October 3: Touched By An Ormand: A Ron Ormand Godsploitation Double Feature
23. The Grim Reaper (1976)
24. The Burning Hell (1974)
Ah Ron Ormand… Formerly an exploitation producer of such “classics” as Mesa of Lost Women, Teenage Bride and The Monster & The Stripper, after surviving a plane crash with serious injuries in 1968, he apparently converted to Christianity and began churning out flicks for the God-set using many of the same exploitation tactics as he had employed in his prior life.
The Burning Hell features erstwhile evangelical doom & gloom minister Estus Pirkle, a frequent collaborator of Ormand’s, describes the literal torments of Hell to a couple of door-to-door progressives as we see visions of that oh-so-hot place that scorches your face.
The Grim Reaper on the other hand has more of a narrative to it with a father and son communing with the dead while the son goes off to a not-so-successful stock car career that leads to his fiery death. In both films, we get to see those dark and maddening fires of Hell. And if both films are any indication, Hell is apparently a place where you are copiously slathered in mud and are forced to mope around and look bored while the dying embers of a superimposed flame flickers nearby. Honestly it really doesn’t seem that bad… I think the tedium would get to you more than the “torment”. While both of these have their “so bad it’s good” moments, neither tops the sheer anti-Communist insanity of Ormand’s If Footmen Tire You, What Will The Horses Do?
October 3: The Stern Female Gaze: Women Directors in Horror
25. The Lodge (2019)
26. Most Beautiful Island (2017)
27. Darlin’ (2019)
It’s unfortunate that women weren’t given many chances in the past to direct, and in particular direct horror, but I’m glad that it seems like the floor gates have opened somewhat and we are now getting quite a few horror films directed by women in recent years.
The Lodge, co-directed by Veronika Franz, finds a soon-to-be step-mom named Grace snowed in at a cabin with two kids that seem to hate her guts. As her past as the lone survivor of a death cult comes back to haunt her, strange things start to happen that leads her down a path that may require her to deal with her prior demons. The Lodge has very good atmosphere at times, conveying the sense of isolation and unease very well. Unfortunately, I have some problems with the script and the way it ultimately plays out.
Most Beautiful Island is directed, written by and starring Ana Asensio as an undocumented immigrant who is struggling to make ends meet and whose friend brings her to a mysterious gathering to earn some quick, easy money. All she has to do is partake in a short game while the rich and elegant look on, placing bets. This was about 80% a really solid movie. The acting was uniformly quite good with Ana in the lead displaying that slow sink of despair as she can feel her options falling away one by one, leading her to ultimately take part in something that she should be nowhere near. She’s also able to convey her inner strength just by a few glances. The pacing is mostly solid save for the very end. The “game” feels a little truncated honestly. When it ended, I had a kind of “that was it?” thought. But maybe that’s just me being desensitized to the ridiculous extremes of films like Would You Rather and Cheap Thrills.
Darlin‘ is an odd little picture, ostensibly a spin-off of a spin-off, taking place after the events of Lucky McKee’s The Woman which itself took place after the events of The Offspring. With Darlin’, Pollyanna McKintosh, star of The Woman, takes over both writing and directing duties as well as showing up as The Woman again in a smaller secondary role. The primary role of that the titular Darlin’, another wild girl who is found and brought into the fold of a Catholic shelter under the care of oppressive religious figures where attempts are made to civilize her. What they don’t know is that she harbors secrets of her own and she has a past that wants to find her. Darlin’ seems to have a sort of weird tone, somewhere between trying to be a serious treatise on the failings of organized religious and a pulpy, unsavory horror flick. The tone was probably not quite as bleak as The Woman, but it also wasn’t as skillfully made either. For fans of The Woman or feral people flicks in general, you may get a kick out of it. Otherwise, it’s fairly inessential.
October 3: KILLer Comedies
28. The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020)
29. Kondom des Grauens a.k.a. Killer Condom (1996)
30. Some Guy Who Kills People (2011)
Man, I really dig horror comedies to the point that I can even enjoy mediocre to bad ones if they cut loose enough. This brings me to The Babysitter: Killer Queen. For what it’s worth, I had fun with it. Yes, it’s stupid and quippy. The second one even more so than the first, but you know. You can’t watch grim, savage depressing stuff all the time. Sometimes you need movies like The Babysitter, the film equivalent of cotton candy (light, fluffy and ultimately lacking in substance but still tasty while it lasts). Besides, I’d rather McG do these movies than attempting something like Terminator Salvation again. The overly serious tone of that one just is not a good fit for his directing style.
Color me surprised by Killer Condom. Based on the premise and the Troma distribution, I had certain expectations that put it of a similar tone to other Troma splatter comedy fests like Poultrygeist and Class of Nuke Em High. What I get instead is a sort of dime-store pulp neo-noir pitched somewhere between Angel Heart and a John Waters movie with some surprisingly forward thinking views on same-sex relationships and gender fluidity (something Troma is definitely NOT known for). It’s still a pretty trashy, silly movie but it does take its premise more seriously than I expected and is ultimately better for it.
Some Guy Who Kills People was a pretty decent movie as well. Not as funny as I expected with more heart to it and a pretty strong focus on the relationship between the daughter reuniting with her long lost father. The acting is uniformly solid with the main character, his daughter and the sheriff being particular standouts. Really the main issue I had with it was the ending which just seemed to be too far fetched to me.
October 3: KIDDIE KORNER!
31. The Haunting Hour: Don’t Think About It (2007)
When you have two kids, sometimes you have to take a stop-over in the kiddie korner, ya know. This time, we have an R.L. Stine brand that isn’t Goosebumps or Fear Street. With Goosebumps being targeted to tweens and younger and Fear Street being targeted to older teens, The Haunting Hour’s tone seems to fall somewhere in-between those, roughly the same demographic and stuff like Hannah Montana. Because of that, I think it isn’t afraid to get a little scarier than something like Goosebumps would. In fact, I actually quite appreciated the practical effects creatures in it that came off pretty decently done for this time of kids movie, looking like something that may have escaped from Spookies or hung out with The Boogens. You can certainly do much worse with these kinds of movies.
October 4: Kiwi Krazy Double Feature: Horror from New Zealand
32. Perfect Creature (2006)
33. Death Warmed Up (1984)
When one thinks of New Zealand horror, mostly likely Peter Jackson and What We Do In Shadows are the first things that come to mind, but New Zealand is more than just those two. Digging a little deeper, we have first Perfect Creature, a vampiric alternate reality period piece that posits a world where vampires and humans co-exist. But a vampire and human cop pair must team up to stop a blood sucker who has gone on a killing spree to ignite a war between the races. The movie does a solid job of world-building, giving us glimpses of a 1960’s New Zealand that feels like it could be real. The problem is that the pacing and editing feels off and it feels to beholden to the Underworld movies in the general feel it seems to be going for (although thank God it doesn’t have that stupid blue filter on everything). Ultimately is just feels a little hollow, but I think it would appeal to folks who like that world-building aspect.
Death Warmed Up is a pretty fun, nutty movie that doesn’t overstay its welcome. We have a mad scientist who brainwashes a kid to kill his parents for reasons unknown (and they remain unknown so don’t bother trying to make sense of his motivations). The kid gets thrown in a mental institution and goes back for revenge years later. He finds the scientist on an island turning people into murderous zombies through hideous experiments, and all sorts of weird craziness happens. I think this one would make for a good party movie actually. It really rarely has any slow parts and throws enough off-the-wall bizarre stuff to make for a good time.
October 4: Rats!
34. The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972)
35. Mulberry St (2006)
36. Of Unknown Origin (1983)
I decided for my next animal attack spree to be based around rats. Although to be honest, I feel like rats are very misrepresented in culture. As someone who has had rats as pets in the past, they’re actually very friendly and gentle usually, much more so than other rodent pets like guinea pigs and hamsters. Despite that, it’s always rats you see as the vicious, murderous creatures in film. Oh well…
The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! is pretty standard Andy Milligan. Incredibly shoddy camerawork mixed with drama school dropout actors and Andy’s seemingly endless costume trunk as well as a dose of terrible makeup effects for the werewolf situation… Also despite the title, rats don’t really play much of a role in it. They bite someone at one point, and someone murders the shit out of a rat (which looks very real, poor little guy… PETA fans be warned), but really this is a werewolf movie (a shitty werewolf movie…).
Mulberry St. is the first feature from director Jim Mickle (Stake Land, We Are What We Are) that finds Mickle still trying to work out his style in a story that focuses on some apartment tenants under siege from mutant rats. Unlike most of his later work’s more slowburn, character-based aesthetic, Mulberry St. is full of gritty close-ups and shaky, handheld camerawork with a much more aggressive fast-paced story than Mickle will employ on later films. It’s not bad necessarily, but honestly, I prefer the southern gothic vibe he has adopted nowadays more than this.
Of Unknown Origin features white collar hot shot Peter Weller being invaded by a stupidly smart, vicious rat in his newly renovated house. The movie takes a while to get going, and it really doesn’t harbor any surprising twists or turns, but it’s still a solid, anxiety-inducing little flick for what it is. Director Cosmatos,whose ’80s action bonafides from Rambo: First Blood II and Cobra are very evident here, manages to keep a pretty steady pace even as Weller’s character behaves more and more irrationally.
October 4: KIDDIE KORNER!
37. Goosebumps: The Ghost Next Door/ It Came from Beneath the Sink (1998)
After my mention of Goosebumps yesterday, I thought I’d show the kids a little of that series to see what they thought of it. Short answer: They got pretty bored with the first story , a two-parter, that uses the same twist as The Sixth Sense but with both characters as kids. My daughter did seemed to be mildly entertained with the second story about a killer sponge. As for my opinion, they were both pretty bad and the whole thing felt like a cut-rate rip off of Are You Afraid of the Dark.
October 5: Reaching Out to the Other: Indie Horror Communicates with the Beyond
38. Starfish (2018) TSZDT 1001-2000 #918
39. The Endless (2017) TSZDT 1001-2000 #293
40. The Signal (2014)
The theme that ties all three of these films together is that they all involve mysterious messages that lead the protagonists into a bizarre waking nightmare. In Starfish, the lead Aubrey is dealing with the recent loss of her best friend in less than wholesome ways like breaking into her friend’s apartment and obsessing over hidden messages found in mix tapes while being tormented with terrifying dreams involving a figure with no face and other strange phenomena. This was an interesting one. I actually really liked the aesthetic and soundtrack although the story itself never really came together in a meaningful way. But still, the creativity in the filmmaking is something to be admired at least.
The Endless is a follow-up (although not really a sequel) to Benson’s and Moorehead’s film Resolution and is about two brothers who grew up in a religious cult but left and are pulled back in by a mysterious videotape that shows up one day. Once there, the previous apprehensions they held about the cult are somewhat alleviated when they see how seemingly normal everything is. But the strange messages that start showing up in the form of videotapes found at the bottom of the lake or buried underground that the cult claims are messages sent by their overseer starts to sour one of the brothers on the whole experience. Then it starts to get really weird. I actually liked this one a good bit. The dialogue is funny and natural with consistently good acting and an interesting central premise. It does feel a little aimless in the middle and probably could’ve done with a little editing but still manages to come across quite good overall.
The Signal starts with three friends from MIT on a road trip to California but gets sidelined when they start receiving mysterious messages from a cryptic hacker that leads to them an old house in the middle of nowhere. After screams and being bathed in a bright light, the lead Nic wakes up in a secret facility, held captive and not knowing who has captured him, what he’s doing there or where his friends are. This basically sends the film spiraling into a variety of directions. The Signal has several interesting ideas at play. I’m not sure how well they all work when slammed together though. The acting is generally solid and the effects work is quite good. The script I think is the biggest weakness though. Certain things just aren’t explained very well, and not in an intentionally mysterious way. It just felt like sub-par storytelling. At a certain point the movie seems to want to rush to get to certain show pieces in the back half, seemingly losing interest in the conspiracy thriller/captivity storyline introduced earlier. Still while not as good as something like Ex Machina, you could certainly do much worse.
October 5: Tepid Thai Terror: A Trio of Terrible Talkies from Thailand
41. Ghost of Mae Nak (2005)
42. Taxi Tonight (2005)
43. The Commitment (2004)
For my first foray into Southeast Asian horror, I took on three Thai films, all involving evil spirits. What I didn’t realize is they all had another theme in common. They all sucked and all had terrible makeup and effects work.
Ghost of Mae Nak concerns the husband of a newly married couple who is struck by a van and sent into a coma where his soul is held captive by the spirit of Mae Nak, a famous Thai legend not until La Llorona. Stories rooted in folklore can be interesting, but this one just uses the premise as a setup for a series of laughably bad and over the top kills. That subway beheading in particular had me laughing pretty hard at how dumb it looked.
Taxi Tonight looks even worse. Shot on video with makeup effects that look like a kit bought from Walmart, somehow it was still the most entertaining of the three just because it didn’t seem to take itself very seriously. I mean, the idea of a haunted taxi is pretty damn stupid to begin with, so it’s better to have some fun with the idea. Just to be clear, this is also a bad movie. Don’t take this as an endorsement in any way. Just sayin it isn’t AS bad.
The Commitment is basically just about a bunch of girls being haunted by a ghost and to just be a parade of Asian horror tropes used in the lamest, least interesting way possible. I’m starting to wonder if Shutter is an anomaly when it comes to solid Thai horror…
October 5: KIDDIE KORNER!
44. Goosebumps: Strained Peas/Shocker on Shock Street/Click (1998)
Well, I wasn’t planning on watching anymore Goosebumps this month, but my daughter saw the giant mantis on the front cover of Shocker on Shock Street (which in typical Goosebumps fashion isn’t in the actual show) and wanted to watch it. So here we go again. Strained Peas was pretty bland, taking the “baby takes over” story quite literally. Shocker on Shock Street is probably the best of this bunch with a Westworld-for-kids vibe that feels closer to the level of quality of Are You Afraid of the Dark than any other episodes I’ve seen of this one. So did Adam Sandler steal the idea for his movie from this Goosebumps episode “Click”? They have the same premise of a TV remote that can control reality and they even both use some of the same gags. They were also both pretty stupid. Maybe it’s coincidence… I dunno.