⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I'll never understand why this movie didn't get the love it so deserved. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people bitching about there being no good grindhouse style cinema anymore. Exploitation sorely lacking in what was being spat out, No One Lives was a refreshing breath of scuzzy air. Could it be the fact that is was a WWE production leading to horror fans rolling their eyes? Maybe it was the May release date in the year of our lord 2012? Or maybe it was the fact that this year unleashed some excellence (Resolution, The Bay, V/H/S, Lords of Salem to name a few) and it just got lost in the shuffle. As it stands, this flick is due for a rediscovery because it is filled with unsavory folks better found in a 70s revenge flick and is taken serious enough to not insult its audience. A sexy young couple (Luke Evans and Laura Ramsey) are driving through some nothing area of the south looking to relocate. They seem to be in love but something is a bit off with them. A news report fills us in on a missing heiress who we have witnessed fleeing some unknown assailant in the pre-credits sequence. We're also introduced to a gang of thieves lead by the always welcome Lee Tergesen. They're busted midway through robbing the huge estate of some wealthy family when the family unexpectedly returns from vacation. Psychotic member Flynn murders the lot of 'em and gets into trouble with the boss for doing so. Now that we've been properly introduced to all our important characters, things can get messy. Evans and his gal have stopped to rest at a roadside motel and, following the advice of the motel owner, are enjoying dinner at a local dive. This dive happens to be the hangout for Tergesen and his gang and also the location where his daughter works as a waitress. Flynn, being the unrelenting shit that he is, decides to mess with the out-of-towners but is stopped before things can escalate by his boss. Not being one to let anything go (like I said, he's a shit) he ambushes Evans on the road, stealing his car (and trailer) and leaving Evans and his gal tied up at a gas station where the giant gang member (former WWE superstar Brodus Clay) can scare them into silence. Yeah. That's how it'll play out. Things escalate quickly as former WWE superstar Brodus Clay holds a knife to the throat of the pretty young woman as Evans watches, seemingly helpless. Unexpectedly, the young girl says something along the lines of "I can't do this anymore" and forces her throat across the knife. Obviously, former WWE superstar Brodus Clay is shocked but that shock turns to terror when he looks up to see Evans standing before him, un-cuffed and pissed off. At the same time this is happening, Flynn is going through the car he just jacked. While searching through the trunk he finds a hidden compartment and inside is the missing heiress Emma. She tries to flee the scene but is stopped by the gang and when they finally get her to speak she asks if they killed the man who had her. When they answer in the negative, she warns them that they're all fucked. Two go to grab former WWE superstar Brodus Clay when he doesn't answer the gas station radio and, of course, they find the giant man laying dead in a pool of his own blood. They also find the girl with her head nearly severed and decide its time to scoot the fuck out with the colossal body of their leader’s brother in tow. That proves to be a fatal mistake because it would seem that the corpse of former WWE superstar Brodus Clay makes the perfect hiding spot for the ultimate killing machine, Luke Evans. In short order, Luke Evans manages to blow up the gang’s getaway car, injure their youngest member (and boyfriend to Tergesen's daughter) and kidnap their leader. Some minor torture (as in it doesn't drag itself out) involving a man hanging headfirst over a mulching machine, gets Evans the info he needs and he proceeds to outwit the criminals and decrease their ranks as the night progresses. A lucky escape proves to be anything but, as the survivors are tracked to the very motel Evans and his gal were staying in. Of course there's a backyard junkyard where the violent climax can take place. Flashbacks reveal some of the shit Emma had gone through and Evans possible love for the girl. Flynn attempts to prove his male dominance in the situation but Evans proves to be the apex predator. With its sleazy characters, mean streak and high violence level, No One Lives really feels like a true blue lost relic from the seedy days of 47th street. The best part being that everyone is taking the material seriously. Evans plays calculating coldness to perfection and Adelaide Clemens brings some perfect sarcasm to her role as Emma. Lee Tergesen is perfect as usual and even former WWE superstar Brodus Clay is comfortable in his (small) role as group enforcer. Most importantly, Derek Magyar's Flynn is the most detestable character in the movie and has you rooting for homicidal Evans all the way through. Everything works in this 2012 exploitation flick. Characters, violence and enough humor to allow the mean streak room to breath. You really owe it to yourself to track this one down.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Almost exhausting in its wealth of lunacy, Magic Crystal comes off as some sort of cocaine-infused hybrid of the popular Spielberg action/adventure films of the 80s. There was money to be made and HK schlock auteur Jing Wong wasn’t about to let that go unnoticed. The Hunting Eagles is a two man task force comprised of likable and laidback badass Andy and his dopey buddy Pancho. They do some work for the Hong Kong police with the understanding that if shit ever goes south the police will deny any knowledge of their existence, but the gig pays well so everyone seems happy with the arrangement. Andy gets a call from his archeologist buddy, Shen, who has just discovered a rare gem in Greece. This discovery has put the KGB on his tail as well as two Interpol agents (one portrayed by Cynthia “badass fabulous” Rothrock) who are attempting to protect him from the Soviet threat. Andy and Pancho head out to Greece, taking along Andy’s nerdy little nephew Pin-Pin for some sightseeing. This is when things get complicated. Turns out the KGB is working for some evil dude named Karov (Australian stunt specialist/martial artist Richard Norton doing a bizarre Russian/French accent with touches of that Aussie twang) and he is obsessed with getting his hands on that rare gem. Said rare gem is actually an alien life form taking up the appearance of jade and this life form just happens to fall into the hands of that adorable pip squeak Pin-Pin after Shen gets shot and has to ditch the goods. Now, back in Hong Kong, Karov and his vast criminal network are after the jade/alien (jadlien?) and Andy and company are thrown into the mix along with Pin-Pin’s television-addicted mother and Shen’s hot and worried sister. Everyone is an expert martial artist and Pin-Pin forges a friendship with his telepathically communicating gem. They manage to shake fingers when the glowing green rock grows out a suspiciously penis-looking finger for Pin-Pin to grip. As uncomfortable as that may be, it’s all within the realm of PG entertainment but, as this trash-addled adult can attest, it’s so completely bonkers it never feels like it was made for children. Toilet humor, feet for hands and mullets all make an appearance and there is so much going on that it’ll take a heavy dose of Ritalin to focus on everything wrong with the plot... not that you should be doing that anyways. A must for fans of kicks, booby trapped caves and adorable dorks.
⭐️1/2
Three social media influencers head out into the woods to debunk a spooky myth that has been getting hits. “The Tree Game” involves a creepy-ass tree in the middle of the forest which, once circled, transports you into another dimension. There’s a missing hiker which has added some gasoline to the urban legend fire and some wacko who has convinced himself he successfully played the game and managed to get back to his home realm. They find the tree, all three participate and the trio quickly call bullshit. On their way out of the woods, shit gets weird. Strange noises and your usual walking-in-a-giant-fucking-circle gets everyone unsettled and it doesn’t take long for frustration and paranoia to set in. The only likable(ish) character vanishes first and I found it pretty hard to give a damn about anyone else because who really gives a fuck about social media influencers? It’s a pretty meh time in the woods.
⭐️⭐️1/2
A downed atomic rocket brings Major Joe Nelson (so that’s what Cesar Romero looks like without The Joker makeup) and a small rescue mission to the South Pacific. They crash on an unknown island, encounter the gorgeous Acquanetta as a native girl and a couple cheapjack monsters. Do you like rock climbing? I certainly hope so because there is an endless ascent up a mountain that just consumes most of the runtime. The rocket ship landed on top of the sacred mountain, because of course it did, and its arrival caused all but Acquanetta and her little brother to flee the place. The two stuck around to take care of their injured father who is now dead. Bummer. Eventually, the men make it to the plateau and find a lost world… after much climbing and cigarette smoking at high altitudes. The lost continent portion is tinted a sickly green to the benefit of nobody but the dino-hijinks are my kind of fun. Whit Bissell (with a mustache!) and Hugh Beaumont (without The Beaver!) are there to remind you it’s the 1950s and you’re definitely watching a monster movie. I’m probably giving this flick more love than it deserves but when I watched it as a kid, my dad made a joke involving a family photo in one of the scientist’s wallet. I have never forgotten that joke and it still makes me chuckle more than thirty years on.
aka Pulse/The Circuit
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
In my expansive history with the genre, there’s only been a handful of films that changed things. Three which I can recall right off the bat but I’m sure with a couple more hours to contemplate, I could dredge up a few more. Those three films have burned an imprint on my brain and they came into my life in this order. TCM had me not realizing I had been holding my breath for a duration of time. Finally catching it in the dark after a sliding steel door slammed shut. Session 9 had me turning on all the lights in an empty house to little effect at calming the disquiet. And finally, the film in question. The last of the trio I watched but the first one I’m revisiting to write about. Kairo shook me. Kairo changed things. Kairo made me realize that if there was something wallowing in the shadows, I probably didn’t want to meet it and I damn sure didn’t want it to know I was there. Kairo had me looking over my shoulder for weeks during the long walk home after work. Kairo is the scariest thing I had ever seen and probably will ever see. Which can be a horrific burden because everything that came after just doesn’t hit as well as it’s capable of. Do I think Lake Mungo is a truly horrifying masterpiece? I do but it came after Kairo, so it’s not as effective as it should be. The suicide of a friend and a terrifying web page which poses a simple and horrifying question sets off a series of increasingly disturbing events for a group of Japanese youths. Peeling back disturbing layer after disturbing layer of an unthinkable plot where the spirits of the dead are invading the world of the living using technology. The drowning atmosphere of dread mingles with a gorgeously disgusting visual palette that successfully shows off an image of Japan already succumbing to a drab rot. Isolated no matter how many friends or strangers surround you, an incredibly hopeless vibe is realized through a master craftsman manipulating every aspect of film. You can almost feel the cold slipping under your skin. Add to that some of the most striking macabre images ever presented in a film and a true sense of the uncanny when it comes to the supernatural threat, and this is one J-Horror presentation that refuses to leave. I consider it the best to come out of the cycle of films. Never has the apocalypse felt so personal. Kiyoshi Kurosawa lands another powerful entry is his impressive catalogue of horrors. “Do you want to meet a ghost?”
aka Beloved Enemy
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Horny newlyweds are on their way to the train station when their taxi gets a flat. The driver sends them to a nearby mansion while he repairs the car. The place does not seem lived in until the owner appears in a giant mirror, speaking in an echoing creep-voice. They’re in the house of Thakur Jwala Prasad and he has a tale to tell. His wife poisoned him on his wedding night because she loved another man and just wanted his money but as he dies, he throws down a curse and warns his hatred will always haunt her. Nowadays his soul wanders around, carrying an unhealthy dislike of all women and can’t find peace until he murders his murderer with his own hands. The couple tries to flee but the car is gone. At this point we see Thakur’s killer fleeing from another man who immediately gets possessed by Thakur and transforms into a monster. The couple witness the murder by werewolf and hightail it the hell out of there. The young woman is a nervous mess as they hop on the train to visit her new in-laws and, unbeknownst to them, the man who was possessed by Thakur (the couple only saw him in his hairy and toothy state) has just entered their car. The husband and haunted man talk about spirit possession and we learn some important things. First off, there are five signs of spirit possession: constant sweating, lip chewing, shaky extremities, no blinking and a fear of fire. Secondly, the only way to kill such a thing is to break his spirit. Lastly, the poor sap who gets his ass possessed has no idea what he’s doing while the evil is getting its evil on. We also discover that due to his awful wedding night, Thakur gets set-the-fuck-off by women in red dresses and it just so happens the beautiful bride has changed into a gorgeous crimson number. Of course, the transformation hits. The likable youngsters are murdered and the possessed man shows up in the morgue... but the evil spirit is still roaming around and has a bit more killing to do. The police are on the case as it’s not the first murder, it seems anytime a wedding passes through the village, the bride ends up dead. Enter the next wedding procession! Added to the issues that no one needs on their wedding day, the bride’s father squealed on a local gang of bandits and their powerful, mustachioed leader sees this joyous day as the time to get himself some revenge. The revenge goes unrealized because the bride gets herself abducted by the monster. Now we get into some mountain village drama. Thakur is the village leader and is seen as some kind of benevolent god by his idiot subjects, he has a son named Shera who is a spoiled ass-bag. A sexy cross-dressing lady named Reshma and the local cool guy named Lakhan flesh out the main players. Love is in the air and it appears everyone is on the verge of getting married, which is unfortunate considering the bride-hating monster is in the area. Of major interest is that Lakhan’s sister is currently approaching her wedding day to a handsome young dude with a glorious head of hair. I think it’s supposed to be a mystery as to who is now in possession of the evil spirit but we see how the village leader reacts to red (not to mention his damn name) so we know where to point the finger. Running nearly three hours, there’s a whole bunch of drama to wade through in between the lovely bits of werewolf action and, unfortunately, not all of it is interesting. Tragic accidents, suicide, horses, a combat competition, and a whole bunch of soap opera shenanigans keep things going. The werewolf stuff is fun as hell, there’s plenty of beautiful women and there’s a few characters that’ll keep you invested but the runtime is a killer thanks to a lack of action.
⭐️⭐️
Private investigator Gareth Morris vanished off the face of the earth in 2018. His final case was an investigation into strange activity taking place in a Sherwood home, enough oddness to get hired on by a concerned neighbor. He hacks into the home’s security systems and records everything. We get to see the compiled footage Gareth had on his computer… the last known proof that Gareth was still in the realm of the living. It’s pretty humdrum as we watch the single man watching the single man going about his normal life. Minimal excitement comes from swaying objects and lamps turning on by themselves. The slow escalation of phantom tomfoolery may not raise the pulse but the matter-of-fact presentation is oddly intriguing. Soon, Gareth’s target (and his lovely cats) isn’t the only one being fucked with and the private investigator has to contend with the supernatural after he digs up a phone he watched the young man bury in the park. He listens to the voicemails saved on the phone and they’re disturbingly a mix of static and a wheezing voice threatening harm. Not good. The creepy phone calls begin coming Gareth’s way and his concern grows. We know none of this is going to end well. Gareth watches the young man seemingly get hurt after he enters his cellar and when he can’t get in touch with the authorities, he makes his way over to lend a hand. We know none of this is going to end well. When the non-threatening attack comes Gareth’s way, he’s unable to exit the house and even when he manages to make it home, he’s still not safe. We know none of this is going to end well. There’s a good amount of dull which is kind of necessary but still impossible to justify in something that’s trying to be entertainment. Gavin Gordon is solid in the lead and if you have never seen a film about a haunting before, you may get some chills. It’s inoffensive, so I guess it has that going for it. Ending blows.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
On an 80-acre patch of abandoned farmland in the rural township of Springfield, TN, Emily Dixon went missing while she and her husband Dwight were partaking in some amateur treasure hunting. The police like Dwight as a suspect but even with suspicion falling on him, he continues to search for his missing wife. This draws the attention of two film students from Nashville who come along to speak with Dwight. After getting through the basics, Dwight lets them know that Emily isn’t the only person to disappear on that property and the police aren’t exactly forthcoming with that interesting bit of information. There’s a disturbingly long line of unsolved disappearances stretching all the way back to the founding of the small town in 1798 and the area where Emily vanished has a local bit of infamy, the kind of place where kids dare each other to go and older folks don’t like to talk about. A missing girl, who pretty much vanished off the face of the earth right in front of her parents, is the first case looked at. Her father may have lost his mind following the disappearance and believes something beyond our realm of understanding went down. A video Emily took before the occurrence shows a reclusive and eccentric neighbor creeping around in the background, a neighbor that attempted to kidnap a 14-year-old girl some years back. When confronted, he claims that “the land took her” and let’s out another name. In 1977 a family of migrant workers all vanished, leaving only their son Daniel. The filmmakers and Dwight eventually break into the abandoned house on the property and things take an unexpected turn. The deeper they dig, the more disturbing things get. Interviews, cellphone video and security camera footage piece together the story as things gradually spiral into unfathomable depths. A nice mix of David Paulides’ intriguing Missing 411 series, the Skinwalker Ranch bizarreness and every “true crime” documentary that gained in popularity after Netflix unleashed Tiger King on our unfortunate asses. It lags in a few spots, has a couple awkward sequences/performances and offers up a completely unnecessary final scene but it still works.
⭐️⭐️
I wonder if there’s a special room in police storage where they hold all this discovered footage from social media idiots who vanish whilst investigating houses, hospitals and woods. There’s got to be. At the very least a national archive where they can go through these endless hours of footage, edit them down, add creepy music and then ship them off to Tubi so they can get a dozen people watching them in the hope that some poor fuck looking to kill an hour or so can identify just where the missing folks may be. If not, we’ve truly wasted the resources that me and probably six other bored idiots bring to the table. This time around, a batch of idiots live-streaming from a spot of local infamy figure out much too late that they probably should have just gotten a job in the food service industry because filming ghost videos for YouTube may get you some easy moola but you’ll always end up biting off way more than you can chew. A cop responds to a noise complaint and comes across some wiener in a clown mask holding a girl at knifepoint, unable to prevent anything, the girl gets her throat slit and the clown gets gunned down. The quartet of “serious” ghost hunters show up to the now abandoned home to get their investigating on. Shockingly, it’s not in found footage format… good for them. Their goal is to spend 8 hours locked in the location and find themselves some proof of the supernatural. The wiener in the clown mask was a serial killer named Lester who just snapped one day and started murdering young girls and now the dead wiener is back as a clown-masked ghost just as homicidal as he was in life. No longer needing to worry about the issues that come with corporeal form, old Lester can pop up wherever the fuck he wants as long as the budget allows. Getting them views, the crew fakes some shit to keep ‘em coming in but Lester makes it so it doesn’t become all that necessary. A small hidden room with a couple mannequins and some clown masks provide the first viewer-chosen challenge for the team. With one dude left in the room on his lonesome and some failing tech, the team realize things may be getting mighty sticky. Idiots are gonna idiot and a frightening Ouija board experience almost gets their intern exiting the premises but the team stays intact and pays the price for it. I could have stopped writing many sentences ago and you would have known what was happening. These flicks don’t stray too far from the path. The only thing this one shifts is that it is not completely from the POV of the cameraman and the ghost has a clown mask. It’s fine but it doesn’t veer in any direction over the line of so-bad-it’s-mildly-enjoyable-crap or shockingly-adequate-indie-surprise to be more than forgettable. It does feel longer than it is… so… oooph.
aka Blackest Heart
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
It’s the reunification of Germany and the borders of East and West are taken down for a brave new tomorrow… sure. Pitch-black satire set in the theaters of extreme violent absurdity follows a young woman by the name of Clara who murders her awful boyfriend (yay!) and their dog (boo!) and then crosses the former border to meet her lover. Their meeting doesn’t go well because he’s really horny and claims they don’t have much time. Clara doesn’t want to get busy on some dirty mattresses laying around an abandoned factory because she may be a dog killer but she does have standards. He forces herself on her and shes… I guess “rescued” is the word by some mentally ill man in a rain slicker and a metal helmet with pigs feet attached to it… fuckin’ Germans, I swear. A good rock bludgeoning takes out the would be rapist and Clara’s knife attack sends the loon running. She flees and doesn’t manage to escape to the peace she had set out to find. No. She finds a sadistic family of perverts who dabble in cannibalism, incest, satanism and a few other isms I’m sure. The family daughter (who is definitely the same actress who played her boyfriend) takes a liking to Clara. That’s not a good thing. An odyssey of low-budget but high-effort splatter follows along with the batshit stupid characters that always pop up in these backyard German gore flicks. It’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre but way cheaper and less thrilling but crafted together by an obvious lunatic who is fond of people yelling. So… German. Butcher shop gore adds to the explicitness and a lack of plot and pace makes you wonder if you wandered off the schnitzel tour into a particularly German level of Hell. Very obnoxious but in a form so pure that it becomes gratingly hypnotic as it spirals out of control. Udo Kier is there with a swastika Hitler mustache because that’s just inevitable and I’d feel cheated if that didn’t pop up in this movie. He also shows back up with a head of curly hair which he sets on fire before chopping off his own hand and drawing a peace sign on a tile wall in his own blood. God damn Germans. Batman bathing suits, a butcher knife up the backdoor, a badly mutilated but still kicking rapist/boyfriend, a hit and run that removes a woman’s bottom half, border guards who can’t accept the border is gone, sparklers attached to chainsaws and an ending that had me laughing pretty damn hard. They don’t make movies like this. They’re not supposed to so it can feel special when you come across an obvious insane man’s final stage neurosyphilis notes on a script for a TCM remake he attempted to write after most of his brain had rotted away… just imagine if that happened more than once in your lifetime.
⭐️⭐️1/2
At an institute in Pasadena, Dr. Edmund Redding researches past lives by experimenting with hypnotic regression. He discovers his subject, Ann Taylor, was an Aztec woman in a former life and he uses this knowledge to lead he and his associates to a hidden chamber in the Great Pyramid of Yucatán. They hope to find the legendary lost treasure of the Aztecs but instead they unearth two mummified bodies. One of them lookin’ a little more modern than expected and the other one period appropriate but shockingly alive! Redding brings the mummies back with him but his rival, Dr. Janney, murders the good doctor and takes the modern-man-mummy to his lab where he performs a resurrection experiment because SCIENCE!!! Since this modern man is Lon Chaney Jr, you can guess that he has a very hairy secret (No, you pervert! Not like that!). Chaney wakes up, transforms and attacks. Janney loses his assistants and throws the bandage-wearing werewolf into a cage. The schlubby werewolf escapes and mild terror is experienced. Janney has also employed a thief to steal the other mummy because he’s a greedy bastard, the thief bumbles the job and now on top of a lycanthrope running around, there’s also a confused Aztec mummy. Pasadena sure hasn’t changed at all. Another Jerry Warren hatchet job throws poor Lon Chaney Jr into the mix, cutting together footage from 1957’s The Aztec Mummy and 1960’s House of Terror (home of the Chaney footage) to mold a semi-coherent adventure that’s butt-numbingly boring yet defiantly charming. Long stretches without dialogue (dubbing ain’t cheap, ya chumps!), frantic editing (just cut out the stuff that doesn’t fit, ya chumps!) and an intrusive and slightly schizophrenic score (you don’t need words when ya got music, ya chumps!) let you know you’re watching something that was hastily thrown together. The mummy is destroyed before the wolf man makes his escape, which is convenient because then scenes would have had to been shot outside of the usual exposition filler you get in a Warren “production”.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A scientist uses scientific juice and other science “stuff” to create life in his lab. Said life is an E.T. action figure that kills its creator and questions its existence. E.T. wanders off into the woods to die and comes across a prostitute whose love for Twin Peaks has brought her into the forest. They make love and E.T. sacrifices her to make his transition back to his home in the deep reaches of space... and then things get weird. Complete fucking insanity from Damian Bishop is an 8-minute slice of brain-damaged bliss. A pig-headed space doctor, the German rain forests and unexpected catharsis pop in to guarantee you’ll never be one hundred percent certain you watched a movie or had a near-death fever dream.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
POLONIA POWA!!! When an eccentric film collector passes away, his rare film collection goes to auction. A horror film fanatic snatches up a few and begins to view them. What follows are a collection of early Polonia brothers short films shot on Super-8. Bloody Saga: The Scarecrow Part 1 features a homicidal scarecrow crashing a Halloween party at the command of a young man. The second feature, Don't Go Near the Water, concerns an asthmatic machete-wielding aqua-killer hacking away at some vacationing young fellows. Blood Flood has a satanic blood cult picking off a couple camping buddies and Bloody Saga: The Scarecrow Part 2 brings the killer scarecrow back after a séance goes wrong. There is so much to love in these energetic early works from Mark and John Polonia. The ambition is through the roof and the budget is somewhere buried in the backyard. Not for everyone, but if you love bizarro DIY filmmaking this is a necessity. "Boy! I'm gonna eat you for supper and fart you out for breakfast!"
aka Gamma 693
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Universal Cryogenics is doing good business as they freeze the recently deceased with hopes of thawing them out at the time a cure for their ailments is discovered. If you got the money, I can see the allure of courting immortality. The main problem is “can science actually bring a human body back to life and grant it a normal existence?” Outside of the ethical question of playing God, there’s no guarantee the subject will be able to live any semblance of his or her prior life. These questions won’t matter anyways because a power outage (a scenario which it would seem a fucking Cryogenics company should be prepared for even if it is all because of a rare direct lightning strike) has the security staff moving the corpsicles outside where it’s cooler. We can all collectively slap our foreheads here. It’s supposed to be pretty cold outside but there’s a thunderstorm going down and of course the metal canisters are prime targets for a lightning strike. Lightning rods filled with corpses is always a problem and sure enough, this leads to the dead being brought back to life and they are not happy. Ya see, the head of the business (a wonderfully sleazy Troy Donahue) has been getting up to no good. He’s been harvesting the organs of his clients and selling them off to some shady contacts in Mexico. The green cryogenic fluid he’s been injecting into the corpses has added to the aggressive nature of these once dead fiends. Bad news for anyone unlucky enough to be in the building, this includes our sleazy Dr. Miller, his kind-hearted secretary Mary (Linda fuckin’ Blair, cute as ever), her new emotional support buddy and company client Joseph Davenport (whose awful son has just been fatally shot in one of the most pathetically presented bank robberies in history) and laid back security sergeant Vince Marlow (the always impressively bearded Dan Haggerty). Dumb as fuck zombie movie takes a stance against cryogenics through hilarious melodrama, awkward performances, cheap gore and rubbery zombies rocking thermal blankets. So, it’s a winner. There are way more credible zombie films out there, there’s also way better garbage zombie films out there but none of those have Troy Donahue decapitating a zombie with a sword or a rescue via forklift operated by Dan Haggerty. Of course he’s forklift certified, he’s Grizzly fuckin’ Adams!
⭐️
I decided against having a bachelor party all them years ago because I did not feel like having my friends and family worry about getting me shit-faced and watching over me in case I decided it was a good idea to live out my dream of giving a belly rub to the big cats at the Brookfield Zoo. Honestly, I figured we’d be drinking at my wedding and at least there my wife would be around to protect me from not only my idiotic thought process but the very same idiotic thoughts that run through the brains of the people I love. I do not regret my decision and it looks like those boys that make up our camping group of buds on a bachelor party excursion to the Texas wilds should have just stayed home and had a couple beers on the couch. Not because they deserved to have a few more years wandering this earth but because it would have saved me from deciding to watch this annoying-ass movie. A couple kidnappers in ski-masks introduce us to the movie because I guess Amazon removed it from streaming for being offensive. I don’t know. I hadn’t heard anything about it but these kidnappers (who show up in the movie, I assume) yell about things and thoroughly fail at being funny, so I guess it happened. Oh no. A couple hunters get murdered looking for Bigfoot, then we’re introduced to some idiots talking about sex and kidnapping their buddy for their bachelor party hijinks. Toilet humor follows and I’m already annoyed. The groom-to-be is none too happy and I really can’t blame him but once he learns his fiancée was in on it and his buddy talks him down, he cools off a bit. “Comedic” tangents play out and campfire tales get told. Bigfoot, ghosts and UFOs get mentioned. Something stalks around, watching the group. There’s a skeptic in the group and he loses his shit with all their talk about cryptids and the supernatural, the religious bachelor knocks him out when he says there is no God. A park ranger shows up and lets them know they are on restricted land but with a little coercing, they get to stay the night. Pot brownies happen, strippers show up and the park ranger even stays to hang out with ‘em. We’ve gone past 50 minutes with only the opening murder serving as the sole Sasquatch tomfoolery and these derps are not worth investing in, so I’m just kinda staring off into space because none of this is interesting or remotely thrilling. Stripping happens and I will say I once went to a strip club in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin, the girls in this flick are better looking but they are far worse dancers. We take a little detour to a male strip club where a bachelorette party is going down and some slightly covered and large dongs share the screen with the bride-to-be. Bigfoot murders someone offscreen while the boys party with the strippers and that skeptic ass-bag posts a video of the bachelor dancing with some ladies… something the bachelorette is hypocritically pissed off about. Man. This movie just keeps on going. Ok. All these annoying characters are still kicking after an hour of failed humor and nothing near what I would call entertainment. It’s nearly 80 minutes in when we get a look at our favorite North American forest ape and some of these ass-clowns start losing their lives. Penis violence happens and we finally see the decent-lookin’ monster… it’s way too late to save it but at least things pick up steam. The production value is impressive and the acting is alright for a bunch of people just screwing around with their friends in the middle of the woods but everything else is just terrible. If there was a script, it’s drowned in dialogue that thinks it’s way more solid than it is and humor that belongs hanging with a couple thirteen-year-old boys who split a case of Bud Light they stole from an uncle’s garage fridge while watching nothing but Troma films. A fuckin’ endurance test that needed way more Bigfoot and someone willing to edit out shit because at nearly two hours, you’ll be praying for Bigfoot to come rip your head off and toss it full force into the closest tree.
aka The Saw of Death
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
A disco pool party ends in tragedy when a disfigured young man stabs a girl to death with scissors. Five years later and the man’s sister is checking him out of the nuthouse and bringing him home. Home happens to share land with a school of language where a bunch of sexy young women are enrolled to learn Spanish. Splattery deaths soon follow. Jess Franco lends his talents to the body count picture and we’re all just a little better off for it. There’s a bit of incest, a bit of disco and a whole lot of scheming in the works. We’re in Franco country so everyone is horny, dumb as fuck and talks like they have no familiarity with human language. It just may be one of the most bizarre slasher/giallo hybrids you’ve ever seen... enjoy!
aka Necrosis/ Dead of Winter
⭐️⭐️
Six friends head up to a mountain cabin for an extended weekend, chilling in the snow. On their way up they’re warned off by Michael Berryman (uh oh) about the property and the area of mountaintop they’ll be calling home for a few days. The snowmobiling goofs are in Donner Party territory and creepy shit is slowly freaking everyone out. Jerry has some pre-existing mental issues which make his stories of ghosts hard to swallow and has him questioning himself as well. Others experience some visions of cannibalism and snowbound madness begins to turn poor Jerry against everyone. Of course, there’s more at play than cabin fever... maybe? Jerry loses his mind, my girl Tiffany (Mega Python vs Gatoroid) is wasted in a thankless role, Sam shows she has no snow skills and nothing wraps up satisfactory.
⭐️
Sleep-inducing New York-shot wretchedness aims to be a serious look at the mental deterioration of a businessman but instead it shits its pants and decides to just go about its day without any thought to the poor souls it meets along the way. Bobby has a nice job and a saintly wife at home, but all that is about to change after he murders a mugger while defending himself. He gets a taste for violence and murdering homeless people becomes his favorite hobby. The addiction (Hey! That’s the name of the movie!) consumes him and his world falls to ruin. There’s a side story following Bobby’s junkie cousin (Joshua Nelson, who is shockingly fantastic at playing a heroin addict) and the violent drug dealers he owes a good amount of cash to. The heroin plot leads to Bobby’s complete unwinding and an unintentionally hilarious nod to the climatic stabbing in William Lustig’s superior Maniac. Think of a lower income American Psycho with none of the talent behind it and you’re kind of close... but only kind of. The only interesting part of the movie (the grim heroin subplot) isn’t even wrapped up, further annoying the shit out of me.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The low-budget love affair I have with the state of Wisconsin continues. From Winnebago County comes the film that brought a tear to this trash lover's eye. The city of Oshkosh used to be known as the home of OshKosh B'Gosh but now I'll only recognize it as the birthplace of Swamphead. Just one more thing to love about the Badger State. The flying and floating severed head of a master swordsman wrecks bloody havoc when a schlubby Wisconsinite removes a dagger he finds at the bottom of a swamp. The ancient knife isn't in his possession long when the homicidal noggin comes a-calling and tears him apart with its teeth. Checking out the crime scene, a "young" slacker named Steve absconds with the cursed blade and puts a target on his back. Unfortunately for Steve, his best friend Marty, his gal Megan, her mentally handicapped brother Haun and her friend Nastalgia, their weekend camping trip in the woods is about to become a massacre. Every last one of them is easy pickings for the demented dome thanks to Steve snatching the knife. A local crackpot/paranormal investigator is in the area tracking some weird signals and knows the history of Swamphead. Even better, he knows how to kill it. But before the final confrontation we'll be getting violence to genitals, masturbation, man boobs, crapped pants and an Elvis impersonator. There's... a lot going down. Genuinely hilarious and bursting with enthusiasm, Swamphead is a must for anyone who has fallen hard for the regional horrors of the past. Names like Polonia, Schiff and Schnaas we're constantly running through my head as I grinned like an idiot. I usually have no patience for films of this ilk. Intentional camp has never been something that tickles my fancy and mostly comes off as forced. No such problem with Swamphead. The cheap (and charming) special effects, reaction shots mismatched to dialogue and oddness of the script work perfectly. There's no posing, there's no winking and nudging, there's just the warm fuzzy feeling of lunacy and appreciation. The shit and dick jokes may cause your eyes to roll but it's forgiven immediately when a floating head flies across the screen and rips the throat out of a man in a wig. See it.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Black Panther, a cold-blooded killer, has managed to allude the cops for his whole unsavory career but a special team has been formed to ensure the criminal is brought to justice. The fabulous fivesome get to work, donning leather jackets and wandering around some sleazy locations looking for information. Black Panther learns the special unit is closing in and decides his best course of action is to murder the unit head’s wife and children. Inspector Jiu is called by his wife (forced at gunpoint) and comes home in time to see his family bite it. He and his squad manage to take out most of the baddies and chase Black Panther into a nearby temple. Cornered, Black Panther elects to throw himself off the temple instead of giving Jiu the satisfaction of bringing him down himself. Not one to be denied his vengeance, he has his partner set him up with a mystic master to send him to Hell. He has seven days to track the bastard down if he wants to get back to this plane of existence but there’s plenty of evil things waiting on the other side to complicate his journey. He makes it through some zombies, ghost warriors and Dracula(?) then finds the entrance to the afterlife is more like Disneyworld than anything else. A bribe gets him through and he eventually crosses paths with one of Black Panther’s victims... a lovely young lady whose case he was working on before everything went to shit. As it goes, the girl is Black Panther’s illegitimate daughter and there’s a chance he may be able to rescue her as she’s not completely dead yet. Conveniently, she’s able to clue Jiu in on the whereabouts of her father. Inconveniently, he is now serving the super powerful Ghost King and his ninjas in Hell’s Army. He teams up with one of Hell’s security officers, says a goodbye to his family as they head to Heaven and brings the fight to the Ghost King himself. Surprisingly, the more grounded opening act is better the the fantasy-themed back portion. It almost seems to lose focus as it jumps into the afterlife. It’s still pretty fun, it just feels like too many ideas weren’t given enough room to breathe.
⭐️⭐️1/2
Using my beloved found footage genre as a foundation, I assume urban exploration is the most dangerous hobby to ever grace this planet. That and social influencing… but they’re all assholes anyways so fuck ‘em. An urban explorer does what he does and explores… uhm… urbanly? The location is an abandoned building tucked away in a rural area that has the kind of mud roads leading up to it that makes me reflect fondly on my youthful summers spent in Tennessee with my grandparents. Granny let me have Oreos for breakfast and nobody was gonna tell her otherwise. The decrepit location harnesses a nice and sinister aura thanks to its disrepair and were purely in the POV of our adventurous young man, so we get a first-person look at the darkness and disturbing papers littering empty rooms. A sudden fall sends him to a different location. It’s a cavernous tunnel system with plenty of graffiti and discarded beer cans. There’s also some screaming goober who pops up out of nowhere and shouts “They’re everywhere!” Unfortunately this jump scare just had me yelling “They’re all gonna laugh at you!” and chuckling to myself. Our hero is then sent to a new location through unknown means. This place has a hooded dude in a white mask brandishing a machete. I think I’d take the shouting dope in the grungy tunnel over the empty building with the machete man. There’s more cheap Halloween masks and location shifting for the unnamed urban explorer before coming into contact with the cause of his unfathomable predicament. I had my issues with the same filmmaker’s Monophobia which is similar in plot because I have little patience for teenage boys arguing with each other as soon as things go south, here we’re given one protagonist (writer/director/producer/editor/cinematographer/winner of the “How is this Man Still Awake” award Nicholas Carrado) thrown into a shit-storm of location jumping and the threat of grievous bodily harm. It works a lot better and it’s also shorter.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
In a deserted (well, there’s one dude there who runs the motel but he doesn’t make it very long) Colorado town, sometime in the year of our lord 1887, the passengers of a stagecoach and an enigmatic gunslinger, who just had to put down his horse, run afoul a duo of vicious outlaw brothers fleeing a neighboring town following a bank robbery that ended in a teller’s death. The stagecoach is carrying a youthful deputy from the town where the bank robbery went down, his new wife, a young reporter writing a series of articles on the Wild West, a sassy saloon owner and a reverend… along with the two stagecoach drivers. The town marshal and a super hot tracker he’s recruited by the name of Black Deer are in pursuit of the criminals, heading to the only likely place they can go. Black Deer warns the marshal that she’s had a dream vision of a dangerous Navajo legend called a Skinwalker which coincides with an upcoming blood moon. She warns the lawman that he should postpone his search a couple of days but he dismisses her superstitions and insists they head on out. Black Deer agrees and makes sure she has white ash handy… something that will help with the monster she is sure is out waiting in the wilds for them. Nearby, the hostile pair of rat bastards have some nasty plans in the works for the random group of travelers but, of course, Black Deer knows what she’s fucking talking about and a monstrous hunter is already stalking the group. Upon finding the mutilated corpse of the former mining town’s sole inhabitant, the gunslinger (Calhoun) recognizes that something supernatural is at play but he has a hard time convincing Deputy Norman or anyone else that the unknown has come calling. He doesn’t get much of a chance to concern himself with it when the two brothers open fire on them, killing the Reverend and the coachmen. Sociopathic Jeb and his older half brother Hank take control almost immediately. There may not be much monster action but the impressive cast (especially Shaun Dooley as the cool and calculated Calhoun and Raffaello Degruttola as the psychopathic Jeb) carry the drama and action well. We also have a solid script which keeps the tension thick and never really feels like it’s ambling around, wasting time because it doesn’t have a monster to display. If you’re not a western fan, ya may not get much mileage out of it but I am a fan and I don’t get to sit down with all that many horror/westerns. The bulky monster suit is fun if less than impressive but it’s still nice they have some practical creature and violence on display. It ain’t perfect but considering it’s a low budget werewolf western with a cool folklore you don’t see thrown in the mix all that often, it’s a remarkable feat.
aka Bloody Pom Poms
⭐️⭐️
Gimme an S! Gimme an H! Gimme an I! Gimme a T! What does it spell?! Ah, you get the point. This very hard to sit through slasher flick involves a group of cheerleaders arriving at Camp Hurrah to compete in a… uhm…. competition. Of course most of them will end up very dead and you’ll probably end up very bored. The humor falls flat, the acting is crap and the rapping ain’t much better. The most likable character is George “Buck” Flower’s heartwarming portrayal of a perverted old coot. You may get a few chuckles from disbelief at the level of stupidity on display but that just may be me. On a positive note, Lorie Griffin is cute as all blonde hell and there are plenty of breasts.
aka I’m Still Waiting for You
⭐️⭐️1/2
Thirteen years ago an eye-patched psychopath had himself a little murder spree and now that man is back and targeting a fresh set of horny folks. The opening murder of two promiscuous dinks lets us know this lunatic had himself a hook and was obviously into urban legends. The man is caught soon after and thrown into an asylum. Thirteen years later he escapes, grabs his hook (conveniently displayed by his doctor), leaves a message letting them know the food there sucks and makes his way back to his old titular stomping grounds… or does he? Don’t matter anyways, it’s still nothing but bad news for a group of your standard high school victims-to-be. One of them is the daughter of the pre-credits female victim, also the cheating wife of a police officer-now-sheriff. It’s Valentine’s Day and they’re heading to lover’s lane to get their party on. The adults are also dealing with the mental anguish of that nightmare from the past coming back into their lives and worrying about what that may mean for their kids. Poor decision making allows the dopes to get themselves picked off and when they discover two of their number dead, they crash their only means of escape as they flee. The principal (whose husband was the one cheating with the sheriff’s wife and also got his ass hooked) and the sheriff team up when they find out their kids are off partying. It’s a simple slasher with a sense of humor that at least tries to put an emphasis on characters and most importantly it features national treasure Anna Faris as a new girl in school (and seemingly unable to part with her cheerleader uniform) and also one of those teens under the hook. The splat factor is nothing to write home about but the year of release should have had you expecting that. At least it never feels lazy. I won’t call it good but it is better than expected and has a memorably silly denouement.
aka The Occultist 2: Demons
⭐️
Annoying social media ghost hunters are invited to a shitty little loft to prove that it’s authentically haunted by the demonic spirit of a murdered nun. The man who has offered the invitation is willing to pay the winner of the contest one million for proof. Well it turns out he actually already has the proof and just needs a fresh batch of victims to feed the nun. There’s an amulet that protects its owner from the murderous spirit and more failed comedy than a batch of those parody films that were popular about a decade ago. Everything about this film is subpar, from the “effects work” to the acting to the absent script (I have a sneaking suspicion most of the dialogue was ad-libbed). The demon nun doesn’t show up until there’s about 15 minutes left in the film and kills the only somewhat likable character right away. Fuck it. Sometimes the complete lack of talent brings joy but mostly you’re just constantly reassuring yourself that at some point the movie must end.
aka Lion Man
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
An odd epic from Turkey plays out like a mostly non-fantastical fantasy with a hint of kung-fu sensibility. The evil Sir Antwan incites a successful coup which leaves King Solomon and his wife dead. Their newborn baby vanishes before Antwan can get his traitorous hands on him and disappears into the surrounding forest. There, he is raised by a pack of lions and grows up to be a hopping, super strong Tarzan-esque young man with killer hands who roars like a lion. A group of rebels, looking to overthrow Antwan, believe they must find Solomon’s son (now known as Lion Man) to successfully end Antwan’s reign of terror. Luckily, Lion Man falls pretty hard for the rebel leader’s daughter and will be more than happy to assist the ragtag group of warriors in wresting control from the usurper of the thrown. Complicating things is Antwan’s son who may have a deeper connection to Lion Man than anyone could have known. A convoluted plot eventually gets us to Lion Man losing the ability to use his hands because of acid and getting two steel claws as a replacement. Horrendous voice acting, garish costumes and lunatic editing are par for the course of this vintage of Turkish cinema. The fight choreography is the stuff of trash film legend and there isn’t a cruel bone to be found within the fun one hundred minutes. You may be disappointed if you’re seeking out an action classic but it is extremely rewarding for fans of adventurous bizarre cinema.
aka Massacre/Death House
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Memorial Day weekend leaves a large sorority house near empty except for four lovable young ladies and their boyfriends. The building was the site of a horrible murder in which a young man slaughtered his entire family except for one young girl fourteen years earlier. Said psychopath has just escaped from the asylum where he’s been housed for more than a decade and he’s heading home. Beth (one of those lovely ladies) shares a telepathic link with the psycho and tries piecing together the strange visions and nightmares before her and all her friends end up deceased. It’s a minor slasher flick which rises above boredom thanks to an extremely likable cast. The telepathy angle is interesting but everything else feels a little too well-worn. The cast saves the movie but that’s not enough to bring on repeat viewings.
aka Dark Silence
⭐️
Following the tragic passing of his wife, Craig (looking like a Temu CM Punk) and his mute daughter move into a new home to escape the traumatic memories that have turned him into a depressed daddy and his girl into a silent Susan. A new start is hindered when it appears that there is something awful in the home and it has set its malevolent sights on the little lady of the house. Professionals tell the father that it’s just a manifestation of her grief and the terrible trauma she has undergone concerning the suicide of her mother but we know that their is definitely some creepy entity sticking to the shadows. Craig has strange dreams where he somehow fails at walking convincingly and wanders around the woods topless as some “spooky” voice makes threats, cryptic advice is spewed out and his daughter is claimed by the thing she’s been drawing in all her pictures. Dad’s frustration makes him act like an asshole and the poor mute girl just has to look on as he makes a fool of himself. Nightmare conversations with his dead wife, nightmare conversations with his bitchy sister, nightmare conversations with the nightmare entity and nightmare runtime in which all of this can play out. Drama handled by humans who should not be anywhere near dramatics have everyone sounding like they just learned what emotions are and may not exactly be comfortable with the kind of speech found on planet Earth. The boogeyman looks like a broke Full Moon fan cosplaying the bundled up form of the goon from Castle Freak. There’s a couple laughs because it comes off like a theatrical interpretation of The Babadook put on by the teenage residents of a head trauma ward who have never seen the movie and have only been told what the film represents.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
A unibrowed Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Mirakle. He has a sideshow act where he rambles on about evolution with his visual aid/partner Erik the Gorilla (a chimpanzee in some scenes and a man in an ape costume in others). To prove his theory about the kinship between man and ape, Lugosi has been abducting young women and attempting to mix their blood with that of his loyal simian. The experiments have been a failure and the corpses of young ladies are dumped like yesterday’s garbage. A med student is slowly figuring out what’s going on and his girlfriend has caught the eye of Lugosi and his monkey. Lugosi is fun as hell playing the mad scientist and there’s some intense (for the time) fetishized violence on display. There’s a bit of rambling but nothing too offensive.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I know it’s been almost fifty years but if you haven’t seen this one, I recommend watching it before reading on because I spoil the hell out of things and this is one to go in blind on. A young art restorer by the name of Stefano is hired on by the mayor of a quiet village to restore a fresco concerning the suffering of St. Sebastian in the local church. The painting was done by a mentally disturbed painter, Buono Legnani, who was known as “The Painter of Agony” for his work focused on people near death and/or in great pain. Stefano was recommended by his friend Dr. Antonio Mazza who has been looking into the mysterious life and death of Legnani. Supposedly dead for twenty years, no body has ever been found. The artist was also suspected of several murders, perpetrated in a disquieting, dilapidated house with those laughing mouths painted over the windows. Stefano gets to work, even as unfriendly locals warn him against finishing the painting, and Antonio learns some disturbing information that a sudden case of murder prevents him from sharing with his friend. The police are happy to call the doctor’s passing a suicide and Stefano begins looking into the subject his friend was fascinated by. Stefano and a newly arrived teacher, Francesca (gorgeous Francesca Marciano who manages the rare ability to look good in grannie panties), begin to see each other and Stefano befriends a local mentally challenged creep who works at the church named Lidio. This becomes fortuitous when he’s evicted from his hotel and is invited to stay with Lidio and the elderly paraplegic woman he seemingly mentally tortures at an isolated house, hidden away from the rest of the village. The very house was owned by the artist’s sisters who were suspected of aiding him in torturing and killing subjects for his work. So, not fortuitous at all actually. The audio recording he finds in the cellar points in the direction that he really should be afraid of where the hell he has ended up. When the fresco is destroyed with acid, he decides it’s time to get the fuck out of the place and he plans on taking Francesca with him (not forcefully or anything, she wants out). Those plans are put on the back burner when an obviously troubled taxi driver fills him in on some key secrets about the town’s fabled artist and Stefano’s planned exit looks to be too little too late. Deeply unsettling somewhat-folk-horror/giallo/gothic hybrid from the under-appreciated Pupi Avati is hard to forget once it worms its way under your skin. The same way Avati’s interesting take on undead cinema, Zeder, remains hard to shake thanks to the intriguing directions traveled off in to. I mean, what Italian filmmaker makes a zombie movie that ain’t really about zombies in the early eighties? They both carry the same sinister atmosphere but the denouement in this one makes it just a bit more fulfilling. A near masterpiece that may be a bit too slow-going for some and definitely lacks the violent set pieces of the subgenre but that’s purposeful for the ending to hit as hard as it does.
aka House on Terror Tract/Terror House
⭐️⭐️1/2
Realtor John Ritter shows newlyweds a few houses, hoping to get an offer before a 5 PM deadline. At each house he discloses what happened to the previous occupants and it ain’t pretty. In Nightmare a cheating wife and her lover murder her insane husband in self defense after he catches them getting funky with the sexy times. Instead of explaining this to the police, the dude decides to sink the body in the middle of a lake. The woman begins having nightmares of her waterlogged ex coming back for revenge. The dead man’s police officer buddy begins to suspect something is up. Anxiety grows and a set of car keys drowned along with the hubby may spell doom for the unfaithful couple. The next house brings us the story Bobo, which features Bryan Cranston going up against a tiny organ grinder’s monkey that his annoying little shit of a daughter has adopted. Turns out the monkey has a bit of a homicidal streak. American Male himself Buff Bagwell shows up as animal wrangler. The final story is Come to Granny and has an either psychic or psychotic Will Estes talking to a shrink without an appointment and claiming to have visions of the murders the granny-masked killer terrorizing the area is committing. The shrink begins to believe he may not be having premonitions but may be responsible and when he claims he saw her murder fast approaching, she has to decide how to get out of the dangerous situation. There’s a bit of fun and a nice streak of black humor but no story really knocks it out of the park. The second tale is almost completely sunk by the highly slappable child. It’s like HBO’s Tales from the Crypt but instead of a cackling Cryptkeeper you get a wonderful and bearded John Ritter. That’s got to be worth something. Right?
aka The Under Water City/The Swinging Monster/The Night the Screaming Stopped/When the Screaming Stops
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Interesting bit of folkloric horror is filled with beautiful women and cheap gore, yet somehow comes off as a bit dull. Still, it beats a shit-ton of other monster movies and there are some grand times to be had. A cloaked reptile monster is causing problems in a quiet German village. Young women are getting their hearts ripped out and others are getting clawed to high hell. A sexy professor at an all girl school goes to the mayor demanding protection. Enter a hunky hunter with a whole bunch of swagger and the skills that killz. The hunter ends up stumbling across the monster in her human guise as a beautiful woman by the name of Lorelei. Of course they fall in love but as most monster and human relationships go... there’s only tragedy in their future. An under water grotto serves as the beautiful monster’s lair where she guards a treasure and various violent ends come to a bunch of innocent people who could have been saved if the hunter hero was doing his damn job. Acid-eroded faces, blind violinists and various bikinis all make an appearance.
