October 6: Metal Mayhem: Horror Affiliated with Metal Musicians
45. Dark Floors (2008)
46. Verotika (2019)
47. Sunset Society (2018)
Oh boy… This is a triple feature I regret… All of these feature metal musicians in front of or behind the camera. In the case of Dark Floors, we have the band Lordi as demons or something tormenting folks in a hospital including a young autistic girl and her father. From a purely filmmaking standpoint, the movie is competently shot, and as expected, Lordi’s creature effects make-up is basically a more polished version of their regular stage show (not unlike Gwar). Still, the acting is not great, especially the girl, and there’s some awful dialogue and character decisions. Also the ending is nonsense. Despite all that, this was the best of this triple feature, a very bad sign indeed…
So Verotika… Written by, directed by and based on a comic by Glenn Danzig, I think in his mind, he saw this as his Heavy Metal-esque pet project. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Danzig has absolutely zero talent behind the camera. The acting is abysmal. The dialogue is laughably terrible most of the time. Things happen for no rhyme or reason. Some have called this The Room of horror movies. Only time will tell if that’s the case, but it certainly is a good contender. Maybe I would’ve had more fun watching this with a group of people but watching by myself, parts of it feel interminable (especially the Bathory segment).
The main appeal of Sunset Society is of course that it stars Lemmy of Motörhead. The thing is, there’s a reason Lemmy was not as known for his acting as his music. He’s a fucking horrible actor who mumbles through every line as if he’s completely wasted (which I mean.. yea, probably). The plot is your pretty basic “vampires living amidst humans” plot with Lemmy as the vamp in charge. The whole thing is shot on video with wall-to-wall terrible acting. Given that both this and Verotika were produced by Cleopatra Records, I need to make a mental note to maybe avoid other movies they may put out in the future.
October 6: Blood Moon: The Modern Werewolf at a Glance
48. Late Phases (2014)
49. Wildling (2018)
50. Howl (2015)
I needed to watch something competent as a chaser to that shit pit of metal movies, so I decided to tackle these three fairly well regarded somewhat newer werewolf movies. I can safely say, they were all better than any of the last three.
Late Phases has a pretty straightforward werewolf plot set in a retirement community. The elderly are being killed off by what appears to be a savage animal from the woods nearby. Ambrose, a bristly veteran lacking in social graces, begins to suspect more than just a wolf attack going on. After his beloved dog is torn apart, he sets out to do something about it. I’m of two minds on this one. On one hand, the effects were pretty weak sauce. The werewolves didn’t look even remotely sinister or threatening and the transformation sequence felt derivative of other better effects sequences (especially American Werewolf in London and In the Company of Wolves). Despite that, Nick Damici’s central performance as Ambrose is fantastic and pretty much single-handedly makes this one worth watching. The sadness behind his eyes of his haunted past is palpable. Unfortunately when juxtaposed against the other characters, it shows how one-dimensional nearly everyone else is (although his conversations with an older priest are particular highlights). Still, while maybe not one of the truly great werewolf flicks, it is still solid and worth a watch.
Wildling takes a somewhat fresh approach to the werewolf mythos. A girl is cared for in isolation by her Daddy, Brad Dourif, but when she begins to blossom into adulthood, her Daddy starts drugging her to stave off something he fears is coming but won’t speak of. He eventually shoots himself in the face, after which the girl is discovered and brought into the temporary care of the local sheriff played pretty ably by Liv Tyler. But as she begins to transform into something else, forces seek to threaten her existence. Basically this one has the feel of Ginger Snaps meets The Woman, combining the “werewolf as metaphor for coming of age” with the feral woman sub-genre into something that’s executed pretty well and feels somewhat unique. I think this one is worth checking out as well.
Howl is more targeted to folks who are like “Fuck all this character development and puberty metaphor bullshit. I just wanna see werewolves killin’ the shit outta people!” Howl is definitely a more aggressive film that feels like a combination of Creep (the UK one in the subway) and Dog Soldiers and is primarily focused on a werewolf siege of a stranded train car full of people. It has a snappy pace with some good creature effects. In particular I liked the shining of the werewolf eyes in the darkness. Very much a “Bro” werewolf movie but still fun to watch even though it’s lacking in depth.
October 6: Down in the Gutter: Shot-on-Video Horror
51. Sledgehammer (1983)
52. Franky and His Pals (1991)
53. Vampire Cop (1990)
It’s Shot-on-Video time! Sledgehammer emerged in the early ’80s and one of the earliest accessible SOV horror flicks as a mainstay in video stores around the country (I remember my local one had it but my mom never let me rent it… WELL I’VE SEEN IT NOW MOM SO HA). A kid murders his parents with a sledgehammer. Years later some teens are in the same house having what looks to be a pretty bitchin’ party/seance and start getting killed off by SOMETHING with a sledgehammer in a similar fashion to the previous murders. Gee, I wonder what could possibly be going on? This whole movie has a weird campy vibe to it with a moody synth soundtrack and copious use of slo-mo, especially in the final third of the movie. I could see it maybe being fun to watch with a crowd.
Franky & His Pals was actually more entertaining in general though. It’s incredibly stupid plot involves Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, etc. on a search for hidden gold. Along the way they get caught up in a dance party, a beauty contest and other assorted nonsense. I mean, it isn’t good in the traditional sense but it does actually have some legitimately funny dialogue in a few places and has a very brisk pace that avoids being boring, which is a pretty major feat on its own for SOV. This one would make for a good party movie too.
Vampire Cop is definitely the worst of the three, brought to us by the director of Shark Exorcist himself Donald Farmer. The acting is terrible. Effects are terrible. The movie looks like it cost $5. Plus it seems to employ even more slo-mo than Sledgehammer, even during scenes where there’s no action going on. In a way, it’s actually impressive that Farmer makes a movie called Vampire Cop boring. Avoid this one like the plague.
October 6: Creepy Puppet Double Feature
54. Triloquist (2008)
55. Possum (2018)
Ventriloquist dummies and marionettes can be so damn creepy… The only surprising thing is why there aren’t even more evil puppets movies out there. Triloquist deals with some dark twisted sibling relationship issues and past trauma. It has some pretty fucked up subtext despite the gleefully gruesome tone it takes for the murder spree. The plot is a little on the complicated side for this kind of movie, involving a brother and sister who are sent to their uncle’s house with a ventriloquist dummy after their ventriloquist mother dies of a heroin overdose. After the sister is raped by her uncle, the dummy kills him. The siblings eventually end up on the streets with the brother being institutionalized and escaping. It just gets more warped from there… This one honestly had some potential. It’s ghoulish humor and grimdark tone with a fairly original dummy story is mainly hampered by absolutely awful acting from the lead as well as some fairly poor directing.
Possum is a very different beast altogether. More a mood piece than a coherent, easy-to-follow narrative, it does actually share the theme of confronting past trauma with Triloquist. The tone is drastically different though without even the hint of humor to be found and most violence being of the emotionally destructive kind. This story of a puppeteer who is unable to deal with traumatic events of the past involving his stepfather feels oppressive and quite disturbing in places. The soundtrack combined with the genuinely unnerving visuals of the spider puppet as a manifestation of his suppressed memories make this one very effective for those who have the patience of a slow burn atmospheric film. I will say this may not be recommended for those who need more explicitly explained though as it seems intentionally vague in its actual narrative.
October 7: The Twilight Years of the Golden Age of Euro-Horror
56. Laurin (1989)
57. Vec vidjeno (1987)
58. Paganini Horror (1989)
So when one thinks of Euro-horror in the modern context, the movement was really kicked off with the likes of Mario Bava in Italy and Hammer studios in England. They were known for their gothic atmosphere while also not being shy with the red stuff at times. With the Style of Bava and Dario Argento and the gore and supernatural strangeness of Lucio Fulci and Umberto Lenzi and others along with influences creeping in from the US slasher boom, euro horror began to splinter and mutate in very different ways in the ’80s. By ’88/’89, it became harder than ever to define what precisely Euro-horror even was anymore. And really, that’s ok. I personally think a move to more creator-driven ideals and less copycats based on an overarching trend is a good thing.
Having said all that, first up in Laurin. This one plays out as a sort of grim, somewhat surreal fairy tale of a girl who starts seeing disturbing visions that may be tied to the missing children in her small village. It is definitely is more of a slow burn but holds attention just with how subtly off-kilter everything seems. It’s a pretty good movie but some may find it’s denouement a little too brief.
Vec Vidjeno is certainly an interesting one, coming from Serbian director Goran Markovic. It has a very unique style, shifting back and forth in time using different tinting to punctuate mirrored events that lead to the despondent lead’s eventual breakdown. It can be a little hard to follow at times due to its narrative structure but is still worth a watch.
After two restrained slow burn films, I felt like I needed to dip my toes into the trashy side of Euro-Horror for a bit, and Paganini Horror certainly did the trick. Objectively this is not a good movie. Also what it is NOT is boring. From Luigi Cozzi, director of masterpieces like Lou Ferrigno’s Hercules, Contamination and Starcrash comes this delightfully stupid, gory flick about a rock group that acquires a long lost Paganini piece of sheet music that they plan to record in an old mansion to jump start their career. As you can guess, playing the song opens a portal to Hell or something and death for all involved isn’t far behind. This is the kind of movie that’s good for a party watch since it’s rarely dull and brings lots of “WTF is happening” moments with ridiculous out-of-nowhere character logic and death scenes.
October 7: Trapped In A Single Location on Christmas Double Feature
59. P2 (2007)
60. ATM (2012)
So both P2 and ATM finds our leads getting trapped and stalked by a madman while in the throws of Christmas celebrations. In the case of P2, it’s in a parking garage and in ATM it’s…well… an ATM kiosk obviously. Despite the incredibly similar theme (and even the really short titles), they approach the material in two very different ways. P2 focuses much more on the crazy guy, played pretty effectively by Wes Bentley, and his unhinged motivations. ATM on the other hand is much more vague in terms of who the killer even is. The protagonists just know that if they leave the kiosk, he’ll kill them. Both generate some solid suspense although I think P2 wins on the acting front. It also wins on the “most gruesome kill” front with a particularly squishy one involving someone being caught between a car and a hard place.
October 7: Tropical Terror: Argentine Horror
61. La Secta (2014) a.k.a. The Sect (2014)
62. La venganza del sexo a.k.a. The Curious Dr. Humpp (1969)
63. Limbo a.k.a. Children of the Night (2014)
Argentina isn’t largely known for their horror output, but they have released some over the years of varying quality. First up in this bunch we have The Sect, a very low budget digital video feature about a woman who goes in for a job interview only to be abducted by a strange cult who uses her in a human trafficking scheme. The premise only gets ickier when their leader, a robed and masked figure they claim to be an alien impregnates her and she succumbs to Stockholm Syndrome. I was…not a fan of this one…
The Curious Dr. Humpp is probably mostly known for being one of the marquee titles of Something Weird Video. This strange, sexual mad scientist trip through perversions certainly fits in quite well with SWV’s library offering up a slice of sleaze involving an evil doctor who kidnaps and forces people to bone in laboratory conditions so he can extract sex fluids from them to stave off his monster tendencies. And yes, it’s as ridiculous as that sounds. Good times.
Children of the Night was an interesting one that’s a good counterpoint to The Sect. Despite its low budget, Children of the Night still offers some interesting ideas that, while not perfect, still makes it worth a watch. The plot concerns a group of children vampires in an isolated community who come under attack from outside forces. It actually has some surprisingly solid acting and character moments in it, even from the kids, with some very bleak themes as well. It does have some pacing issues and the poor production holds it back in places, but I still liked it pretty well.
October 7: KIDDIE KORNER!
64. The Munsters’ Revenge (1981)
Earlier this year, I watched through both seasons of the original Addams Family TV series with the family and my kids seemed to like the macabre goings-on. So naturally it made sense to see what they thought of another family of monsters of the more literal kind. While my daughter seemed to like seeing Frankenstein, a vampire, mummies, etc. all in the same movie at first, the corny gags and “wronged man” plot did nothing to hold her (or my) attention very well. I don’t know if I’ll show them any more Munsters… Maybe I’ll give it one more try later.
October 8: Hysterical Housemaids: Classic Korean Horror
65. Gipeun bam gabjagi a.k.a. Suddenly in the Dark (1981)
66. Pimak a.k.a. The Hut (1981)
67. Salinnabileul ggotneun yeoja a.k.a. Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death (1978)
I tend to really like South Korean films from the ’70s and ’80s and this trio of films is no different. I quite enjoyed all three, particularly Suddenly in the Dark and Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death. The Hut was solid but definitely more of a slower meditative film that made a nice counterpoint to the craziness of the first and third.
So one thing I can definitely glean from watching a lot of Korean horror and thrillers is they really seem to be fixated on crazy housemaids. While Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death itself doesn’t feature this trope, it’s director Ki-young Kim basically seemed to kick off this trend with The Housemaid (1960) and proceeded to make roughly the same story at least two more times (Hwanyeo (1971) and Hwanyeo ’82). Suddenly in the Dark from director Young Nam Ho is another in this oddly specific sub-genre of the housemaid interloper who worms her way into the midst of a family and causes major disruption and tragedy. Like the other films with this theme, it is something of a slow burn with the early scenes playing out with subtle domestic drama as the maid’s influence becomes more pronounced. The last twenty or so minutes though goes off the deep end with a psychedelic freakout that needs to be seen.
Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death is a weird one. The narrative is all over the place with several different overlapping, interconnected subplots involving a suicide pact involving butterflies for some reason, an archeologist trying to track down a mummy that has turned into a female cannibal, the owner of a bookstore that refuses to die even after beheading, a cop trying to make sense of it all, and a bunch of other things that don’t really all gel together but is still a hell of a ride nonetheless. In fact, I probably need to watch this again just to try to make a little more sense of it.
October 8: Getting Trash Down to a Science: Welcome to The Asylum
68, Attila (2013)
69. Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012)
70. Asian School Girls (2014)
Some may compare The Asylum to a modern day AIP, but really they are more like a schlock equivalent of Marvel movies. Unlike AIP who pretty much gives total creative control to their directors as long as they bring the movie in on-time and on-budget, The Asylum seems to intentionally strike a very specific tone and format with most of their films to the point that you can pretty much derive a couple of different formulas from it. Either they are a pastiche/rip off of a popular film released around the same time (Transmorphers, Almighty Thor, AVH: Alien vs Hunter) or it’s a “start with a crazy title and work backwards” film (Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, Sharknado, Zoombies), and one key I think is that they rarely tip their hat with a wink and nod about their bullshit. And here’s the thing, like Marvel movies, this approach isn’t going to create a new memorable masterpiece of film BUT it does introduce a consistency that makes The Asylum movies easy to watch. They tend to hit certain beats, rarely go more than ten minutes without some nonsense going on to hold your attention and usually end with some stupid but amusing ending showpiece. Don’t get me wrong. They are generally bad for you. But so are Sonic Drive-In’s onion rings. And I still find myself eating those everyone once in a while even though they give me heartburn.
Attila is your fairly standard “Unearthing Attila the Hun’s corpse and resurrecting it from the dead as a rampaging monster” flick. I’m actually not sure what this one is ripping off although I’m fairly confident that it is ripping something off (if anyone knows feel free to comment). Despite that, honestly the filmmaking is a little cleaner and higher quality than many of The Asylum’s films I’ve seen. Although it still has the same brain dead script and bad acting I’ve come to expect. Also while it has its share of Asylum’s patented bad CG effects, it does seem to use some practical ones as well which is nice to see.
Nazis at the Center of the Earth definitely falls into the crazy nonsense category. I remember after Overlord came out a couple years ago, several people I know had commented that it felt like a Wolfenstein 3D video game movie. I have to say, this one seems even more so, even culminating in a Hitler robot with disembodied head like in the game. But yea, like Sharknado, you should be able to tell from the title whether you want to watch this or not.
Asian School Girls I think is another one that started from a title and worked backwards. The marketing looks like its trying for a Sushi Typhoon type vibe but the film itself seems more of a rape-revenge exploitation type film with a little bit of Women-in-Prison thrown in. The thing is, both of those are kind of ill fits for The Asylum. While their movies may have the occasional boob shot, they usually don’t lean into the sexual perversions and graphic nudity. Asian School Girls is no different which makes it feel oddly chaste as a result. The gangrape that kicks it all off is mostly not even shown, and the aforementioned section where the girls are throw into jail in their civvies stays pretty tame too. As one would expect, it doesn’t shy away from the violence though with lots of blood splatter. I dunno. I don’t think I’d recommend this if you’re looking for a typical movie from The Asylum.
October 8: Stumbling Around in the Dark: Found Footage Fear
71. 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck (2012)
72. U.F.O. ABDUCTION a.k.a. The McPherson Tape (1989)
73. The Houses October Built (2014)
I can’t say I was super looking forward to this one. Found footage movies tend to recycle a lot of the same tropes and do the same stupid things (why are they still filming? why is this person walking with the camera pointed in front of them? Oh, I guess it’s the part where someone points the camera at themselves and cries in terror). Given my luck, of course the first film out of the gate I end up watching, 100 Ghost Street, could’ve just been called Found Footage Tropes: The Movie. It isn’t surprising considering this one was released by The Asylum (it was actually on the same blu-ray as Asian School Girls, so I figured the gods were telling me it was time to start the found footage run). Really the only thing that I could say positive about this one is that the lead in it does actually have some charisma to her even though the movie doesn’t give her much to do but point at shadows as the camera swings around too late and scream as co-workers are pulled off into darkness.
The McPherson Tape has many of the same tropes listed earlier. The most interesting thing about it is that as far as I know, it’s the first of this particular type of found footage horror movie (yes, Cannibal Holocaust came before it but that was a mockumentary style rather than home video footage). The extremely low budget is even more evident with this one than many with most of the second half of the film primarily being people pointing guns out windows and screaming at something. Still, if you really dig found footage movies, it’ll scratch that itch.
The Houses October Built is done more in the style of Cannibal Holocaust and is structured as a documentary on extreme haunted houses. The premise itself has potential but the characters are mostly a bunch of unlikable dumbasses which makes it hard for me to want to spend over 90 minutes with these people. I don’t really get pleasure from watches idiots gets tormented either.
October 8: KIDDIE KORNER!
74. Halloweentown (1998)
This time in the Kiddie Korner we’ve got a Disney Channel original movie that feels initially like a Harry Potter rip-off with a girl being raised not knowing about her witch lineage. but when her town gets attacked by evil, her grandmother lets her in on the truth and recruits her to help fend them off. While thematically it initially starts off like Harry Potter, the tone is really more like Sabrina the Teenage Witch or Goosebumps with some obvious budgetary TV trappings manifest in the pretty weak effects. Also my kids mostly seemed bored with it so it didn’t even accomplish the basic goal of being a distraction.