I’m Haunted (2022) (Canada)

⭐️⭐️1/2

Smart money says that if one believes their apartment is haunted, the best way to gather evidence is to record a video blog and let your subscribers work along with you to capture the proof needed to calm the nagging notion in the back of your mind that you just may be insane. The hilariously named Genesis Brady is the renter with a suspicion that the supernatural has begun to encroach on her life. Moving doors and poltergeist activity has immediately started up after Genesis had an argument with her mom and a falling out with her friend. Said friend is now harassing her on social media and creeping around her neighborhood. Genesis lets it slip that Blythe has always been into witchcraft and even dragged her along to a séance. Quick cuts catch us up on all the backstory, it’s the two minute mark and we have our protagonists issue presented, a likely suspect to the unfortunate circumstance and the mention of a male friend who is trying to help calm her down. That’s got to be some kind of record of getting to the fucking point… especially in a found footage flick. Blythe apologizes via text and leaves the cryptic message that she wishes she could stop what’s been set in motion but it’s impossible. We haven’t hit three minutes yet. Knocking, phantom voices and dropped temperatures begin to annoy and Genesis contacts a paranormal researcher to help her out with the situation. Dan starts acting weird and bad luck accompanies the paranormal activity. Recordings capture the lamest child ghost clip I’ve seen outside of YouTube and Genesis takes it shockingly well and just decides to fend for herself before the paranormal investigator can help out. Further poor choices are made and the depth of awfulness proves to be far more vast than one motor-mouthed redhead could be expected to deal with. An ability to communicate through knocking answers some questions but also raises a couple more and the investigator warns her that she has a parasite on her hands and she needs to stop communicating immediately. She also doesn’t offer much of anything close to a helpful solution. Elizabeth Chamberlain is fucking delightful if not completely believable but I don’t think anyone was expecting award-winning performances. A shaky performance is forgotten thanks to just how charming she is, presenting a young woman who sprinkles a ridiculous situation with enough bits of reality-based humanity to make the less-likely actions easy to shrug off. So, there’s not much to the haunting aspect for a big chunk of time (it takes the “tell, not show” angle) but luckily all of that time is spent with a protagonist that I fell completely in love with. Your enjoyment is completely dependent on your tolerance for no-budget hutzpah, so plan accordingly.

Kiss Me Quick! (1964) (USA)

aka Dr. Breedlove/Dr. Breedlove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love 

⭐️⭐️1/2

Despite what one may think after viewing this nutso nudie cutie outing, an adult human wrote this script. I was under the impression that an adolescent cocaine addict raised on jerk-off magazines tried their hand at the screenplay but I’ve been told I was wrong. I’m still not completely sold on that. Sterilox is a 612-year-old dimwit with a spaghetti colander on his noggin from the galaxy of (sigh) Buttless. He is given the kind of assignment that only exists in questionable movies and the fantasies of guys who call themselves “alpha”: Go to Earth and find the “perfect specimen” of woman to perpetuate a slave class. His leader believes, and I quote, “these women make ideal servants if you train them properly.” Sterilox meets up with Dr. Breedlove (like Dr. Strangelove but really stupid) who has invented the Sex Machine. What does this Sex Machine do? Well, it makes mostly mute (they do manage to say the film’s title quite often) abducted girls strip naked and undulate. These Go-Go gals have such names as Boobra, Hotty Totty and Gina Catchafanni, so there ain’t much personality beyond swaying mammaries, impressively giant hair and the disturbing realization that they all probably landed the role thanks to their ability to still shake their goods while taking copious amounts of quaaludes. The cheap-ass feel of the whole production has me thinking this is a likely scenario. Breedlove’s sex-starved assistant Kissme has the look of someone whose brain turned off immediately after getting off the bus from Kansas and landing her first and only “acting gig” in a producer’s wood-paneled basement. There’s a few monsters hanging around: a lady mummy named Selfish (she’s all wrapped-up in herself… sigh), a transgender Frankenstein’s monster (she was Fannystein but now he goes by Frankystein… sigh) and cinema’s most pathetic Dracula for reasons I’m not all that sure of. Both misogynistic and naive, Kiss Me Quick! is one incredibly strange and stupid exploitation flick that, despite all odds, manages to entertain when your not rubbing your temples and groaning. Large breasts help at first but then too much of a good thing sets in and you’re begging to get lost in the idiocy of the non-booby parts. Shared lingerie (there’s a budget to consider), dirty uncle jokes circa 1957, the ever-present nudie cutie pasty buttcheeks, pepperoni nipples, library muzak, dad jokes circa 1934 and an abuse of laboratory sound effects will charm and agitate in equal measure. I usually avoid nudie cutie flicks like the plague but if more of them were like this, I’d still avoid them but less like the plague and more like an ex with a short fuse and maybe VD… just get me drunk and we’ll see what happens.

Allegoria (2022) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

Spider One of Powerman 5000 writes and directs a pretentious meditation on art and monsters. I actually hate myself for writing that sentence. I feel gross. Anyways, an opening quote from Vincent Van Gogh (his final one) lets ya know you’ve entered a high-schooler’s idea of edgy. The appearance of John Ennis and some short and sweet opening credits offer some hope. But then things start and you fall into what could kindly be described as well-produced off-off-Broadway garbage. Ennis is an angry theater director forcing his students to “show me the monster”. One girl obliges and transforms into something awful. A moody painter is having trouble finishing his latest piece, which is making his client antsy. He has an existential crisis because of his “art” which leads to immense stomach (?) pain and the appearance of visions involving some Creepshow-reject slicing open the artist’s throat. The horrific thing also inspires great art so whatever. A wiener writing a horror screenplay about a slasher called “The Whistler” deals with his angry inner critic in the form of the killer he created. It gets violent. A date between an awkward guy and an outgoing young woman heads back to the man’s house. They chat, drink wine and get to know each other. She’s a sculptor and she shows him some Polaroids of her admittedly disturbing sculptures. Discussions on the actual meaning of “art” and a chaotic intensity slowly seeping into the conversation eventually leads to the only conclusion it could. Thirty minutes into the film and we finally get a solid outing featuring two likable characters. A crying slasher in an ugly-ass baby mask is the focal point of a slasher film being watched by two chickadees who disagree over the film’s merits. One of the women (the one who dug the movie) is in a band and following a rehearsal they talk about the emotional importance of music.
One idiot is looking into a sequence of notes that can manifest evil. This ties into that first story because the girl’s friend is the one who transformed on stage and her asshole boyfriend was that unlikable artist who encountered that Creepshow antagonist. Six notes later and I’m sure you have already figured out where this is going. If you’re really into dialogue that makes you want to punch people, boy oh boy is this the film for you. There’s a bunch of unlikable people (none of them are bad actors) and minimal surprises. It’s easy on the eyes and they’re all trying so I’m not angry at it. There’s even a couple memorable images to make it feel like you didn’t completely waste your time. Love the poster.

The Amityville Harvest (2020) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

A documentary crew is invited to a historic Long Island manor by the enigmatic proprietor of a local funeral parlor named Vincent Miller. He claims the place has deep ties to the Civil War and will help to shed some light on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The pre-credits murder of a grieving widow lets us know he’s evil as fuck and harnessing some supernatural powers… we learn pretty quickly that he’s a vampire. The smoky-voiced head of the crew, Christina, and her small team set up in the large manor house and are greeted by Miller’s elderly housekeeper who has the acting prowess of driftwood. Thankfully, she’s given a bunch of dialogue. A squiggly black mass of lines starts “evil-talking” to the crew and floating around the place. Vincent requests nobody disturb the basement or his mortician and he also plays the organ after dinner so he’s obviously a real weirdo. Crew members Cosmo and Lexy are actually looking into the case of a missing woman behind the back of Christina. Civil War soldiers with skeleton faces appear and put a bayonet to good use on the sole African American member of the crew… yikes. Vincent proves a tough interview, not because he’s refusing to get in depth on his family history but because technical issues are making it hard to catch his image and voice on camera... which is incredibly frustrating considering he admits that his grandpa was behind the Lincoln assassination and is now the owner of a shit-ton of confederate gold. Other ghosts appear, horrible visions are had, more of the crew die… becoming ghosts themselves, there’s vampires in the basement, there’s also a mad surgeon who moves around like a crackhead evading a debt collector, a young girl may have the worst scream in horror history and Mr. Allen watches from the shadows lookin’ like he’s suffering from severe constipation. A ghost on one of those stair-lift chairs elicited a much-needed belly laugh from me and hopefully does the same for you. A really cute deaf girl out-acts everyone (she’s not a great actor, it’s just an incredibly easy feat) and some silly spookers hang around the house to make it more than a complete waste. Did I expect more from the director behind Big Freaking Rat and The Amityville Moon? Of course I didn’t, you idiot. I may have missed it because the thing did not hold my undivided attention but I don’t think any reference to the Amityville house or town was made.

Hellroller (1992) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The product of the unholy fornication between a video camera and a pile of trash, Hellroller is a garbage epic that entertains with its ineptness as it stretches the viewer’s patience. If you don't mind smelling like a dumpster for the rest of your life, I suggest you jump on in. Eugene is a miserable homeless person, pushed around L.A. by his mother (Mary fuckin’ Woronov billed as Penny Arcade). A quick revelation shows her not to be his mother at all but his aunt who has raised him since his real mother was raped and murdered by horny conjoined twins. This is also the reason he's in a wheelchair, as he was dropped when they started groping his mom/hooker. His aunt is soon robbed, raped and killed by two bums (thankfully off screen) and Eugene loses it. Eugene teams up with a mentally challenged Tennessean named Donald and begins taking his revenge on all the normies he's grown to hate. Their first victim is a gym owner who rudely tossed Eugene out. After that Eugene spots a newscast saying that supermodel Michelle Novak is in town and decides she'll be next. Ms. Novak (Michelle Bauer who would go onto "better" things like Sexercise and Bikini Drive-In) spends an extended amount of time performing an odd mix of aerobics/undressing/stripping before she gets into the bathtub. Eugene and Donald force their way into her hotel room. For some reason Eugene kills Donald when he attacks Michelle but then ends up murdering her anyways. Ok. We're "treated" to another endless scene of a woman dancing and getting naked (this lady being porn star Hyapatia Lee from such classics as One Wife to Give and Saddletramp) before jumping in the shower and getting murdered by the handicapable killer. Twitchy Eugene continues his mutilating and his mental state deteriorates right along with it. He runs into trouble with some sort of “king of the street people” thanks to his actions. He also visits a mad doctor and pays him for a potion to turn all the normals into bums. He succeeds but his actions are about to catch up with him. There's a lot wrong with Hellroller. The handheld camera was obviously operated by a semi-blind person with Parkinson's and a finger constantly tapping the zoom button. Outside of the shocking cameo from Mary Woronov and the always welcome Michelle Bauer, there's not much to recommend in the casting section. Although it really fits the "dump truck in August" vibe permeating the film's loooooong 70ish minutes. Luckily for all us idiots, there's enough zero-budget charm to make the trip worthwhile.

Harry Price: Ghost Hunter (2015) (UK)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Renowned skeptic paranormal investigator and debunker of charlatan clairvoyants, Harry Price, is enlisted to assist a rising MP by the name of Edward Goodman whose wife is claiming to be plagued by the supernatural… causing a bit of a scandal and hindering the aspirations of the government official. The powers-that-be convince a reluctant Price to stay at the Goodwin home and get to the bottom of things. A sensible housemaid and opportunistic journalist are also hanging around and Mr. Price moves into the house to untangle the mystery of Mrs. Goodman’s affliction. The place was formerly a workhouse where a youngster was murdered and it’s expected the child may be the ghost tormenting the woman. But there’s also some skeletons in the Goodwin closet, which could also explain the recent unpleasantness. Harry’s got his own baggage and he’s running out of time to spare the troubled woman from the horrific fate that is enrollment in a sanitarium. Deliberately paced and somewhat intriguing look at the very real man who has been given a bit of a mythological status amongst ghost hunters. Rafe Spall is excellent as the haunted man trying to suss out the truth he knows to be hidden under psychological distress and lies. Things even manage to get a little spooky in some points, not something I was expecting at all.

Dogman Territory: Werewolves in the Land Between the Lakes (2024) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Internet rumors and supposed cover-ups have mixed well with firsthand accounts of an American monster roaming the wilds where few people tread. The Land Between the Lakes is a National Recreation Area almost completely untouched by the hands of man. Kinda. I mean, there’s abandoned settlements, forsaken campgrounds and the like (the government threw up their eminent domain middle finger and kicked a lot of inhabitants out of the place decades ago), but for the most part, it’s unspoiled land located on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee. It’s 171,280 acres of the closest you can get to primeval forest in these southern United States. Of course the legends run rampant, the most popular one being a 1980’s massacre of a camping family by these dogmen. There’s no proof that it happened and with nothing to substantiate this attack, folks point to a government cover-up. So now a couple of researchers are in the area jumping to conclusions whilst sharing the tragic history of the area. It’s not just werewolves (or whatever the hell these dogmen are), there’s also ghost lights, shadow people, phantom voices, Sasquatch… the usual. Our investigators Aaron Deese and Shannon Legro do their best to sift through the lore, the lies and the facts to the best of their ability. It’s an interesting time if you’re willing to shut up that logic point in your brain. They’re also way more levelheaded than most of these folks who go rummaging through the woods on the hunt for threads that probably lead nowhere. That’s usually the case for these docs released from Small Town Monsters (that’s a good thing, I like their production style… very little eye-rolling from me when it comes to their team… can’t say the same for some of the folks they interview). They touch on the idea of them being a supernatural entity that’s more akin to demonic than anything existing in the natural world and just dimensionally conversing… which is a good way to explain away why they have gone unfound for so long… if you can buy into any metaphysical bullshit. That’s up to you. They also briefly mention the idea of government black ops which I really wish they spent more time on but not because I think that’s close to the mark, I just think it would be hilarious watching folks explain why dog/human hybrids are the ultimate government killing machines. Former law enforcement officer Martin Groves gets a lot of time and comes across as a solid witness with one hell of an unbelievable story… I’ve read both his books and like the man, so it was nice putting a face to the storyteller. Listen… I’m not saying that dogmen exist, a basic knowledge of biology and physiology makes it a little bit more than difficult for me to wrap my head around that but what I am saying is; if dogmen exist, I think the best spot to go looking for them would be in the LBL.

Girl Hell 1999 (1999) (Japan)

aka Injure Rape Murder Film 

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Fucked up Japanese sleaze offers up nihilism and very little else. A pleasant young girl named Misaki quietly moves through a life that does nothing but shit on her. She has one “friend” who fucks gross men for money and sells them the tissues she uses to clean up afterwards. Her sister was crippled and disfigured in an awful accident and now she comes home most days to her horrid father raping the poor bandaged-up invalid. Her only reprieve seems to come through her friendship with a mentally ill homeless woman who breastfeeds a doll. There’s also two violent rapists wandering around. They beat the homeless woman with a baseball bat and rape her, afterwards they head over to our heroine’s house. She’s not there, she’s in the back of a car with a well-off gentleman who likes to drink piss and wants her to supply him with some liquid gold (not oil), so they kill her dad and double team her sister in the shower. Misaki comes home after rebuffing the piss-drinking deviant and finds the aftermath of the little visit from the duo of rapists. Running out of the house, she passes out into the arms of the man she just told to (politely) fuck off. Of course she wakes up bound and gagged in the back of his car. He gets what he wants and lets her go, wandering and mentally broken, she runs into the two rapists but she’s too far gone to care. Nauseating hell on earth is a bit hard to sit through but that’s kind of the point. The blood flows, the bad feelings stick like a fat man’s underpants in August and it all ends with a baseball bat decapitation. A mean little film that gives very little fucks about you or your loved ones.

The Hoot Owl (2022) (USA)

⭐️⭐️1/2

An abandoned estate in the woods of East Texas isn’t as empty as believed and this spells some fatal danger for a group of friends trespassing on the location. Well, Scott has actually purchased the place for he and his wife and he has a legal claim to ownership but that means very little to the deranged skull-masked psychopath and his feral sister/lover (definitely a dude) who call the spot home. As charming as the wood-paneled walls may be, the fact that the Gibbons family left everything behind is a little unsettling and the discarded children’s room is as creepy as any discarded children’s room should be. As the quartet of young folks explore the room, some heavy-breathing POV watches from outside… not good. Pot gets smoked, scotch gets drunk and it all takes place in a charmingly lame-ass party montage. The next day a couple workers show up to help with some major repairs and Scott shares the house’s troubling history. The unsolved murder of the mom and dad was particularly gruesome and followed a few years after their twin children vanished in the woods. There’s plenty of chilling and heart-to-hearts before anything of interest but luckily the filmmakers knew that it’s way better to spend time with people that actually like each other as opposed to the usual group of friends that can’t seem to stand each other. There’s also an incredibly lame-ass “fashion show” montage involving our two female protagonists. So if that’s your thing… mazel tov! With a little less than twenty minutes left in the movie, the silly lookin’ killer finally makes his move and some gnarly practical splatter follows. It’s got a great amateur vibe that may be lame as hell in its opening acts but its brief dip into splattery lunacy leads to some wet murders and a very stupid but disgustingly presented labor. It really shouldn’t have, but it somehow worked for me.

Condemned to Live (1935) (USA)

aka Life Sentence 

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Blood-drained victims are being discovered in a seaside cave, sending a small town into a tizzy and believing a giant bat to be the culprit. The benevolent, well-respected and depended upon Professor Paul Kristan advises everyone to stay indoors at night but unbeknownst to the poor man, he’s actually the fiend behind the slayings. Thanks to his mama being bit by a vampire bat while she was pregnant with him (hiding in an African cave will allow that to happen), the man transforms into a bloodsucker. His loyal hunchbacked servant Zan covers for him by providing alibis and dragging the corpses of his victims to the caves. This puts a hamper on Paul’s engagement to the gorgeous Marguerite who idolizes the man but may not actually love him. This is good news for a local boy named David who has the hots for his childhood friend and is the first to suspect that a nefarious fiend is using a wild animal as a ruse to commit his heinous crimes. Paul’s foster father Dr. Anders Bizet responds to his son’s news of his betrothal and is caught up on the town drama and Paul’s reoccurring headaches which happen to coincide with the deaths. Dr. Bizet, knowing Paul’s past, is unsettled by the news of the villagers suspecting a vampire bat. Bizet also catches on to Marguerite’s hero worship of Paul and how she may be confusing her emotions and not actually be in love with the man. Paul goes to talk with her that night but transforms on his way, he attacks her maid when he arrives but runs off when her scream attracts the household staff and his fiancée. Dr. Bizet discovers Zan and a near unconscious Paul after he chased after his adopted son and they head back to Marguerite’s house. One of the servants lets them know he saw a figure run off into the night and now everyone believes there’s a human behind the unpleasantness. Seems like something superstitious townsfolk could easily blame on a disfigured man… poor Zan. It all ends with a “heroic” suicide followed by another suicide which isn’t all that “heroic”. It’s a creaky old time with a monster that requires minor facial contortions and very little else but I have fond memories of staying up late and watching this on PBS after Wild Chicago, so you can consider the rose-tinted glasses sitting snuggly on my stupid face.

The Communion Girl (2022) (Spain)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

In the close-knit Spanish province of Tarrgona, newcomer Sara has made friends with outgoing Rebe but not much headway elsewhere with her outsider status. Her home life is awkward as well, her parents seem to be in debt to her snooty aunt (forcing Sara to deal with her shitty cousin) and her little sister (who just celebrated her first communion) is having a rough time acclimating to her new home. She seems especially upset that her communion gift was a rosary instead of a doll that all the other girls got. Not that she’s a wilting flower or anything, she’s just as into fun as the more chaotic Rebe and a night out clubbing goes just as well as it could in the late eighties when you’re mixing drugs, booze and diminishing inhibitions. After they get ditched at the club by the dude that drove them there, they end up hitchhiking and jumping in the car of a seedy drug dealer and his buddy who Sara has the hots for. They drive off into the woods because the creepy drug dealer Chivo wants to party more and as the four argue, they almost hit a young girl wandering around where she shouldn’t be in her communion dress. The guys didn’t see anything but Sara knows what she saw so she runs out of the car to look for the girl. Forcing the others to follow. Sara doesn’t find her but she does manage to find a dog hanging from a tree and an old communion doll lying under it. It freaks Pedrito out and they all decide to get the hell out of the woods, but Sara grabs the doll before they make their exit. It’s a fatal mistake. Sara grows ill and some troubling skin condition forms and spreads. Rebe enlightens Sara to the urban legend about the curse concerning the communion doll and tells her to just forget about it. Sara can’t, and goes to speak with the town’s priest about the girl she saw last night and shows him the doll she discovered as proof. The father seems disturbed but tight-lipped about it and sends her away. Paranormal activity slowly builds around Sara and the creepy-ass rotting ghost of the girl in a communion dress is seemingly trying to tell her something involving a well and drowning. But it’s a ghost, so nothing can be revealed outright. Why are spirits so convoluted about everything? Sara thinks she may be going insane, her father thinks she’s on drugs and her mother is just trying to keep things calm. Rebe reveals she has the same skin condition as Sara and they blame the drugs they took initially but eventually have to accept that things have gotten very weird and very dangerous. Secrets come to light as the desperate group attempt to figure out why there’s a supernatural force after them and how to break the curse before they end up dead as disco. You’ve seen it all before (mostly in the slurry of J-horror that followed in the wake of Ringu’s success) but it is aided by the incredibly likable turn from Aina Quiñones as Rebe (I think the filmmakers recognized this too because she is way more fleshed out than the kinda likable but mostly irritating lead, Sara) and a memorable supernatural threat that looks exactly like you’d expect the restless ghost of a water-logged girl to look.

Alien 2: On Earth (1980) (Italy)

aka Alien Terror/Strangers

⭐️⭐️

Thelma is a mildly attractive spelunking enthusiast with psychic powers… no, I’m not having a stroke… and these powers would explain why she zones out during an interview at a local news station. A zoned out guest, holding her head in pain doesn’t lead to good television and the program is cut short as Thelma looks on like me whenever someone attempts to talk politics. The psychic occurrence is sparked by a returning space capsule. A returning space capsule that is found to be worryingly empty. That’ll be important for later. Trust me. So, following the disastrous interview, Thelma, her boyfriend (and lost Gibb brother) Roy and her gang of friends who could not be any more “Italian Horror Film Group Of Youngsters” head out for their weekend cave-diving trip. You don’t have to be a psychic to be a spelunking enthusiast, apparently. They make a couple stops along the way. Stop one is a beach so one of their number can pick up some candles he ordered from Italy (I too buy all my Italian candles from beachfront stores) but this is mostly done so Thelma can have another episode while she walks along the beach, managing to freak out a mother sunbathing as her daughter plays in the water. The gang leaves and the little girl discovers a strange looking rock that’s breathing… something I don’t believe rocks should be doing. Soon after, mother comes across her daughter sitting perfectly still and lightly whimpering. Sounding like she may have slightly scrapped her knee or something, the mother is quite shocked to find her daughter’s face torn off. Impressive pain endurance on this child, I’ll tell you that much. We leave old hamburger face to get back with our group of spelunking goobers. They stop at a general store to grab some supplies and change into their gear, it’s also where the candle-buying dork, Burt, finds another strange rock and hands it off to Thelma who throws it in her backpack. That’ll be important later. Now, I’ve never dived a cave or shimmied my way in between rocks under the earth so I have no interest in spelunking. The filmmakers obviously had a major interest in this hobby because they spend an inordinate amount of time feasting on the details of cave exploration. It may be a blast to take part in but trust me when I say that watching minimally attractive Italian people take part in the experience like it’s far more interesting than slimy alien-rock-things mutilating Italian flesh is an ass-numbing experience. My ass being thoroughly numbed, the rock boogers finally attack (never place a pulsating alien that looks like a rock in your travel bag) after what feels like nearly ten hours of spelunking. Thank the spaghetti nightmare gods they do away with these derps in an excessively messy way. After thinning the heard, Thelma (whose psychic abilities have proven to be beneficial just not at all to her dead friends) and Gus escape the caves and run to the safest place in the world… a bowling alley. Wait. These fucking dopes. The lack of populace should have been a dead giveaway that something has gone wrong and when a fully formed alien creature shows itself, we get the vibe that earth may be doomed. There are aspects of this film that are trash bliss but man does this movie not give two fucks about keeping you interested when it’s not wallowing in its more exploitative elements. Bowling, suiting up for cave exploration, cave exploration, waiting for people and a form of conversing with friends that feels like cut and pasted bits of dialogue from several scripts that have nothing to do with each other may just fry your brain before having the chance to appreciate the fun stuff. I pity anyone who actually had so little going on in their cranium that they went into this thinking it was actually a sequel to Ridley Scott’s masterpiece. Bring a blanket, get some sleep… you’re going to get some sleep before the alien gullet POV (maybe it’s the creature’s butthole? I don’t know the physiology) climax leads to the usual “Fuck you for watching” denouement.

Satan War (1979) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

This review/rambling reflects the original 64 minute cut

It’s Amityville but on the kind of budget that either produces charming and cheap trash goodness or unwatchable awkwardness like a blind virgin fumbling around with an inexperienced and sociopathic prostitute. Flip the coin, roll the dice and call your mama for advice because regional no-budget horror is a game only for the adventurous. After opening credits set to tribal drum beats (sending my head to fuzzy memories of Fulci’s Zombi 2) and synth abuse, a narrator warns us that the film we are about to watch is based on true events in “the world of the supernatural”. He also lets us know that the order and sequence of events has been changed for dramatic effect. Glad there’s no bullshitting here. More talk about Satanic cults, God worshippers and angels of darkness. That brings us to Louise and Bill Foster moving into a three-bedroom home following their recent marriage. The narrator continues that the purchase price was reasonable… TOO REASONABLE! Louise starts narrating and I already dislike her. She and Bill have their first big argument immediately… I’m talking as they’re moving shit in. Foreboding music plays as they make up through talk of coffee and Louise hangs a cross on the wall. Bill smokes a cigarette, Louise unpacks in the kitchen so she can make coffee and the cross supernaturally turns upside down. GASP! This scene takes much longer than it should but it does allow Bill the chance to smoke another cigarette. The couple enjoys their coffee and Louise notices the cross ain’t sitting right but a knock on the door draws their attention away from things. There’s nobody at the door. GASP! Well, Louise rehangs the cross, Bill chases the phantom door knocker and slime (maybe a thick pudding) oozes from the stove. Bill blames his wife for the slimy and stinky mess in the kitchen. Bill investigates an outside noise and a chair lazily attacks Louise. This terrifies her to no end… or she may just be really constipated. Anything is possible in the war with evil. Noises in the dark, shadows in the shadows and some atrocious lighting really hammers home the fact that you can’t see shit and wouldn’t know anything spooky were happening if it wasn’t for the oppressive score. We also get our protagonists/idiots arguing a bunch and laying on dramatics with all the skill of a mannequin recently granted life with the catch of having to deal with a brain injury. Morning coffee makes itself (Does this war with Satan know no bounds?!) and phantom fingers run through the wife’s hair and grope her as she does the dishes. She has a fit or she may just be severely constipated. Flip a coin. More slime (thick toothpaste?) appears, things get odorous, Bill smokes, Louise portrays distress with all the subtlety of a sentient sledgehammer attacking a room of glass ornaments, an off-putting chat on the beach between the married couple leads to them realizing they need to call in a “ghost chaser” (they also crack jokes about the spooky molestation), demon rape (whilst Bill smokes in the living room), spontaneous newspaper combustion, paranormal thunder, they’re told they need to leave immediately (yeah, that’ll happen) by a blonde psychic who also warns them of the house’s awful history before fleeing the place due to its evil (this is done after a walkthrough of the place that will put anyone who is the slightest bit tired right to sleep) and finally Bill decides to do his own damn exorcism while Louise takes a bath. It comes to a close with a black-robed and knife-wielding figure appearing and the man of the house firing his gun in a pitch black kitchen at random spots. Amazingly, Louise doesn’t take a stray bullet to the dome. The heroes flee into the night and the narrator lets us know they left their dream home and never returned. Wow. What a thrilling climax. If the effects of opium tried its hand at directing The Amityville Horror utilizing nothing but people who lied on their résumés about acting experience, production notes from a particularly tired Andy Milligan and the special effects team behind Maury Shankleman’s Bar Mitzvah video something like Satan War would be the end result. That’s a long-winded way of me saying this thing is a completely boring yet hypnotically alluring slice of no-budget horror.

Ouija Blood Ritual (2020) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Three likable filmmakers produce a web series debunking internet urban legends and spooky rituals. They find some Internet video involving a group of drunk kids attempting to summon some Slenderman-adjacent boogeyman called The Closet Man. They decide it would make for some good social media and creep it up by using a walk-in freezer at an abandoned insane asylum as their summoning closet. Since the opening notice tells us the Tacoma police provided the footage we know it unfortunately worked. Your standard found footage hijinks are livened up by an imposing creeper, some interesting folklore and some well-choreographed scares.

Intensive Care (1991) (Netherlands)

⭐️⭐️

A grouchy surgeon (the grouchiest of gentlemen, George Kennedy) storms out of a surgery when his colleague dares to question his mistake. He stabs his patient a couple times before telling his colleague to do it himself. He then learns that his medical research grant has gone through but the board is denying it because they are concerned about the doctor’s morals. He replays this argument with the head of the board as he drives off and conveniently explains his brain transplant for coma patients studies through inner monologue before getting into a nasty car accident. Seven years pass and the now hideously disfigured Dr. Bruckner is still in a coma at the very hospital he caused so many problems at. Orderlies place clown masks on the coma ward and talk shit about Bruckner who wakes up and is pretty pissed, breaking the neck of a poor nurse just doing her rounds. The vastly unlikable Peter (one of those awful orderlies) heads home to act like a complete shit to his parents and have a boring New Year’s Eve. His father notices that his driver’s seat headrest has been cut by something very sharp, Peter denies doing it and the stalking POV points in the direction of the doctor following the young dope home. Old ugly mug begins murdering folks in the well-off neighborhood. The incredibly cute girl next door Amy (Nada van Nie) is the focus of Peter’s smug affection and he’s happy to see (spy) that she and her boyfriend are having a rough patch. He attempts to seduce her with his saxophone when he invites himself over. As most Dutch youngsters are known to do, they play music together along with her little brother. The sax, bass and piano trio perform some elevator music and the pouting boyfriend heads back to the family home where his parents were just slaughtered. He eats some chicken and then heads back to Amy’s to catch her smooching with Peter for reasons I can’t fathom… he’s honestly the fuckin’ worst and I have a bad feeling they’re setting up his ass to be the hero. Fortunately, Peter gets sliced up by the killer who is hiding in his closet, regrettably the deadly doctor gets distracted by a news report on himself and Peter manages to survive. Fuck. I ask for one fucking thing. Amy throws on a comfy sweater and attempts to survive into the new year. A lazy slasher plot is given life by a parade of characters with a true dearth of intelligence and a seriously slumming George Kennedy barely shows up to a laughable degree. It’s almost impressive just how unlikable the hero is but that washes out because in the end that only means we have to spend so much time with him as he scumbags his way through the movie, sucking all of the charm and good graces out of any screen time he abuses. Wretched pacing also has this bad boy feeling longer than it runs. At least Amy is cute, some of the splatter is graphic, the brain-damaged psycho surgeon is pretty goofy looking and the fireworks-heavy demise of the villain is suitably stupid. Seriously, fuck you Peter. I wish you were dead.

Tales from the Quadead Zone (1987) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Shirley L. Jones (our hero from Black Devil Doll) reads from a book to her dead son Bobby… we know he’s a ghost because of the floating cup and mom’s loving chatter. He also whispers sweet nothings as a breeze blows in mommy’s face. Bobby provides the titular book for his mother to read to him. The first story involves a large poor family sitting around the dinner table in a cramped room, chatting away until father rings a bell and everyone shuts the fuck up. The family is eight-strong but the table is set with only four bologna sandwiches. Instead of splitting what they can, the group races to grab the sandwiches when papa rings the bell again. Suddenly, the date July 16 pops up the screen. The dinner situation happens again and the stinkiest-lookin’ of the family grabs a gun and takes out some family members. This is greeted with lethargy as now there’s enough food for all. A cameo from a plastic Kool-Aid pitcher that my family had growing up is the standout. July 17, the stinky man growls while papa prays and then we’re shown text about the deaths or current living situation of the family members. Wow. What a yarn! Bobby seems to have enjoyed it, if his nonsensical whispers are any indication. The next story is about two brothers. One of them dies and the other breaks into the funeral home after hours to steal the body. The living brother drinks champagne out of a mug that’s fashioned to look like a breast… it’s his favorite glass. With tit glass in hand, Fred pisses and moans at the corpse of his brother about how shitty he was while he was alive. He even admits he had planned on poisoning him before he up and had a heart attack days before he could commence with his poisoning. Now, he plans on not letting his sibling rest in peace so he paints him and dresses him like a clown for his basement burial… sure, it may sound like a dumb idea but it seems to make Fred happy. He laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs while he goes about digging a hole in his basement. Welp, the clownified corpse wakes up, sporting an indecipherable distorted voice that sounds a lot like an RFK jr robot and a goal to take out his living brother. A basement showdown ends in pitchfork violence. Shirley L. Jones lets her ghost child know she needs to change her glasses because they’re giving her a headache but before she can start up another story, her boyfriend arrives. She warns Bobby to be quiet so Daryl doesn’t get upset. Well, Daryl gets upset anyways when he finds the book his lady was reading from. He’s had enough and starts beating her but she fights back and the scuffle travels from the carpeted living room to the kitchen where Daryl gets stabbed and takes forever to fucking die. Bobby even gets bored and leaves for the comfort of a bedroom. The police arrive and mom sits on the toilet while she daydreams about playing with her son while he was still walking this earth before cutting her own throat. The police probably shouldn’t have let her go to the bathroom but they are dressed like uncles at a Sunday barbecue so maybe their heads just weren’t in it. The ghosts of mom and son reunite and all is well. We’re promised Tales from the Quadead Zone will return and, sadly, I am still waiting. The dream of sanity floats just outside the viewers grasp as Chicago’s very own Chester N Turner follows up the lunatic Black Devil Doll from Hell with an anthology populating the same camcorder gutter. An opening title track sung by the offspring of a banshee and a cat in heat along with the lost soul of Buster Poindexter if he had taken a throat punch from Brian Cage rambles over hand drawn illustrations of horror. This grips us by the collar and drags us through the looking glass into the dimension of backyard opus Turner calls home. It may look like Chicago’s forgotten areas but it’s not, it’s a dreamscape where other dreams go to get treated for schizophrenia. Boring, fascinating, an abyss of imagination and zero-budget sincerity… it’s all of these things and I wouldn’t change it for all the world. Lovingly dedicated to Chester N Turner Sr, I know he was proud.

The Doll Fucking Movie (2017) (Poland)

NO STARS FOR YOU! 

Some Polish wanker spends his days doing horrible things to dolls and corpses when he’s not jerking off to those Best Gore mixtapes that your standard depressed edgelord consumes. There’s no audio, just the hypnotic hum of tape static and that little voice in your head constantly asking what you’ve done with your life to be sitting here and watching this bullshit. At least there’s some truth in advertising. Unless you’re really into watching a sad Polish weirdo lick his own man-milk and shove a crucifix up his butthole, I don’t see how you’ll get anything out of these forty minutes that feel like fourteen hours. This isn’t entertainment. This isn’t art. This isn’t transgressive cinema. This is nothing but a hack mistaking deviancy for a message or a perverted con man who just made some curious folks watch him masturbate into a doll’s head and piss on a Bible… oh fuck, that son of a bitch!

The Cyclops (1957) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bruce Barton’s plane crashes in a remote area of Mexico and he goes missing. His fiancée Susan mounts an expedition a few years later (no, she’s not lazy and unconcerned, it just took her a bit to get shit together) to find her vanished husband-to-be. The area where the plane went down is supposed to be rich in uranium, so she’s able to get her search partially funded by wealthy Martin Melville (fuckin’ Lon Chaney JR). Along with a disgraced pilot and a bacteriologist/friend, the four set out to the area and, of course, an emergency landing is necessary. The place is radioactive as all hell and this has had a dangerous effect on local creatures and the disfigured missing man. They’re all big as fuck and not at all happy about the tiny folks trespassing in their territory. Melville is prone to panic and causes a bunch of problems as he freaks out and puts everyone in danger. He’s a lot like me in that aspect, except he has money so people have to continue to put up with him. Monstrous howls let the group know they’re in dangerous territory and Susan refuses to believe her beloved is gone for good. When the colossal animals show up, safety is called into question but Susan insists on continuing the search. They finally find the ugly-ass beau and he too is giant. Half his face melted so now he’s rocking one eye and a mixture of radiation poisoning and brain damage has made him one temperamental man-mountain. Susan is in denial that the monster is her missing Bruce but she’ll need to accept the awfulness if she and her group want to leave the Mexican valley alive. Mr. BIG, Bert I. Gordon, does what he does best and throws giant monsters at unfortunate humans. No stop motion to be seen, just some corny back projection has me right at home and loving every minute. Also wonderful to watch Chaney cutting loose and losing his cool as things spiral out of control. Just a fun time.

Revenge in the House of Usher (1983) (Spain/France)

aka Neurosis: the Fall of the House of Usher 

⭐️⭐️1/2

Rambling Franco flick serves as a loose adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher with some characters from Bram Stoker’s Dracula thrown in and disguised as a sequel to Franco’s classic The Awful Dr. Orlof. Howard Vernon “reprises” his role as the doctor but is now named Eric Usher. The good doctor is going insane and seeing ghosts wandering around his crumbling castle. Even as his mind mirrors the deterioration of his home, he continues attempting to cure his comatose daughter Melissa. He’s doing this by performing blood transfusions from unwilling young women. With the help of his loyal servants, including the deformed Morpho, he’s keeping women prisoner in his dungeon. The bearded Dr. Harker arrives at the castle, after being summoned by his former professor Usher, to find his teacher the worse for wear. He confesses his crimes to the young man (utilizing plenty of footage from The Awful Dr. Orlof) and claims that the spirits of his victims are haunting him. He’s told by the local doctor not to take anything Usher says seriously but Harker still has his suspicions about the good doctor. Dream and reality are given the loosest of ground to stand on and nothing can really be trusted. Vampires, ghosts and the super sexy Lina Romay all wander around lost in this mess of a film but it is a Franco flick so it’s still a better mess than most shit-heaps.

Ballad in Blood (2016) (Italy)

aka The Inferno

1/2

On the (very early) morning after an intense Halloween party that looks like the exact opposite of any party I’d ever want to attend, a buck-naked dude walks into a bathroom to piss. He tells a black cat to go fuck itself and then steps on broken glass. Limping his way over to the room where two folks are having the kind of unconvincing sex people have been having in Euro-horror films for decades, he complains of his current issue and demands someone get him a rag. The man throws up on the woman riding him and the sex expectedly ends. The girl runs off to shower. Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen. The trio of (maybe) humans carry on like it’s their first day on Earth but that may have something to do with English being a second language to these folks. I don’t think it changes the fact that they’re all idiots. As the guy pulls the glass out of his foot, he notices a naked corpse on the skylight. Her topless body soon falls through when the glass breaks. Now they’re all wondering just what the fuck happened to this “girl”. Lenka (having successfully showered off her man’s vomit) recognizes her as her friend Elizabeth. Everyone argues and may have brain damage. We jump back in time to piece together the story and find out what the hell just happened… in between the present where the unlikable dinks wander around acting like morons. Drug dealer Duke and his very drunk friend leave Lenka with the corpse to make a drug deal with a gang of roving goths who they rob when their leader claims he needs some leeway on paying. They then walk off and Duke spits some rhymes before hitting the bar run by the very drunk guy’s midget landlord. He demands the rent and the two leave. The most non-threatening gang of goths return, having followed the duo and run off, satisfied with knowing where they live. Lenka is missing but there’s blood on the bedsheets and most of the damage has been cleaned up. They find her smoking dope and listening to music in an “antique bathroom” that’s in the apartment. The overflowing water in the bathtub contains the corpse of her friend. This upsets Duke for no discernible reason and he tries to drown Lenka. The next scene has the dudes goofing around in the bathtub while Lenka blow dries the corpses hair. Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen. Elizabeth was a vlogger, so they begin to go through her footage to get to the bottom of things but it’s a whole lot of dumb fucking hijinks and nudity. There will be more death, racism, sweat, sex on the opposite end of erotic and character actions that make no god damn sense. The reveal is somehow worse and dumber than even I was expecting. Of course there’s still plenty of time left for things to get even more daft. If this film had come out a decade later, I’d swear an AI program was responsible for the script. Instead we have to point the finger at fuckin’ Ruggero Deodato and whatever dinks he was working along with on this inept screenplay. Some unintentional laughs save it from the lowest pit of genre damnation but it is dangling right on the fucking edge.

Molt (2025) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

A freelance journalist falls down a rabbit hole thanks to an internet theory concerning a sinister and unseen force working against humanity. His paranoia causes concern and, ignoring his roommates protests, he joins up with a questionable parapsychologist who has no problem feeding our hero’s delusions… but are they delusions? A pandemic (not that one) rips through the world and Kevin (a very good Mychal Thompson) is pulling at the thread wrapped around a mysterious hooded figure that keeps popping up with a connection to the unknown virus currently causing all sorts of problems. Dr. Lin (Diana Lu) agrees with the odd theory and thinks this hooded figure, named Serpentes, needs to be exposed and eliminated. Kevin’s roommate Grumps (Tony Bartele) thinks they need to listen to the scientific community and not obsess over conspiracies. The discovery of a possible appearance of Serpentes in a photograph of his mother who died during childbirth has Kevin thinking there’s a larger conspiracy in the works than previously believed and Dr. Lin encourages that he keep digging. When the voice of reason in Kevin’s life gets sick after touching a large package with mysterious scratch marks on it, the journalist is sort of abandoned to the echo chamber of mistrust and humanities inclination to point the finger of blame at anywhere but themselves. A grounded (necessitated by budget but in the hands of an expert team, so it doesn’t matter) conspiracy thriller plays like a small-scale version of that 70’s heyday entertainment.
The small cast is excellent and Ari Briskman plays everything out in a surprisingly compelling way. Of course, it may just be the protagonist’s delusions made corporal and you can read it all as a meditation on fear, helplessness and the madness it causes. Impressive even if the ending comes off as a bit corny.

The Mummy: Reckoning (2026) (UK)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Those occult-obsessed Ratzis were at it again! As the Second World War drew to a close, immortality was attempted at the hands of everyone’s least favorite Germans by using the burial rites of the ancient Egyptians. Well, they unleashed a mummified hell upon themselves that did not discern between victims and even the Ratzi running the program realized the world-ending implications of what he had unleashed. The dawn of a supernatural extinction had this bastard attempt to put a stop to things. Of course, this means evil was contained in a convenient relic and, of course, this means that in the present a team of treasure hunters come across the old box and unleash said evil. A rich prick is fronting the bill and has put his unloved son in charge of the operation but has picked the team for his offspring and the young man ain’t all that happy about putting up with the group of people he doesn’t know. Lord Enfield believes there’s Nazi gold to be discovered but he also may know more than he’s letting on. A YouTube military history expert who annoys and a couple archaeology interns make up the team going through the recently declassified fort filled with WW2 relics. The priest minding the fort’s chapel lets the team leader know that the last priest there went mad, claiming to see and hear horrible things within the fort as the past clashed with the present and the cheapjack (lovely) mummy revealed itself. Jasper Enfield is disturbed by this story of the haunting but carries on with his work and explores deeper into the fort. Psychic flashes of the fort’s past visit the team and hint at the darkness waiting to be unleashed, eventually that evil gets freed from a hidden chamber and a cranium-destroying mummy runs around causing a problem for our heroes outside of the clashing egos between the YouTube dope and the wiener rich kid running the operation. The priest and a scuzzy hired gun are also working against things trying to get their hands on the mythical weapon and the aforementioned gold. Possession, head ripping, hieroglyphs, a convenient journal explaining everything and a score that’s doing its best to add a Carpenter vibe to the movie just further endear. A solid cast adds some proper spice to the B-Movie shenanigans that combines the well-known occult activities of Nazi assholes and a fuckin’ mummy that the film is not shy about showing. This all leaves me in the kind of monster movie nirvana that makes it easier to look the other way at the budget issues the production could not avoid. I’m a sucker for mummy movies thanks to my Mummy and this one was a good time that I may have gotten more mileage out of than most people will.

Bloody Pit of Horror (1965) (Italy)

aka The Castle of Artena/Some Virgins for the Hangman/The Crimson Executioner/A Tale of Torture/The Scarlet Hangman/The Life and Times of Larry Artz 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Rick is in Italy looking for a location to shoot some photos for his horror photo-novel. He, his publisher and his bevy of models come across the perfect spot but the thought-to-be abandoned castle turns out to be occupied by a former actor named Travis Anderson and his beefcake servants. He’s not happy that this mildly attractive group of folks have trespassed but he decides to let them spend the night. Guess whose castle the group of idiots have set up in. Travis warns Rick and company they can use any room to shoot except for the dungeon. Of course, this is the exact location Rick needs and, because he’s a horrible guest, he decides to do whatever the hell he wants. This does not end well. The opening has us witness the execution of a 17th century sadist by the name of The Crimson Executioner within his own iron-maiden-like contraption. Of course, he vows revenge. A tableaux using one of the old torture devices ends in what seems to be the accidental death of a model but suspicions rise when it looks like a rope has been cut. While the publisher offers triple pay to the lethargically upset models, a couple that went off to get their hanky-panky on meet the muscular madman rocking a mask, red hood and no shirt. Looking more like a luchador and less like a 17th century maniac. Travis seems to have a bit of an obsessive thing for one of the ladies (sure, buddy) and we see Travis is also obsessed with himself. “Mankind is made up of inferior creatures, spiritually and physically deformed, who would've corrupted the harmony of my perfect body.” As shit hits the fan, everyone acts like they can’t really be bothered to concern themselves. Rick snoops around and Edith (said lady that caught our meaty man-monster’s eye) let’s him know she was once engaged to said meaty man-monster but he was a little off his rocker and eventually vanished. The night marches on and death greets most of the dummies by the loony hands of the buff beast. There’s the ridiculous death of one of the models via a spiderweb-ish trap involving arrows and a mechanical spider with poison in its claws, enough homoeroticism to make you question your Catholic upbringing, the kind of performances you get when you pay your actors in quaaludes and those damn psychotronic vibes you can’t replicate. They just don’t make ‘em like this anymore, and they rarely made ‘em like this at the time.

Kill Her Goats (2023) (USA)

⭐️⭐️

It’s nothing but boredom, bewbs and butt-cheeks when college grad Audra gets her dream home in Cape Cod as a graduation gift but that dream ends up being a nightmare when an uninvited guest (maybe guests) pays a visit during her tiny homecoming gathering. The remote place was once in the ownership of the prominent New England Tupp family. They made their fortune from fur trading and whaling but as the years went on they met with misfortune and eventually disappeared. That definitely has something to do with the large woodsman (Kane Hodder himself) wandering the surrounding forest, wearing a goat head and using a hedge trimmer to violently dispatch trespassing idiots. This brings our attractive but vapid characters into mortal danger. When your cast consists of OnlyFans models you’ll be able to get some T&A on display but the acting prowess isn’t exactly impressive. I have no problem with making money in sex work, if I were attractive it’s how I’d be surviving but dialogue and comedy fails in the hands of folks who usually just thank their supporters and spread their buttholes. I’m actually not sure if these are OnlyFans models… I just assumed. There’s plenty of boobs, a few bums, wet violence and Kane Hodder got a paycheck (which I will never complain about) but you don’t really give a damn about the characters and the drawn out scenes kill any hope of professional pacing the upscale production had you thinking may exist. There’s a dream involving a chick in skimpy underwear wandering around a foggy graveyard (THAT’S GOOD!), the emoting ability of a pond pebble (THAT’S BAD!) and a goat-headed dude with a Darth Maul-ish hedge trimmer (THAT’S GOOD!) but he doesn’t become a major threat until about an hour in (THAT’S BAD!). The limited amount of cannon fodder also deters from the film doing what it does best. It’s a braindead, lazy slasher flick that is admittedly easy on the eyes but not worth the nearly 100 minutes it takes to tell its story… but at least the ending is dumb as fuck.

Red Eyes (1994) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Somewhere buried in the backyards of Wisconsin is a bundle of bones. How many bundles? I can’t say for sure, but I know these remnants of what I assume was some kind of shaman or demonic entity are scattered like dimwitted seeds from Lake Michigan to Lake Superior. These bones are cursed, they have to be. If they weren’t, there is no explanation for the nefarious specters knocking around the skulls of so many midwestern filmmakers. You won’t find me digging up any earth though, I’m quite thankful... some curses can be a good thing. Red Eyes doesn’t belong here. Not in the way that your homophobic great aunt doesn’t belong at your gay cousin’s wedding but in the way that a snake doesn’t belong slithering out of your mouth when you yawn. It’s like something went wrong between dimensions and the parallels merged. It’s a fever dream you had where the ghost of Bill Rebane whispered a film plot into your ear but you downed 24 beers before you wrote it down. I apologize. I’m rambling. That’s what Wisconsin does to me. Maybe it’s how the curse hit me. Budgets are of very little importance when someone has fallen under the spell of regional horror. Acting ability means even less. In this instance, Red Eyes walks the familiar path. Judging it on those merits, it’s every backyard epic spewed out by some hometown hoodlums with a video camera and an idea. The VIDDY-OH Corporation has released the next evolution in home entertainment and a guaranteed victory in the home video market. The VID-VISOR is a headset (but think less virtual reality and more View Master) the customer places on over his peepers and it beams some story-telling goodness right into the eyeballs of the viewer. The catch is ya have to keep feeding it coins to get more stories... the secret catch is that the VIDDY-OH Corporation has planted a microchip within that basically gets you addicted to pumping coins and keeps you viewing the bargain basement crapola horror flicks. This microchip has a tendency to malfunction and pushes that addiction into the realm of homicidal lunacy. When this happens (which happens so much there is no way in hell its financially viable) the corporation sends out cyborg killing machines called COM-AKZ units (here played by Brian Ritchie of Violent Femmes fame) to wipe out the troublesome customers. That’s the fucking wraparound story. Contained within the adventures of the wandering cyborg hitman and his homicidal target are four tales of terror delivered by everyone’s favorite ferryman, Charon (portrayed here by a cheap electronic skull with red eyes and a penchant for rhyming). The skeletal narrator lays out multiple accounts of shrug-inducing horror in between reminding our duster-sporting viewer to pop in coins. In Marine Corpse a grandmother relates the sad tale of Johnny Banks, who returned to his small hometown after serving in WW2 but couldn’t seem to let go of his service in the big one. When a secret military plane crashes in the town lake carrying some Japanese POWs, Johnny gets it in his head that those no good bastards are living at the bottom of the lake... planning evil. He marches right on in and, of course, drowns. Ever since then, the lake has had an eerie vibe and when the zombie of a Japanese soldier pops up, grandma and her grandson are gonna be mighty thankful that the living corpse of Johnny is still hanging around. Sunday Drive follows a small family, still grieving the loss of their son, after the father gets the desire to keep driving... along with everybody else in the world. There’s some supernatural force behind it but, trust me, you’re not gonna give a flying fuck. Some sappy stupidity on a road trip to napville. The Palace Conspires starts off strong as a faux documentary about a deteriorating movie house that seems to be alive and decides to hold onto its patrons. It drops the mockumentary aspect with the introduction of a movie fanzine writer who comes into contact with the entity of The Palace (embodied as a creepy-ass clown). The Palace is set for demolition and it needs our brave writer to spread the word and save it. A love letter to the cinema and forlorn look at the ravages the Video age laid upon it. The final story, Spirits, puts one hell of burnout in the path of a vengeance-seeking doll after he runs over the doll’s roller-skating-in-the-middle-of-the-street owner. The doll comes to life through heartwarming stop motion effects and Jake gets his comeuppance. It’s like the worst episodes of Tales from the Darkside were stripped of all their cash and given a weekend to film. It’s lovely if you have a soft spot for the underdog (who, lets be honest, should not and will never win). Special effects that aren’t so special and an over reliance on narration sweeten the pot and get your brain swimming in a comfortable stew of inanity. Is it good? Oh god no but does that word have anything at all to do with the discussion? What merit does that word carry in these deep and dark oceans of trash cinema? “Good”. It doesn’t matter. Is the ghost of Bill Rebane laughing like a maniac between short bursts of applause? It’s a definite maybe.... and that’ll have to do.

Mystery Box: The Amber Green Story (2023) (USA)

⭐️1/2

After watching some “mystery box” videos (in which YouTubers order boxes containing unknown shit from various shady folks on the Dark Web), Amber decides to get in on the “fun”. Whereas most of these dinks deal with other people’s garbage or some dumbfuckery made to come off as sinister, Amber’s box (stop sniggering) contains something rather insidious (I said stop sniggering!). She’s from Florida so I get the inability to discern good ideas from bad ones. She films her experience. A note on the side of the box warns that a Dybbuk is contained within and now its Amber’s problem. She doesn’t open it right away as she tries to get some answers from the seller who is way more chatty than anyone ever selling shit on the Dark Web. The box causes lights to flicker and an EMF detector to go nuts when placed in its vicinity. While she’s questioning the box using one of those annoying ghost hunting tools that picks up “answers” in radio signals and static, I can’t help but notice how comfy her couch looks. Man, I wanna nap on that thing while watching Gotham or something else I can nod off to. Amber finally opens the damn thing and it seems Amber’s box is filled with a pungent odor and an unsettling amount of heat (Damnit! Stop sniggering!). The EMF detector stops working but she keeps going and discovers the contents are a soiled tarp containing a dried flower, an old piece of paper with strange writing on it and a locket of hair. All of it smells. She really should have used gloves while going through it. Strange noises lead her back to the living room where she finds everything packed back into the box. Proud of that Jewish dark spirit for cleaning up after itself. Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you need to be a slob. More spookiness and boredom which one would expect to find in YouTube ghost videos plays out as Amber just can’t seem to wrap her head around the fact she’s sinking in very dark waters. The inevitable possession is a nice and cost efficient way to show your supernatural presence, it also helps that you can just end things with “main character posted last video and moved out, we don’t know how she’s doing.” Fuck it. “Brennan Dortch moved on from this nothing film immediately after watching it. He has already forgotten the name of the protagonist and it’s in the fucking title. There’s been no word on his current mental state.”