The Ship of Monsters (1960) (Mexico)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The last male on the planet Venus kicks the bucket and two sexy astronauts are blasted into outer space to gather up male specimens from various planets. They’re forced to make an emergency landing on Earth and come across the path of a charming (and full of hot air) singing cowboy. Naturally, sparks fly. As the women make repairs to their ship with the help of an informative robot they’ve snatched up along the way, they keep the frozen specimens of the monstrous males they’ve gathered in a nearby cave. The creature captives are not at all happy with being prisoners of the foxy Venusians and promise great terror if they escape. Meanwhile the two space ladies stay with our hero cowboy and his younger brother (under the guise of being in town with a circus) while the robot fixes up their spacecraft. The commander, Gamma, and the cowboy fall in love, which leaves the navigator, Beta, in a jealous mood. Unexpectedly, Beta turns out to be a vampire (yeah, I know) and gets in trouble with the Venusian council due to her blood drinking. It’s decided she’ll be disintegrated by morning, instead of just standing by and letting herself perish she puts her sinister plan in motion. The blood of earth shall be hers!!!! She unfreezes the monsters and convinces them to help her dominate Earth. The monsters are cheap and fun. The big eared cyclops and big brained Martian goober would pop up in Santo y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstrous. Sadly we wouldn’t see the talking skeleton and shaggy spider-creature again. There’s a bunch of singing and comedy in the works and the movie definitely radiates psychotronic vibes throughout the runtime. The fog-blanketed song and dance scene is a bit of bizarre excellence. There’s some stretches of boredom along the way but all in all it’s more fun than anything.

The Sibling (1974) (USA)

aka Psycho Sisters/So Evil, My Sister 

⭐️⭐️

The film opens on a scuzzy-lookin’ dude driving and thinking about murder right before he loses control of his car and flies off a hill. This, of course, ends in the usual manner for all seventies car crashes with the vehicle exploding into a ball of fire. Cars were flaming death traps just a few decades back. We then join two cops in pursuit of a private investigator (Hey! It’s John Ashton!) who is acting out of sorts. Seemingly, he has a courteous relationship with police but he’s evading them on his motorcycle and then shooting at them. This ends with him taking a bullet to the neck. Goodbye, John Ashton! Before he shuffles off this mortal coil, he lets the police know it’s all thanks to an extortion angle that went bad and some stolen funds. Following the death of her husband (the scuzzy guy who is now a crispy corpse), Brenda begins to suffer a nervous breakdown. Luckily, her sister Millie Hartman (who is the one who had her funds stolen by her sister’s hubby) is there to care for her after they have been separated for years. Millie had a stint in the sanitarium and the two are attempting to fix their fractured relationship. We’re caught up on the case as the cops talk and play pool and even though Millie has refused to upset her sister with bringing up the bullshit her husband had gotten into, the cops are going to keep on digging. Millie invites Brenda to stay with her and things start getting a little freaky. Millie claims to be in tune with the stars if you’re into that kinda trip and she also claims to still hear the voice of the their dead mother. One cop goes undercover by surfing at the beach the sisters are staying on and trying to get close to Brenda. Is Brenda going insane? Should Millie have been released from the nuthouse? Is Millie scheming? Is the supernatural actually working against the siblings? You’ll find out if you don’t fall asleep. It’s your standard gaslighting flick just viewed through a lens of molasses. Trust me, the addition of the police investigation angle doesn’t add any more excitement to things. Kathleen Freeman shows up as a housekeeper named Hilda and that probably doesn’t mean much to anyone outside of me and the fourteen other people who remember The Willies. We even get the standard-issue mentally challenged handyman hanging around to be all creepy and sharpen an ax menacingly while perving on Brenda in his simple-minded way. Hilarious corpse makeup, attempted murder and the inevitable poetic comeuppance add some pulse to a mostly DOA “thriller”. This doesn’t even feel like a TV movie made on the spot, it feels like an episode of some forgotten cop program that was cruelly stretched out to movie length.

The 13th Unit (2014) (USA)

aka The Darkness, Rage and the Fury/The Alcatraz Alien Project

⭐️1/2

Strangers find themselves trapped in an underground storage facility and the bad times have a’started because along with their unprecedented situation, something monstrous is lurking around. Said something resides in Unit 13 (although, I’m not sure if they ever explicitly state that is the unit number) and it’s more than happy to slaughter the idiots who have found themselves trapped with it. It traces back to 1937 and the unsolved murders in Chicago of artifact thieves. A witness to those happenings claimed to see a bloody individual in some kind of trance wander off, disappearing and leaving the incident a cold case. It’s decades later and the A-American Storage “Alcatraz building” facility in Chicago is being visited by a seemingly random group of folks who have found themselves there for whatever convenient reason has put them in the sights of the thing that’s been lurking there for apparently eight decades. Two horny young folks, a cranky woman, a homeless man living in one of the units, a company executive and his frustrated employee make up the gaggle of destined dinner. The boss has passed up his hard-working employee for a promotion, giving it to his nephew. That frustration has turned the man homicidal and he beats his boss to death with a 2x4. The cranky woman sees a body dragged away and goes to investigate. She gets herself dragged into a unit. Opening credits hit set to some ear-abusing nu-metal music and feature some wanker doing a summoning ritual and filming it. This wanker doesn’t make it past the credits when he’s attacked by a tentacled something. One day passes from the events of the opening scene and we see two disheveled people gasping for air and wandering around in the dark. That flashes by and we join a group of college kids scheming about something called “the demon stone”. Michael is pumped to go into the storage facility where we’ve seen all this crap take place and find the ancient treasures he is so damn sure are hidden down there. His friends aren’t sure about it but his enthusiasm convinces them to come along. Kendra reads the troubling history of the artifacts aloud and the reluctant duo of the trio are convinced to join Michael on this trip. Kendra’s family is having some financial troubles, so she finds the opportunity hard to pass up. Back at the storage facility is more darkness and bad music. We then flashback ten hours earlier and see two women attempt to get into a storage unit with stolen bolt cutters after an employee there refuses to assist. One of the women is a sexy lass who we’ve seen panicking in the dark, so I don’t think this will go well. Other people are introduced, dates shift back and forth and a very simple scenario is made needlessly complicated by jumping around between dates and characters and I don’t believe it manages to keep its own narrative structured as well. Or it could have forgotten to add a time stamp. I could be wrong but I’m not rewinding because that’s way too much effort spent on this. Dude-bros share some harsh words, time stamps pollute everything, drama is emphasized but not well, the opening time jumps irritate the viewer into being angry at the movie before one rightfully should, repetitive deaths involve an unseen something dragging people into storage units, schmaltzy muzak accompanies melodrama as dour faces are made, the lights go out, the facility earns its nickname, people lose their cool, there’s evil goo or some shit and did I mention the fucking time stamps? It’s not confusing or anything, it just feels so damn pointless that it becomes offensive. Performances are mostly fine when they’re not asked to be convincingly sad… which an unexpected amount of them are (I guess content people don’t frequent storage facilities) and the monster is kept to POV shenanigans when it’s not offscreen dragging idiots into the shadows. It’s a shame too because the barely-seen cheap special effects (butcher shop splatter, puppetry) hit a sweet spot for my questionable tastes. “I am not afraid to punch a chick. Especially a crazy one.”

The Toxic Man (1995) (Finland)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

On the walk home from his shitty job, a young man falls into an ooze-filled ditch. Of course, he begins melting and goes a little homicidal. Throwing on a mask, some mittens and sunglasses, the dude gets his murder on. It’s a bunch of kids having fun with a camera and spraying fake blood all over the place. A chunk of the film is dedicated to the exploits of a woodcutter who went nuts and escaped into the woods, a card game ends in a fatal beating, the limited “actors” take on multiple roles and the lowest quality of special effects are used... it’s pretty great. Your mileage completely depends on your stomach for backyard garbage because this ain’t cinema, it’s a home movie made over a couple of weekends with nothing but initiative and booze. As usual, it’s pretty damn repetitive and is mostly a rambling mess.

Xtro (1982) (UK/USA)

aka Judas Goat 

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Three years after he saw his father abducted by a UFO, young Tony is still having nightmares. This proves to be the least of his problems as his life is about to get way more complicated. A grotesque alien creature crash lands on earth, murders a couple motorists and then orally impregnates an unfortunate woman. This woman soon gives birth to the missing father. Still with me? Great! The father comes back into Tony’s life, causing obvious friction between his mother and her photographer boyfriend. On top of that, the alien hybrid papa bestows a strange power onto his son which allows him to bring his toys to life with creeptastic and murderous results. Alien Dad also wants to take Tony with him to his new home planet and it doesn’t seem like anyone will be able to stop him. A lovely mess of a film feels a bit more Italian than English but in this house that is more than acceptable. It’s icky, it’s weird and it’s got a sexy French babysitter who gets cocooned and lays some alien eggs. See it!

Pyewacket (2017) (Canada)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Following the tragic loss of her father, Leah's mother (Laurie Holden) attempts to escape the depressing memories by moving with her daughter to a new town. The daughter is upset leaving her friends and new boyfriend and, following a particularly nasty argument, Leah's plausible teen angst leads to an occult ceremony in the middle of the woods. Leah summons the demon Pyewacket and tragedy follows. The gamble Pyewacket takes is risky as all hell. In a scenario where both main characters could have come off as unsympathetic assholes, it successfully toes the line and pulls off presenting them as flawed but immensely likable. They have a true mother/daughter chemistry and it shines above all else. Sadly, there isn't much else that stands out. It's a competent film and offers one extremely well-placed gut punch but outside of that, it feels a bit lean.

House of the Damned (1996) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Three months after the brutal murder of her father, Liz is talked into celebrating her 21st birthday by her father’s killer... her mother. Liz’s mother is an ancient witch who has struck up a dark bargain with some evil forces: she will never age as long as every 21 years she sacrifices a daughter to the evil power. Liz’s grandpa (who is actually her brother) lets her know she can break the curse as long as she survives her 21st birthday. It ain’t gonna be easy. Her gathered friends are murdered in various supernatural ways and they come back as zombies (one even raps a grim verse to poor Liz). There’s also some POV camera attacks and poltergeist activity going on and Liz’s father comes back as a mirror-trapped ghost to offer some help. It’s cheap as all hell and incredibly charming. Shot in black and white and blessed/cursed with a repetitive and droning score, the first feature from Sean Weathers won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. If you’re inclined to enjoy the more enthusiastic-than-skilled brand of horror, you may get a kick out of this one.