⭐️⭐️⭐️
One of the final times the brothers Polonia would make a film together and with that in mind there’s a bit of heaviness in my heart as I watch. Mark still may be going strong nearly twenty years later but you can feel the pieces of him missing after his brother’s sudden death at the age of 39. I’ll hold back these tears though, I’m a trooper after all and this tale of treasure hunters and a troubled psychic fighting earthquake-released demons needs to be seen through the light of two brothers being able to work together before a tragedy. The forest surrounding Skull Mountain becomes the territory of a large monstrosity and various Pennsylvania residents come to bloody ends after meeting its claws and teeth. The two treasure hunters drive into the area lookin’ for a Native American bounty and the psychic has painful flashes of evil in her modest house as her delightful cat watches on. John Polonia is her disbelieving husband who works at a small news station and he tells her that she need to let her visions go and move on with her life. Ignoring her asshole spouse, she heads off to Skull Mountain to see if she can put a stop to the evil doings transpiring. One treasure hunter finds an “ancient” weapon that was definitely purchased at a discount Halloween shop and some skeletal dude wakes up from under a bunch of leaves and wanders around like a lost elderly man suffering from dementia. Random people come to messy ends… there’s also a bunch of farting. It’s nice to know that nearing their forties, those Polonia boys were still a couple of immature goofs. It all comes off like a ghost story made up on the spot by your progressively drunker uncle who stops every so often to have you sneak him a Molson Canadian from the garage fridge so your aunt doesn’t know how many he’s put down.
aka The Red Sign of Madness/Blood Brides/Red Wedding Night
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
John Harrington is a fashion designer who specializes in bridal wear and has a murderous habit of taking a cleaver to his clients on their wedding night. He’s able to dispose of the corpses in the greenhouse incinerator (making a strong fertilizer for his flowers in the process) located on the grounds of the notable mansion he inherited from his mother. He’s not at all sure why he carries this murderous habit but he will continue on with his sick compulsion until the complete truth of a past trauma (represented by the hallucinogenic wedding-night murder of his mother when he was a child that plays out as he slaughters the brides) presents itself. One of his models goes missing but he has no recollection of taking her life or of her mentioning she was getting married, therefore he would have no urge to kill her. The new model he hires to replace the missing girl grabs the fancy of John but starts getting uncomfortably close to the truth and that’s just one of the handful of things threatening to unspool his crimes. A detective has his sights set on the designer as he’s the only link between all the missing gals and John’s strained relationship with his well-off wife is not helping matters. His inability to perform sexually and her vow to never leave him, even after death, further adding to his deeper unraveling. She doesn’t love him or anything, this seems to be a relationship built upon spite. The psycho/sexual thrills get a nice twist of the supernatural after John kills the woman and she begins to haunt his ass. John’s mental state… yeah, it’s not good and it’s probably gonna lead to a suitable comeuppance. The visual brilliance of Mario Bava shines through and pushes an already solid thriller over into a territory of macabre splendor along with a wonderful cast and enough insanity to make up for the lack of splatter that folks may be let down by.
aka Samson in the Wax Museum
⭐️⭐️
Santo (or Samson depending on which version ya get your grubby psychotronic hands on) investigates a string of kidnappings perpetuated by a madman who runs a wax museum. Doctor Carrol is using some primo bullshit science in his cavernous, monster-filled dungeon of horrors. A reporter and his fiancée get wrapped up in the sinister shenanigans when her photographer sister goes missing following a visit to the wax museum. Carrol initially brings Santo in to investigate why it seems he’s being setup by an unknown evil out to ruin him but it turns out he’s behind everything thanks to the horrific mental strain brought on by his time in Auschwitz and a sulphuric acid “accident” caused by his betrayed compatriots. He now despises loveliness and gets off on torturing people. So he plans on turning the cute photographer into a panther-girl, using his slow-going blood transfusion (maybe?) procedure, and displaying her for the world. His end game is turning all of humanity into monsters... or some shit. Particularly creaky outing for our silver-masked badass definitely strains under the weight of its poverty-rowish production.
⭐️⭐️1/2
Suffering from a severe physical reaction to sunlight, high schooler, Santi, and his mother move into a small village located in the Spanish mountains. The isolated village may offer the proper amount of shade but the locals are a bit untrusting and when a series of murders happen in the surrounding forest the police and the locals begin casting a suspicious eye in Santi’s direction. In their defense, he was at the scene of both crimes so it’s not just untrusting local stupidity to blame. Of course we know Santi is innocent because we have witnessed the feral child calling the woods home who has been chowing down on sheep and the locals. Looking to prove his innocence, Santi and a couple of friends set out to capture proof but they’ll also be discovering a town secret that a couple of locals will go to great lengths to keep buried. An interesting idea is only somewhat successfully carried out thanks to a silly climactic reveal. It all just feels a bit too soap-opera-ish to be taken as serious as it wants to be. Still, the setting is gorgeous and the cast handles the material as best they can.
⭐️⭐️
It’s a well-known fact that during the Cold War, the USSR developed super-aggressive and impressively intelligent bipedal sharks of various species. Of course, their top-tier scientists soon discovered that these beasts were rather un-killable (not good when carelessness gives them a chance to escape) so they did what any reasonable nation would do when confronted with the unstoppable abominations they had birthed… they launched them into space and discarded them on the moon. It’s called world history… read about it sometime. Decades pass and now a team of American astronauts on the moon for the first time in a long time are repairing a module after an accident forces them to make an emergency landing on the dark side of the moon. You see where this is going, right? Renegade astronaut Michael Kelly (a last minute stand-in for a sick crew member) ruffles some feathers with his inclusion but they’ll thank their lucky stars the man of action (ish) is around when the human-like sea beasts strike. They also meet a Russian and his daughter on the moon who save their asses and can seemingly breathe on the moon. Okay. Sergei is the one who piloted the rocket and the girl is his adopted daughter… so I guess that explains that. Wait. That explains very little. Whatever. The sharks live under the dark side of the moon and take one of the crew hostage. The sharks have developed a society and speak Russian and English with a Russian accent… there’s also breathable air and they have plans to get themselves to Earth for nefarious reasons. It’s revealed the adopted daughter is half shark… so I guess that’s why she can breathe on the moon… wait, that doesn’t explain anything at all. A rescue mission gets put in place and then a rescue mission for the rescue mission happens but that rescue mission ends with a 100% casualty rate. There’s a six hour window to get home because you definitely need a ticking clock added to the shark-human issues the remaining crew is facing. It’s revealed the sharks plan on hitting earth and releasing their eggs (No. Nope. That’s not right at all. I’m aware that the species is ovoviviparous so the eggs are carried within the female for the gestation period and then hatched within, where the pup will continue to develop until live birth but you have to figure with the hybridization of shark and human it would be your usual mammal birth… listen, I know I’m the idiot for thinking about this too much) to make them the dominate species. There’s shark breasts, shark butts, talk of Elton John, questionable green-screen work, a limited prop budget, moon lava, slow-motion spear skills, the usual Asylum-level cgi, the usual Asylum-level dialogue, an ending so dumb it made some of my brain melt and so much stupidity your IQ will probably drop a few digits. The wrong kind of boring and the right kind of dumb make for a semi-entertaining time. “Gravity normalizers engaged!”
aka Ghost House 3: House of Lost Souls
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A small group of youngish geologists (and one dink’s kid brother) shelter in an old rundown hotel when landslides wash out the road. Naturally, this house has a bad past and the pissed-off spirits of the dead are still hanging around. The dumbasses get themselves knocked off by ghosts, ignoring the premonitions of group psychic Carla (she’s been diagnosed as a medium by doctors, don’t cha know). The lunatic landlord and his dumbass children took out a few innocent lodgers back in the sixties and hid their victims decapitated heads somewhere on the property and now our young heroes are meeting similar fates. The little kid gets his head lopped off in a supernatural dryer incident (Yes. You read that correctly) and a clawed Buddhist monk runs around the property, sometimes hauling ass in an electric wheelchair (Yes. You also read that correctly). It’s a ridiculously fun time from an era of Italian horror that remains unfairly maligned.
aka Hoody
⭐️
The paths of a woman looking for her missing son and a detective looking for some answers cross when they’re both led to a suspected killer and a local urban legend. Ariana wakes up in the hospital after a car accident caused by the sudden appearance of a hooded man in the middle of the road. She’s repeatedly told her son is dead but she’s having a hard time accepting that. She believes someone took him and the creepy shit happening around her has people think she may be slipping into insanity. Adding fuel to the possible fire on a mental instability claim is the recent suicide of her husband. She moves back in with her parents much to the excitement of her little sister, Missy. There’s a connection to a dead brother in their past and the tragedy was something that had mama telling Ariana stories about the Hoodman when she was little. There’s also an awkward neighbor boy who has a crush on her. She thinks the urban legend of the Hoodman is responsible and lets the detective know as much. He attempts to show her pictures of her dead child but she is dead-set on her belief that her baby boy is still out there. The detective also lost a kid but he isn’t buying her story about a supernatural something-or-other snatching up kiddies. A local coot and grieving parent is convinced of the Hoodman as well and the detective thinks he may be the man stealing children. Ariana starts hearing a crying baby and seeing the hooded phantom around her little sister and blah blah blah blah… you’ve been here, I’ve been here, we’ve all been here before. It’s just that this time you may not care even a little bit about the fate of our characters. Ariana is not a solid actor but she does have a knack for calling people back and saying “thanks.”. I don’t know why but I find it fucking hilarious. Performances range from solid-for-an-afternoon-soap-opera to I’m-fairly-certain-that-person-was-just-cloned-and-has-never-encountered-another-human-before. The supernatural entity may just make you want to rewatch I Know What You Did Last Summer and in all honesty, it’s a much better way to spend your time.
