“It ought to be burned down … and the ground sowed with salt.”
A source of early Skinny Puppy samples. A guy invites a select group of people to stay in an old house and decide if it is actually haunted or not. I found it very enjoyable Its a 2.5/5.
Theres basically 2 films here. The scenes originally shot by the producers, crew, cast etc…and called Twisted Souls, and the scenes shot after the films financier fired them all and decided to complete the film himself. Easier to just quote the Wikipedia page for Spookies
I’m not sure the film would have been good had it been completed as intended, or if it had been fully produced by the financier, but the end result we do have is pretty crazy. I like all the monster costumes and effects. The 1985 stuff is just a mind boggling. Not intentionally as funny and enjoyable as it ended up being, it’s a weird mess. Farting zombies. 2/5.
Death Spa. Stars Ken Foree. A guy owns a health club and his wife commits suicide and then she possesses the clubs computers and equipment, using it to murder people. It ends with the husband frying the buildings computer destroying his spirit-wife which causes the health club to burn down killing what seems to be hundreds of people trapped inside. 1.5/5
This is a Neo-noir Crime Thriller with a murder plot. It’s the directorial debut of the Coen brothers. I really liked this but I’m going to watch it again before posting a text review. 3/5.
“The Italian version of this film, called Sexy Jeans, was edited with pornographic inserts” – Wikipedia
New kid David moves to a new school, its run by a gang of bullies, and after seeing them attack other students and try and rape students he intervenes to help. The bullies cripple David by kicking out the jack of the car he is under and repairing. He then seeks total revenge. The school students also side with David and take some revenge of their own. The culmination is the bombing of the school dance where David dies and his friends blame it on students who died earlier.
The bullies are over the top brutal, but the revenge is just fucking insane. The biggest similarities between this and Heathers is the bombing of the school dance (a pep rally in Heathers), and the crazed ego of David at times (maybe similar Slaters character at moments) . This not comedic at all and not cynical like Heathers. Its acted well enough, shot well, an is not a B-grade film. Worth it for the over the top revenge sequences. 2.5/5.
It’s the Betty and Barney Hill story staring James Earl Jones. A 1975 TV drama. It addresses their encounter via flashbacks while they discuss them with a psychologist and undergo hypnosis. Its get rather dramatic and focuses on their first main abduction encounter. The aliens and UFO’s are uses sparingly, though it does show Betty and Barney being taken onto a spacecraft and experimented on, it is rather dark. Enjoyable enough for a 1975 TV movie. 2/5.
Its meant to be a horror comedy but its not that funny.
An author breaks up with his wife and their son disappears. He moves to some house and has to write a new novel. He writes it about the Vietnam war and has nightmares about a person he fought with in Vietnam, and they eventually turn up as an undead creature to exact revenge because he let them be captured and killed. Also its the creature that took his son.
It’s not bad I guess, not very funny but has comedy moments none the less, the creature looks cool. 2/5.
¿Quién puede matar a un niño? Some real 70’s exploitation insanity.
Kids are attacking and killing adults in retribution for decades of abuse and past atrocities against children (as seen in the opening montage of stock footage of war, famine, the holocaust, that just keeps going for a full 10 minutes). Initially the adults are incapable of killing the children in defense, but that soon ends… The adults fight back. The children seem to be able to recruit other children just by looking at them. An unborn child “joins” the children by killing the pregnant main female character from the inside.
It’s a rather slow and meandering and occasionally very fucked up film.
The movie ends with a small group of children preparing to head to mainland Spain on a motorboat, taking care to go in low numbers to avoid suspicion. When one girl asks, “Do you think the other children will start playing the way we do?” the boy in charge grins and says, “Oh, yes…there are lots of children in the world. Lots of them.” 2/5.
A horror comedy by Ken Russell based on the Bram Stoker novel, staring Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi.
Peter Capaldi is an archeologist digging on the grounds of Hugh Grants manor. They find a skull, possibly that of the the d’Ampton ‘worm’ (Lambton worm), a legendary created said to have been slain by an ancestor of Grants. A missing persons watch is found, a seductress is encountered, and the legend of the “worm” may be more real than it seems.
An interesting really enjoyable film, a bit raunchy, and almost camp? There’s some far out psychedelic moments, some horror moments. It is absolutely a comedy and in ways you are not initially expecting at all, dry yet overt and often just outlandish and bizarre. Intelligently and stupidly, almost subversively, fully aware of its insanity. 3/5
A woman takes a vacation in the country after the suicide of her husband. She encounters men in a variety of fucked up forms.
Its shot lovely, and the score is excellent. Its atmospheric yet intense, grounded but with big surreal moments, rich in subtext, and genuinely creepy and fucked up and confronting as needed. An interesting, different and even enjoyable film. 3/5
I don’t want to be involved in these annoying peoples lives for 2 hours. The main character is an idiot, and it takes so long for the Cenobites to turn up. There’s no reason for her and the guy to instantly go straight to “we must investigate who owns the warehouse” etc… as a solution, rather than just throw the box away. Everything but the Cenobite costumes is stupid. Yelling “I dont know, I dont know” and “What the hell is going on” and being hysterical isn’t suspense. Everything about the characters and almost everything they do is pointless except for occasional out of place seemingly random choices needed to keep connecting the most basic “story” elements together. The twist that the BF is working for the box “owner” is brutal to experience after almost an hour, such a tired cliche. It takes so long to get to the Cenobites. Jesus it just wont fucking end. The only good parts are when the Cenobites are on screen, and even then they are too often wasted. This needs to be cut down, edited and re-released 100% focused on the Cenobites.
I guess its not really THAT bad, its just disappointing.
The film starts with train station announcements and new presentations about overpopulation and city congestion, and murders. A businessman witnesses a murder and is then chased around by a strange mutant guy who “recruits” him to be an “Engineer” by infecting him with something (?). The businessman starts being wracked with pains and receiving hallucinations and messages telling him to “reduce the rats” and “be the engineer”. H meets the mutant guy again at a crime scene. The news on his TV is now overtly discussing murdering people as population control. He keeps having fits and freakouts, fighting the urges to kill? He has an altercation with the police shooting one of them and getting shot himself before killing the other with some kind of mutant weapon that his arm has turned into. He steals their car and goes on a killing rampage. Cops chase him to his home and there is a confrontation. He destroys them all, and when we see him next he is all fucked up and mutated. We then see scenes of other mutated Engineers around the city. We then suddenly see him and he is fully normal, walking in a crowd, he looks at his normal un-mutated hand and smiles. A voice announced “The Latest Congestion Update…” and the film ends.
A highly stylised film with almost zero dialogue. Its very low budget, but still visually nice. Different and very 90’s Japan. Remade as Tokyo Gore Police in 2008. 2/5
This is a psychological thriller (that counts as scary I guess) staring Gary Busey, Mimi Rodgers and Michael McKean. Jake Busey appears in scenes where Garys character is a child.
It sounds like it should be hilarious, but it isn’t.
Gary escapes from a mental institution and starts living in the attic of an unoccupied house. Then a family moves in. He spies on them, kills their dog, and starts interacting with the wife. Gary ends up trying to kill the family members and is killed by the cops. Its a TV movie and its not great. 1.5/5.
The best of the Halloween sequels, and one of the best horror films ever.
I have seen this before but not for a long time. It isn’t directed by John Carpenter like 1 and 2 (Carpenter and Debra Hill produced, Carpenter also co-wrote the music), and there’s no Michael Myers. How is this even a sequel?
A toy company, Silver Shamrock, makes a Halloween mask that every child wants. Each mask contains a microchip with a piece of Stonehenge in it. Upon watching a special commercial to be aired on TV anyone wearing the masks will die and insects will escape their body killing anyone nearby. The masks creator wants to sacrifice children like ancient Celtic pagans did, presumably to gain powers!
“Nobody knows it really happening – People are dying, and people are laughing.” – IMDB review
Some kid named Eddie Burber accidentally kills a girl in a Halloween haunted house run by his family and has to leave town. Skip to 20 years later, he is living in the woods with his mother who suddenly dies and he decides its time to return home. A fraternity in the town need to raise money to pay for fees and they decide to use the “Old Burber House” to host a Halloween haunted house event, the same house where Eddie killed the girl 20 years earlier. A stranger appears at the fraternity and says they should use the house and gives them a key. During the Halloween event Eddie turns up in a mask and starts executing the fraternity members running and acting in the event, and none of the townsfolk attending know its real. A surviving fraternity member eventually kills Eddie.
Its rather low budget, the generic characters and setting don’t require any fleshing out, the general idea is a good one, and it goes rather fast for 127mins. Its still only a 2/5 being generous.
“In 1993, Dr. Florence Weaver and her colleagues Victor Fields and John Gregory treat a violent, disturbed patient named Gabriel at Simion Research Hospital. Gabriel is able to control electricity and broadcast his thoughts via speakers. He kills several staff members. Dr. Weaver determines that he is a lost cause and the “cancer“ must be removed.
Yeah there’s a weird and convoluted storyline. The important parts are all the weird WTF moments, the straight acting, the genre and style mashing, the style choices generally, the creepy shit, and the insane action scenes and horror. It feels kind of like a collage of genres and styles from different films, that meld and even overlap each other even in the same scenes. It feels ridiculous and that is in no way a bad thing. Argento films, Homicide: Life on the Street, Possession, Blade, Exorcist 2? I have no idea…
It makes no sense to watch a film like this and rate it low for being this ridiculous, that’s not how the Horror genre works. And the more confusing and ridiculous it got the more I liked it. Its a fucked up ride. 3.5/5. (The “Where is my mind” musical stabs were the dumbest part)
As per previous years: Watching 31 Horror/Spooky/Scary type films from any genre during October. 31 total films, but not trying too hard for 1 per day, because that actually sucks to keep up.
