick around footage that most backyard filmmakers could only dream of. Conall (as Barry) bloviates over the footage and catches us up on the shit that went down in the jungle... it’s kind of charming. A fun mix of alien invasion and zombie mayhem on a 10 dollar budget showcases plenty of fake blood and violence to cheap zombie heads and enough heart to make its limitations easier to look beyond.

Curse III: Blood Sacrifice (1991) (UK/South Africa)

aka Panga/Blood Sacrifice 

⭐️⭐️1/2

Continuing the box office record-smashing Curse franchise, comes another sequel that has nothing to do with anything involving 87’s The Curse or 89’s Curse II: The Bite (of course, Curse II: The Bite had dick-all to do with The Curse), it’s almost like they just slapped on the Curse label to an unrelated movie… but I’m not one for gossip. This time out, an ancient sea demon (looking like a first cousin of Monster Squad’s gillman) is summoned by a pissed-off witchdoctor when some annoying white settlers disrupt a sacrificial ritual in 1950’s Africa. Luckily, a bearded Christopher Lee is hanging around as a doctor with a vast amount of knowledge concerning the supernatural threat our hero has found herself in. You’d think the supernaturally induced attempted miscarriage would have been enough. Well, there’s perfectionists everywhere I suppose. There’s a lot of drag for a movie featuring a bearded Christopher Lee in a white suit and a fish-man with a nasty machete (Surprise! We don’t get enough of either) but fumbled ideas are prevalent throughout this genre I’ve dedicated my life to. It’s still pretty fun seeing a 1950’s monster movie made with that early-nineties gloss and taking itself completely serious.

Curse II: The Bite (1989) (Italy/USA/Japan)

aka Blood Biter/The Bite

⭐️⭐️1/2

This plot sounds like it was written by a fucking child. A radioactive snake bites a man on his hand and the man’s hand turns into a venomous snake head that kills people and the man is also filled with snakes which he spawns and those snakes are also murderous and anyone he meets ends up dead because his hand is a lethal snake and he also has snakes in his body which kill. He also has a girlfriend who he runs away from so he can protect her but she loves him and wants to save him. See what I mean? That’s some fever dream logic that a child would come up with to explain to their aunt why they can’t take a bath while their parents are out for a much-needed date night. Needless to say, my kind of plot. So, Clark Newman (who is surprisingly not the love child of Bruce Abbott and Scott Bakula but did star in the Olsen Twins masterpiece To Grandmother’s House We Go) has a really bad snake problem and it’s proving to be a bigger problem for any poor sucker he meets along the way which has the local sheriff and his deputies hunt down the monster to put an end to all the terror while his girlfriend Lisa (lovely Jill Schoelen) just wants her beau back even though his diminishing health and mental stability has really put a damper on their relationship. Jamie Farr, (sadly not in drag) is an extremely helpful traveling salesman who knows a thing or two about snakes. It has nothing to do with 87’s The Curse which is fine by me because that movie ain’t all that great and did not have a snake/dog hybrid, Sydney fuckin’ Lassick as a squeamish hotel clerk or Bo fuckin’ Svenson as a podunk sheriff with a grudge. A wonderful dumpster monster movie exists here but there’s a hell of a lot of nothing you have to deal with because it always seems that these late 80s Italian co-productions forget to lean into the elements that make for a good time. Even more frustrating when those elements are blatantly there… I mean, a fucking snake-hand rips a doctor’s jaw off and one of our heroes is a guy who is trying to save the day because he really doesn’t want to get sued. Come on. That’s great. Damm shame the rest of the movie couldn’t be like the final ten minutes.

The Curse (1987) (Italy/USA)

aka The Farm/The Well

⭐️⭐️

A meteorite crashes into the Tennessee farm property of super-religious asshole Nathan Crane (Claude fuckin’ Akins). Nathan is struggling to keep his farm running and keep his family in line with his beliefs but concerns of hellfire will have to wait because whatever the hell oozed out of the space rock and seeped into the soil soon contaminates the area’s water supply. Madness and mutation follows close behind and Nathan’s second wife Frances and her kids from a previous marriage are facing mortal danger. Nathan’s obnoxious giant son Cyrus from his first marriage is also around but he’s a massive pud and deserves any and everything bad that comes to him. Frances bangs the help (hairy-shouldered Mike) and Young Zachary (Wil Wheaton) knows something awful is going down as his mom, livestock and vegetables degrade into nastiness but Nathan believes it’s just God’s punishment for the sinning ways of the people under his roof. In his defense, the damn thing crashed into the earth while Frances was getting pounded by the disgustingly hairy farmhand and his apple harvest is quite impressive but unfortunately full of worms. The town doctor also sees the object make landfall but a scuzzy speculator dissuades him from calling in any professionals to look over the comet and since he’s the smartest man around, he looks into it. There’s also talk of a reservoir being built and a rookie TVA agent making his way through town. When mom mutates into a slimy hag, things finally get the right kind of stupid. Lovecraft adaption and the directorial debut of actor David Keith never really picks up any kind of steam and just kind of meanders around trying to be a few too many things while succeeding at none of them. There’s hairy asses for the ladies (or the fellas), oiled up legs for the fellas (or the ladies), bleeding tomatoes for the foodies and a little girl being attacked by a swarm of chickens… that’s for me.

Scared Stiff (1987) (USA)

aka The Masterson Curse 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

More than a year after some mental troubles, a pretty musician takes her son and moves into an old house with her former psychiatrist now boyfriend (ewwwwww). One hundred and thirty years before the house was under the ownership of one slave-owning son of a bitch named George Masterson. Fed up with his cruelty, a handful of his slaves placed a curse on the man. They passed on a stone totem to protect his kind-hearted wife Elizabeth and their young son. Judging by the skeletal remains that Dr. Young finds stashed in a trunk in the house's hidden attic, something went wrong. Katie begins seeing strange things and picking up on the home's bad vibes but her chooch of a boyfriend is convinced she may be slipping back into insanity. It also seems that George Masterson's evil spirit may be taking possession of the good doctor. A few deaths happen along the way and soon Katie comes to learn that the curse transformed Mr. Masterson into a horrific monster. She's going to have to fix the broken stone totem and make a stand if she wants to escape with she and her son's lives. Oddly enough for a film that takes so long to get down to the mayhem, Scared Stiff is an entertaining treat throughout. There's enough fun to be had in the shoddy laser effects and quirky characters (my favorite being a sports-obsessed detective). There's not much violence for most of the runtime but a few dark touches (a decaying handyman hanging just outside the son's window, death-bringing pigeons) help the film to stand out. The monster doesn't show his ugly mug till way late in the game but there's enough to chew on to keep you satisfied. Mary Page Keller is a sympathetic heroine and her son is likable enough. Andrew Stevens plays an excellent dick. The makeup is rubbery in the best way and one wishes we got to see more of it. Completely entertaining late 80s horror shot in Miami.

Hyenas (2011) (USA)

aka Devil’s Spawn - Hyenas of Death/Hyenas - The Legend is Real

⭐️⭐️1/2

Every time Meshach Taylor ends up in a movie I’m watching, my heart gets broken all over again because I search for what he’s been up to and realize he’s been dead since 2014. I love you Hollywood, may you rest in peace. Here, mighty Meshach plays a coot by the name of Crazy Briggs and he lends a hand to a man on a quest for revenge. Ya see there’s this roving pack of human/hyena hybrids that drive around the backroads of California and eat poor motorists who enter their domain. They also dress like they’re really into Smashmouth and are about as threatening as that sounds. It doesn’t help that they cackle like hyenas while attacking. The opening slaughter of a baby and its mother by some awkwardly rendered digital hyenas is stumbled upon by two lost dopes in leather jackets. Crazy Briggs sits by a campfire and speaks directly to us about the ancient hyena people and warns about how dangerous and mysterious they are. Glad he’s there to catch us up. He also reveals that his purpose in life is to hunt their supernatural asses down. The dead woman’s husband (holy hell, it’s Costas Mandylor) is riddled with guilt because she was on her way to see him and the police force is not hopeful that they’ll find out who the hell did this. So he drinks and cries until that majestic Meshach approaches him with the promise of revenge. Gannon doesn’t exactly buy into his claim of werehyenas on the prowl but Briggs convinces him to go on a little field trip with him by the old trick of pulling a gun on him. Proof is provided and the team up of Meshach and Mandylor that I never knew I needed finally happens. While this is going on there’s tension between a racist gang of Caucasian assholes and Mexican mechanics (?) that provides a few more bits of unlikable cannon fodder (not nearly enough, way too many of these derps make it to the end credits). There’s also the random folks who find themselves in the teeth of the beasts. There’s a young guy who wants to join the group of white dickheads and his sister (who is dating the head mechanic) ain’t happy about it. This all takes away from the dream team action but them’s the breaks. There’s talk of the female Alpha of the pack dying and the monsters now traveling and hunting down the hunters. The next alpha looks like it will be the large-breasted and tattooed Wilda but there’s chatter amongst the clan about her sister taking the reins. It seems like there may have been a time jump I missed but I think the film may just be lazy. A young woman is saved from a roadside attack by our heroic duo and Gannon falls for her and now I know there was definitely a time jump. Of course, she’s got a big secret and I’m pretty sure you can figure out what that is. Some of the worst fight choreography I have ever seen (and I’m using “choreography” in the loosest sense of the word) graces the screen and weak southern accents and weaker digital effects and somehow weaker acting have this thing reeking of hyena excrement. Fortunately for us, its trashiness is glorious and the one-two punch of Meshach and Mandylor really warms my dumbass heart. It’s still really bad, I just enjoyed it more than I should have. It also teaches a valuable lesson that bigotry can only be defeated by joining together to combat the threat of humans who can turn into hyenas.

The Forever Dead (2007) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Christine Parker’s backyard splatter epic has no right running more than one hundred minutes but somehow manages to charm the hell out of the trash-loving horror fan in me. The opening credits less than inspire as they play out over the climax of the film but in reverse. Luckily once it all gets going, it becomes a pretty enjoyable time... if you’re accustomed to hometown shenanigans from a cast comprised of friends, family and drunk locals. A scientist has a mental breakdown and releases an infected rabbit called Bugs into the wilds of North Carolina. The rabid rabbit is carrying one nasty virus and begins spreading it as it attacks some random folks, turning them into zombies. Various characters pop in and out, along with some bodycount-filling extras and eventually we’re left with a ragtag group of blood-covered survivors holding up in an abandoned house. An extended flashback reveals the true villain (although it was pretty obvious from the get-go) and the opening reversed footage we’ve had more than an hour to forget plays out in linear time (although I’m pretty sure a few things were edited out). I’ve said it a hundred times, if I’ve said it once: “If you bring enthusiasm to your low-budget vision, odds are I’m gonna like it.” There’s more than thirty minutes of this film that could have easily been cut but I still found myself enjoying it more than regretting my time spent watching. Familiar crap acting, scenes dragging and audio that jumps from almost inaudible to ear-piercingly loud are all present and accounted for. The music is better than most of the butt metal you find in these crap-fests and actually had a few belly laughs intentionally dragged out of me. I’m also smiling thanks to the butcher shop gore, zombie rabbit puppet action, JNCO pants and obvious (terrible) ad-libbing.

Burial of the Rats (1995) (USA/Russia)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

A young Bram Stoker is captured by a vicious cult of thong-clad women (looking like they’d be more at home in a Roger Corman barbarian flick… he did executive produce) who take it upon themselves to punish evil men with the help of flesh-eating rats. Now, if I were enslaved by a gang of bikini-rockin’ man-hating pissed-off women with a penchant for vengeance, I would just sit back and do as I was told. Helps that Adrienne Barbeau holds the mantle of group leader (Queen of Vermin or the Pied Piper’s Twisted Sister) and plays a mean flute with rat-controlling powers. She could tell me to go give Lindsey Graham a deep tissue massage and I’d obey. Bram wishes to escape but he also falls hard for one of the women (and she seems to have a soft spot for the wannabe author) so he finds it difficult to just up and flee. It’s bombshell Maria Ford, so I sympathize with our dopey hero. She looks great carrying a sledgehammer. Bram’s papa, who managed to escape with his life when the ladies attacked, is working hard to find his son and save him from the feminine clutches of the French Amazonians. Barbeau likes how horrifying Bram’s writings are about her gang’s murderous deeds, she encourages him to keep on putting pen to paper so the world of man can be terrified by their actions. Perverts and scumbags (anyone with a dong, really) end up stripped to the bone by the ravenous vermin and one of the chickadees (Olga Kabo, lookin’ fantastic and having a blast) gets jealous that her blonde darling is spending so much time with Bram and the man is being given special treatment. Bram begins helping out on the man-killing raids but unfortunately his special-lady-friend gets apprehended by French authorities. Completely stupid and totally wonderful, it’s all so hornily innocent that I was grinning like a dope the whole time. The script matches the cinematography in its late-night Cinemax vibe and this material is so far below Barbeau that it somehow ended up on top of her ridiculous nobleman wig. There’s a little Linnea Quigley but not nearly enough Linnea Quigley and even at a brisk 78 minutes it feels just a little bit longer than it should be. Of course, that wasted time is spent with naked women dancing for the pleasure of the Rat Queen or smoke-shows sword fighting, so who am I to complain?

The Grieving (2025) (Italy)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Following her father’s sudden passing, Mia carries a bit of guilt that her busy life as a New York gallery owner put her relationship with her dad on the back burner for a seemingly brief bit of time. Of course it was in this brief stretch that his life came to a close, so I can understand why she’s beating herself up. The disturbing dream-vision of her father the night before she receives the word of his death further unsettles. Mia flies home to Italy to collect her papa’s ashes from the crematorium where the excellent, atmospheric opening of the film took place. Yeah. We know the spookiness is on the horizon. She plans on burying the ashes next to her mother on the family property. It’s going to take a few days for paperwork to be sorted and Mia is warned that it’s illegal to open the urn and spread the ashes without the permission of the Italian government. I don’t blame them for hammering this home, Mia’s been in America for a bit and we are a selfish batch of monkeys. So, this leaves Mia on her isolated family property while she’s waiting to get permission to lay her father’s cremains to rest. She opens the urn to place in her mother and father’s wedding rings and fixes up the house while crying. Luckily, she’s able to communicate with her best friend/business partner and he’s able to offer up some levity during this awful stretch. It takes almost no time for spooky shit to ramp up and Mia may be spooked but she also sees it as a chance to communicate with her much-missed dad. She’s convinced he’s pierced the veil because there’s something he needs to tell her or maybe even warn her about. It also may be driving her insane. A convenient medium pops up because what’s a small Italian village without one? She lets Mia know that her father asked for her assistance because he was being haunted by something and needed help. This will lead to contact and a revelation of just what malevolence is in the works. A very small and likable cast carry the familiar haunting story (executed well enough) on a small budget and may deliver some stilted performances but that’s the cost of performing something in a second language. It doesn’t bother me a bit and it’s my kind of indie horror because it comes off like a foggy recollection of Insidious presented with a production budget that wouldn’t cover a small percentage of that movie’s catering. I love me an underdog and this is a capable one.

Mother of Flies (2025) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A young woman’s terminal cancer diagnosis has her looking for healing in the dangerous fields of backwoods medicine. A witch offers up a remedy but as anyone who has ever seen anything involving the curative powers of black magic medicine could tell you, there is a hefty fucking fee. Mickey and her loving father struggle with the diagnosis and Mickey decides to seek the assistance of a deep woods dwelling woman with a strong connection to nature and death. This woman had reached out to the girl and Mickey, looking to hold on any way she can, agrees to undergo the three-day stint of death magic and ritual being offered up. Her dad goes along with it because the options are thin and the idea of such a deep loss is fucking terrifying. His disbelief and helpless anger at the situation never rings false and he serves as a solid anchor for the slow spiral into the unknown. It’s a much more important part of the film’s progression than I was expecting. Of course, the heavy focus is placed upon the conjurer and the sick girl where it rightfully belongs, also a centuries-old shame that ties everything together. Presenting witchcraft as it should be to anyone raised on stories of Appalachian disquiet or Hong Kong ickiness, the spells and conjuring here are suitably disgusting. Gorgeous images and scenery meld perfectly with decay and disgust to throw everything on unsteady ground, keeping the audience right where the film wants us to be. Quiet, hallucinatory, personal, beautiful, lyrical and carefully gross. Melodrama detracts a bit but it’s easy to overlook when everything else is so fascinating. A dream steeped in fairytale and corrupted by the inevitability of mortality forming one hell of an intriguing dark fantasy. Not at all what I was expecting and sometimes that’s the best thing a movie can be.

The Fairfield County Four (2026) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

As flawed as it may be and as many times as it has hurt me on a personal level, I still love me some found footage movies. I also find the dog man a fascinating edition to the realm of cryptozoology. Now, what happens when these two things come together? Four young folks head out to the Connecticut wilderness to investigate sightings of a werewolf (not exactly a dog man but oh well). John Bloom pops in for an interview as an attorney who is releasing the footage captured of the missing four to help his clients (the families of the vanished quartet) get some answers that the local authorities appear to be covering up. It’s nice seeing Joe Bob Briggs introduce us to what we’re watching and we get a brief chunk of people talking about the case. In no time at all, we’re traveling along with the doomed team of monster hunters who run a series called “The Cryptid Project”. Irritating Randy documents everything, including the usual useless footage and moments of people talking over each other. Two exhausting female hosts agitate and the sound guy’s sarcasm grows tiresome. The two dudes bicker even before things go to shit. Uh oh. Local interviews and Fairfield County wanderings kill time, awkwardly fleshing out our protagonists (God help me, it kinda works. The interview with the grieving mother really goes a long way in showing these people actually have more to them than manufactured enthusiasm) and introducing some colorful folks and cautious /hostile government officials who populate the small town living under the shadow of a hairy and dangerous legend. John Bloom comes back to let us know that after a certain point in the footage, things shift for the four and things get worrisome. A slimy town rep hooks them up with his magnificently bearded uncle so the old timer can work as a guide for them into the woods. He’s pretty great. He shares some spooky history and personal experiences and then warns them to not go following a loud howl and movement in the woods. They don’t listen and the inevitable encounter with the killer unknown ruins everyone’s day. The opening act may be a drag thanks to it landing firmly into the standard unlikable found footage shenanigans but once it allows the audience to project some sympathy towards our heroes, it gets a lot better. Also… a found footage werewolf film… that’s such a great way to get me rooting for your damn movie right out of the starting gate. The werewolf costume is practical and looks mighty fine which means the movie ain’t afraid of displaying it for the brief time it’s featured. A solid cast works well and it’s a simple enough story to keep it all from dragging too much. A good time that may not reinvigorate the subgenre but shouldn’t piss anyone off if they’re looking for some easy shaky-cam tomfoolery.

The Black Fables (2015) (Brazil)

aka Dark Fables

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

As Dominic Toretto once proclaimed; “THIS IS BRAZIL!” Only this time instead of muscle cars being raced by sweaty men capable of physics-defying driving techniques, we get a side of Brazil that deals with much darker things. Bringing together a quartet of local legends (amongst them, Coffin Joe himself, the late, great José Mojica Marins and Petter Baiestorf who blessed the world with Zombio and then shat all over everything with its sequel) we are treated to an anthology with its Brazilian blood pumping enough madness and variety to keep me intrigued. A group of goofy kids take a break from their delightful costumed shenanigans in the woods, enjoying some hybrid fantasy role playing that involves homemade weapons, homemade costumes, slabs of wood serving as swords and water balloons. A kick to the balls puts a sudden end to the tomfoolery and eventually some storytelling eases the youthful boredom. First up is Monster of the Sewer from Rodrigo Aragão. A corrupt, obese mayor dies on the shitter (the kind of brief illness that involves blood shooting out of your double chin until the back of your head explodes… I think that’s mono) and everything he voids goes into the sewer system he has refused to fix. This ends up poisoning the water supply that crosses paths with the overflowing sewer outside of some frustrated man’s home. This has the nasty effect of turning said fed-up guy into a violent sewage zombie for… uhm, reasons. It also has a giant, living turd found by the soon-to-be sewage zombie’s child who keeps it as a pet. It’s pure toilet stupidity, which I have seen plague more than a couple Brazilian flicks but it’s at least reasonable because it’s being told by a pre-teen boy. We’re idiots, especially at that age and I can definitely see this as something hilarious to some youthful dope who swears it to be true. A very cheap zombie, a very messy kicked-in head and a very lovely giant insectoid BM combine for an opening act that kind of has me shrug while shaking my head. It’s not my cup of tea but nowhere near as bad as it could have been. As the kids march off to grab some food, one of them stumbles across a giant track left in the dirt. This leads him to telling a local legend about a werewolf fucking up the cruel, racist military rule of a small village. Pampa Feroz comes from the aforementioned Baiestorf and it is a charming bit of budget-strained lycanthrope madness. Chocolate syrup splatter and truly despicable victims pair well with a majestically janky monster (think the creature from Cellar Dweller but realized by Andy Milligan and you’re practically there) and a transformation back into human form that is fucking jaw-dropping in a very cheap and icky way. It’s also shot to look like it was filmed through your memory of an unfinished basement in the Midwest. Yes, that is praise. Why are you looking at me like that? One of the boy’s fears of something called the Saci leads to O Saci from Marins which he shows up in. A young girl is tempted by some horny dope to join him while hunting in the woods at night. An old timer warns them that it’ll be dangerous after dark because they’re in the land of the Saci but the guy ignores the warning and ends up shooting the mythical hopping monster. The girl’s parents aren’t happy and they don’t believe her story. The guy decides the truth can only come out if he finishes the job and embalms the Saci for all to see. The creepy-ass rubber monster pays a visit to the girl’s home and the question rises as to whether or not the girl is just insane or actually being plagued by an ugly nightmare. Possible possession leads to Marins performing an exorcism which leads to a concerned father and unfortunate ends for a few folks. It works fine and features a folkloric beast I haven’t seen before. The next story comes from Joel Caetano and involves a ghost haunting the bathroom of a rundown boarding school. Bloody Blonde is said specter and she’s leaving some bodies in her wake. The headmistress buries these dead kids on the school grounds and goes about her business, informing nobody but she has darker secrets than that and it connects to the school’s spirit. Bloody Mary scared the fuck out of me when I was little and this ghastly ghost really hits me in the terrifying nostalgia section of my brain. The effective entity is decayed to hell and covered in blood, conjured up by speaking her name in the bathroom mirror… it’s damn-near perfect when it comes to giving this middle-aged idiot some chills. Cruelty, a hideously scarred butler, bitchy classmates, nauseating wall paint, some nasty violence and a nice level of grime just wrap it all up into the kind of package I am madly in love with. Rodrigo Aragão bookends with Lara’s House which has a woman murdering her adulterous husband and bumping uglies with a Satyr that clued her into her husband’s infidelity. Legend has it that the scorned woman still resides in her now derelict house, leaving the confines once night falls. Our storytellers now sit outside the seemingly abandoned home and a simple, mean-spirited prank is going to show just how factual the scary tales were. If you have no issue with production budgets stretched as far as they can go, this anthology is a pleasant surprise (outside of a mostly forgettable first story). Giving us a zombie, a giant poop-creature, a werewolf, a one-legged thing from folklore with a case of the giggles and one hell of a ghost all brought to life on film sets you can smell from the comfort of your own home with a cast that could use a shower. Again, that’s praise.

The Vampire’s Coffin (1958) (Mexico)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sequel from the same team behind El Vampiro sees Count Lavud (a returning Germán Robles) unwittingly resurrected by a greedy grave robber and embarking on a quest of revenge against our two likable heroes from the previous entry. A colleague of Dr. Enrique (Abel Salazar, also returning), fascinated by the vampire lore, looks to unlock the vampires biological secrets but instead unleashes the evil count on the medical center where he works. Unluckily, Marta (the beautiful Ariadna Welter reprising her role) is at the same medical center recovering from her traumatic encounter with Lavud. On top of the returning cast and bats on strings, we get a creepy wax museum, a climactic battle between man and bat, some awkward dance numbers and an elderly woman killed by an iron maiden. Not on par with the excellent original, The Vampire’s Coffin is still a fun time.

El Vampiro (1957) (Mexico)

aka The Vampire 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Vampirism combines seamlessly with family drama in this horror classic. Marta returns to her home for the first time in years at the request of her uncle when it seems her aunt is nearing death. She arrives to find her aunt has passed and her lovingly remembered home has slipped into disarray. Mr. Duval has taken residence in the small village and now it is avoided like the plague. Duval is in cahoots with Marta’s aunt (whom he has vampirized) to reclaim ownership of the family estate and resurrect his brother who is buried on the grounds. His vampiric gaze has become fixated on the lovely Marta, not because of the “lost love” stuff usually found in these films, but because her aunt left her the deciding share of her childhood home and her vote to sell to Duval would mean her uncle is shit out of luck. Hopefully she may be spared an undead fate with the help of a charming doctor and the (possible) ghost of her recently deceased aunt. An excellent film that should be far more revered than it is. Germán Robles makes for an impressive evil presence, the story is fresh, the folklore moves to its own beat, superbly acted by all involved and the striking photography enhances the already moody atmosphere. See it.

The Ghost from Hovrino (2012) (Russia)

⭐️1/2

Russian Blair Witch Project offers nothing new outside of some cool backstory involving an ancient forest used as a sacrificial ground by sorcerers. There’s talk of a large ghost/monster thing running around the woods but you know you’ll never lay eyes on it. In a pleasant twist, the female lead follows her gut and dumps the dumbass filmmaker when he refuses to leave the legend alone. Something starts taking the four-man crew one by one and the idiot goes insane in a less than convincing fashion. You’ve seen it before but this time it’s in Russian!

Cannibal Cult (1999) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

In the year 1950, a demented veteran/camp owner uses black magic to turn the suspicious townsfolk into cannibals and then kills his family and himself. We jump ahead to present day and a group of teens, looking for some kicks, decide to check out the infamous site now said to be guarded by an army of flesh hungry idiots. It does not end well. Ultra low-budget (we’re talking home video style, baby!) horror flick is a hilarious thirty minutes of ineptness. The editing is garbage, the audio is worse and a fog machine was definitely abused. Depending on just how well you can handle trash, you will either be charmed into loving or worn down into despising this amateur affair from Blake Fitzpatrick. I’m in the former camp.

Devil’s Island (2021) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

Three years following the passing of her grandparents, a young woman (who looks like what I’d imagine an elderly producer would think when he hears the term “real hip chickadee”) inherits their small island home in New York’s Thousand Islands area. Samantha awkwardly kills time as she seems completely underprepared for her new living situation but it also doesn’t help that her behavior appears to be under the guiding hand of a writer who has only experienced human actions from barely-remembered sitcoms. After she cruises around a bit in her boat while guitar strumming plays on the soundtrack, she meets some creeper who claims he does boat repair. He looks like every New Yorker you’ve ever seen who works in the kitchen of a greasy pizza joint but since it’s the islands, he’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt over his stained undershirt. His name is Mort and I don’t think there has ever been a more synchronous bond of man and name in the history of low-budget horror shot in the Thousand Islands area of New York. Creepy dudes aside, Samantha starts getting freaked out when she hears some strange things on her supposedly vacant property. Maybe. She may also be severely constipated… it’s a little hard to tell. As she investigates (or maybe looks for a laxative) she catches a boat heading away from her home. Now she’s really spooked. The next day she speaks to the sheriff (he’s the one that found her nana and papa’s corpses) and he’s able to slightly convince her that there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to late night visitors on the water. Even if said visitor is the large local named Michael, who definitely had the same acting coach as Samantha and looks like he’d be the janitor at the pizza place Mort works in. I really wouldn’t eat any of those slices. More creepiness (or possible constipation) plays out as Samantha meanders around, looking twelve and fifty at the same time and performing normal human tasks (conversations, drinking coffee, breathing) like it’s causing her great distress. A box with worms is left on her dock, Michael’s boat is found abandoned near her house, the sheriff thinks she may have rubbed somebody the wrong way (he’s also a total dick about it), locals watch her with mistrust (or maybe, they too, are having problem BMs), a mute woman hangs around in the background, Mort neglects the idea of “sleeves”, there’s a significance when it comes to wolves, Mort attempts to be helpful (and fails), the mute woman has a cryptic warning (written out, of course) before vanishing (kinda) and Samantha insists on ignoring reason and standing her ground… which leads to some hilarious action. Usually, when films can’t rely on strong performances or an interesting script, they’ll provide some thrills and splatter to keep things chugging along. Devil’s Island makes the bold choice of being completely content in offering nothing and saying “fuck you!” for expecting any different. For some reason, I can really respect that. It’s bad but it’s the surreal kind of bad that’s begrudgingly entertaining. So piss and moan all you want, I’m kind of a fan. My mom recommended this to me and now I’m thinking I may have forgotten her birthday. Not because I’m busy or anything, because I’m a horrible son.

Carnage (1984) (USA)

aka Hell House

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

There’s something very wrong with Andy Milligan and that’s exactly why I love his peculiar library of gutter thrills. If you’ve read Jimmy McDonough’s irreplaceable The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan, then you know how the man’s wretched past inspired his wretched working days and eventually lead to his wretched death. It’s a fascinating look at the power a shitty mother has in developing an awful human who, for some reason, decided to be a filmmaker. Outside of a few dramatic pieces steeped in an odd level of unearned pretentiousness, Milligan stuck to horror that ran through themes of family rot, mental decay and a general nihilism for anything that had the tenacity to breath on this planet. He also utilized handmade period piece costuming, church basement spook show gore effects and scripts that were already pretty dated by the time of conception. It sounds like a train wreck you’re being forced to watch by a drunk nun who is also your uncle in drag… and it is but it’s completely unlike anything else I’ve seen. Well, a Milligan film is like everything else festering in low budget hell but it’s being crafted by Milligan so nothing else is like it. I don’t know if that makes sense and I doubt I should care. I’m sure Milligan wouldn’t have given a fuck, he was probably too busy planning on choking out his nephew. Carnage is Andy Milligan pissing all over marriage. Gay, straight, horse… I don’t think Andy cared. Before the opening credits hit, a groom shoots his wife in the head while they embrace and then the dopey dink turns the gun on himself. They’re in their wedding clothes and in their own home listening to that toe tapping hit The Wedding March. It’s also all consensual and done out of love. Things are not well in Staten Island. Three years pass and a newlywed couple (Carol and Jonathan) move into the home where the murder suicide played out. Fresh starts being what they are, the couple are excited for their new life together… Andy Milligan laughs and spits in all four of their eyes at the same time. There’s something wrong in the house and no it’s not the cluttered interior design and uncomfortable furniture, the spirits of those dead people are doing terrifying things as soon as the couple moves in. Phonographs play by themselves, the stove turns itself on, a discarded bubble bath burps and a home phone hangs itself up… please, just say to yourself “It’s only a movie.” I heard it helps if you repeat it. The couple survive the super exciting supernatural murder attempt of haunted gas stoves and closed windows but blame it on faulty kitchen appliances or maybe Carol’s forgetfulness. She disagrees but she’s also a woman so why would the mustachioed men listen to her? Strange things continue to happen but why focus on that when you can focus on the rocky relationship between Jonathan’s pregnant sister and awful mother. That way you don’t have to produce any dime-store special effects and you can focus your static camera on the arguments. Thanks, Andy! Jonathan (who looks like Albert Eskinazi if he were being played by everyone’s uncle) goes off to work leaving Carol to deal with the spooky shenanigans of the house. Paper slides under tablemats so she can’t take a note, garden shears slide out of eye-line after sliding into eye-line, a candelabra lazily moves across a table, water spills from a fallen teapot… the horrors persist. After a knife falls into her hand and blood spills shoddily, Carol gets worried… kind of. Jonathan (who resembles a well-fed Polonia cousin) just thinks it’s nothing to worry about. Phantom screams in the dead of night do little to light any fire under the collective asses of our heroes. An elderly housekeeper named Rose Novak (hey, the movie thought it was important) is attacked in the cellar by the phantom bride with an echoing voice in an awkwardly staged bit of paranormal stupidity. It’s so shocking she slits her own throat with a straight razor. Burglars who look like budget sex thugs show up too and come to a messy end. Why? Because it’s Staten Island viewed through the trash aesthetic goggles of Andy Milligan and even if you don’t mind wasting time on conversations that hold little interest or story progression, people still have to die messily. After a long stretch of nothing posing as horror combined with humanity at its most agitated and romance that hits with all the eroticism of finding a used condom in your grilled cheese, a house warming party happens and bad things follow. There’s still like thirty minutes left that could be three hundred for all I can tell. There’s still time for a decapitation, city hall research, a priest, cancer, floating furniture and a meat cleaver to the noggin. It’s a diseased dumpster spin on The Amityville Horror with a budget consisting of favors and convenience by people who only read about Amityville during the boring parts of whatever basement pornography they were watching. I love it but there’s no way in hell I’d ever recommend it. Yep. It’s a Milligan!

Blood Sorcery (1986) (Hong Kong)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Stolen jade and a broken heart are the catalysts for two different men to be hit with the same curse by a powerful Burmese wizard. Sau Au Yeung is a young doctor in Hong Kong whose caring nature has him taking care of a battlefield reporter suffering from a painful and worm-filled bleeding wound on his leg. He comes to find that his father is cursed with the same affliction and tries getting to the bottom of it before his dad and his patient are claimed by said curse. Luckily, a Taoist priest and friend of the family may be able to help but failure could lead to a painful death. It’s a bit jumbled and not as much fun as many of the other HK horrors of the time but it’s still pretty damn rich in entertainment. There’s stock footage, bloody worms, eaten creepy crawlies, and a pretty damn cool magic attack. Odd and goofy enough to be worth your time.

Game Camera (2013) (USA)

⭐️1/2

Disturbing chatter on lab-created biological agents opens up things and then a news report about a flying object crashing in Mount Spokane leads to unsettling footage caught by some dude filming his lady in the woods. The army claims they’re running some training exercises in the area and close it off to the public. The spot reopens and some local discovers a destroyed camera in the trees… this is the footage on said camera. A man heads out into the area with his buddy to record him deer hunting with his friends. So we get to watch as these real middle-aged dopes run into some unbelievable trouble in the middle of nowhere. Natural leader Brad brings along an AR-15 and the dudes have some fun blowing it off in the woods. As they march on through the forest, they find some odd liquid that Brad writes off as moldy pond water. There’s sad dad drinking, sad dad smoking, sad dad humor, sad dad machismo, sad dad reminiscing and sad dad political views filling up most of the runtime. It definitely fits the characters so it’s all works but if you’ve never been around sad dads, you may find it unbearable. The next day they freak out when they stumble across a camp which looks like it was home to one hell of a struggle. There may be no blood, but everything’s torn to shit and the hunters left their guns… not something a hunter would do. They also discover a game camera nearby and Brad decides they should look at what it caught. The photos show some mutated dude attacking a buck and then coming in for a close-up. Ron thinks it’s bullshit, Steve wants to leave, Tom is spooked and Brad thinks it’s their duty to find out what the hell is going on. Brad’s a blowhard so he acts like an asshole about it. Despite his tough guy bullshit, the group decides to head out the next day. They get ready to leave but Brad makes the decision that the trip ain’t over and journeys out into the woods with the truck keys and his AR-15. The group begrudgingly follow. Folks get sick, feelings get hurt and older white men die… so a standard hunting trip with the boys. It’s like Blair Witch Project but everyone is unlikable and having a midlife crisis and instead of a spooky threat you can’t see, it’s a space virus that mutates organisms into cheap-ass zombies you’ll wish you couldn’t see.

Bloodstalkers (1976) (USA)

aka The Night Daniel Died 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Florida-shot obscurity is a must for fans of regional horror flicks. Mike, a Vietnam veteran, heads into the Florida Everglades to stay at his recently inherited parents’ old cabin. He’s dragged along his wife, his best friend and his best friend’s ex-stripper girlfriend. Cautioned away by a less than helpful gas station attendant, Mike ignores the warning that the family cabin is in the territory of Bigfoot-like “blood stalkers”. Soon after the vacationing group arrives, they begin to perceive just how much trouble they are actually in. There’s unaccommodating townsfolk, homicidal backwoods poachers, a complaining wife, horrible humor, dopey dramatics, and indiscernible nighttime filming. There’s also some unexpected strong acting (to go along with your usual homespun awfulness) and an amazingly composed climax set to a choir singing Somewhere to Lay My Head. It may feel like a boring slog to some but I’ve always found Bloodstalkers to be a mesmerizing ninety minutes.

As Darkness Sets In (1984) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

Backyard slasher from Iowa runs under twenty minutes and was probably brought to life as a bit of a test run. There’s no dialogue, so it adds more to the vibe that you’re watching some family home movies you were never meant to see. A group of young people do things and title cards let us know who we’re looking at and where they are. Repetitive rock music, the Phantasm score and the essential Halloween theme play out over the scenes where audio was lucky enough to make it in. Film degradation and an empty production budget either bleach the scenes bathed in light or drown everything in shadows… mostly presenting both of those visual issues at the same time. After some smooching and talking, a killer in a tinfoil mask definitely inspired by Quiet Riot begins murdering the cast and crossing out their faces with red marker on various photographs. There’s a decapitation brought to life by damaging the film itself and it’s pretty lovely… at least for something that’s more than a bit indecipherable and done for less than a value meal at Taco Bell. It’s a curiosity piece for sure but nothing you should lose sleep over never seeing.

Dead Men Walk (1943) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

At the funeral for Elwyn Clayton, a woman busts into the church accusing the dead man of being pure evil. She’s hushed and escorted out by the reverend who apologizes to the dead man’s twin brother, Dr. Lloyd Clayton. We later learn that their relationship may have been rocky since youth but everything grew worse once Elwyn returned from India. The man became obsessed with demonology and ancient sorcery. Now, all the kind doctor can hope for is that his brother’s troubled soul is finally at peace. It’s George Zucco in dual roles so I’m highly doubtful of a peaceful and quiet afterlife. Lloyd heads to his brother’s home where he burns his books and is promptly attacked by Elwyn’s hunchbacked servant Zolarr (come on now, like you didn’t know it was Dwight Frye) who accuses the doctor of murdering his own brother. He refutes the claim and insists it was self defense. Yeesh. This is some soap opera bullshit. Anyways, Zolarr runs off, but not before letting Lloyd know that awful things are in his immediate future. That night Zolarr digs up his old boss and Elwyn quickly rises from his coffin to get up to no good. Vampiric deaths greet the small village and Dr. Clayton is reluctant to admit that his brother ranks among the living dead and is feeding on the townsfolk. He assumes a confrontation with his brother may be a hallucination thanks to his tired brain but I’m also thinking he doesn’t want to admit that the Satanic leanings of the dearly departed have allowed him some sort of supernatural power to put a stopper in death. Once his beloved niece is targeted by his dead brother (Gayle grows ill after a visit from the creepy uncle as he attempts to make her his servant), he begins to work with the niece’s beau to put the not-so-dead man to rest for good. Sadly, the man believes the good doctor may be the one who is up to nefarious things and goes to the police for help. Pretty fun vampire flick allows Zucco to play villain and hero and I’m so here for that I basically moved in and started paying rent. Predictable and maybe a tad lazy, it still hits the sweet spot I have for these dusty old horrors.

Reaptown (2020) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

On a work-release program as a night shift security guard for a rail yard in Nevada’s Reaptown, Carrie spends her free time looking for her missing sister. The opening shows a woman arrive for her first day of training and navigating the creepy-ass building while following the sound of a baby wailing. Making it to the source, a specter jumps her and that’s that. There’s a reporter looking into a troubling amount of missing women who all have the work-release program in Reaptown as their final proof of life. So yeah, shit ain’t right in Reaptown. Cassie starts her shift in the same program her sister disappeared partaking in and gets to her rounds on the spooky property. It’s dark and somewhat otherworldly as she walks around, carrying a single flashlight with no other human in sight. Strange shadows pop up on her first night and the whole situation seems a bit off but she makes it through in one piece. She gets a troubling phone call the next day from a stranger who saw her putting up “Missing” posters and is warned she is in danger and that she’s better off just breaking her parole. Even with the unease growing, Cassie stays because finding her sister is of the utmost importance. Of course, as we all know here, digging too deep leads to nothing but trouble. There’s evil on-site and said evil is feeding on those poor young women that usually have nobody to miss them. The cold, dead setting works to the film’s advantage and establishes a pleasantly uneasy vibe but the troubled childhood flashbacks and pointless jump-cuts don’t work at all and take the viewer out of things whenever they pop up. Luckily, it ain’t that often and the rest of the film may be slow-going but I was intrigued and maybe even a little shook. The boogeyman is a simple design and kept in the dark so it works pretty damn well and the lead is more than adequate which is important because it’s mostly a one-woman show. The ending sucks a little but I’m a bit more forgiving of that shit when the majority of everything that preceded worked so well. Another winner from Dutch Marich who unleashed one of my surprise favorites of 2021 with Horror in the High Desert.

Alien Swamp Beast (2018) (USA)

1/2

It’s an alien because it came here in a meteor. It’s a swamp beast because that meteor crashed into a swamp and it takes over the corpse of a dead derp, transforming him into a very distant cousin of From Hell it Came’s Tabanga. Now that all the confusion is sorted, we can get to the film proper and I can ask myself why with only so much time on this earth in a slowly deteriorating vessel I spent an hour with this thing. A dimwitted young man is excited to get out and find that space rock, the old people he lives with tell him to finish his chores before looking for it. A man wakes up and we spend an ass-numbing amount of time watching him amble about his home. Dramatic music plays as he makes coffee, chooses a mug and drinks coffee. He also feeds his dog and pours himself a glass of booze. After that excruciating bit of needlessness we join the meteor-hunting dimwit as he awkwardly talks to a girl waiting for a bus and somehow convinces her to join him in hunting for the space rock. Back to the middle-aged drinking man doing a whole bunch of nothing. He gets called and is forced to cut his sad vacation short because of reasons. His dog watches the TV and a news report comes on about a bank robbery… well get more breaking news updates because why show when you can tell? The glowing green meteor is found, the bank robbers have to leave their car because it runs out of gas and are forced to cut through the swamp, the sad guy is an FBI agent and he’s after the bank robbers (of course it’s personal), he and the female agent running the case do not get along, various locals annoy with their bullshit and that titular monster (who is some cheapjack loveliness) takes fucking forever to show up. Audio issues persist throughout and can’t all be blamed on the wind, lines are flubbed, reshoots are ignored and the visual aspect looks like it was filmed by a camera made from the shattered hopes of dead orphans. It’s an ugly, ugly time. The fun monster and pink-haired bank robber with an eyepatch (What?! I have a type) save it from the oblivion of a zero rating. It’s supposed to be funny, I didn’t laugh once so I guess the joke’s on me.

Whisper (2022) (UK)

⭐️⭐️

A young nurse has a regretful night of drunken fun and is begged by her coworker to pick up a job for their agency instead of nursing her hangover and regretting her actions. Sam is offered triple time to take the supposedly easy job somewhere out in the English countryside… or maybe English suburbs. I don’t know, there was a lot of driving but also it looks like a lot of neighbors. Anyways, that’s not important. Sam’s patient has been comatose for three years so if all goes well there shouldn’t be too many annoyances for the young lady and it seems all she has to worry about are the rules left for her… some of them are a little odd. Like not talking to the guy. She finds a cellphone under a couch and judging by the background screen, it’s the woman we saw attacked by something in the pre-credits. We’ll see more scenes of her and her boyfriend (maybe the guy in a coma?) while Sam hears noises (thumps and someone whispering her name) in the supposedly empty house (except for the coma guy, that is) and discovers some disturbing things. She also finds out that the patient isn’t supposed to have a female carer but her coworker manages to convince her to stay. Night comes around and spookiness comes with it… and fog, a bunch of fog. Sam investigates everything and gets into the attic where she discovers an old cardboard box with plenty of exposition stored within. Thank you very much dusty laptop with three videos on it pointing at an experimental treatment program for possession that went very wrong. And thank you very much coma man’s diary with a bunch of exposition. This is very bad news for Sam… and for the viewers who don’t want to watch footage of coma man not in a coma while diary text runs across the screen. So, bad news all around but for very different reasons. Sam also watches videos on the phone of the girl who was dating coma guy and revealing the creepy shit that was going on with him leading up to his vegetative state. Even with all this conveniently available information, it’s not gonna end well for our hero. Linda Louise Duan sure is easy on the eyes and gives a memorably awkward performance as our young hero which makes her incredibly easy to root for. Well done, Linda. You won me over. Micro-budget spookiness charms as well and I’m in love with effort and pieced together storytelling behind the architecture of the film. The surprisingly decent specter is barely featured for some reason but at least they tried.

The Draft! (2023) (Indonesia)

aka Setan Alas!

⭐️⭐️⭐️

College friends shack up in a secluded old villa belonging to one of the group’s parents for a weekend of fun but that never works out no matter what part of the world you call home. One of their number is spooked and warns that ghosts are attracted to the kind of place they’re in but he’s dismissed by his more modern-thinking friends. A lack of network connection has them extra secluded and a dead generator adds to the horror flick conventions already rattling around the back of everyone’s minds. Add a locked room, an abandoned well and a nearby Dutch cemetery to cement the gloom. Ani begins to see the ghost of her dead sister, Ani’s delightful caretaker uncle creeps around and the group banter back and forth with each other while getting slightly spooked. The next morning the group wakes up to find Ani’s boyfriend murdered and Ani unable to give any explanation as to how. She’s not saying much just that the bedroom window was opened sometime during the night. They soon find Uncle Dadang hanging from the ceiling in his shack. The remaining four decide to leave but can’t flee as fast as they’d like to thanks to someone slicing the car’s tires. Their slow getaway is halted completely when they discover a cliff where no cliff was before completely cutting them off from any form of escape. They go back to the villa, unsettlingly closer than it should be, waiting outside and trying to come up with an answer as to what the hell is happening. Well, we get the answer pretty quick and it’s pretty damn fun. An atmospheric setting that feels well lived in adds to the novel idea running through the bones of the film. It’s been done before but not often enough to be expected and even necessitates familiarity when it comes to the horrific threats coming after the heroes and giving an excuse for the inevitable silliness. Drama is purposefully fumbled, humor actually works and low-rent gore is in the cards. Admittedly, the whole thing could definitely use a shot of adrenaline which has it coming off as awkwardly paced which is a shame but it’s still worth a watch.

Evidence of the Boogeyman (2025) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The legend behind the haunting of a farmhouse and the surrounding area draws the attention of a small film crew looking to make a paranormal documentary. Lighthearted vibes turn to terror when it seems evidence the team catches points to the entity being more than a ghost story. What we’re watching is recovered footage pieced together from damaged hard drives, discarded tapes and police evidence. So, obviously whatever malicious attention the small group of filmmakers caught ended up being fatal. It’s been edited together by the only member of the crew that didn’t make the trip to the location. This means we get an excuse for editing and mockumentary true crime aesthetics… which I will always appreciate. The boogeyman has supposedly claimed the area as its stomping grounds but the key focus is on a small house where it seemingly festers. The abandoned house holds a past involving vanished children and full-body apparitions. Sounds like a good spot to catch some spooky evidence to allow you to actually sell your micro-budget production. Surprise bewbs (plenty of nudity, unexpectedly), a host that ain’t all that good at talking (she’s still incredibly likable), a director out of his depth (he’s also kind of a sleaze), background hauntings, a cool and simple entity that likes showing up on camera (no Blair Witch leave it to the imagination here), a local weirdo (he’s seen Bigfoot!), every found footage haunting shenanigan you can think of and a short dive into casting couch stupidity that feels out of left field and completely needless… even if it pays off in a jumpscare and the striking visual of a nude woman out in the wild all caught in night vision green. It may lack atmosphere as the haunted house isn’t all that notable and we’ve seen everything it offers up a couple dozen times but the cast is solid (annoying qualities exist but are not in the forefront like a lot of these ghost hunting dopes) and the threat ain’t camera shy which makes it just fun enough to have me nodding in approval.

The Bloodstained Lawn (1973) (Italy)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Lunacy and wealth are an already dangerous mix but if you add deviance to the equation, you’re just asking for trouble. A group of well-off weirdos pick up the kind of folks who won’t be missed and bring them back to their fenced-off villa. Initially the random-ass houseguests (a prostitute, a gypsy, a drunk and two hippie hitchhikers) are treated well by the odd brother and sister duo and the sister’s somehow weirder husband who is mighty keen on sporting ridiculous neckerchiefs made to look like ridiculous bow ties. Along with his interesting fashion choices, the husband is an inventor/scientist who specializes in robots and something that has to do with bloodwork. He’s all too happy to collect a sample from the young hippie girl when she pricks herself on something in the guest room couch. He lets her know that he has researched the evolution of plant and animal and has concluded that nature is flawed and it’s on the human race to modify and repair themselves. Of course, the only way to do this is to bring together man and machine. I’d be concerned if I was spending the night in this man’s home. On the first night after the hippies light some incense, smoke their Devil’s lettuce and start getting frisky, the drunk interrupts and takes the hippie dude on a little tour. It ends with him showing the stoned man the gypsy girl, tied up with a rope, buck naked in her room. The creepy brother tells them she’s family and she has epilepsy so it’s for her own safety. The drunk protests but is dismissed for being… well, a drunk. I think if the homeowners got rid of the viewing windows they have on the room doors, this could be avoided but then I guess the creepy sister couldn’t spy on them. A narcotics agent is on the trail as an unsettling amount of missing people have been reported. After discovering wine bottles being shipped out filled with blood, he knows there’s some sinister shit afoot. Let’s just hope he can follow the trail and make it on time to at least rescue one of the slowly vanishing houseguests. An outdoor oven contains a skull, attractive people get naked, a “perfect man” is created, there’s a champagne infused naked dance party in a room of mirrors, sexual hang ups, a whole lotta wine, bickering spouses, a hilarious janky-ass blood drinking robot (fuckin’ thing has a cape) that’s about as threatening as something a bored child would piece together in their stepdad’s garage, a basement secret that we’ve all seen coming from about ten minutes in and a last act reveal that’s somehow disturbing and hilarious in unison. It is one strange flick that despite its giallo title is nowhere near that particular area of film. Stretches of boredom hit more than once but the main thrust of the story is so unexpected and off-kilter that it’s worth waiting around for.