MY CALL: An excellent and classic anthology featuring some familiar tales.  OTHER HORROR ANTHOLOGIES:  Some other fun, decent and/or clever anthologies include (in order of release date):  Black Sabbath (1963), The Vault of Horror (1973), The Uncanny (1977), Creepshow (1982), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye (1985), Creepshow 2 (1987), Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), Necronomicon: Book of the Dead (1993), Campfire Tales (1997), 3 Extremes (2004), Trick ‘r Treat (2007), Chillerama (2011), Little Deaths (2011), V/H/S (2012), The Theater Bizarre (2012), The ABCs of Death (2013), V/H/S 2 (2013), The Profane Exhibit (2013) and The ABCs of Death 2 (2014).

Based on comic book stories Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror, this British anthology begins as five strangers on a catacombs tour who end up trapped with a robed monk who reveals the dark secrets of why each of them is there.  This “crypt keeper” (Ralph Richardson; Time Bandits, Rollerball, Dragonslayer) seems all too knowledgeable about their sins and reveals how they all came to be here today.

The stories involve crazed madmen, zombies in various forms, prophetic dreams, twisted wishes and some very, very angry blind men.  Perhaps due to the dated style, these horror stories will bring you no sense of horror today.  They will, however, make you smile as they are nice little horror stories whose concepts have been used over and over again in past decades.  Think of them more as campfire stories than facets of a horror film.

There are five short stories, one for each stranger in the crypt…

And All Through the House stars Joan Collins (Empire of the Ants) a trophy wife who murders her considerably older husband on Christmas Eve to make herself a rich widow.  While this may sound evil enough already, she executes her plan with her daughter asleep (or is she?) upstairs.  That same evening we hear radio announcements of a recently escaped psychopath wearing a Santa Claus suit…and all get what they deserve.

This short story is an absolute delight in its simplicity and it has been retold on Tales from the Crypt, season 1, episode 2 (1989) and then replayed by Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984).

Reflection of Death changes pace for the worst with a less engaging tale of a man sneaking away to leave his wife and family for his mistress.  The man awakens from a bad dream revealing his future (much as with a “ghost of Christmas future”) only to relive it.  A clever idea at the time (over 40 years ago), but now a trope too played out to hold up.

Poetic Justice finds Peter Cushing (Horror of Dracula, The Mummy, The Curse of Frankenstein) as the elderly Arthur Grimsdyke, the kindest widower living only for his dogs and the local children whom he entertains with homemade toys.  Arthur’s neighbor takes action to part Arthur from the things he loves most along with his formerly saintly reputation and happiness.  This predictably leads to Arthur’s death and revenge.

Wish You Were Here will feel most familiar, being based on the now-troped-up popular story of the Monkey’s Paw.  In this story a formerly wealthy man finds himself deep in debt and forced to sell his assets.  After breaking the bad news to his wife, she suddenly notices some strange text etched in an antique Asian statuette that offers three wishes to its owner, but offers a warning as well.  Not heeding the warning his wife hastily wishes for riches…only to find grave consequence.  Subsequent and more careful wishes to solve her error only make things worse.

We find more use of the Monkey’s Paw concept in The Monkey’s Paw (2013; which I DO NOT advise watching) and the Wishmaster (1997) movies…among many others.

Blind Alleys is by far my favorite short of the anthology and the one that stuck with me in the 20 years since I first saw this movie.  A selfish (to the point of being cruel—except for when it comes to his dog) retired veteran takes a job as a superintendent of a home for blind men.  As the “officer in charge” he budgets himself steak, brandy and fine art for his office as the elderly blind men freeze through the winter with little meat to warm their plates.  When their requests are not met and a fellow resident dies after succumbing to illness in the cold, the blind seek revenge in a way that just makes my toes curl in delight…a way that makes me think “and this is before the Saw films came out.”

This is a classic horror anthology not to be missed.  It may not be dripping with gore and the stories may seem simple by today’s standards, but it’s easy to see what makes this a beloved horror classic.

MY CALL: A decent classic, but a classic may often feel dated. Keep your expectations low and this may be very entertaining.  OTHER HORROR ANTHOLOGIES:  Some other fun, decent and/or clever anthologies include (in order of release date):  Black Sabbath (1963), Tales from the Crypt (1972), The Uncanny (1977), Creepshow (1982), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye (1985), Creepshow 2 (1987), Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), Necronomicon: Book of the Dead (1993), Campfire Tales (1997), 3 Extremes (2004), Trick ‘r Treat (2007), Chillerama (2011), Little Deaths (2011), V/H/S (2012), The Theater Bizarre (2012), The ABCs of Death (2013), V/H/S 2 (2013), The Profane Exhibit (2013) and The ABCs of Death 2 (2014).

Based on comic book stories Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror, this British anthology begins when five strangers accidently take an elevator to the “subbasement” of a building only to end up trapped in a room where they all have no choice but to sit, pour a drink and chat to pass the time. The theme of conversation is that each of them inexplicably shares the recent experience of a grave dream that felt so real that it was as if it really happened. They take turns goading each other to share their dreams, which clearly seem disturbing to each story teller.

The stories involve murderers, double crosses, being buried alive, vampires and voodoo vengeance.  Perhaps due to the dated style, these horror stories will bring you no sense of horror today.  Also, unlike its Tales from the Crypt (1972) predecessor, these stories largely do not seem as iconic or particularly interesting. This film has a lower IMDB (6.6 vs. 7.0) and Rotten Tomatoes (51% vs 70%) scores. They’ll still make you smile, though.  Think of them more as campfire stories than facets of a horror film.

There are five short stories, one for each stranger…

Midnight Mess is about a man who hunts down his missing sister to a quiet little town with the intention of murdering her for her recently inherited fortune. During his trip, he his warned by several locals that “they” come out at night. Confused by this warning, and clearly not heeding it, he goes about his business and finds out the hard way that he should have listened.

“Your fangs look so legit.”
“Thank you.  Yours, too.”

This short story is unforgivably dumb and made me think twice about continuing with the movie. I’ll admit that I giggled at the final scene…but it was bad. Thankfully, the stories get better.

The Neat Job features an obsessive-compulsive neat freak who, without getting to know her, marries a woman so he would have someone to take care of him. Unfortunately she lacks his unhealthy attention to detail and order, which creates much tension between them and leads to dire consequence for one of them.

This story was an absolute delight and by far my favorite of the anthology. It is rich with dark comedy as we see his obsession blossom before his now fearful wife, who is driven mad by his mania. Truly a pleasure.

This Trick’ll Kill You is about a magician and his espoused magician’s assistant on vacation in India to discover a new trick for his act. He discovers a mystic woman with a magical rope trick that he absolutely must have—but it’s not for sale. Desperate for success on stage, he will do anything to possess the secret of the trick.

This one was a mixed bag. It started out very interesting only to later reveal that there was nothing behind the story; no clever twist or turn. It was entertaining, but conceptually simple to the point of disappointment.

Bargain in Death provides the answer to “what could possibly go wrong?” A man decides to fake his own death (using some metabolism-slowing drug of sorts) to cash in on an insurance policy. The catch is that his friend will cash in the policy and then dig him up from his grave before he suffocates in his coffin.

It’s not as predictable as it sounds. A bit random and a bit entertaining, but the story is nothing special.

Drawn and Quartered combines some interesting ideas used in later horror films/stories. An artist who is financially cheated by his agent wants revenge so he “buys voodoo” to bestow him with the ability to control fate. Whatever happens to his art, happens to whatever was painted. Destroy the painting, destroy the model. The catch? The artist must now protect his own self portrait.

This was an interesting story and the fun was in the anticipation. The only short story better fitting to end this film would be The Neat Job, the two of them clearly being my favorites.

This is a classic horror anthology not to be missed.  It may not be dripping with gore and the stories may seem simple by today’s standards, but it’s easy to see what makes this a beloved horror classic.

MY CALL: This movie is dumb.  Really dumb.  But it’s also gory, campy, bad in a good way and full of laughs and weird things like werezombeavers. MOVIES LIKE Zombeavers:  Looking for more self-aware horror that will make you laugh?  Try Black Sheep (2006), Cabin Fever (2002), Cabin Fever 2 (2009), Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (2014), Shark Night 3D (2011), The Boneyard (1991), Critters (1986), Gremlins (1984), Ghoulies (1985), Piranha 3D (2010), Piranha 3DD (2012).

This flick dutifully pays homage to the likes of Piranha 3D (2010), which feels like an Academy Award winner next to this.  It answers what happens when an inexperienced director teams up with two inexperienced writers, none of whom having written or directed anything in horror?  Certainly nothing amazing, but perhaps something that’s still worth the price of admission at the very least…as long as you brought beer, that is.  That’s what Zombeavers is.  It’s the very least…the very least that it takes to watch a movie and not hate, regret or dislike it to the point that it cannot be enjoyed.

This movie is definitely funny (and fun in general), but there are scenes that I feel may not have been intentionally funny (although this film is very self-aware of its quality and tone).  The acting is deplorable, the writing is horrendous, there’s basically no story nor any clever shots to boast.  Yet I didn’t mind.

Perhaps a product of the film’s own self-awareness, no time is wasted before leaping into some lakeside nudity.  It may not be raining breasts in terms of the gratuitous nudity, but they got to it right away for those who care.  Later in the film we’ll endure some quintessentially tasteless sex scenes (brief nudity at most) that feel like a one-way ticket to pound town on frat row.  The sex dialogue is pretty funny.

The highlight of the film is animatronic beavers, which are delightfully bad.  After being exposed to some sort of toxic waste that was dumped in their lake, these rabid twitchy zombie beavers remind me of the glorious creature effects of the 80s.  Their spastic movements are reminiscent of evil Muppets or shaky-limbed gremlins.  While they are surely funny to watch, something about them remains menacing.  Really—I think the twitchiness makes them appropriately off-putting.  I’m somewhat reminded of the mounted deer head in Evil Dead 2 (1987) crossed with the trickster gopher from Caddyshack (1980).

As you can see BELOW, the shots very tasteful.

As if directly copying scenes out of Night of the Living Dead (1968), the zombeavers break their way through boarded up windows in the panicked victims’ vacation house and the deck of the tanning raft.  The beavers are pretty smart.  They chew through phone lines and know when to regroup.

If the cheap zombeavers were the best aspect of the film, the gore came next.  The rubber guts and torn latex flesh is thankfully abundant as throats are bitten and bodies sundered.

Quite a pleasure was the transformation of a bitten girl into a werebeaver zombie (or werezombeaver?)—not unlike what happened in Black Sheep (2006).  These infected victims behave as if they caught a beavered up version of the Evil Dead’s (2013) contagious zombie demonism.  After being infected, a young woman twerks her tail—YES, she grew a beaver tail—and terrorizes her friends with her buck teeth which pushed their way through her front teeth.  She even bites off a guy’s penis in the spirit of Piranha 3D (2010).  Yikes!

Clearly this flick has a good sense of humor.  At one point a guy throws his girlfriend’s dog in the water as a decoy for the beavers and when the zombeavers break their way through the cabin floor, it’s like a game of Whack-a-Mole.

 That poor dog. SMH

The ending (and opening) scene is gloriously stupid, along with the outtakes at the end.  My favorite outtake was the dog in the water being chased by the zombeaver props.

I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoyed the more recent movies listed above in “MOVIES LIKE Zombeavers.”

MY CALL:  I consider this movie a major disappointment in terms of storytelling.  But it certainly has its merits in the creepy and scary department.  Watch at your own risk.   MOVIES LIKE Insidious: Chapter 3:  Poltergeist (2015), Insidious (2010) and Insidious Chapter 2 (2013).

I am not a fan of these films.  If you are, I strongly recommend reading Mark’s reviews of the Insidious films instead of mine.  Mine will probably just upset you…much as this franchise continues to upset me.  I enjoy these franchise films for creepiness and scares but abhor their poor storytelling.    :/

The Insidious franchise has never done much for me.  Some people love it and praise these films up and down as the next best thing…I’m not one of them.  Directed by James Wan (Saw, Dead Silence, The Conjuring), the first installment (2010) succeeded in introducing us to fantasticly written and acted characters for whom we cared, great shots and stellar scares–but somehow to its detriment, the movie felt like three different movies forced together one after the other.  It began like a mix between a weird haunting and a Lifetime movie about a home invader, moved on to some really cool build up as we learn what the problem is, and them degenerates into great scares but off-kilter storytelling as we dive into The Further.  This could have been done splendidly, but I found no sense of smoothness in the transitions; individual scenes felt strong but they struck me as hastily sutured together to form a Fankensteinian stitch-work horror of storytelling.  In its defense most of the cast was amazing, however the story lacked any sense of synthesis and the overexplanation of The Further (and simply trying to show it to us rather than leaving it a mystery) really depleted my interest in the film.

Insidious Chapter 2 (2013; also directed by James Wan) continued to follow Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring) and Rose Byrne (28 Weeks Later) down an even more shakily-told storyline whose tone inexplicably shifted to near farcical at times with an insanely possessed Patrick Wilson grinning like the mounted Evil Dead 2 deer head.  I liked parts of Chapter 1 very much, but nothing about Chapter 2 brought me any pleasure and I was hardly entertained.  Despite the presence of solid actors and a proven director, I was relieved to hear that Wan was stepping back for Chapter 3 and that we would start anew with a largely different cast.

Now with a new first-time director (Leigh Whannell, who wrote the first two installments), we venture into this incredibly unnecessary prequel which serves little more purpose than to re-introduce us to the psychic medium Elise (Lin Shaye; Ouija, A Nightmare on Elm Street), show us how she teamed up with her paranormal investigator Geek Squad duo, re-visit The Further, and tell us a new story.  It pains me (but doesn’t shock me) to say that in all endeavors this film failed.

The budget is low and this is most obvious during the scenes in The Further.  I maintain the film didn’t need to take us there and “show” us The Further again, or in the first place.

Insidious Chapter 3 suffers from the same snags as the Poltergeist (2015) remake.  From the start these films assume we already care instead of giving us a good reason to care.  Sure, you can show me a struggling widower raising his kids or a family facing some hard times.  But you don’t earn my sympathy and manifest urgency just by putting that on screen and then dropping these families into bad supernatural situations–and that’s all we get here.

Hey, Elise?  Did you find the soul of the story in there?  It seems that a demon stole the soul and life from this plot.

Teenager Quinn (Stefanie Scott) helps her struggling father (Dermot Mulroney; The Grey, Stoker) to take care of the house and her younger brother.  Their dynamic is stale but we understand the situation and its challenges well.  We learn that after the loss of her mother Quinn tried to “contact” her spirit and, in doing so, caught the attention of something insidious.

Quinn and her father end up seeking the help of Elise, our recurring franchise medium who also has her very own insidious demon’s maligned attention (The Bride in Black from Chapters 1 & 2) from trying to contact her dead husband.  Specs (Leigh Whannell; Cooties, Saw) and Tucker (Angus Sampson; Mad Max: Fury Road) return and here is where they first team up with Elise.

The evil spirit after Quinn is The Man Who Can’t Breathe.  A disturbing sight to be sure, this antagonist adds a major creep factor and some significant scares.  To that end, I’ll say that the insidious spirits of all three films have always been exceedingly successful at making audiences uneasy and it is for this reason that—however much I whine about them—I’ll go see every Insidious film they make.  The greatest (if only) success of this film is the creepy tone and its ability to catch me off guard with good jump scares.  Not simply loud noises.  But jump scares–but well-staged jump scares arriving after a creepy, tense build-up.  Kudos for that.  Being a grumpy critic at times, this really kept me from regretting the film.

An evil spirit steals “half her soul.”  HALF!  Really?  We’re meant to just let that one go.  Okay, fine. Which half?
Was it the half that had the better writing for this film?

I was especially reeling with discomfort during the scene (NO SPOILER here, it was in the trailer) when the possessed Quinn kicks her leg casts to crumbs and then walks on them…with bone crunching sounds.  Yikes!  So wrong!  Painful to watch.

Sadly, the abrupt turns in the story (many of which leading to dead-end characters we never should have met or notions that add nothing to the story) left me with a bad taste in my mouth and a finale that wasn’t satisfying.  But Elise and Quinn were both well-played and, upon further reflection, this will remain in my eyes an excellent scary movie night, popcorn flick.

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This article is rich with images you do not want your boss to see when he’s looking over your shoulder at work. View at your own risk.
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 MY CALL:  There are certainly better horror anthologies out there, but I really enjoyed two of the stories herein.  Looking for a film that features egomaniacal magicians, horrifying elderly nudity, alternate dimensions, demonic genitals, “sort of” zombies, a fork frenzy massacre, Mexican Satanists and an evil ice cream truck?  Then this may be for you—of course, with very small doses of everything.  OTHER HORROR ANTHOLOGIES:  Some other anthologies include (in order of release date):  Black Sabbath (1963), Tales from the Crypt (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973), The Uncanny (1977), Creepshow (1982), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye (1985), Creepshow 2 (1987), Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), Necronomicon: Book of the Dead (1993), Campfire Tales (1997), 3 Extremes (2004), Trick ‘r Treat (2007), Chillerama (2011), Little Deaths (2011), V/H/S (2012), The Theater Bizarre (2012), The ABCs of Death (2013), V/H/S 2 (2013), The Profane Exhibit (2013) and The ABCs of Death 2 (2014). A found footage episodic horror anthology, the movie opens with the overarching horror story.  These short films vary substantially in filming style, acting, gore, direction and writing quality.  Below is a summary of each short film and, sometimes, a cheeky quote…

Overarching Story.  This opens with scattered videos of a man recording his girlfriend.  They seem quite happy until their clips lead to a terrible accident in which his girlfriend disappears and suddenly calls his phone–flickering in and out and apparently in trouble (via Skype call).  Everything hereafter strangely seems to revolve around a police chase with an ice cream truck as people who the boyfriend knows keep dying in weird ways as we go from story to story.  Meanwhile, this story continues intermittently and then concludes the anthology.

Dante the Great. Dante (Justin Welborn; The Signal, The Crazies, The Final Destination) was once a struggling wannabe magician living in a trailer park who somehow came into possession of Houdini’s cloak. This cloak gave him real magical powers and, subsequently, fame and megalomania. He telekinetically dissects a rabbit with a thought, levitates people, teleports them, breaks their bones (this was REALLY cool), guts them…but this power comes at a price.  The cloak needs to be fueled.  By what you may wonder…?

I really enjoyed Dante the Great, directed by Gregg Bishop (The Other Side, Dance of the Dead).  The pacing was perpetually entertaining and the ending was cliché but fun.  It reminded me of Lord of Illusions (1995) with a dash of The Craft (1996).

Parallel Monsters. A man creates a portal to another dimension that is exactly the same as his own…except that everything is mirrored in this twisted story. He meets “himself” who thinks the same, invented the same machine at the same time to cross dimensions and they used it at the same time.  The two (versions of the same) men are giddy with discovery and decide to “trade” universes for 15 minutes.  Only, once the switch is made, it seems that things are a bit more different than expected.  Even morality and the general sense of “good” is reversed.

“Oh, look.  An alternate dimension me.  What could possibly go wrong?”

Directed by Nacho Vigalondo (The Profane Exhibit, The ABCs of Death), this Spanish language short film starts out fantastically—we sit back wondering “what’s going to go wrong”—but veers into the bonkers zone towards the end.  Not just the off the deep end, but into the “demonic genitals” end.  That said, I loved this.  The storytelling gets a bit slow in the middle, but you’re bewildered in the horror of this “other world” and we get some nice surprises. Bonestorm. A group of teen skateboarding troublemakers recording a webseries about their ill-conceived stunts decide to venture to a secret spot in Tijuana, Mexico to party and finish their project. They encounter an earthquake tremor, a deeply disturbed woman who appears to be in a trance, long decayed remains, small shrines and a skate arena complete with a pentagram drawn across the floor.  The kids don’t seem to consider that anything is wrong.  Stupid.  Not just the kids, but the story, acting, filming, writing, effects…smh. The extremely shaky GoPro shots offer nothing to the story other than mirroring the chaos of these teens’ judgment.  This film relies on entropy for entertainment, but it’s not working for me at all.  Some kid gets blood on the pentagram, a bunch of weirdoes show up to tear the kids apart, and there’s apparently some sort of “Hell Beast.”  Cultists chant, wear cultish outfits, light blood on fire with black magic…things just get more stupidly bonkers, and not in a way that I find cool or funny.  This feels like a gory acid trip written by a flunky.  The gore is abundant and ill-executed—it almost draws a smile.  And no sense can be made from the mayhem. It should come as no surprise that the men behind this film were the least experienced in terms of directing.

SUMMARY:  Far too much attention is dedicated to the over-arching story, which offers nothing but incomprehensible chaos.  It isn’t clever.  However, some of the deaths will please viewers with surprises.  While it tries to show us a lot, the wraparound story is less engaging than the much simpler ones used in V/H/S (2012) and V/H/S 2 (2013).  I could have done without this wraparound story altogether.  It ends the anthology in a major disappointment and isn’t creepy or scary, nor twisty or explicative.  Trick ‘r Treat (2007) did this all much better, with a wraparound story that actually connected the stories instead of simply serving as a gift bag with a bunch of random stories therein. People may complain up and down (in some reviews I’ve read) about Dante the Great and Parallel Monsters.  But these are exactly what I wanted!  They’re stories I haven’t seen or heard before and they were done adequately.  Good or bad, they were at least adequate and (for me) fun.  The wraparound story and Bonestorm were simply a waste of film, both of which being so mundane and flat out awful that I’d be all the happier if they were altogether omitted at the expense of the film’s running time. I guess I was pleased with this movie.  Not overall, but because I got two interesting stories out of it (hidden among the other crap).

MY CALL:  Not as scary as it used to be but every bit as fun, Wes Craven’s original Nightmare is a creation that no horror fan should be without.  A little hokey by today’s standards, but also still creepy.  MOVIES LIKE A Nightmare on Elm Street: Other classics  everyone should see include Poltergeist (1982; discussed at length in our podcast #16) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Hills Have Eyes series (1977).  For more recent horror with a similar sense of humor try Wishmaster (1997) and Hatchet (2006).

Now over 30 years old, I think it’s safe to say this is a horror classic…and it’s a classic I still enjoy and revere.  However, like many “classics,” there are aspects of this film that will disappoint horror fans reared by films of the last 10-20 years.  The effects are dated (although I love these practical effects still much as I do those in The Thing and The Fly), the plot and characters are a bit hokey at times (but that’s forgivable in the horror genre), and it feels more campy by today’s standards when it felt drop dead serious at the time of its release.  So I contend that it is my duty to defend the importance of the classics to our younger readers and assign some homework to those who have not yet seen the pre-remake/reboot Freddy Krueger.

This film opens with a nightmare, and an inherently creepy one at that.  We are taken to a shadowy, steam-spewing boiler room where a mysterious stalker rakes his “claws” across old pipes as he slowly advances upon his prey, his dreaming victim Tina.  The evil assailant swipes his claws at her and she awakens with her nightgown shredded four-fold.  Rattled by the experience, Tina shares her horrible dream with her friends Rod, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp; Star Trek Into Darkness) and Glen (Johnny Depp; Tusk, Dark Shadows), who have all eerily had similar dreams about the same “clawed” killer.

Written and directed by Wes Craven (Cursed, Deadly Friend, Deadly Blessing), we are introduced to the terrifying notion that someone (or something) can hunt and kill us in our dreams…and you really die!  Our killer is Fred Krueger (Robert Englund; Wishmaster, Hatchet), a demonic power with an ugly red and green sweater, a single clawed glove, and a face still-moistly burned beyond recognition.  As a villain, Freddy is iconic and has graced the screen for 9 films!

This film may not have the emotional power of Poltergeist (1982; discussed at length in our podcast #16) or the blunt-force trauma holy shit factor of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), but is instead its own entirely different animal.  Freddy gives us hints of a twisted sense of humor as he cuts off his fingers and slices open his own maggot and pus-filled chest or licks Nancy and laughs through a possessed phone, but (unlike many of the sequels) there is nothing slapstick or comedic about it really.  He is a twisted and pure evil.  It’s intended to be sick and disturbing, not funny (to anyone but Freddy, that is)—although fans laugh at it today.  We find these kinds of scenes delivered with a deliberate humor in Hatchet (2006), Wishmaster (1997) and so many more releases of the past 20 years…and also blatantly more deliberate in later installments of the Nightmare on Elm Street or Leprechaun franchises.

Simply meant to be terrifying back in 1984, Freddy looks a little hokey today—in a fun way.  He runs down alleys like a crab with a limp waving his glove hand in the air, he jumps atop Nancy and rolls around instead of wisely slicing at her, laughs after mutilating himself.  My movie companion actually said the movie, at times, felt a little dorky.  And I couldn’t agree more.

Starkly contrasting these “dorky” scenes are dream sequences with a bodybagged Tina calling for help and being dragged away through the school hallway, the boiler room scenes, the harrowingly weird death scene of Nancy’s mother towards the end, Tina’s gravity defying death scene, and Freddy’s twisted laughter in the boiler room.  These scenes remain “effective” to me, but they lack the right kind of production to remain sufficiently creepy or scary today (even with all the lights off as I watch).  Of course, I’m a bit numbed by the hundreds of horror films I’ve seen.  Perhaps these scenes will make you all quiver a bit.  If not those, then at least the little girls jumping rope while reciting Freddy’s dark nursery rhyme.

 Whoa! A cool death scene in any decade.

 Timelessly creepy.

Look for John Saxon (Blood Beach, Enter the Dragon) and Lin Shaye (Insidious Chapter 3, The Signal) as we watch Nancy and her friends discover what drives Fred Krueger, learn his origin, and figure out how to defeat him through a combination of booby traps and bringing Freddy from the dream world into reality.  Just try to ignore the lamely written controlling nature, denial and alcoholism of Nancy’s mother.  It should also be noted that as Nancy, Langenkamp (not Robert Englund) carries the film.  Freddy is done well with creepy execution, but he has almost no lines and little screen presence until the end.  It’s Nancy who validates our fears, rallies awareness despite her parents’ disbelief, and battles Freddy.

Without going into detail, I should add that I still enjoy ALL of the practical effects in this film.  Sometimes the simplicity makes it more gross, weird, off-putting, or even a bit funny.

The ending is deliberately sort of silly and illogical.  But that was and remains a fun staple of horror—twists, even if stupid, that make us smile.  If there was a deliberately funny moment, it had to be the last scene with the car and Nancy’s mother being cartoon-yanked through a tiny window on the front door.

Is that prop a blow-up doll?

This is a truly fun movie experience and worth the ride, even if you laugh today in 2015 whereas others screamed back in 1984.

If you need another trusted opinion, check out this review from Rivers of Grue.

MY CALL:  Perhaps my favorite zombie movie of all time, this is gory, often funny, occasionally brutal film features credibly flawed characters that we can get behind and a believable story of a zombie apocalypse.  MOVIES LIKE Dawn of the Dead:  Try Romero’s other early zombie movies (Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead).  They’re amazing.  Want to see some other films that paved the way for horror as we know it today?  Try Poltergeist (1982; discussed at length in our podcast #16), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

Back in 1978, gore like this wasn’t so common.

In the spirit of our recent podcast, The MFF Podcast #15: The George A. Romero Zombie Special, I must also credit my fellow podcasters John Lasavath and Mark Hofmeyer as co-writers of the content in this review since I am including some of their insights herein…

In 1968 George Romero revolutionized the “movie zombie” concept by delivering the contagious, flesh-eating zombie (in lieu of risen corpses of vengeance via Voodoo).  Zombies “eating people” was a notion that had not before been realized on film.  Needless to say, in the next 10 years flesh-eating zombies became a celebrated theme in horror.  After numerous copycats followed Night of the Living Dead (1968), Romero finally made his highly anticipated sequel.  After various delays, eventually Dario Argento flew Romero to Italy, where Romero penned the script.  Romero had complete creative freedom and, in exchange, Argento got to make his own cut however he wished—and he did so with none of the humor.  I am quite curious to see this cut, but I doubt it would be as entertaining.

In Dawn of the Dead (1978), we find ourselves looking at the world now that the zombie apocalypse is well under way and a fact of life.  In equal doses of satire and realism, hunting and gun enthusiasts (i.e., proud rednecks) rally together and form base camps to “hunt” the zombies, draining beer coolers as they heckle each other’s marksmanship over lunch.  Very funny, yet very believably delivered with perhaps a somewhat straight face.

We focus on four survivors who find their way to a shopping mall (back when malls were a relatively new thing) in the spirit of consumerism.  Shortly after their arrival, they observe waves of zombies being drawn to the mall…as if it was their instinct to go there to find what they need—flesh, in this case.  National Guardsmen Peter (Ken Foree; The Lords of Salem, Death Spa) and Roger join Stephen and Francine in realizing that their residence in this mall may last longer than they anticipated.

Romero is more a prophet than filmmaker.  Just look at his Nostradamus-like foretelling of society’s degeneration on Black Friday.

This was definitely the most fun movie in Romero’s initial zombie trilogy.  There’s a playfulness to it.  And why not?  A lone zombie poses little threat to an able-bodied, wary person like a National Guardsman.  We see Roger and Peter running around the mall having fun, like two bros playfully running football drills, as they collect groceries and equipment.  Roger slides down the escalator rails, they taunt and herd zombies where they want them or knock off their zombie hats, they sprint through department stores—all the things we would get yelled at for doing when we were kids.

Stephen can’t shoot, so Roger teaches him the now common knowledge that zombies are killed with headshots; Peter and Roger being chummy.

We get some great zombie kills in this film, my favorite of which being when the helicopter chops off the zombie’s head—the top of it anyway.  Just watching the zombies wander the mall offers its own form of entertainment.  Romero never gave clear direction to the zombie actors.  He wanted them to do whatever they wanted and some of their facial expressions are priceless.  That gave us today’s zombies.  My favorite zombie had to be the Hare-Krishna.

We see a lot of this Krishna-zombie.

Of course, the tedium of their mall-inhabiting lifestyle wears on our protagonists.  There’s a strong sense of irony when we find Peter playing racquetball on the roof as the zombie apocalypse presses on.  Eventually they develop a desire to move elsewhere and find other survivors.  This is where some tension builds.

Despite being so gorily loaded with rubber guts and torn flesh, this film has a good sense of humor to it until the end, which closes on a dark note when a paramilitary biker gang overtake the mall and all chaos breaks out.  This long segment of the movie is a tolling dose of reality and human nature.

Some may criticize the “inconsistency” of Romero’s zombies, sometimes moving fast and sometimes slow.  But here’s something to consider:  Zombies, like any movie antagonist, are a dangerous as they need to be in any given scene.  They’re as fast or dangerous or scary as the scene merits.  That’s the difference between reality and filmmaking, life and drama.  Whenever a protagonist martial artist character faces a single bad guy, you get one fight that endures exchanging countless blows lasting 5-10 minutes of screen time.  However, when that same martial artist encounters 20 bad guys, each bad guy is dispatched with one or two quick, easily delivered techniques.

Now a staple in zombie movies, our protagonists face the fear and reality of seeing one of their own succumb and contract zombiism.  This is handled well, with early dashes of pragmatism and ultimate pessimistic reality, denial and inner conflict.

Another curiosity is why a bite (however minor it may be) will cause a victim to die within days and become a zombie, whereas getting zombie blood splattered in Roger’s face (e.g., the truck recon scene) is no worry at all for contracting zombiism—consider what happens to Brendan Gleeson in 28 Days Later.  To this end, I say chill out.  This was Romero’s second movie and he “invented” the zombie you have come to know and love.  The “zombie rules” were still being written right in front of us and, in Romero’s zombiverse, this was the first time it happened.  He was just making a movie, people.  Blood splatters are exciting and manifest urgency.  Don’t overthink it.  Romero hadn’t even identified the zombiism definitively as a curse, virus or anything…we just get hints.

Speaking of those hints, a news clip from Night of the Living Dead (1968) suggested the possible cause of zombiism was radioactive contamination from a space probe from Venus crash-landing on Earth.  Perhaps there were radioactive bacteria on the probe that were ingested by patient zero, and the reason only a bite will cause zombiism is because the affliction lies in the intestinal bacteriofauna (or gut flora) in the infected zombies.  Why might a scratch infect you?  Because the zombies sloppily eat with their hands, which are now covered with this alien bacteria.  There!  Blood splatter controversy solved.  LOL.

Another hypothesis of the zombie outbreak origin…

We embark on a rollercoaster of emotion as this gory film was loads of fun and managed to make us wince in the utterly brutal opening scenes, laugh in the middle, and grow tense at the end.  The characters expressed various credible human responses to pressure and danger, bravery and cowardice, control and chaos.  The story was solid and the dilemmas faced made sense.  Night of the Living Dead will remain Romero’s most important film and the most significant zombie film perhaps ever to be made.  But I find Dawn of the Dead to be his best film.

Want a second opinion on the film?  Try this review from Rivers of Grue.

MY CALL:  This B-movie gets a solid A+.  I love the gore and the zany creatures, and after a slow start the movie keeps stacking on the gore and lunacy more and more until the end.  MOVIES LIKE Love in the Time of Monsters:  Other horror comedies like Smothered (2014), Zombeavers (2014), Piranha 3D (2010), Slither (2006), Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010), Tremors (1990), Club Dread (2004)…and Blood Glacier (2013), although it takes a more serious approach to evil contamination of mother nature.

With all the style and subtlety of a summer camp slasher combined with a strong sense of self-aware satire, Love in the Time of Monsters sweeps horror fans away to a land of laughter.  There are no scares to be had here–just gore and giggles.  I’ll admit, I came in skeptical (and curious) and it took me a little while to figure out what kind of movie I was watching.  Just know this, I love horror comedies and I grew to enjoy this film more and more as it revealed its nature to me.

Marla (Gena Shaw; Insomnium) and Carla (Marissa Skell; Sorority Party Massacre, Slumber Party Massacre) arrive to some tourist trap family vacation destination in the woods with cabins, fishing, hunting and buffet dining.  Pretty much ‘Murica!!!  The place is staffed by Lou (Kane Hodder; Wishmaster, Hatchet, Smothered) and his bigfoot suit-wearing entertainers.

The story takes root when one such furry entertainer is exposed to some contaminants.  Subsequently, the other four fully-suited entertainers (including Kane Hodder) become infected with some sort of virus-thingy-whatever that makes them get slimy, put on their bigfoot masks, and become belligerent jerks that chase all unafflicted humans and eat their human flesh…sometimes…it’s not very consistent.  LOL.

Now that we’ve delved into flesh-eating and what I can only describe as “mutant rage zombies” we should address the special effects and the apparently low budget.  Whatever afflicts these bigfoot-costumed men is pretty simple to recognize by our now-hunted protagonists.  A dash of ooze on the face, a couple of wart clusters on their face or neck and, oh yeah, they’re wearing bigfoot costumes.  But this silly premise and low budget seem to be something to celebrate rather than ridicule.  I was dazzled with glee when a bigfoot tore off a woman’s head with a dangling spinal cord in tow.  It was sloppy and gory and it made me smile.  It’s at about this point in the movie that I realized “this movie isn’t stupid, it’s FUN.”  This film knows what it is and runs with it much to my pleasure.

Hey, bro.  I think you’ve got an STD on your face.

All logic goes out the window in this film.  A favorite scene of mine is when a bigfoot “sneaks up on a cop” by bum-rushing him in the middle of an open area and then projectile vomits face-melting acidic bile all over his face.  Why can it do that?  No clue (well, it’s quasi-explained later).  But it’s a gore-slathered mess and I like it.  Afterwards we get a Romero-esque rubber gut-ripping display and another guy has his face torn off and eyes popped out.  Lots of gore.  Pure joy.

What’s more is that this silly script and it’s often lame lines are delivered strikingly well.  The acting rightly feels deliberately campy.  I roll my eyes and grin at the lines, but the lines are intentionally delivered in such a manner as to bring about that very reaction.  Everyone is hitting on everyone else, drug and alcohol placement is blatant, and some girl clumsily runs through the forest in high heels and lingerie.  Oh, right, and some murderous afflicted men are killing people in bigfoot costumes.  This is just plain silly.  This film clearly has no illusions of being taken seriously by viewers.  So if you’re taking this movie seriously and thinking “what am I watching and why am I watching it,” you’re doing it wrong!

All the characters have their overblown clichés and the film is stitched together with one farced trope after another.  A favorite character of mine was the Sasquatch hunter Chester (Hugo Armstrong; Coherence).  He’s weird and played with a straight face but has some of the funniest lines…”A woman on the radio in the gentle forest silence…It’s like diarrhea in a kiddy pool” and “I couldn’t leave you running around in the dark like that, so…I shot you.”

This happens…  A lodge entertainer goes full throttle while trying to create a diversion.

There’s a simple brilliance behind the bigfoot costumes.  Without them, we’d have slimy warty jerks as antagonists.  It would have looked stupid; it would have been stupid.  Lord knows I’ve seen enough lousy student films helmed by visionless filmmakers.  But with these silly costumes we are given something to laugh at and playfully mock instead of sneer at and hatefully criticize.

Speaking of silly, completely out of nowhere a doctor in a felt Abraham Lincoln beard (Doug Jones; John Dies at the End, Absentia) explains that the cause of the affliction is a combination of medical and pharmaceutical waste and some bacteria giving the men irregular strength and pain tolerance.  He explains that they will continue to get stronger, faster and meaner until they die from overcharging their body.  How Dr. Lincoln could know this is beyond me.  This was just another utterly ridiculous nugget that made this silly movie work in its own way.  Oh, and he can make an antidote…because he’s an expert in medicine, toxicology, pharmacology, and pretty much everything else and can conduct ground-breaking science in an hour with whatever is on hand at a vacation lodge in his office.

So far this movie is pretty fun, but there’s room to grow.  But just then, in the spirit of Blood Glacier (2013) we encounter a mutant rage zombie moose, mutant rage zombie trout swimming upstream, and a flock of mutant rage zombie geese.  Again, these effects are not necessarily good, but they are abundant and easily “good enough” and most importantly they are FUN.  The real treat comes at the end…mutant rage zombie squirrels!!!  They swarm lodge entertainer Brandi (Heather Rae Young; Chillerama), strip her naked while biting her all over, and make roaring sounds.  Then, as if combining “The Cat from Hell” (Tales from the Darkside: The Movie) with Alien (1979), one of them forces itself down her throat and then tears out of her chest between her breasts, ringing the dinner bell for the bigfoot gang to chow down on some bloody, gut-covered boobs.

Because mutant squirrel zombies roar.  LOL

Things are really getting out of hand at this point.  Then, out of nowhere, the “real” bigfoot shows up (with a moderately more convincing costume than the mutant age zombies) and battles the electrically charged Kane Hodder mutant rage zombie.  Then zombie raccoons, a moose and roaring squirrels show up for a final fight battle montage.  This is nuts.

This movie is loads of fun and the moment you think you’ve hit the climax of the excitement it gives you more zany, gory madness again and again.  Give this fine slapstick horror comedy a chance.

Let the filmmakers (http://www.tbcfilms.com/) know what you thought on Twitter: @UncleSlavko & @gunnforhire

MY CALL:  Neither gory nor exhilarating, if you don’t like slow-burns then you definitely won’t like this.  However, if you’d enjoy a callback to atmospheric 70s-80s horror with a well-developed and endearing victim, then this is for you.   MORE MOVIES LIKE House of the Devil: Slow-burns like It Follows (2014), Session 9 (2001) and The Innkeepers (2012).

This film has loads of different movie posters, many of which follow a more dated style.

“During the 1980s over 70% of American adults believed in the existence of abusive Satanic cults… Another 30% rationalized the lack of evidence due to government cover-ups… The following is based on true unexplained events.”

From the opening shot director Ti West (The Sacrament, The Innkeepers, Cabin Fever 2) transports us to what feels like 1980, a time of payphones and public bulletin boards with thumb-tacked want-ads.  The score, film quality, wardrobe and even the credits simply ooze “VHS horror.”  The film doesn’t just “look” old, it “feels” old.  Like it’s been in a dusty box of tapes in a closet for the past 35 years.

As with It Follows (2014), we take our time getting to know and invest in our female lead, Samantha (Jocelin Donahue; Insidious Chapter 2).  Her hair and delicate features remind me of a young Margot Kidder (Black Christmas) and, thus, a good victim.  She rents a house from an all-too-kind landlord (cameo by Dee Wallace; The Howling, Cujo, Halloween) but desperately needs money to pay her rent.

West gives us a lot of subtle hints, and then some unsubtle ones in the spirit of the more obvious horror of the 80s.  When Sam finds a “babysitter wanted” flyer, it’s surrounded by flyers/ads for watching the upcoming lunar eclipse.  Later the radio and TV news harbinger the ominous eclipse.  Add that to the babysitter trope, a house in the middle of nowhere and her friend (reluctant to leave Sam alone) finding the house and owner creepy and no one in the audience should have missed what’s going to happen.

The house is huge and remote.  Its owner (Tom Noonan; Wolfen, RoboCop 2) is weird but polite, speaking of preparation for the eclipse to a suspicious degree.  He clearly wants Sam alone in the house, protesting the presence of her friend.  When Sam hesitates the old man offers her $200, $300, then $400 to watch over the house for a few hours while he and his wife (Mary Woronov; Warlock, Chopping Mall) are out.  Sam’s friend says this is “too good to be true” and she should leave…she’s obviously right!

There’s a lot of exposition but it’s delivered tactfully enough; like a subtle delivery of blatant content, which also holds for the scares and gore, when present (though rare and skewed to the end).

The film moves at a slow pace and it tiptoes the line between slightly boring and provokingly interesting.  I don’t mind, though.  I’m digging the nostalgic atmosphere and West does a god job of getting us familiar with Samantha and her friend (Greta Gerwig).  Several scenes endear them to viewers, my favorite being Sam’s cute scene dancing around the creepy house listening to a Walkman.

The payoff in the end is nothing we haven’t seen before (many times, in fact, in 70s occult horror), but again, I don’t mind.  It’s creepy.  And even though we saw it coming and very little happens until the very end, I enjoyed this for what it was.  Honestly, I enjoyed the buildup in the first 60 minutes more than the payoff at the end.  Some may even argue that the final act does the film’s first hour no justice.  Despite this perhaps somewhat justified criticism, I felt the film was largely beautifully executed.

West wisely cast aside the CGI, overblown gore for shock value, nudity and over-exposition.  He ignores the rules of modern horror success and contemporary tropes to instead resurrect the nigh-forgotten tropes of decades past as he breathes life into that 70s/80s style that never truly benefited from high production value back in its time.  In short, West has created a “classic horror” film for a modern audience that has lost its patience with dated films—and I applaud him for it!

There’s actually nothing original at all in this film.  However, West’s careful approach restores my faith in an overplayed genre.

Other actors to look for in this film: AJ Bowen (Chillerama, You’re Next, The Sacrament)

MY CALL:  This film steers clear of paradigmatic horror and will fulfill your darkest pleasures with creepiness and awesome practical effects.  MOVIES LIKE Hellraiser:  For more great practical effects try Re-Animator (1985), Lord of Illusions (1995), Nightbreed (1990) and The Thing (1982).

A crowd pleaser to horror fans of all ages, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser tells the story of a man who escapes Hell, the temptations he exploits in order to freely roam the Earth again, and the consequences that befall those nearest him.

In 1987 horror was already becoming predictable, but Barker takes us into uncharted territory that lacks the predictability of this film’s horror peers.  The victims aren’t drunk teens, people don’t make horrendously stupid decisions, and things in no way happen as we’d expect them.  Even the gore and effects take us down a more rare and satisfying path.  This film will fulfill your darkest pleasures.

Larry (Andrew Robinson; The Puppet Masters, Pumpkinhead 2) and his reluctant second wife move into an old family property in which, unbeknownst to anyone else, his brother Frank had toiled with the powers of evil and now suffers in Hell.  Some blood is accidently spilled where Frank was torn apart by an otherworldly evil and this blood initiated the beginning of the transformation of his remains to a rather “incomplete” facsimile of infernal Frank.

This scene is a testament to the patient practical effects of the 80s.  We see organs develop from blood droplets and his body slowly finds form from a gory muck.  The scene is long and gross, and it includes some creepy stop motion of his decrepit skeletal arms and bloody resurrection.  This transformation scene is one of the most memorable scenes in 80s horror.

Deliciously gooey!

Now a skinless, weak, macabre husk of his formal self he tempts Julia (Clare Higgins; Being Human) to “help” him by bringing him more blood.  Julia clings to an adulterous memory of a past lusty tryst with Frank and wants more.  She has no love for Larry but much carnal desire for Frank despite Frank’s criminally loveless nature–making this quite the perverse story.

Abusive, adulterous, infernal and skinless… Clearly, Frank is the man every woman dreams of.

Whereas Frank’s desire to be whole again bridges our story from reality to Hell, the keystone is Julia’s adulterous desire to be in his arms.  As she finds comfort in the murderous means to fully restore Frank, we see her shift from an apathetic (in her marriage with Larry) and effortless housewife to a comfortably made-over black widow.  Once she has brought blood to Frank slimy flayed body, she starts to do her hair differently and her make-up looks sharper–more villainous.

Although many scenes occur elsewhere this feels much like a chamber thriller, claustrophobically taking place mostly in the confines of the house.  We, like Frank trapped in the attic-like spare room, feel isolated; trapped under a roof with a damned skinless man.

The only impediment to Frank’s freedom is Larry’s daughter Kirsty (Ashley Laurence; several Hellraiser sequels, Warlock III), who learns the infernal power of the Puzzle Box and bargains with some demons to return Frank to Hell.

These leather-clad, macabre demons are called Cenobites and they look like members of a devil-worshipping 80s metal band.  They include Chatterbox, Butterball, Female and their leader Pinhead (Doug Bradley; Nightbreed).  Their monster make-up work is off-putting and their silent demeanor only adds to their malevolence.  Their words are few but direly chilling.

The Puzzle Box leads us to the only special effects in the film that don’t hold up well.  While watching the Puzzle Box being solved is actually very simple (no significant FX involved really) and cool, the Box brings about some effects that resemble Atari-Tron videogame lasers.  However, the Box remains powerfully mysterious and it draws our ominous attention whenever it’s on screen.

Written and directed by Clive Barker (Nightbreed, Lord of Illusions), this film offers no shortage of gore to compliment the fantastic, effective story.  Frank’s victims are drained husks of pus and maggots, Frank himself is a horror to behold in his various phases of development, and then we still have other cruel visions, the twisted make-up of Pinhead and his fellow Cenobites, the Puzzle Box opening creepy gates to a somewhat ambiguous Hell, and Frank ultimately being torn apart by hooked chains in another iconic horror scene of the decade.

I find the story and characters every bit as powerful as the gory practical effects and consider this a “must see” for anyone who considers themselves a fan of modern horror.

MY CALL:  This is The 40-Year Old Virgin of the present decade, folks.  Don’t miss this.  MOVIES LIKE Trainwreck:  The Change-Up (2011), What’s Your Number (2011), Wedding Crashers (2005), That Awkward Moment (2015), The 40-Year Old Virgin (2005), This is 40 (2012), My Best Friend’s Girl (2008), Good Luck Chuck (2007).

I am one of perhaps millions of people who fell in love with Schumer’s brutally honest and often limit-pushing humor specializing in relationships and sex.  Her Comedy Central Roast work was always top notch and her stand-up pleases crowds and creates a powerful female presence shining through the overtly provocative comedic shadows cast by Dave Attell (who cameos in Trainwreck), Daniel Tosh, Louis CK, Jim Jeffries and Dane Cook.  That’s not to say there aren’t some equally provocative “R-rated” female comedians out there, but they haven’t become as popularly mainstream as Schumer.

In her first major role as Amy, a well-educated writer for a trashy magazine, Schumer breaks gender barriers and basically plays the female version of a womanizing, overindulgent “bro.”  It’s like a frat house version of Sex in the City.  She drinks in excess, sleeps with everyone, has a “rule” about never spending the night, takes the longest walk of shame ever (even involving a Ferry from Statin Island), and assumes that if a guy calls her the next day that it’s either a butt-dialing accident or that he’s a psychopath.

The story is simple.  The perpetually single and aloof Amy is assigned to write a story about an orthopedic surgeon (Bill Hader; Superbad) to sports stars.  They have drinks, click, sleep together and, well, it turns out to be something more meaningful than a one-night stand.  Of course, Amy is confused, repulsed and scared by this and from these emotions emerge the resistance and humor that synthesize this story of Amy becoming romantically “sensitized.”  Much more interesting than the story, however, are its characters, which include too many cameos to mention.  Most comedies have one or two people drawing our laughter, but here we have a dozen!

The film opens with a great scene in which Amy’s father (Colin Quinn; Grown Ups 2, That’s My Boy) rationalizes divorce and infidelity to his two young daughters using Teddy Bear analogies to convince them of the non-existence of happy monogamy.  Quinn is delightfully brutal and always on point, stealing every scene in which we find him as he claims that “every 12-year old in the Dominican Republic is better than Babe Ruth” or that his nursing home is basically a Viagra-fueled sex house after lights out.

Likewise, Schumer and Dave Attell (cameo) bombard us with numerous comedic nuggets regarding sex with strangers (or even objects) and overindulgence.  Schumer is always “on” but, much to my pleasure and very loud laughter, so is everyone else.  As her boss, Tilda Swinton (Snowpiercer, Only Lovers Left Alive) steers clear of her typically serious roles to play a soulless, shallow, quick-witted magazine editor whose every line is a memorably cutting one-liner.

However, among all of the shallow sex jokes we encounter some softer, even touching moments.  Amy gives a most memorably sweet yet honest eulogy at a funeral (like in This is Where I Leave You), LeBron James (as himself) steals the show with funny but heartfelt commentary about being romantic and splitting checks and how Cleveland is as awesome as Miami, and Bill Hader brings the voice of reason to the entropy of Amy’s otherwise romance-free life.  As Aaron, Hader plays his role straight and dramatic, which works our fantastically.

Most shocking was John Cena (The Marine) as Amy’s perhaps sexually confused boyfriend.  Their dirty-talking sex-scene is hilarious, seeing Cena nearly naked is (speaking from a male perspective) equally horrifying and intriguing (at 255 lbs, the dude is gigantic for 5’9”), Cena getting taunted in the movie theater is awkwardly genius, and all of his dialogue is shockingly well-written.  By the way, Schumer did an AMAZING writing job penning this–her first script!

Directed by Judd Apatow (The 40-Year Old Virgin, This is 40), this is exactly the raunchy romantic comedy for anyone in their 30s-40s with a history of partying, serial dating or at least a couple one-night stands…or even someone with a close friend or sibling like that.  The film is formulaic in general plot points, but excellent in comedic execution.  A few scenes feel like they run long, but they account for all but maybe 5-10 total minutes that I wasn’t laughing out loud.

This is The 40-Year Old Virgin of the present decade, folks.  Don’t miss this.  It is comic brilliance and I can’t wait to see what Schumer does next.

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This article is rich with images you do not want your boss to see when he’s looking over your shoulder at work. View at your own risk.
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MY CALL:  This is one of the more interesting horror movies of its decade—second only to its franchise predecessor.  Gory, dark, exploratory and with an engaging story, this is not a movie to miss.  MOVIES LIKE Hellraiser:  Hellraiser (1987), Re-Animator (1985), Lord of Illusions (1995), Nightbreed (1990) and The Thing (1982).

The movie opens with a something of a highlights reel of the best and grossest scenes from part 1.  Continuing immediately from where Hellraiser (1987) ended, we find Kirsty (Ashley Laurence; Hellraiser, Warlock III) in a mental hospital where her account of what happened to her father, uncle Frank and stepmother Julia (Clare Higgins; Being Human) is received as more than a little hard to swallow.

Whereas Hellraiser (1987) delivered credible character reactions to an incredible evil force, Hellbound takes a nosedive into bonkersville in terms of plot believability.  I, in no way, mean this as a complaint…I LOVE this movie.  But this “movie” is the point in the franchise when we stop using the word “film.”  Clive Barker’s infernal art and brilliant storytelling are behind us now.  It seems that perhaps our new director Tony Randel (Amityville: It’s About Time, Fist of the North Star) was trying a little too hard to fill Horror Master Clive Barker’s (Nightbreed, Hellraiser) shoes.  The gore–which was already heavy, sloppily gross and pleasurably unique in part one–is now turned up to an “11” and the plot elements seem to have shifted from credible to nonsense.  Almost every event in the story evidences this mania—not that the horror genre is known for its storytelling.  In fact, as bonkers as it is, this story is told more eloquently than most horror (especially in the late 80s).

Now in a mental hospital, the doctor in charge of Kirsty’s case just happens to be an amateur expert and collector obsessed with all things occult, especially the Puzzle Box and its history.  In other words, coincidence has been pushed to the extreme as Kirsty’s caregiver has been waiting for this!  After Kirsty warns police to destroy the mattress on which Julia died in part 1 (because Kirsty somehow understands exactly how coming back from Hell works all the sudden), Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham; Hot Fuzz) somehow gets the police to deliver this murder case evidence to his private residence with the intentions of summoning Julia.  For a blood offering he checks out a deeply disturbed patient from the screaming basement ward of his mental hospital–it’s what you’d expect from an 1800’s mental hospital…in a horror movie…on steroids…and then more extreme!!!  Dr. Channard seems to frequently bring disturbed patients to his home without restriction.

So clearly, this movie has gone to comicbook lengths to bring something crazy to the screen.  But you know what?  It remains crazy awesome!!!  I haven’t read Clive Barker’s books (on which this is very loosely based), but I think we can safely assume that these actions would all much more carefully explained and tactfully justified in his detailed pages.  As it turns out, the book on which Hellraiser was based (The Hellbound Heart) was quite short and only minorly addressed Pinhead and his Cenobites–so already the films have taken their own path.  Meanwhile, in Hellraiser movieland, no one seems concerned with the disappearance of several patients.

It may sound like I’m slamming the plot.  I’m not.  In fact, overall the story itself remains elegantly unique. After all, whatever liberties this director took in making this film, it is still based on Barker’s refined writing.

After Julia’s “resurrection,” she sexually beguiles Channard–even though she hasn’t any skin–to help fully restore her with more victims.  He obliges and we get to enjoy a room full of life-drained corpses.  But this isn’t enough for Channard.  He wants to know and see the secrets of the Hell that is The Labyrinth.  So he brings a mute patient with a knack for puzzle-solving to open the gate to Hell with the Puzzle Box.

Things get yet crazier as Channard and Julia wander the corridors of Hell.  He gets transformed into a Cenobite himself (simply referred to as “the Channard Cenobite”) by the God of Hell Leviathan and is for some reason way tougher than Pinhead and his Cenobite gang.  He kills loads of people with his stop-motion bladed hand tentacles, so Kirsty gets Pinhead to see his inner child and wears Julia’s skin as a suit.  A lot of cool stuff is happening, FOR SURE!

Whereas part 1 was entirely based on illustrating one man’s escape from Hell and the temptations required to accomplish the task, this sequel addresses that component just in the first act and then moves on to exploring the Labyrinth and witnessing various personal Hells while being swiftly introduced to how Barker’s Hell works and is ruled.  Despite the busy plot of this movie (it does cover a lot), it remains very dark and creepy and, more importantly, the plot makes sense.  We can’t say that about a lot of horror.  Its gore-pleasing effects are abundant, the story pushes the Hellraiser franchise into a new dimension, and we learn more about the background of the Cenobites and the mythology behind Barker’s Hellish Labyrinth.

This movie is buckets of cool (and blood) and one of the more interesting horror installments (along with part 1) of its decade.

Watch it!  Love it!  Buy it!  Watch it again!

MY CALL:  In this spirit of entertainment (and good fun), this flick seems to have sampled a little of everything.  It’s pure dumb fun for the uncritical horror fan.  I recommend it.  MOVIES LIKE Extraterrestrial:  There have been several recent horror approaches to traditional aliens…  Alien Abduction (2014), Skinwalker Ranch (2013), Dark Skies (2013), Signs (2002), The Fourth Kind (2009), The Thing (2011).

The opening scene is worth mentioning.  After being refused refuge by some ponytailed jerk at a woodsy remote gas station on a stormy night, a frightened young woman makes a call from a phone booth in the middle of nowhere and it–the entire phone booth and woman–disappears…then crashes down from the sky without her in it.  This sets the tone for a fun flick.  Next, the credits seem serious and well composed, with glimpses of what appear to be red-filtered UFO clips.  So apparently some aspects of the production were tended to more lovingly than most direct-to-DVD horror flicks.

April (Brittany Allen; Dead Before Dawn) is going to the family vacation home, a cabin in the woods, with her boyfriend Kyle (Freddie Stroma; the last three Harry Potter movies).  Unbeknownst to April, who was only going to take photos of the cabin to put it on the market, Kyle invited a bunch of their friends.  Melanie (Melanie Papalia; The Den, Smiley), Seth (Jesse Moss; Tucker and Dale vs Evil, Wolfcop, Ginger Snaps) and Lex (Anja Savcic; iZombie) join.

The sheriff (Gil Bellows; The House at the End of the Street) warns these 20-somethings of recent criminal activity in the area.  After agreeing to behave, our youth in revolt drink and smoke, grill and dance.  In the middle of a drinking and pot-smoking session, the group observes something fiery falling from the sky.  Upon investigation, they find a prototypical flying saucer has crash landed leaving inhuman footprints departing the scene.

When we see the alien it has the classic look to it, however much taller and quite gangly.  They shoot it, leave it for dead and end up trapped in the woods by a suspicious treefall blocking the road.

Filmed in both traditional and found footage techniques, this trope-by-numbers movie over-explains things to us with the victims saying things like “that’s a fucking alien” and “is it still in the house.”  We see things like a skinny naked alien with big eyes a la Communion (1989), someone getting beamed up in a tractor beam, and every other alien movie staple you can think of…so it should come as no surprise that the aliens use mind control as well.

The effects were as good as they needed to be, including a very cool yet simple effect involving rain.  I was also quite pleased with some gunshot wounds, loving the gore from the headshot.  There were slimy imprisoning cocoons and slimy hallways a la Aliens (1986), a cabin siege a la Signs (2002), an Alien mothership megaplex a la Independence Day (1996) and Oblivion (2013), a weird grub impregnation a la Wrath of Khan (1982) and a bladed drill bit anal probe.  Yuuuuck.  We also encounter experiments hybridizing humans and aliens a la Alien Resurrection (1987) and District 9 (2009).  In this spirit of entertainment (and good fun), this film seems to have sampled a little of everything.

I was happy to see Sean Rogerson (Grave Encounters, Underworld: Evolution) as a deputy.  Also, look for Michael Ironside (Starship Troopers) in a cameo as a weed-farming nutcase.  He’s a conspiracy-theorist Vietnam veteran with claims of nearby experimental aircrafts.  His character is annoying at times, poorly written most of the time (perhaps deliberately), and entertaining all the time.  He explains that the aliens are attacking because a peace treaty with these gangly aliens was broken when our victims shot the first alien.

From the makers of Grave Encounters (the Vicious Brothers), this is pure dumb fun for the uncritical horror fan.  I recommend it.

MY CALL:  If Hellraiser was the Alien of the franchise and Hellbound the Aliens, then Hell on Earth falls somewhere in the Alien 3/Resurrection zone.  But just because Hell on Earth pales to its predecessors, it doesn’t mean we forget that it exists.  Not great, but worthy.  Whether you’ve been educating yourself with 80s and 90s horror or are simply revisiting your old favorites, don’t give up on this franchise just yet.  MOVIES LIKE Hellraiser:  Be sure to see Hellraiser (1987) and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) first, of course.  Then maybe Lord of Illusions (1995), Nightbreed (1990) and The Thing (1982) for more creepy practical effects.

Franchise background so far:  Whereas Hellraiser (1987) delivered credible character reactions to an incredible evil force, Hellbound yielded less plot credibility while delivering a vaster array of effects and revealing more about Hell and the Cenobites.  As such, I consider part 2 the point in the franchise when we stop using the word “film” and start calling it a “movie” however much I enjoyed the story.  Part 1 was more compact, being entirely based on illustrating one man’s escape from Hell and the temptations required to accomplish the task.  Hellbound addressed that component just in the first act and then moved swiftly on to exploring the Labyrinth and various personal Hells while being introduced to how Barker’s Hell works and is ruled.  We learned more about the background of the Cenobites and the mythology behind Barker’s Hellish Labyrinth.  It felt that perhaps the sequel’s director Tony Randel (Amityville: It’s About Time, Fist of the North Star) was trying a little too hard to fill Horror Master Clive Barker’s shoes.  The gore–which was already heavy, sloppily gross and pleasurably unique in part 1–was turned up to an “11” and the plot elements seemed to downshift in credibility.

A friendly warning: This movie gets a bit more sacrilegious than its predecessors.

In an obscure art gallery we find J. P. Monroe buying an infernally adorned pillar from a mysterious purveyor.  A connoisseur of macabre art, Monroe owns a huge night club that features an attached VIP penthouse, hair metal bands and death metal décor like baby dolls wrapped in barbed wire.  After a club-goer steals the Puzzle Box embedded in his “Pillar of Souls,” the thief is rushed to the hospital dragging behind him bloody chains.  This is witnessed by news reporter Joey (Terry Farrell; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) who is in need of a good lead and is now obsessed with discovering the story behind this strange “accident.”

Meanwhile back at the club, after a one-night stand with a bimbo he finds at his bar, Monroe’s date for the evening examines his new art purchase a bit too closely and, well, you know…something bad happens.  LOL.  Pinhead’s now lively face appears on the pillar, hooked chains harpoon the young girl and flay her skin, and the pillar basically eats her as a blood offering to Pinhead.  It’s actually a pretty cool scene.

When we last saw Pinhead, he had been killed by the Channard Cenobite in Hellbound.  Once something of a torture-master servant of Hell, in this movie Pinhead is introduced more as a desperate diabolical tempter.  So he gets Monroe to bring him more blood to make him whole again.  Monroe calls his ex-girlfriend Terri (Paula Marshall; Warlock: The Armageddon, Nip/Tuck).  The sacrifice doesn’t go very well and Monroe himself is consumed by Pinhead fueling his infernal resurrection.  The pillar turns into a collage of the animated flesh of trapped souls and begins to fragment, falling apart and oozing a slimy afterbirth.  Yet another gooey, memorably gory scene.  [Like its two predecessors, this movie will please gorehounds.]

Upon release, Pinhead goes on a metalhead killing spree, unleashing a storm of summoned hooks and chains from the club’s warehouse ceiling to rend and flay the panicking masses.  I’m assuming they’re not all heinous sinners, making this is the first of the Hellraiser movies in which Pinhead kills innocents having nothing to do with the Puzzle Box and, crueler yet, turns innocents into Cenobites!  Summoned in the same manner as Frank and Julia (in parts 1 and 2), Pinhead is now apparently free to roam the Earth!  It seems that the rules have changed and, now unbound by the laws of the Hell’s Labyrinth, he may wreak havoc as we wishes.  There’s one catch, though.  Just as the Puzzle Box opened Hell’s door to return Frank and Julia to Hell, it can do the same to him; he must destroy it!  It’s up to Joey to stop him.

The Cenobites are a bit less inspired. Look at the top right and note the Cenobite holding a drink shaker.  He was a bartender in life.
Then CDs in the head of the DJ and a camera through the eye of the cameraman.

In something of a side plot we learn that Captain Spencer (Doug Bradley), the man whose curiosities opened the Puzzle Box and transformed him into Pinhead, was not an evil man.  The evils inside him were sundered from the good, leaving his good-intentioned ghost and his evil-immersed Pinhead as two separate entities in Hell.  His ghost visits Joey in her dreams to warn her of Pinhead’s powers and intentions.

Now in our third installment, Clive Barker’s (Nightbreed, Hellraiser) infernal art and brilliant storytelling are behind us now.  This third film finds a third director (Anthony Hickox; Waxwork) and a third set of writers—contrary to Hellraiser which was written and directed by Barker himself and Hellbound which involved Barker in the story development.  This film continues a very engaging story (the ongoing franchise story) but is cheapened a bit by falling into some 90s horror trope snags.

I just want to pause here and say that I really enjoyed this movie.  So whatever you read below, just now that I’m not hating.  I’m simply being critical.

In the first film the Cenobites seemed to be demons from Hell intent on torturing souls for eternity.  Their mutilations and appearance were suggestive of their sins.  Hellbound then revealed that the Cenobites were once human and we see Dr. Channard transformed into a Cenobite (and an irregularly tough one at that!) in Leviathan’s “Instant Cenobite Chamber.”  So we added substance to the Cenobite mythology illustrating that they were the creation of the God of Hell, but cheapened the entity with the creation of a new one in less time than a “7 Minute Abs” workout and more like “The Clapper.”  In this third film we find Pinhead himself creating Cenobites left and right.  Further cheapening the Cenobites is that our new demons lack mutilations indicative of their sins in life or torture in Hell.  Instead their appearance is consistent with how they were killed onscreen…impalement by CDs in the mouth and head, constricting a head with barbed wire, jamming pistons through a head (and WTF was up with those pistons coming out of the Hell pillar sculpture anyway!?!?!).  Oh, and while easily killed in Hellbound, these Cenobites are totally bulletproof.  You can only kill them with glowing Atari videogame lasers fired from the Puzzle Box.  All that said, they were still fun to watch, rather menacing and born of gory means.

Another major flaw would be the writing.  The story is fine, but EVERYTHING is over-explained in such fine detail that it feels like listening to SAT test prep instructions or a “Do It Yourself” audiobook.  I found myself a bit exhausted as the ghost of Captain Spencer directed, warned, instructed and taught Joey about the Puzzle Box, its history and importance, Pinhead, what he wants, how he’ll get it and how to defeat him.

The acting is fine—nothing spectacular but everything that we need.  The effects and gore are satisfactory and abundant, although not as wowing as the first two films.  This movie seemed to approach gore with the “more is better” mentality.  I certainly enjoyed it, though.  What holds this film together is our fear of Pinhead and what happens if he is free to wander the Earth.

Yup.  This is clearly the influence of the 90s, a decade known for the dark humorization of horror and over-exposition.  The Freddy and Jason of the 80s could be funny, but Pinhead is darker and should stay that way.  Thankfully, outside of the annoyingly instructional dialogue, the uninspired Cenobite mutilations (which were entertaining in their own right) and a few grotesquely lame one-liners (“ready for your close-up?”) reminiscent of a mid-franchise Freddy Krueger, this film’s tone remains quite dire.  That’s what makes this third film work despite its shortcomings.  But it has lost its once truly surreal luster and now simply feels murderous…which is probably why this was the last Hellraiser movie to hit theaters, leaving only direct-to-DVD films in its wake.

Yes, this movie has many faults.  But it was also exciting and perhaps the only film in the franchise that felt like it “starred” Pinhead.  What we learn about Captain Spencer’s ghost also adds to the developing mythology.

Hellraiser was the Alien of the franchise, Hellbound the Aliens, and Hell on Earth falls somewhere in the Alien 3/Resurrection zone.  Just because Hell on Earth pales to its predecessors, it doesn’t mean we forget that it exists.  It remains worthy.  Whether you’ve been educating yourself with 80s and 90s horror or are simply revisiting your old favorites, don’t give up on this franchise just yet.

MY CALL:  This is an homage to 80s schlock trash cinema.  As such, everything about this movie is stupid and cheesy and over-the-top…but for some people that works.  You know who you are.  ;)  MOVIES LIKE Manborg:  Kung Fury (2015), Mutant Hunt (1986), Tokyo Shock films.

Kung Fury (2015) meets Mutant Hunt (1986) with a dash of cracked out Robot Chicken (2005-present) and Flash Gordon (1980) in this trashy collage of schlock, super cheap effects and stop-motion creatures.

So here’s the short synopsis by IMDB:  “A soldier, brought back to life as a cyborg, fights alongside a band of adventurers against demon hordes in a dystopian future.” If that doesn’t make you want to see this movie entirely on its own, then you probably shouldn’t watch this.

“Earth, the legacy of the Hell Wars when mankind fought the armies of Hell and Hell won… With every passing hour, another nation crumbles to the technological might of this unholy menace, and their monstrous leader Count Draculon.”

The film is choppy and it appears as if actors are being greenscreened over a 1990s videogame backdrop as soldiers battle Doom zombie pseudo-Nazis with laser guns and stop-motion monster zombie shock troopers.  In fact, this feels a lot like watching a videogame…while on drugs.  One brave man in the battle field goes toe-to-toe with the evil warlord Count Draculon (a Nazi vampire demon from Hell?) and is left for dead.

This man becomes Manborg (Matthew Kennedy; Father’s Day) in a cybernetics montage.  Laser hoverboards, combat droids, cheap computer graphics, even cheaper costumes, and a Liu Kang-ish martial arts-y sidekick named “#1 Man” mix nicely into this persistent assault on good taste—or a delightful bubble bath of bad taste, depending on your preferences.

Manborg is captured and forced to battle in the evil Nazi zombie fighting pits.  Their champion is a giant claymation monster with laser rocket launchers.  I loved the claymation, however bad it was.  Speaking of “bad” this film was both bad and delightful (to lovers of bad films).  It had a budget of $1000.  1000 DOLLARS!!!!!  That in mind, this is actually quite impressive.

Massively cheap and grossly overacted, Manborg is an homage to 80s schlock trash cinema directed by Steven Kostanski (Father’s Day, ABC’s of Death 2 “W is for Wish”).  At times the ultra-low budget and ultra-badness of it all was a bit exhausting.  Other times it was weirdly refreshing.  I especially enjoyed The Baron’s lines, attempts at romantic courtship and awkward demeanor.  Attempts at gore, however cheap they may appear, were abundant and suitably messy and gross to match the trashy scale of the rest of the film.

This film even made an attempt at a plot.  You see, Manborg was actually created by the same mad scientist who accidently opened the gate to Hell in the first place.  So, he made Manborg to combat this infernal evil from Hell.  While doing so, Manborg delivers loads of tropes from 80s trashy action badness along with digital future-scapes and weird special effects galore.

This is CLEARLY not for everyone.  But for some of you (the schlock lovers), this may be just what you need.

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MY CALL:  A nice change of pace as the franchise reviews the past and future of the Puzzle Box in this anthology of sorts. This franchise remains worthy through the fourth film, even if pale in comparison to the first two films.  MOVIES LIKE Hellraiser:  Be sure to see Hellraiser (1987) and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) first, of course. Then maybe Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth (1992).  Also try Lord of Illusions (1995) and Nightbreed (1990) for more creepy practical effects reminiscent of the first two Hellraiser films.

Jason X (2001) took Jason Voorhees to space, as did Leprechaun 4: In Space (1996). I think we can all agree these were bad, but fun and campy ideas. Thankfully Pinhead’s (Doug Bradley) legacy retains some value as this film actually rights its swervingly uncertain path in the wake of Hell on Earth (1992) and returns the franchise to a more worthy storyline than Pinhead on a killing spree or simply giving us “Pinhead in Space.” Yuck. If you want Hell in space, you want Event Horizon (1997). Period.

Entering the fourth installment of the franchise, Bloodline opens on a 22nd century space station where Dr. Paul Merchant (Bruce Ramsay; Alive, Continuum) uses what I can only describe as a 1990s Nintendo PowerGlove operating a robot to open the Puzzle Box. A team of “space marines” manages detain him (after he opened the box), and he reveals that the Puzzle Box has been in his family for centuries and he must put an end to its lineage of terror. As he explains, we are told of two past generations in his bloodline that possessed the very same infernal artifact.

I was most pleased with the very different approach in storytelling in this movie. This film is essentially an anthology in which the space station story wraps around two other stories within, all three being of different time periods; past, present and future.

Merchant explains (in the first encapsulated story) that in the 18th century, his toymaker ancestor Phillip L’Merchant (also played by Bruce Ramsay) commissioned the Puzzle Box for a twisted cultist magician who, along with his young assistant (Adam Scott; Piranha 3D), used this device to summon a demon. They skinned a young woman as a sacrifice such that the demon Angelique (Valentina Vargas; Faces in the Crowd) may inhabit her skin and walk the Earth. Contrary to past Hellraiser canon, if you summon a demon you control that demon “as long as you don’t stand between the demon and Hell.”

Part 3 (Hell on Earth) ended with the Puzzle Box being dropped in wet cement, which was revealed to be the foundation of a business class skyscraper with the interior decorated with the famous Puzzle Box design all over the walls like modern art. Accordingly our second encapsulated story advances Angelique and her master to present day (1996) as she “senses” the presence of the Puzzle Box and is drawn to America where another of Merchant’s ancestors has been inspired by the designs of the box.

Angelique makes some temptations and summons Pinhead who. as usual, wants the box.  Thankfully, Merchant successfully thwarts Pinhead, Angelique (now in Cenobite form) and their newly created “Twin Cenobites” but the box remains in the wake to threaten future generations.

I was pleased with the stories underlying all of the Hellraiser films so far. Even though Hell on Earth felt too much like an action horror with some silly troped-up components, I remain pleased with it as it refrained from the all too often exploited cartoonishness of 90s horror. It remained dire and creepy with a rich story leading up to the “Pinhead action sequence.” A major fault of Hell on Earth was the blatant over-exposition. While this fault did not keep me from enjoying the movie, it is a bit frustrating nonetheless, and we find this fault here in Hellraiser IV. Directly paralleling the degree of over-exposition is the drop in acting quality of these two movies.  It’s worst in the opening space station sequence but becomes more tolerable later on.

An interesting notion in this story is that the rules continue to change from film to film. Or, if they haven’t changed, then they’re not being properly explained. In 18th century Paris, he who summoned the demon controlled the demon. I’ll bet Hellraiser‘s Kirsty wished someone had told Pinhead that in 1987! And, like in all the sequels, innocent people grow less safe with each movie. In Hellbound the Channard Cenobite goes on a mental patient killing spree, in Hell on Earth Pinhead tries to kill EVERYONE, and now Pinhead continues to kill without reservation once summoned and converts Cenobites at will. Back in the original Hellraiser, Pinhead couldn’t touch anyone unless he at least believed that their “desire” was behind opening the box. My, how times have changed with now a fourth director and set of writers for as many films.

The effects remain entertaining and gory. The Cenobites have a more traditional appearance again, except for the Cenobite dog (where did that thing come from; did Cujo open the Puzzle Box and go to Hell?) and the franchise mythology continues to expand our interest in the Puzzle Box.

Our story finally returns us to the space station where Pinhead now wanders. In the end Pinhead is perhaps permanently deported to Hell in an interesting and clever story development involving the space station itself, which Merchant designed. Lucky for us, this is about 200 years in the future. So we’re good for as many sequels as they want to make until then.

Perhaps nothing in comparison to the first two films, I still consider that this film (and part 3 as well) remains worthy for viewing pleasure.

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MY CALL: This would probably be more fun if watched as a drinking game. But for a smutty, shoestring budgeted, semi-exploitation film, it tried really hard with the creature effects. Good for them. I was entertained. MOVIES LIKE Bio Slime: Tentacle and goo monster movies come in all forms. The good include The Thing (1982, 2011), The Blob (1988), Grabbers (2012), The Raft (segment from Creepshow 2; 1987), Slither (2006) and The Kindred (1987). The “good bad” include The Boogens (1981) and The Stuff (1985). The really bad include Night of the Tentacles (2013) and Street Trash (1987).

This is one of those movies that I had never heard of until Amazon randomly recommended it based on some of my purchases of more questionable taste. I’m guessing Night of the Tentacles (2013) triggered this. LOL. I went in hoping for an indie Splice (2009) meets The Thing (1982, 2011). Instead I got something originating from deeper in the Abyss. It turns out this movie stars and was made by people involved in loads of other horror films of the kind I specifically try to avoid; the kind with so much nudity and/or sex that they feel like softcore porn. Oh well, here we go…

Within 30 seconds of starting this film I fear I’ve made a mistake. The acting is bad and the editing is even worse. Immediately I shift gears and consider this more of a student film that may have some merits hidden deep within. Right now that hidden merit seems to be the opening credits. But wait, perhaps this isn’t actually so awful. Yes. The acting is bad…and much of the camerawork…and the writing. But this “bad” was packaged like this deliberately. Among deliberately bad horror movies this is surely not of the caliber of Zombeavers (2014) or Love in the Time of Monsters (2014)–or anything else that I’d actually recommend to anyone. But should you accidently wander into viewing this with an open mind and a good sense of humor you’ll survive the encounter with at least a smirk on your face.

A criminal (Tai Chan Ngo; Killjoy Goes to Hell) meets another man of questionable moral fiber in a dark alley to exchange a brief case. Its contents? Apparently some kind of tentacle monster the result of secret government experimentation. The case ends up in an apartment building inhabited by friendly but shady people and, in no time at all, a drunk (Vinnie Bilancio; Blood Gnome) comes across it and “activates” something by turning a key that compromises the integrity of the container and something that looks like a block of spoiled tofu from Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods bites his hand.

Then someone else comes in contact with this now pulsating blob of goo in the case, and they become infected. Infection by this parasitic slime seems nonspecific, happening by the goo injecting itself into one’s blood stream, engulfing them like the blob (but in a boring way) or jamming itself down one’s throat. Although sometimes it’s just trying to kill you rather than infect you. There’s really no rhyme or reason to it.

The classlessness of this film is readily apparent and deliberate as various characters are in the porn industry (and played by adult film stars) for no other reason than to have our protagonists walk in on scenes being filmed and to have otherwise mundane conversations with totally naked women suddenly being “normal.” It also means the victims may be naked (and several of them are).

The kills and the effects were all pretty poor…or are they pretty entertaining?!?!? It all comes down to your frame of mind and expectations when viewing a film like this. After all, what would you expect from a $50,000 budget and loads of gratuitous nudity? Perhaps the highlight of the special effects was a fleshy trilobite of a monster that looks like a slimy, warty STD. But this turns out to be an ectoparasitic organism that lives on the “main monster.” Our first glimps of the monster looks a lot like a squid-sludge monster or a Grabber with a toothy maw. Other effects include a couple naked porn stars transforming into a naked slimy succubus with tentacles…and one gets cut in half…and then she attacks. LOL.

We eventually meet the central hivemind of this creature, a quasi-humanoid sludge beast that speaks and has some understanding of its identity. It captures a woman, apparently strips her of her clothes, and entraps her in slimy ivy like an incubating host in Aliens. It knows it’s very old and comprised of all victims that are absorbed into its sensual communion. After something of a tentacle sex scene between them (nothing terribly graphic other than the nudity itself), it smacks of a live-action Hentai Cthulhu. But even more striking is how similar the creature is to Phantoms (1998).

This film starts out horrible, but finds its way to something tolerable…as far as sleazy, low budget horror goes. The first 30 minutes were honestly quite painful, but the action becomes much more frequent as the film proceeds, along with more on-screen (rather than off) activity and we begin to see quite a lot of creature effects considering the budget. I think I might actually be impressed. Our hero may be an alcoholic, out-of-work painter with a samurai sword who can make an EMP device out of a biohazard containment unit, but I ultimately found myself not caring.

This film is horrible and yet the second half is also a pleasant surprise of abundant creature effects. Watch at your own risk and be mindful of the sleaziness if you have company.

MY CALL:  After the well-executed opening act, this possession film offers little more than illustrating some skills (and some limitations) of a fledgling director.   MORE MOVIES LIKE In the Dark:  In terms of possession movies, I’d instead recommend The Quiet Ones (2014), Case 39 (2009), The Last Exorcism (2010), The Conjuring (2013) and Oculus (2014).  They all offer very different “flavors” of possession with less conventional settings.

Right out of the gates this is beautifully scored with a thought-provoking opening credits sequence hinting at a dark ancient Biblical fable as art student Bethany paints something…something dark.  Immediately we find unsubtle cues of a supernatural presence, followed readily by a…”disturbance.”

Meanwhile a skeptical graduate student (Veronica) studying parapsychology interviews paranormal researcher Lois about her “verified” cases, the most interesting of which involves possession and exorcism.  Lois is not one to desperately grasp at straws to evidence claims of the otherworldly, rather she is known as the “miracle killer” for debunking 197 of 200 cases.

The acting (all actors being of little experience) is not great, but the director stages his story well.  In one scene, Veronica reviews the 5 stages of a haunting to her boyfriend as she expresses doubt in all things paranormal.  I like this as it gives us (the audience) a way to “measure” the seriousness of the situation.

1. Hearing footsteps, feelings of being watched, cold spots, noises, odors.

2. Whispers, laughs, moans, shrieking, moving shadows.

3. Lights and electrical devices turning on and off, unseen hands touching, writings, open/close doors.

4. The appearance of apparitions, disappearance of objects, breaking mirrors and glass.

5. Manifestations of violence.

Lois (with the intention of helping eradicate a supernatural problem) and Veronica (with the intention to debunk the case) visit the troubled Bethany and her mother, who claim to have a paranormal disturbance in their home that’s after Bethany, who shows signs of possession.  She speaks in a voice that couldn’t possibly be hers, vomits a 5″ nail and gradually becomes more physically disheveled.  As Bethany’s “symptoms” advance, her behavior and appearance become more overt.

At this point in the film, I feel some credibility is lost during this transition—and, subsequently, more credibility is later lost.  The contortion scene failed to capture my attention and Bethany’s episodes of violence feel more than a bit forced.  What’s more is that her behavior is straight out of the “possession movie playbook” with no inklings of clever nuance to make these possession scenes stand out.  We aren’t really offered any different “versions” of the classic symptoms we’ve seen a dozen times before.  There is little gore (not that gore is important here), limited to vomiting black bile and a stabbing.  The make-up is decent and special attention was paid to Bethany’s corrupted skin and teeth.

Lois strongly suspects possession whereas Veronica questions an overworked abusive mother or Bethany’s past head trauma to be the cause of their problems.  Of course, the supernatural element becomes increasingly undeniable as we move towards confronting the “Gehenna demons” controlling her.

The dialogue falls into the trap of over-exposition, explaining every detail in the dialogue of the demon(s) and characters to such length that it feels like a chore to listen.  Early in the film this was of negligible consequence as the dialogue felt more natural.  But as the film progresses it begins to wear on me.  I take that back, it’s becoming significantly annoying.  Even in a world in which demonic possession exists, I find this level of gross over-explanation implausible.  The demon characer is the worst of all.  “This is what I am, this is what I don’t like, this is what I want, and this is how I’ll get it.”  Basically the words of the demon summarized.  Later the demon’s dialogue shifts to pure melodrama–even for a possession film.  This is unfortunate.  Show me, don’t tell me.  When you tell me too much it informs me that you perhaps don’t know how to show me.  This dialogue is all too often explained instead of shown in context.

I also didn’t feel that the characters were responding appropriately (i.e., reasonably or credibly) to what they were seeing and experiencing.  Their emotions typically didn’t match the scene, the lines or the urgency–except for the mother, she was emotionally on point.  Overall, the writing just wasn’t there and things really fell apart approaching and during the exorcism.

Written and directed by horror newcomer David Spaltro, this film’s first act showed the signs of a promising director.  Spaltro stages things well with a good premise (i.e., debunking the paranormal goes wrong), creating anticipation and mood when weighing the opening credit sequence, the first paranormal events and Veronica’s skepticism.  Introducing the “5 stages of a haunting” may appear to some to be formulaic, but when Veronica explained it to her boyfriend it felt as if it arose organically.  I was being primed for something great and I enjoyed the delivery.  But the second half of this film is indicative that this director would better serve his audience with a more experienced writer penning the script.  Sorry, it had to be said.

I’d like to see what David Spaltro could do with his vision if handed a script–or, perhaps, if he had more freedom.  Ultimately, I didn’t get anything  great here.  However, I feel that Spaltro’s proven skills have greatness in them.  He just needs the right script and I am left to wonder if my perceived writing flaws weren’t the hand of a writer/director whose hand was forced by his producers.  And someone give this guy a budget to play around with.  He staged some creepy atmosphere in the early scenes.  I’d love to see what more he can do.

MY CALL: My least favorite of the first five Hellraisers, but it still has a story to tell that adds a minor little something to the franchise.  MOVIES LIKE Hellraiser: Inferno:  Be sure to see Hellraiser (1987) and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) first, of course. Then maybe Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth (1992) and Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996).

The folks from @DeadAsHellHP referred to Hellraiser 5 as the “Bad Lieutenant” of the franchise in their podcast on the series (http://www.deadashellhp.com/2015/07/24/dead-as-hell-scarlet-gospels-hellraiser-special-part-ii/).

Directed by Scott Derrickson (Sinister, Deliver Us from Evil), this fifth installment to the Hellraiser franchise continues to follow the pleasant trend of presenting a new infernal chapter in yet a different style from its predecessors; never does a sequel feel like a rehashed facsimile. Hellraiser was a dark chamber thriller fueled by lustful desire, Hellbound more of a curious exploration of Barker’s Hell-ish Labyrinth and his Cenobites, Hell on Earth was a troped-up action/horror movie chronicling Pinhead’s own escape from Hell, Bloodline an anthology story illustrating the creation and lineage of the Puzzle Box, and now we find a crime thriller neatly packaged in the dark trappings of the Puzzle Box. There may be an admittedly significant drop in quality in the third and fourth films from the original two, and yet another such drop for this fifth and direct-to-video installment, but it remains comforting that we never seem to find the same story recycled and retold with different victims.

Our latest story revolves around Detective Thorne (Craig Sheffer; Nightbreed), who is perhaps the least likable protagonist of the series so far as a drug-using adulterer who neglects his family and frames his partner. Thorne discovers the Puzzle Box and some macabre clues at a murder scene where the victim was apparently torn apart in his luxurious home, decorated and candlelit for an occult ritual. Thorne solves the Puzzle Box and encounters some Cenobites, but is neither shredded and taken to Hell nor forced to bargain for his soul. Instead he wakes up (as if from a dream) and is occasionally haunted by Cenobites. Well this is a strange and welcome change…

The franchise continues to expand the Hellraiser mythology, although with less impact here than before. Whereas parts 1-4 revolve around the Box or Pinhead (Doug Bradley), this chapter is illustrative of what experiences befall those damned souls who open the Box. As a result, we see much less of Pinhead and focus more on our curious and potentially damned soul. Thorne’s journey begins as a rational investigation, shifts to something supernatural, and ultimately steers us into what feels like a surreal dreamscape of his life.

We question if it is a dream, a temptation or trick, or reality when Thorne sees The Pillar of Souls.

This film opens with the scoring, lighting, style and plot of a Skinemax softcore porn. It didn’t quite grasp the noir-ish detective film tone for which I think it was reaching and I was almost embarrassed to be watching it. Thankfully, it shifted more to the point (and story) about halfway through and the sleazy feeling washed away. A major fault of Hell on Earth and Bloodline was the nuisance of over-exposition. I didn’t find that to be a problem here. Although some strange things certainly happen that make me question the quality of the writing and direction at times…to that end, I’ll just say three words: “Ninja Cowboy Cenobites.” Clearly, this concept has no place in any Hellraiser movie ever. LOL.

These ninja cowboys are among some new Cenobites. The gore (while toned down here in part 5) is well done, the effects satisfactory, and the Cenobite make-up is cool. One Cenobite resembles the head and arms of Chatterbox (without legs or even the rest of its torso), menacingly hand-walking around like a Silent Hill monster. There is a pair of twin female faceless BDSM Cenobites with long tongues involved in a macabrely sexualized scene with hands rubbing “under” Thorne’s skin. And, of course, there’s Pinhead.

We are re-introduced to The Engineer. In Hellraiser, The Engineer was the dweller of the halls of the Labyrinth who is never given a name in the film. Back then it was a monstrous aberration of uncertain purpose. Having heard nothing of this character in parts 2-4, we now find The Engineer wandering Los Angeles, assuming the role of a murderous pimp. How this character fits into the story is revealed in due time, along with how Thorne truly fits beyond the capacity of solving his case.

This was The Engineer from part 1.

Parts 1-3 of this franchise should be watched in order. After seeing them, there seems to be no consequence to seeing part 5 before part 4 outside of the fact that Bloodline is much better. This film is nothing special, nor is it even a “good” Hellraiser story. But I take it for what it is and appreciate of it what I can. I didn’t regret watching it, and this is the first in the franchise that I don’t recommend seeing.

Hello all. Mark here.

I recently wrote about the best horror films of the 21st century and wanted to let you know where you can find some of the movies on the lists.  I searched through Amazon Prime and Netflix (sorry Hulu) and found  the films that were ranked in or around the top 50. Hopefully this makes your life easier as you navigate the black hole that is searching through streaming services looking for something to watch.

We searched Netflix for two hours and this is what we picked! We should have looked at MFF’s list about 21st century horror!

The following top 20 ranked horror flicks on the audience/critic lists offer something for everyone. If you are in the mood for Korean serial killers, pesky ghosts, yuppie murderers or creatures in the mist you are in luck! 

Sidenote: The movies with the bold font have been reviewed by MFF. Probably the greatest reviews ever.

Let the Right One In (Netflix) – A beautiful tale about a vampire in Sweden.

The Host (Amazon, Netflix) – A perfect introduction to Korean horror. If you are into creature features you will love this movie.

Housebound (Netflix) – A New Zealand export that puts  a fun spin on the haunted house genre.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Netflix) – The first Iranian vampire western ever made.

Maniac (Netflix) – Elijah Wood wipes out unsuspecting women in this bonkers remake

Battle Royale (Netflix) – Japanese ninth graders kill the living crap out of each other.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Netflix) – A fantastic revenge tale that could’ve only come from South Korea.

I Saw the Devil (Amazon, Netflix) – The most insane game of cat and mouse you will ever witness.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (Netflix) – Two Rednecks deal with jerky college kids who are intent on killing themselves.

The Others (Netflix) – A Sixth Sense knockoff that is actually really good.

American Psycho (Netflix) – A yuppie kills a lot of people in the 80s.

The Babadook (Netflix) – A woman and her child endure some really weird and strikingly original Australian shenanigans.

The Mist (Amazon) – Mist comes in. People hold up in grocery store. It is is very bleak.

You’re Next (Amazon, Netflix) – A badass heroine wipes out dumb killers .

Devil’s Rejects (Netflix) – Rob Zombie will hurt your soul with this awesomely soul crushing road film.

The following horror treasures ranked in or around the top 50  are totally worth your while. 

Dead Snow (Netflix) – A guy named Red and his friends battle Nazi zombies.

Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead (Netflix) – A guy named Red battles Nazi zombies….again.

Honeymoon (Netflix) – A honeymooning couple go to a cabin in the woods. Nothing good happens.

House of the Devil (Netflix) – Never babysit in a creepy old home full of weird people.

Grabbers (Netflix) – Irish villagers need to stay drunk to avoid death via aliens.

Troll Hunter (Netflix, Amazon) – A Swedish man battle trolls in this found footage gem.

Creep (Netflix) – Man answers Craigslist ad. It all gets weird in a gloriously original way.

Snowtown Murders (Netflix) – This movie will crush you soul. Good job Australia.

The Guest (Netflix) – Imagine if Universal Soldier met Terminator.

Berberian Sound Studio (Netflix) – An audio technician loses his mind in Italy.

John Dies at the End (Amazon, Netflix) – This film defies explanation. That is a good thing

Under the Skin (Amazon) – Imagine if Species was directed by Gus Van Sant

Tusk (Amazon) – It didn’t do well in ranking but it features a man being turned into Walrus. That is worth something.

Ju-On (Amazon) – Japanese killer kid ghost story perfected

Spring (Amazon) Imagine if Before Sunset met Species.

Cheap Thrills (Amazon) – Two men have a very bad night. I love Cheap Thrills.