Longlegs (2024) (USA/Canada)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A promising (and awkward) young FBI agent (with a preternatural gift) is given an unsolved and confounding case involving an elusive serial killer who has struck ten families over thirty years. “Half-psychic” Agent Lee Harker uncovers troubling information pointing to the occult and, more disturbingly, a personal connection to the killer who calls himself “Longlegs”. Apparently the monster has the ability to make the father’s brutally slaughter their own families and then take their own lives. The only reason they have been able to connect anything to the killer, is because he leaves a note behind at the scene. Cage taps into the manic energy of his younger self to disappear into the disturbing role of the titular lunatic and Maika Monroe plays things subdued as our hero. Alicia Witt is there as Harker’s mother and that’s always a good thing. Osgood Perkins has one hell of a reputation in this house with his wonderful The Blackcoat’s Daughter and deeply under-appreciated I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (and let’s not forget he was David in Legally Blonde) so I’m happy as hell that he’s unleashed another solid bit of genre unease. Foreboding, intriguing, darkly comedic and gradually weirder and weirder, it’s a solid bit of spooky strangeness that eventually spirals out into the inevitable hellish ouroboros that’s been scratching at the back of your brain since the start of things.

Human Beasts (1980) (Spain/Japan)

aka The Beasts’ Carnival/Cannibal Killers

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bruno Rivera (Paul fuckin’ Naschy) is a famed mercenary in the employ of the Yakuza… not to mention in a relationship with the sister of the idealistic crime boss running the show. He double crosses the dangerous gang and flees into a mountainous region of Spain where they made their score with a cache of stolen diamonds. The brokenhearted woman and her angry brother vow to track him down and soon the criminals are hunting for the back-stabbing bastard. Said bastard, is given refuge in the home of a local doctor, his two daughters and their African housekeeper after sustaining multiple injuries but managing to take out a good amount of the folks out for his blood… including the big boss himself. The family nurse Bruno back to health and put him up in their vast estate. Bruno thinks there’s something strange going on in the house and it may have something to do with the doctor’s dead wife but it could be that Bruno’s mental state is more fragile than he thinks. The growing number of corpses and a peeping eyeball that usually shows up right before loss of life aren’t exactly a good reason to remain calm. Of course, this family has their reasons for helping out the stranger and Bruno may end up wishing the spurned Yakuza woman got her hands on him instead. Naschy, closing in on his fifties here, still carries his swagger even if it’s a bit of a stretch to see all these beautiful women lose their fucking minds over his machismo. Guess that’s the benefit of making your own fuckin’ movies. A Japanese/Spanish coproduction comes off a little awkward with its erotic corruption, crime drama foundation and minor dives into supernatural/horrific waters fitting like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle of various origins. A man gets eaten by pigs in a standout scene that looks fake as fuck but is still intense, a few nightmare sequences play out, there’s a costume party out of nowhere that features Naschy dressed as Napoleon and Naschy probably plays one of his most convincing bastards. Issues arise with pacing and obnoxious comedy but it has a mean-spirited edge that works pretty well for the morally corrosive vibe it’s going for. Killer main track.

 

Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974) (Spain)

aka House of Psychotic Women/The House of Doom

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Ex-convict Gilles (Paul Naschy, looking super handsome in his leather jacket) is having a hard time finding work and is happy to be hired on as a caretaker at an estate owned by three odd (and sexy) sisters after a day of hitchhiking and disappointment. Said hitchhiking is how he meets one of the sisters who lives in the old and large house. Claude has some horrible burn scars on her arm and a fake hand (she’s down to a pinky and thumb thanks to the fire damage that deformed her… hang loose forever). She pulls it off well. He then meets knockout Nicole, who immediately flirts with the handsome stranger. Finally, theres’s the wheelchair-bound looker Ivette and when Gilles mentions her beauty, Claude warns him to stay away from her sisters. This immediately causes his barrel-chested pepper-haired lothario-ass to flirt with the woman, mentioning that her fake hand doesn’t bother him in the least. Such a smoothie.l or maybe it’s just a fetish of his. No kink-shaming here. Nicole sets her sights on the beefcake who is now taking care of things around the house and, whereas her sisters have physical disabilities working against them, Nicole shows up in Gilles’ room claiming she has insomnia… I think she’s just horny. The former caretaker Jean shows up and attacks his replacement, cutting him with a knife before Gilles manages to stab him with his own blade. This gets the inspector involved who warns Claude that the nurse they were expecting to come and care for her sister was murdered by strangulation a few days ago. Hmmmmmm. Soon after, a serial killer begins murdering women with a big-ass cleaver (among other handy sharp objects), and gouging out their eyeballs. Naschy suffers from nightmares where he strangles women so perhaps some lunacy is rotting away in his subconscious and causing him to get a little kill-happy with the female population. Perhaps he’s far too busy banging the siblings with working legs to have much time to fix things around the house, much less slaughter pretty women. Perhaps there’s more than a few suspects popping up to look mighty guilty to any concerned party. A shootout with a little bit too much time left leads to an unlikely answer that the majority of the viewers probably saw coming… or did they? Giallo gothic hybrid feels pretty sleazy thanks to a great turn from Naschy as the womanizing stranger who may be insane or may be in the wrong place at the wrong time but definitely has some skeletons in his closet. Naschy is supported by a great cast of good lookin’ women who all seem to have some mental issues of their own. It’s a nice guessing game that doesn’t give too much away but also has some gory bits for the slasher fans. They do bleed out a pig on camera so be advised there. It’s brief but the audio is horrific.

 

Lucifer’s Women (1974) (USA)

aka Doctor Dracula/Svengali the Magician 

⭐️⭐️

An occult researcher (John Wainwright) fancies himself the second coming of Svengali and he’s just released a book on the subject. His publisher, Sir Stephen Phillips, knows his secret and has some dark perversions of his own. With some shady connections to the underground black magic circuit (sure, whatever) the publisher begins manipulating things to nefarious ends. Sir Phillips has a habit of performing his own black rites and forcing kidnapped women to bend to his will and becoming sexual objects. A strip-club performer by the name of Trilby catches the eye of both men, with John being a point of lust and Stephen seeing her as being needed to kill him during a sex ritual at the height of climax in order to reincarnate. Yikes. Larry Hankin is wonderful as the magician/mesmerist by the name of Svengali but the surrounding cast does nothing for him. Its focus on skin makes it feel a bit sleazy but its soul-jumping plot leaves a bit to be desired. An alternate Al Adamson version features Dracula posing as a psychiatrist and cuts out almost all of the nudity and violence. It adds John Carradine, a shit-ton of talking, wretched performances and a subplot about a murdered mother, her concerned daughter and a worried father. It’s quite boring. But the original ain’t all that great either… you can skip ‘em both.

Paradise of Terror (1965) (Philippines)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A military plane transferring a government spook (oh my lord, is that Dracula from Blacula?) on an import mission is shot down by rebels and crashes in some unnamed stretch of Asian jungle. Forced to parachute out, the small crew must now navigate through the dangerous landscape. A careless accident (don’t kick fruit) causes the explosion of a landmine and knocks all the men out. Realizing the road is probably littered with explosive death traps, they cut their way through the jungle which is also riddled with death traps, just not explosive ones. A faulty compass gets them lost and frustration comes with exhaustion and a lack of supplies. They come across an incongruous house and the major decides to watch the house over night in case it’s a haven for rebels. Music and lights come from the building after midnight, even though the men did not see anyone enter or exit the premises. The government spook decides they need to send a man in to investigate because he knows that the area should be uninhabited and there’s no way anything should be here. It is a shadowy spook’s job to know such things, after all. They give it a night but then decide to take a peek after daybreak. We get a look from inside the house as the men poorly sneak around outside and furniture appears out of thin air. The place is void of life but it has all the amenities anyone struggling through the jungle could want. Almost like the house was waiting for them. Things get stranger when meals are prepared by seemingly nobody, the climate is comfortable within the home without air conditioning and clothes clean themselves. The spook is paranoid that someone is playing puppet master while the other men appear to be content with finally finding comfort. A ghostly woman appears in his room and is unaffected by the bullets he blasts into her. There’s no body in the room when the major responds to the gunshots, so now the government agent is looking pretty damn insane. That doesn’t last long because more strange women show up to seduce and confound our heroes. It’s an intriguing film that maintains a strong focus on its odd script while it plays out like a theatrical production with some surprising graphic violence. One of the most off-kilter haunted house (loosely defined) stories I’ve had the pleasure of watching. It feels like a piece of folklore that I can’t quite put my finger on but that appears in every culture. An admittedly slow but undoubtedly fascinating bit of fantastic cinema. Even the cop out feels earned. Another treasure unearthed from a lost status by Vinegar Syndrome.

The Horror from Beyond (1965) (Philippines)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

It’s a quiet night and a fisherman works alone on his small boat. A coffin emerges from the water and the fisherman goes to investigate. He leads the waterlogged coffin to the shore and unsurprisingly discovers a skeleton contained within. Spooky noises follow him as he gets back to work on his boat and he’s discovered by the police soon after strangled to death with the skeleton lying right next to him. Eerily, the skeleton has its hand around the man’s neck. The coroner raises a couple disturbing questions when he finds that the bones are still sturdily held together after having been rotting for more than a hundred years and the signs of strangulation seem to point to the skeleton being the perpetrator. The police captain is having a hard time accepting this but the science is pointing to these very strange answers. An atomic scientist is called in when the coroner’s deeper probing show the bones to be irradiated and regenerating. Smug American Dr. Redding is intrigued by the idea of a regenerating specimen so he and his superior Dr. Agustin decide they should check it out. As exciting as the strange properties of the bones are, the scientists agree that there is no supernatural killer causing problems and that it’s probably just some lunatic hanging around. That night, the coroner’s assistant is murdered by something unknown with powers of the windy variety. The theremin on the soundtrack lets us know it’s something spooky. The coroner is the next to die when he comes face to face with the being causing all the chaos. Much to my surprise, it appears to be an alien that wouldn’t look out of place in a budget-strained episode of The Outer Limits. In fact, this whole movie is starting to feel like an extended episode. An attack (well, kind of a misunderstanding that escalates into fire and heavy winds) on a costume party is cheapjack magic. The police force and Redding track the trail of terror being caused by the fiend and attempt to figure out what pattern the unknown is following. Long believed to be an alternate title for the same director’s Blood Thirst, this is definitely an interesting bit of formerly lost horror and I will tip my hat to Vinegar Syndrome for unearthing and restoring. A Filipino creature feature from the sixties that overstays its welcome is still a Filipino creature feature from the sixties so there’s no way I don’t give it plenty of leeway thanks to my monster kid mentality. The interesting first act is let down by a lack of action and dulling of originality but I’m still gonna give this one a passing grade.

The Wrestling Women vs the Aztec Mummy (1965) (Mexico)

aka Rock 'N Roll Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy

⭐️⭐️1/2

Sexy lady wrestlers (naturally) Loretta and Golden Ruby have their hands full with Black Dragon (obviously carrying an honorary degree from the Fu Manchu school of villainy) as he and his sisters murder archeologists to get their no-good mitts on an Aztec codex that promises great power. One of the last surviving doctors comes to the wrestling women (who throw on capes after they finish their match, naturally) for help. He dies shortly after, leaving one last doctor with a massive target on his head. Also hanging around is the recently departed doctor’s sexy daughter Charlotte who has sworn revenge (she is immediately kidnapped and brainwashed, naturally). The codex gets divided into three parts amongst the wrestling ladies and the professor’s detective nephew (boyfriend of one of the pointy-bra’d wrestling babes, naturally) to make it more difficult for the evil bastards to put it together and locate the Aztec treasure. This leads to secret messages hidden in sombreros, spy cameras, less than impressive fight choreography, false bookcases, evil clubhouses behind false bookcases and a tag team match between the Judo sisters and the wrestling girls for the last piece of the codex! But that’s not all! You’ve probably noticed I haven’t even mentioned the second part of the film’s title. Well, Aztec treasure is usually protected by the supernatural and a flashback shows us just what paranormal protection has been placed to watch over the treasure. Forbidden love between a princess doomed to die and a witchdoctor who risked it all to save her (he failed, naturally) is the inevitable history and now the witchdoctor, Tezomoc, is cursed to preside over his sacrificed love and the holy breastplate she wears upon her corpse. Our heroes are there to find the treasure and the Black Dragon is following them for his own nefarious reasons. He also thinks the curses and living mummies are all bullshit, that’ll be biting him right on the ass. Tezomoc rises (looking dried out and fantastic,naturally) when the tomb is disturbed and the wrestling women get their hands on the breastplate before getting the hell out of their with the team. Turns out Tezomoc can use his magical powers to transform into a bat (or a tarantula) when he’s not wiping the floor with Black Dragon’s goons… and maybe Black Dragon too? If not, he just vanishes from the film so I’m assuming our dusty boy got his butt. He’s also afraid of the sun, so he’s like a vampire but an especially crumbly one. If you ain’t a fan of armbar-centric wrestling, the opening stretch may be quite the chore because it takes forever to get to the monster shenanigans which are still pretty lethargic when they finally happen. I found the whole thing pretty damn charming but I could definitely see more than a few people dozing off. This was the English dub of René Cordona’s flick put out by that old reliable huckster K. Gordon Murray. At least there’s no American actors there or explain the hell out of everything (Sorry, John Carradine) but there’s also no Asian actors which is… problematic. Thank God they don’t attempt the accents.

The Face at the Window (1939) (UK)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Tod Slaughter vehicle finds late 1800’s France being terrorized by a murderer who may be a werewolf! At least, that’s what the majority is thinking thanks to a horrifying face popping up in the windows of various victims. My guess is whoever Tod Slaughter is playing is definitely up to no good. Here, he’s some dope rocking ridiculous facial hair and a cape… so he’s a villain for sure. A Paris bank has been robbed and Tod Slaughter shows up to pull the owner out of trouble by putting a large quantity of gold in his bank. In return, he would like to marry the bank owner’s daughter. The young girl, Cecile, is in love with a poor bank clerk and turns him down. Not one to sit on his hands and listen to the opinion of a young woman, Slaughter decides to frame the man she loves for the crimes and get her all to himself. The young man attempts to prove his innocence and sets out to expose the nefarious businessman behind all the shenanigans. The bank owner ends up with a dagger in his back and Slaughter slimes his way into things with the assistance of his gang of miscreants. Stuffy melodramatics are saved by the usual wonderfulness Tod Slaughter brings to his despicable villains and this one is practically twirling his mustache in every scene. It’s an easy watch that flies by and the day is saved by bullshit science and scheming… so, that’s a win.

Poltergeist Activity (2015) (UK)

aka A Haunting at Pendle Hill/The Unhinged

⭐️⭐️1/2

Having a hard time in the wake of his wife’s death, youthful-lookin’ David Prescott and his teenage daughter Katherine move into a secluded countryside farmhouse. The tenuous relationship between father and daughter is further agitated by a spike in paranormal shenanigans plaguing the house. A strange neighbor is laughed off as just being an old coot when she advises that she’ll pray for them upon their arrival. A creepy porcelain clown doll is found discarded under the daughter’s bed and she catches a disturbing apparition in a photograph she takes of their new home. She also finds photos of herself sleeping on her camera, which is never good, even if it ain’t a ghost snapping some shots. She asks her dad if he took the candid shots but he denies it and Katherine warns that something strange is going on but dad doesn’t want to wrap his head around the idea of displaced spirits roaming their new home. It’s a whole lot easier to blame pipes for phantom footsteps than the unquiet dead. The creepy clown doll keeps popping up to freak out Katherine and the two grow more agitated with their situation and with each other. A hooded and masked (a porcelain baby mask for some reason) specter is seen but dad assumes his daughter is smoking weed and winding him up. He’s super wrong and super in denial. The kind of denial that makes him an obnoxious asshole. Dad comes around after getting attacked by that clown doll in a wonderfully unconvincing bit and Katherine is paranormally raped in a scene that thankfully doesn’t go on too long and happens in between the doll attack. The elderly neighbor gives them the exposition needed as to why the house is haunted and the evil that’s stained the rooms like a trout hidden in drywall. Slaves, slaughter and voodoo will do that to a home. Especially if your original homeowner went by the name Necrosse. Luckily, a somewhat respected paranormal investigator considering retirement from the public eye is in the area and is willing to help out to prove his wild theories involving negative realities. A séance leads to violence and the budget-strained spookiness finally comes to a close in a less than satisfactory manner. The melodrama may be shaky but solid performances from our leads help navigate the standard haunting hoopla. It’s no meager accomplishment to have me sympathizing with a moody teenager but Natalie Martins brings it to the role and makes for a likable protagonist. Lee Bane may not look the part but even his prickish demeanor at the slowly unraveling unknown in his home is believable. Stealing it, though, is Jared Morgan as the paranormal investigator Hans Voltz who has me wishing there were further adventures of his to watch. Also loved the end credits, just name listings and black and white photographs of the whole fucking movie set to some creepy music… really should have opened with that even if it would have given a bunch away. Reminded me a bit of The House of Seven Corpses and I always like being reminded of that.

Blood Surf (2000) (Canada)

aka Crocodile/Amok/Crocodile 2: Savage Island

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Blood surfing is an idea concocted by only the smartest of Reality-TV-addicted brains. You set up a camera, throw chum in the water to get them sharks attracted and then catch some waves with those majestic killers of the sea right below you. Profits are all the small group of entrepreneurs are seeing which is a shame because if they had looked a little harder they may have spotted the big-ass salt-water crocodile viewing them like a Sunday buffet. They get directions from a boat captain with a tragic past (Holy hell! It’s Monster Squad’s Count Dracula, Duncan Regehr!) involving folks getting eaten by said crocodile, who refuses to help at first but once his girl puts up a fuss about the missed payday, Captain John Dirks relents. After a day of successful filming, some crocodile shenanigans get them stranded on an island and more importantly eaten by a giant reptile. They also run into pirates (not the fun kind) which allows for the croc to chomp some folks besides the main cast. Count Dracula, sorry, Captain Dirks comes to the rescue and he’s got a little bit of revenge on the old brain thanks to this beast killing his passengers and ruining his boat adventure business. Dirk’s girl convinces the producer that there’s money to be made in filming the capture and killing of the largest living reptile the world has ever seen. All this will lead to is a diminishing cast. Matt Borlenghi is wonderfully sleazy as the producer, Maureen Larrazabel is incredibly easy on the eyes as a native who falls for the bleach-haired surf addict Jeremy (she gets eaten pretty quickly), Duncan Regehr seems to be having a little fun and the crocodile is delightfully crappy. The head shit-heel goes out in less than stellar fashion, a man gets torn in half and the term “croc-teasing” is used. Is it dumb? Oh you better believe it is but it’s the kind of stupid I like to encourage in my Saturday morning monster watchin’.

You’ll Die at Midnight (1986) (Italy)

aka Midnight Killer/Die at Midnight/Midnight Ripper/Carol Will Die at Midnight

⭐️⭐️⭐️

A violent argument comes from the discovery of a wife’s infidelity and the husband, Nicola, is soon suspected of murder when the woman ends up very dead at the hands of a black-gloved assailant. Nicola storms out of the flat after assaulting his wife when their loud name calling leads to physical abuse and causes the woman to stab him in the hand with an ice pick. Inspector Piero Terzi (the always welcome Paolo Malco) likes the detective with a drinking problem and a violent streak for the murder and he enlists the help of a psychological profiler to aid in proving the man’s guilt. The profiler, Anna Berardi is not convinced of Nicola’s guilt (she knows the man and loved him in the past and she doesn’t believe he has it in him. He’s also already come to her begging for her help.) and thinks that a supposedly dead serial murderer may not have perished in a fire some eight years ago. The inspector highly doubts a ghost could be behind these murders but a growing body count and a twist or two keep him on his toes. Things best get figured out soon because Inspector Terzi’s daughter (and Anna’s student) becomes a target after Berardi shares her suspicions with her students. The killer with an ice pick is also keeping busy with the attractive female population in between stalking targets of with character relevance. Familiar faces abound throughout Lamberto Bava’s perfectly adequate giallo that lacks the splatter one would expect from an Italian 80s genre picture and relies more on the mystery befuddling our heroes. I don’t know if I’m just softening in my old age, but I’ll take that trade even if it doesn’t make for an exactly thrilling time.

Blood of the Werewolf (2001) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

A dirt-cheap werewolf anthology shot in the backyards, backwoods and lazy streets of Michigan or the side streets of New York and released straight to video in the early aughts is something that makes this old heart sing. Don’t worry. I’m fully aware that I am, in fact, the problem. Blood Reunion starts things off with writer Edward Sparrow reluctantly coming back to his hometown looking up an old classmate by the name of Jane Radford following his divorce. He’s disheartened to find the young woman is still under the tyrannical eye of Granny Radford. She warns him that Granny should be home soon and she’s so worried about it she tries to sneak him out before the old bag can see the gentleman caller. Granny is a real bitch and ain’t happy at all that there’s a man in the house. The man takes his leave as the hag pisses and moans. A brief flash of a rubber-mask werewolf follows some in-camera POV effects. The local sheriff stops by the hotel where the writer is staying to question him about a string of animal mutilations going on. Edward being a horror writer and arriving just in time for the mutilations has the sheriff suspicious. Jane stops by soon after. Local drunks/idiots crack middle-aged jokes at Jane as she walks home and the one who looks most like an uncle (in a fucking Red Dog hat, to boot!) stumbles off alone and is quickly mauled. More questions come the sarcastic author’s way from the sheriff and he’s told to not leave town. He and Granny have a confrontation when he comes by to check on Jane and grandma shares the tragic story of the girl’s birth and talks about a family curse and the “sins of the flesh”. It’s like Michigan by way of Bible Belt. Edward decides to leave town and Jane tries to stop him but he’s convinced her grandma is filling her head with bullshit and has had enough. Edward’s love and lust for the woman is just going to lead to tragedy and the revelation of a delightfully cheap lady werewolf. It’s a stretch getting to the climactic amateur bliss but well worth the bland trip. It closes with needless exposition and a cameo by a New York (maybe Michigan) prostitute. Next up is Old Blood and it’s about another doomed romance, except some bible-thumping granny ain’t around this time to put a stop to all the tomfoolery. A lesbian couple consists of one supernatural predator and a mortal woman who wants to join her lover in lycanthropy. The wolf-woman doesn’t want to put that curse on her girlfriend but she is persistent about joining the pack and gaining power she’s only ever dreamed of. Relationship struggles are discussed and conversations about the awfulness of the curse play out like it’s the most interesting thing to ever be caught on camera. The eager idiot ends up regretting her choice and once we see what the beast looks like, we can sympathize with her because I feel bad for anyone who has to wander around looking as stupid as she does. There’s talk of a ceremony and breaking the curse… there’s alot of talk in this one. Everyone is awful and nobody deserves a happy ending. The final segment is Man Beast and features a man being chased by two hunters through the woods because of his “curse”. We hear his inner monologue and then watch as the hunters briefly become the hunted before becoming the hunters again. There’s some butt-metal music playing throughout the extended chase. Camouflage and middle-aged dad adventures play out in some dreary stretch of wilds. The twist is so poorly set up that I don’t know if anything this telegraphed could technically be called a “twist”. And this one just keeps on trucking along. The whole anthology strives to be something deeper than it is and the viewer certainly pays the price for this movie’s pretentious ambitions. What could have been a stupid monster flick starring people just a bit too old to be making stupid monster flicks sinks into a boring stew of character studies with a focus on nobody cares about and action that exists in a realm consisting of material cut for being to dull from a teenager’s home movie. The local aesthetic is right up my alley and the cast of uncles in the bookends makes me very happy. The cheap monsters are also my kind of fun but are barely featured. Stupid enough for one viewing but they’ll be no revisits.

Blood Beast from Outer Space (1965) (UK)

aka The Night Caller/Night Caller from Outer Space

⭐️1/2

Those damn mutant humanoids from Ganymede are after our women! Their species is nearing extinction and they are grabbing Earth babes to breed with… well, they just need the blood I believe… and not even alot of blood or anything! Damn those Ganymedians… Ganymedes? Watching an unknown object enter Earth’s atmosphere and somehow not burn up and more impressively changing course, Dr. Morley, Dr. Costain (John fuckin’ Saxon) and Ann Barlow offer their scientific help to the military crawling around the area where it landed. Instead of the large object they are expecting to discover, they come across a freezing, basketball-sized sphere and probing it with x-rays after bringing it back to their lab, it’s discovered to be mostly hollow, free of radiation and made up of an unclassified silicon composition. Sexy Ann stays late to work on some documentation and is beset by a clawed hand belonging to something that must be rather large and had to have emerged from the sphere. Alien energy bullshit is believed to be behind the impressive transmission of matter and whatever the hell that gnarly hand belongs to manages to kill one of the doctors and steal a military jeep in order to escape the base where the sphere is being studied. A growing number of kidnapped young women points to a sinister plot in the works. These supple young women who have gone missing were answering an add placed in a “Bikini Girl” magazine and it looks like that crazy alien is using the oldest trick in the book to get their claws on some English knockouts. This is how Ann ends up planting herself in harms way to get some answers about the threat currently plaguing London. Incredibly stuffy and talkative exercise in boredom has a bout 20 minutes of dialogue for every scene with a rubbery a monster hand not doing much of anything. John Saxon delivers science jargon much to my everlasting delight and Patricia Hanes is very easy on the eyes as the only female character with any depth (as barebones as it may be) but a 60’s monster movie about an alien using a bikini magazine to kidnap girlies should not be this bland.

Blood of the Vampires (1966) (Philippines/USA)

aka Curse of the Vampires/Creatures of Evil/Whisper to the Wind

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Visiting their father’s estate in a small Filipino village, two siblings learn that their father has changed his will. Papa suffers a heart attack on the night of a ball being hosted at his home when his daughter bursts into the room to tell him about screams she heard coming from the family crypt. Eduardo and Leonor are confused as to why their dear old dad has ordered them to burn his whole damn castle to the ground at the time of his death, especially since the son was promised the vast estate. Eduardo figures out why when he’s shown a secret passageway by his ailing father and is horrified to see that his dear old mother has become a vampire thanks to a family curse. It’s all too late to do much of anything but harm because mama eventually bites her son (he foolishly believes he’s safe around the monster) and he begins to get up to vampiric shenanigans (poor bastard is still reflecting in mirrors so he can see his fangs show up). The fresh vamp attacks and takes a bride on a late-night stroll. He even puts an end to his papa’s life when the family patriarch kills the woman who started all of this. His sister enlists the help of her boyfriend Daniel (who really doesn’t like Eduardo) to attempt an escape but it doesn’t go all that well. There’s a shockingly heavy focus on generational trauma that I was not expecting at all in a Filipino horror flick from this decade but it adds a nice level of weight to the genre dynamics. We still get ourselves some torch-carrying villagers and pointy fangs to hit the familiar notes and a fucking ghost to add a layer of weirdness. Doomed romance, whips, chains, fog and some lovely gel-cap usage keep it all rolling. It drags in spots and holds a bit too closely to the supernatural storytelling that came before it but it’s still a truly unexpected treat for a low-budget vampire flick.

Brain of Blood

aka Brain Damage/The Brain/The Creature’s Revenge/The Oozing Skull/The Undying Brain

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A dying benevolent Middle Eastern leader has his brain transplanted into the body of a mentally challenged and disfigured (burned with battery acid by some drunk bumpkins) behemoth by the name of Gor (with a name like that, he was doomed to be a hulking monster and of course he’s played by John Bloom) at the hands of a doctor working on the cutting edge (i.e. bullshit) of brain science, Dr. Trenton (Kent Taylor from Brides of Blood). Things go very wrong because that’s just inevitable and eventually a brutish beast with a new but failing brain is causing a problem for more than a few people. You see, what Trenton was keeping to himself and far from the concerned compatriots of the beloved leader from the made up nation of Khalid, is that for the transfer to work the body needs to be very fresh… like, we gonna have to murder somebody fresh. That goes wrong because the corpse of the burglar/probable-rapist Gor tosses from a building is in no condition to be of much use, which gets the doctor thinking Gor is his best option as the clock winds down on his ability to successfully pull off his bs science and laugh in the face of all those fools who doubted him. That’s not all that’s working against things because possible political bullshit, definitely fatal scheming and the malicious sleaziness of Trenton’s dwarf assistant (Angelo Rossitto probably best remembered from Freaks, although I’ve seen him in at least a dozen other things) have further complicated matters, it’s almost like transplanting brains illegally is a business that just calls to untrustworthy lunatics. Her loveliness Regina Carrol (lovely in a 60’s backup lounge singer way, that is) is around as the fiancée of the unfortunate leader (also his top secret agent) who gets called in by her future husband’s personal physician (holy shit, it’s Grant Williams from The Incredible Shrinking Man) after he manages to escape an assassination attempt. Everything goes to Hell because you just can’t trust anyone. Al Adamson unleashes some more drive-in fun with this mad scientist trash classic featuring chained women, an evil dwarf, an unlikely dungeon, a science gun that looks like it belongs in a movie from two decades earlier and Count Dracula himself Zandor Vorkov! That’s a big deal if you’re as big of a fan of Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein as I am. The drag is felt at various points as dungeon exploring, low-budget spy movie hijinks and plenty of chatter drag things to a halt but we’re always just a few minutes away from Regina Carrol’s humongous hair (Al Adamson’s most impressive special effect), low-rent laboratory tomfoolery and dangerous science.

Eye of the Beast (2007) (Canada)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

A scientist from the National Oceanographic Research Agency (James Van Der Beek) comes to a small fishing village, looking into the depletion of aquatic life in the area. There’s a local monstrous legend supposedly calling the lake home and when a young man is pulled out of the water with a story about a monster attack, the government egghead begins suspecting some weird shit is going down. The fishermen are hiding something and prefer blaming the awfulness on the local Native Americans and are obviously pieces of shit. Van Der Beek teams up with and falls for Officer Kat Thomas, a fishery officer and the only law in town following the sudden death of the sheriff. As the bodies pop up, Kat closes down the lake which has the local fishermen upset. The higher-ups disbelieve Van Der Beek’s conclusion and Kat saw the beast take her daddy when she was little, so most of the town thinks she’s a nut-bar looking for validation. When the main fisherman gets his ass attacked, racism gets put on the back burner and the hunt is on... more death follows. The significant lack of monster action definitely detracts from one’s enjoyment but there’s enough character development to keep ya are interested... if you’re into that sort of thing. The giant tentacles are delightful and mostly all you get to see which is both sensical and practical but still disappointing. James Van Der Beek fights a giant cephalopod... you’re either sold or you’re not.

Pick Me Up (2006) (USA/Canada)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The under-appreciated Larry Cohen works from a David J. Schow (the man who coined the terms “stalk-and-slash” and “splatterpunk”) script for his serial killer outing in the Masters of Horror series. On a desolate patch of mountain road, a bus breaks down and its passengers make a few dangerous choices. Cautious and tough Stacia (Fairuza fuckin’ Balk) decides to walk the 12 to 14 miles to the nearest hotel, Birdy and Danny decide to hitchhike with a helpful and possibly insane truck driver (Michael fuckin’ Moriarty) and a paranoid wife and her frustrated husband decide it’s safer to stay with the bus driver until help comes. A charming hitchhiker comes across the bus and all the pieces are in place for an unexpected turf war between two serial killers and a handful of strangers who just had some truly terrible luck. Paths are crossed at the tiny motel where Stacia is staying unfortunately sandwiched between a truck driver who is following the trail of bodies and the hitchhiker who needed a place to torture his latest victim. Cohen does what he does best by allowing some interesting and flawed characters to breathe in the hands of some very good character-actors. Schow’s script may be a little scattered and silly but it creates enough space for the antagonists to prosper, unfortunately the protagonist kind of gets the short end of the stick. It’s still a good time. The wonderful Michael Eklund shows up as a rest stop cashier who gets to be the focal point of Moriarty’s acting chops. Lucky.

Abominable (2006) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Matt “Serenity Now!” McCoy plays Preston Rogers, a well-known mountain climber who returns to his home near the cliff where a horrible accident left him a paraplegic and claimed his wife’s life. He begins to suspect there is something large lurking around the surrounding woods. His nurse refuses to believe him and he gets more frantic as whatever big and bad forest-dwelling beast begins picking off a bachelorette party being held at a neighboring cabin. Newly confined to his wheelchair, he attempts to save the lovely ladies (including sexy-as-all-hell Tiffany Shepis who makes her exit far too soon) and refuses to sit by and let them die. The cast (luckily) takes the whole thing seriously and is peppered with genre favorites in small roles (Jeffrey Combs, the aforementioned Shepis, Lance Henriksen, Paul Gleason, Phil Morris and Dee Wallace all collect a paycheck). The sasquatch is practical and a bit goofy looking (but who the hell cares) and there are some bursts of gory goodness. This enjoyable indie horror is a decent enough time waster.

Sick Girl (2006) (USA/Canada)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Lucky McKee reunites with the amazing Angela Bettis (if you haven’t seen May, what are you doing?) to get a little icky in this Masters of Horror addition. Our girl Bettis plays an awkward entomologist named Ida who receives an anonymous package from Brazil containing an unclassified insect. It breaks free and ends up biting Ida’s new gorgeous and odd girlfriend Misty (Erin Brown). Misty begins a slow transformation into something horrifying and when Ida receives a letter from her old professor (also, her new lovely lover’s papa) about the strange insect and its methods of reproduction, she begins to catch on to what her current girlfriend is undergoing and a contagion that is at high risk of spreading. The risks of moving a relationship way too fast are magnified into a ridiculous realm of body horror much to the benefit of any viewer who likes things to get a little weird in their horror. McKee’s consistently fresh spin on genre material continues as he utilizes a strong leading lady and a demented twist on a familiar warning. Big bug horror (but not too big), body horror, intolerance and relationship horror combine into a somehow cute, somewhat disturbing and undoubtedly strange combination. It may push into territory that gets a little too quirky but that’s a minor issue when it comes to this series that started out way too bland for my tastes.

Loner (2025) (UK)

⭐️⭐️

A social media giveaway is won by an aspiring vlogger and Angus Mattock happily makes his way to the wilderness retreat he’s been awarded. Documenting his digital detox in the gorgeous wilds has him following directions deep into the middle of nowhere, where a freshly set up mini cabin awaits him. He attempts to make the most of his time cutoff from modern amenities even if it sure as shit ain’t exactly roughing it. He picks up some unsettling sounds on his equipment and then begins hearing them with his own ears as night falls. The sound of screams has him snuffing out all his light sources and hiding in his tiny cabin. A frantic woman appears at the door and claims that something is after her and she needs to be let inside. Angus refuses and even pushes the woman down when she makes a desperate attempt to get in. She then wanders off into the darkness. The next day Angus walks into the woods in an attempt locate the woman he was no help to the night before. His axe gets stolen from him while he’s taking a dump in the woods and he returns to his cabin to find the place ransacked of anything that would help him in the situation he’s ill-prepared for. He decides it’s time to hike on out of the area and get back to regular life… sure, that’s gonna happen. A quick sojourn into a cave proves to be disturbing and he’s back at the cabin as night falls and something out in the perfect dark terrorizes him. The film stumbles on as our hero shares a recent tragedy and attempts to survive and get help however he can. Some nasty foot violence happens, forcing Angus to put a halt to any hiking out and madness comes knocking along with whatever is hanging about out of the viewer’s eye-line. Self discovery at least feels earned but boredom is still boredom and that boredom is even worse than regular boredom when spending all of your time with a mildly wet blanket of a man.

I Eat Your Skin (1964) (USA)

aka Zombie/Woodoo Island/Zombie Blood Bath/Voodoo Blood Bath/Invasion of the Zombies/Caribbean Adventure

⭐️⭐️

Walking venereal disease and novelist Tom Harris takes some time away from banging anything with two gams and a vagina to join his agent on an expedition to an island where voodoo is being practiced. The island’s name is Voodoo Island so that’s not just some racist guess on my part. It’s not just a trek about inspiration for his next novel, not at all, it’s mentioned to the likely very itchy Mr. Harris that a hurricane wiped out the island’s fishing fleet a few years back, leaving the female to male ratio at about five to one. The agent thinks the island would serve as a great setting for Tom’s next novel and the excitement of the island’s danger and strangeness is enough to impress the frustrated agent’s eccentric (unbearable) wife. The place is also home to a reclusive scientist who secluded himself from the public eye to work on cancer research and as we all know that’s way easier to do in a private villa surrounded by jungle that may or may not be crawling with the living dead. Yep. It all checks out. Off our ragtag group of “heroes” fly to a vacation spot riddled with dangers known and unknown with only enough fuel to barely make it to their destination. Ooops. The cancer researcher has discovered that by injecting natives with snake venom he can turn them into oatmeal-faced zombies with eyes that seem to be haphazardly painted ping-pong balls. I suppose that’s the next best thing to curing a horrible disease but I’m no scientist. The overseer of the island, Charles Bentley, is using these goofy zombies to his own nefarious ends and forcing the doctor to carry on with his work. Tom will be far too busy to poke the natives thanks to his lecherous eye zeroing in on the doctor’s daughter. He’s already seen what she has to offer thanks to a rescue attempt from a spying zombie with a machete while she was skinny dipping. This did lead to the decapitation of a local fisherman after warning the walking erection of an upcoming sacrifice but I guess you just can’t win ‘em all. Danger looks to be coming for Tom’s love life so he steps up to be a hero and to do this he’ll have to unmask the true evil on the island. There are bits of interest throughout the runtime but a lot of meandering and staleness rob it of being a true garbage classic. The low-jack zombie action is wonderful and I’m always a fan of sixties bikinis but I can’t imagine that this films ‘71 release date offered up much excitement to anyone who took this in when it got attached to the “Great Blood-Horrors Double Feature” with I Drink Your Blood. Hell, I can’t imagine outside of some leering sexiness and a graphic (and hilarious) decapitation that this bad boy would have offered up much excitement if it hadn’t sat on the shelf for six years. It’s a watchable curio but not much else.

The Fair-Haired Child (2006) (USA/Canada)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

“Master of horror” William Malone (such universally recognized classics as Feardotcom and the remake of House on Haunted Hill… which I know isn’t all that great by critical standards but I do fucking love) works from a Matt Greenberg (the man who blessed the world with screenplays for both Reign of Fire and Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest and no, there is no sarcasm in that statement) for this Masters of Horror outing. Teenage outcast Tara gets herself abducted by a psychotic couple and because she’s no idiot, ends up locked away in the basement of their isolated estate after figuring out some bullshit is going down when she comes to in a supposedly care facility. Anton and Judith (fuck yes, it’s Lori Petty and the always welcome William Samples) have made a pact with something ancient to bring their drowned son back from the dead. Said pact calls for the sacrifice of twelve virgin teenagers and our girl Tara happens to be the final one. What a horrible way to be needed for the first time. Tara shares the cellar with the couple’s teenage son who is definitely off because black magic is no way to adapt to death, even if it’s not by your own doing. She rescues him from an attempted suicide upon waking up in the basement and assumes he’s another victim of the lunatics. The longer Tara stays in the basement, the more convinced she becomes that there is something supernatural in the works and she really needs to get her ass out of her current situation. Judith is dead-set on bringing her departed boy back but Anton seems to be losing his marbles the deeper they get into the unsavory business of resurrection. Tara and the mute boy she has befriended uncover more and more awfulness as they await the girl’s fate and do what they can to escape. Warnings of a “fair-haired child” etched into the walls point towards the fact they do not want that ticking timer to come to an end. There’s a nice weird edge to everything and this outing from the first season proves to be one of the more pleasant surprises to get produced. It successfully comes off like a Lovecraft outing from his cycle before he went balls deep in the Elder ones and is purposefully melodramatic and harnessing the right level of camp for something this inspired by a late 60’s American International horror flick and reruns of Night Gallery. A charming slice of macabre that I really feel like the Masters of Horror series should have aimed for more than it did. A likable leading lady, a couple of intriguing villains and a weird-ass monster… that’s all I really want.

Cigarette Burns (2005) (USA/Canada)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

John Carpenter enters the Masters of Horror fray and tackles the always interesting idea of lost media. Of course, the lost media in question is a notorious film that was screened once and supposedly drove the audience into a homicidal frenzy. Now an eccentric private film collector, the enigmatic Mr. Bellinger (the enigmatic Udo Kier), hires a bankrupt theater owner with the kind of bendable morals desperation causes (Norman Reedus before he had a real handle on dramatics) to unearth the lost film La Fin Absolue du Monde. After Berlinger shares a horrific souvenir with the young man, Kirby Sweetman begins hunting down what information he can and discovers a history of death for the people behind the movie and a curse that supposedly comes along with the film that may be better left unseen. Bellinger is completely aware of the power the rare cinema holds but he has no qualms about the dangers or the cost of a single viewing. There’s tragedy in Sweetman’s past and the downward journey into Hell he’s traveling on is going to rip those wounds right open as he navigates cryptic critics, snuff filmmakers and the dangerous power of cinema. An incredibly satisfying story helps this bad boy along even if some shaky performances and melodrama produces a few hiccups along the way. So, excellent inspiration, it’s the execution that falters.

House at the Edge of the Woods (2025) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A documentary crew is brought to an isolated home when the unstable man living there begins to experience strange things. He shares footage with the crew of his dad wandering out into the woods in the direction of bright lights, never to be seen again. The crew is there to document and get to the bottom of what strangeness is going on. It would seem there is something supernatural inhabiting the surrounding woods and you better believe the team of filmmakers are going to have to journey deep into the unknown to get any answers. The homeowner shares that things got disturbing with his son after grandpa vanished and a government agency started poking around. One hell of an obnoxious cameraman is also the main character, so he haunts the runtime with his tucked-in shirt and novice rockabilly sideburns. I may be overdramatic there. He’s not unbearable and surprisingly ends up being kinda likable when the shit hits the fan… a complete reverse on the usual character flaws of the found footage obnoxious cameraman. Actually, the quartet are all pretty damn likable and the young man who owns the property may give off Charles Fleischer in Zodiac vibes but I still didn’t mind him and he’s supposed to be suspicious enough to keep ya on your toes. The paranormal tomfoolery festering in the darkness is interesting and well-crafted considering the tight budget our filmmakers were working with. The desperation of the team’s leader inspires some dangerous decisions but at least the motivation makes sense. I’m a sucker for high strangeness and this is some fine high strangeness that just lets itself sink into the weirdness of all of it. Of course, I don’t think your found footage film should have a score if it’s not wrapped up in a mockumentary package but whatever, it admittedly elevates the climax.

The Third Shift a Paranormal Horror Story (2026) (UK)

⭐️1/2

Gloucester prison is reportedly one of the most paranormal locations in all of the United Kingdom. It’s easy to make this claim when there’s no scientific basis for anything except the self-fulfilling pseudo-science being used but I digress. A team of five paranormal investigators descend upon the haunted hotspot unaccompanied and, as paranormal investigators exploring the confines of a super haunted location are want to do, vanish without a trace. Well, there’s a trace and it’s this footage. Opening credits immediately tell you to do some stretching if you want to buy this as actual found footage and the footage of some guy watching a news report as electronic disruption happens pretty much takes that suspension of disbelief out back and fires a bullet into its head. Rambling introductions from the very British team let us know who we’ll be following around and the team reveals they landed on this location after reading favorable Google reviews. I found that hilarious. We spend time wandering around with the group as they make small talk and hear noises. So, the banality of ghost hunting is presented for you… the viewer at home. It seems that a team of ghost hunters shot uninteresting footage at an abandoned prison, realized there was no value to it and then decided to make the trip worth their time by attaching a bullshit psychopath plot to the proceedings in a desperate attempt to salvage a found footage horror flick out of it. The problem with building your half-baked story around meandering footage of walking around in the dark is that the meat of your adventure offers no real thrills… unless a moving ball gets your heart racing and loud bangs give you goosebumps because the laughing lunatic that eventually shows up just feels like it was shoehorned in for no good reason. If so, man it must be nice to be that easily amused. Good for you. I’m a little jealous. You will see a stainless steel colander used as a helmet for an electric chair, a group of paranormal enthusiasts attempt to act and a discount Halloween shop mask as a signature look. So, in the end this is either a really stupid ghost hunt or a really pathetic movie. Either way, the I’m the sucker who watched the whole damn thing.

Deer Woman (2005) (USA/Canada)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A string of murders has a detective tracking down a Native American legend in this Landis family (directed by John and written by he and Max) outing for the Masters of Horror series. A truck driver is trampled to death is his own tractor with witnesses claiming he was last seen in the company of a gorgeous woman. More bodies pop up showing similar destruction and the only lead our detective (assigned exclusively to animal attacks) has is stories about a beautiful woman with deer hooves who murders the targets of her seduction. Hey. A lead is a lead. Even if it makes about as much sense as the gorgeous Cinthia Moura coming onto your standard quality over the road truck driver. An interesting story shoots some much-needed energy into this middling series with fleshed out characters, a nice streak of humor and a folkloric hook that makes me very happy. The mental crime reenactment scene is a standout, I’m always happy to see Alex Zahara (Psych and Supernatural alum), the awkward new partnership our hero shares with a slightly awkward officer (Anthony Griffith) is charming and the movie exists in the same universe as Landis’ most famous horror flick. “Be a lot easier to think of this objectively if it wasn’t so damn stupid.”

Homecoming (2005) (USA/Canada)

⭐️⭐️1/2

Joe Dante gets a little ham-fisted in his outing for the Masters of Horror series when he puts his directorial hand to a short story from Dale Bailey about warmongering political bullshit and the lives it costs. During the re-election season, hotshot White House spin doctor David Murch mentions on a tv morning show how he wishes those soldiers killed in the ongoing conflict supported by the president could come back and vote for the man he’s attempting to get in for another term. Soon after, the president uses this statement in a speech and the old “be careful what you wish for” term comes into play. The soldiers that made the ultimate sacrifice have risen from their graves and they would like to be heard. This is bad news for the politician and his team seeking four more years. Consequences finally come to those gasbags in power but can even the dead Americans who died for this country actually make any kind of change when the deck is stacked in the favor of the politicians? A zombie film that ain’t exactly a zombie film which is kind of what you need your zombie film to be if you want to catch my attention. Dante shows that he still knows how to have some fun, even if the whole thing is bit too on the nose. That’s just my taste and I fully acknowledge politics and horror have been working in unison for as long as the genre has existed. It’s corny but it’s just on the right side of watchable. Robert Picardo steals the show to the surprise of nobody as the president’s morally corrupt advisor.

Creature of Destruction (1968) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

The best part of 1956’s The She Creature was its impressive monster costume. So naturally that’s the one thing we don’t get in this cheapjack remake because ain’t no way anyone behind this had that kind of money. A hypnotist successfully predicts death for folks and he’s able to do so by controlling a prehistoric sea monster that his assistant happened to be in a past life. With proper predictions proving his power, Dr. John Basso is looking to finally taste the fame and celebrity that only the best of stage hypnotists can achieve. The shoddy monster does away with the Carradine wannabe’s targets and the squarest band to ever play music at a beach resort performs. The beachfront resort owner laughs off Basso’s claims of a prehistoric beast taking lives but his daughter’s psychologist and psychic researching boyfriend (for the army?) has a far more open mind. On regular life, I would say being skeptical about the mesmerists claims of a killer monster is the smart course of action… but this is an American International production. A police lieutenant is snooping around and doing very little to prevent the deaths of others. Basso’s assistant hates his ass with good cause and it’s obviously going to end up costing the scumbag. There’s also money to be made in the success of Basso and this has the resort owner seeing dollar signs. He want’s his daughter’s husband-to-be to get in on the action with him but the man has morals. Long stretches of dialogue pollute the runtime as points of interest are left to be explained by folks that look like they belong in a black and white photo of the people who founded the company your dad worked at. Les Tremayne is wonderful hamming it up as the hypnotist with delusions of grandeur and the ability to sometimes be a real catty bitch. There’s a slight charm to it that smells like lukewarm Hamm’s and a rumpus room carpet stained with decades of cigarette smoke. That will only get you so far and if you’re even the slightest bit tired, you’ll probably nod off.

Chocolate (2005) (USA/Canada)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Mick Garris works from a Mick Garris script and has me worrying that this can only be about as good as you could expect from anything Mick Garris has done. It’s the fifth episode of the series he birthed and it stars Henry Thomas as a divorced, depressed and dieting Chicago food lab employee, working on artificial flavor development. After waking up with the taste of a very particular chocolate in his mouth, he realizes he has inexplicably become psychically connected to a beautiful stranger. This allows him to see what she sees, hear what she hears and feel what she feels. He manages to fall in love with the stranger but is shaken when violent images begin to creep into the psychic scenes he’s been receiving. Once the transmissions come to a sudden halt, he decides to track down the woman but there’s a reason for those violent flashes and it’s going to bite our well-meaning (naive) boy in his white pasty ass. Matt Frewer brings his usual solid work as our protagonist’s lovable lab partner and Henry Thomas could play likable/kinda-creepy sad sack in his sleep. If you had told me Mick Garris would be the “master” behind my favorite outing up to this point, I would have called you a fucking liar and laughed in your lovely face. Somehow, he gives the story plenty of breathing room and as much as it feels like a throwaway episode of Tales From the Crypt in its predictably, the top notch cast pulls it above the mundane and makes for one solid time with the right notes of dark humor. Hats off to ya, Mr. Garris.

Jenifer (2005) (USA/Canada)

⭐️⭐️1/2

Argento is up to bat in the fourth episode from the Masters of Horror series working from a short story by Bruce Jones which appeared in Creepy. Actor Steven Weber tackled the teleplay and stars as detective Frank Spivey. Parked for lunch with his partner, he’s put in the position to save the life of a hot-bodied but severely disfigured woman from the clutches of a seemingly psychopathic homeless man with a cleaver Sympathizing with the woman, Jenifer, he rescues her from the insane asylum where she’s been placed and brings her home. His wife ain’t all that happy about it (rightfully so) and his teenage son is his usual level of indifferent. Frank seems like a putz anyways. Frank’s lustful attraction to her has him slipping into obsession while Jenifer shows she has some disturbing urges. I mean, he watches on as his family leaves following Jenifer’s eating of the family cat. Everything goes to shit soon after when a neighborhood child gets eaten and Frank attempts to plot Jenifer’s kidnapping with the help of a shady carnival owner. The scheme doesn’t work and Frank’s sanity slips further into troublesome waters. Because he’s a dope with a deteriorating common sense, he journeys out to an isolated cabin with the dangerous woman to keep the public safe. Nudity and violence abound as Argento injects some sleazy life into the series with his outing about the ultimate dangers of being a scumbag and falling for the “butter face” from Hell. It’s dumb as fuck and handled with a somber seriousness that makes it feel more clueless than it actually is. The best this series has to offer so far but just barely and that’s not really saying much.

Dance of the Dead (2005) (USA/Canada)

⭐️⭐️

Tobe Hooper works with a Richard Matheson short story turned teleplay by Matheson’s son. It’s the third episode in the already mediocre Masters of Horror series left in the hands of a filmmaker who had seemed to have lost his step. I had a whole lotta respect for the man but at this point things had taken a downturn. The flesh-rotting apocalypse has come and gone and society marches on. Peggy is a teenage girl with a dead little sister and an overprotective mom. Working at her mom’s diner has her meeting a couple of youthful bikers who ride around collecting blood. Love is in the air for Peggy and one of the bikers (Jonathan Tucker… so handsome for a boy) which has her mama’s warning bells going off. The teenager wants to see the world and the biker is ready to show her something exciting. It’s mostly drugs and a little place called The Doom Room is the destination. The Doom Room is the kind of club you’d see in a shitty The Crow knockoff and presided over by Robert Englund who is admittedly having a good time. Loud music, questionable booze, bare breasts and a whole lotta stank… a place I would have absolutely no desire to visit… even at the end of the world. Mr. Englund is making a big fuss over the titular event, something I guess bored weirdos are all about. It’s tazing zombies and it just so happens Peggy’s dead sister is one of them “dancers”. This is probably going to spiral out of control. Ryan McDonald (from the Dual Spires episode of Psych and looking like a knockoff Eddie from Rocky Horror) is having a grand old time playing Tucker’s psychotic partner and the always reliable Marilyn Norry is one convincingly determined mother. It’s a shocking good cast placed in a story that’s at least trying to do something interesting but it also has some issues when it comes to editing techniques and story direction. It also suffers from a severe case of obnoxiousness as the apocalypse brings out some truly idiotic tendencies. So, it’s better than I was expecting but I wasn’t expecting all that much.