MY CALL:  If Ice-T’s Surviving the Game (1994) and Van Damme’s Hard Target (1993) had a sweaty-muscled child, and that abtastic child was hunted for sport and could do fancy jump spin kicks—that would be this bad movie.  This was one of Adkins’ weaker movies, in my opinion—and I’m an Adkins fan in general.  But hey, I laughed a lot.  So there’s that.  MOVIES LIKE Hard Target 2:  Surviving the Game (1994) and Hard Target (1993) are the obvious choices—since they, in combination, are the equivalent of this week’s Bad Movie Tuesday feature.  You should also turn to other Van Damme movies, of course!  Especially Bloodsport (1988), Lionheart (1990), Timecop (1994) and The Quest (1996).  Want something a bit more “campy bad?” If that’s the case, try China O’Brien (1990), Outside the Law (2002), Night Vision (1997), Only the Strong (1993) or Mechanic: Resurrection (2016).

This completely unwarranted sequel was made by the king of unwarranted sequels!  Director Roel Reiné (The Marine 2, Death Race 2, Death Race 3: Inferno, The Scorpion King 3, 12 Rounds 2, The Man with the Iron Fists 2, The Condemned 2; any of which make for an excellent Bad Movie Tuesday) has long proven that he can take excellently entertaining flicks and make subpar sequels out of them that no one really ever expected, needed or even wanted.  He doesn’t have any decent “part ones” under his belt yet, and I’m not sure he ever will.

Decked out with crossbows and dirt bikes, a group of hunters track down their unarmed fare in this completely unwarranted and long-delayed sequel to Van Damme’s Hard Target (1993).  But since Jean-Claude Van Damme (Timecop, Bloodsport, The Expendables 2, Universal Solder: Day of Reckoning, Assassination Games) has shared the screen with Scott Adkins (Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, The Expendables 2, Universal Solder: Day of Reckoning, El Gringo, Assassination Games) several times now, it’s fair to say the torch is being passed.

Adkins plays Wes, a mixed martial arts fighter, and his opening Vegas fight is scored and acted like it was the final fight at the end of some Rocky knockoff.  And folks, I love Scott Adkins, but let’s just be honest and say the acting is bad.  Adkins uses his most gruffly deep possible voice to sound tough and I’m not so convinced.  Thankfully his voice reverts back to normal later.

It’s like a reverse Van Damme movie, because instead of avenging his friend (Bloodsport) or brother (Kickboxer) in the ring, he nearly kills his best friend!  Then, guilt stricken, Wes moves to Bangkok to pull a Leaving Las Vegas (1995), drinking himself into oblivion.  But apparently he mixes the liquor with his protein powder and takes swigs between sit-ups since he has been somehow maintaining his strikingly lean abs.  Oh, and did I mention he woke up hungover and sleeping among doves—yes, I said DOVES!  Does the director think he’s John Woo (Face/Off, Hard Boiled, Hard Target)?!?!?

Adkins’ abs may be amazing, but the fight choreography is only “decent” and far below Adkins’ potential (e.g., Undisputed).  But a fight is not as good as the best martial artist—rather it is limited by the worst.  He pulls some of his trademark stunts out of his bag of tricks, including his 540 jump spinning hook kick and aerial split kick.  The stunts look great!  It’s just the exchange of techniques between fighters that is left wanting.  In Undisputed 2 (2006) he worked opposite Michael Jai White (one of the best in the business), here he faces the worst on-screen capoeirista (I think that’s what he was doing) I’ve ever seen.  What happened to the guys from The Protector (2005) and The Quest (1996), huh?  Just sad.

His underground fighting circuit mixes Lionheart (1990) and Fighting (2009), but lacks the charm of either.  Then the slick Aldrich (Robert Knepper; R.I.P.D., Heroes, Prison Break) enters the underground fighting scene, discovers Wes’ talent, and offers Wes a solution to his recent financial hardships.  What Wes doesn’t realize is that the “fight” he agrees to turns out to be a fight for his life!

Rhona Mitra (Doomsday, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, Skinwalkers), looking AMAZING at 40 by the way, cheeses up the screen with her fair share of ill-delivered B-movie lines as well.  She joins Aldrich and four other well-equipped hunters against Wes, who learns that all he gets is a water bottle and a two-minute head start in the middle of the jungles of Myanmar.

About now I’d like to pause and assess some additional ways that we know this is a bad movie (as if it wasn’t yet obvious):

1. Adkins accuses an elephant of “throwing the first punch” with a straight face.

2. Firing a crossbow in slow-motion with CGI arrows doesn’t make it look any better. They seem to think it does, though.  Maybe that’s why so many action shots were also in slow-motion.  And why crossbows.  Is this because of Daryl Dixon?

3. Again, what’s with the doves???

4. Aldrich pays “the Republic of Myanmar” (aka, a corrupt general) as a free pass to hunt people in the jungle. So bad!

5. I think they only named this Hard Target 2 hoping to get some Hard Target money off Van Damme’s fanfare.

6. When the hunters need something, Aldrich just waives his hand and it seems to appear. Guns, four-wheel drive vehicles, tracking systems, surveillance drones, motorcycles with more toys than the Batmobile… it gets annoying.

7. Too many motorcycles.  Ever since Jurassic World (2015), folks don’t really seem to care about motorcycle chases through the jungle unless velociraptors are involved.  And no, there are no velociraptors in this.

8. Rhona Mitra walking far too casually in front of an explosion. She also takes really big hits way too well…like she was the T-1000 or something. Barf!

9. Using violence against women and rape as casually as the opportunity presents itself. Come on, now.  This isn’t the exploitation era nor is this anything of an exploitation movie.  It’s just crass.

10. We could often see Adkins’ knee pads through his jeans. That’s just lazy.

11. We spend too long watching Wes learn to appreciate the local culture, hearing his past and nightmares explained, and talking about getting to the Thai border. This isn’t Kickboxer (1989)… ergo, I don’t care about any of this exposition.

12. Aldrich sips a beer while he watches his henchman fight Wes. The scenario is even more ridiculous than you’d think.  He watches Wes beat his five henchman, then he watches him crush his right-hand man… he basically gives Wes every possible opportunity to win when, in fact, Aldrich had every opportunity to eliminate his liability.

13. The ending makes no sense. Wes should have died.  This was really stupid.

But for all its faults, and they number high, this flick is not without some serious bad movie charm.  Adkins kicks Mitra through a wall and I laughed out loud, the slow-motion water fight may not have been technically impressive but it definitely brought out my inner bro, and there are also some gorgeous jungle shots.

This is clearly among Adkins’ weaker movies.  But if you go in expecting it to suck, you should get a few laughs and see a few decent stunts that may or may not make it worth it for you in the end.

Okay, guys. So the movie is called CANNIBAL Ferox!
Soooooo… NOT SAFE FOR WORK, right?
Any movie with CANNIBAL in the title probably means NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

MY CALL:  I always used to think that Ferox and Holocaust were the two formative extreme cannibal exploitation films.  The truth is that Holocaust is, and Ferox just retraces its brutal steps.  Fun for exploitation fans, but a major bummer for film fans.  MOVIES LIKE Cannibal Ferox:  Cannibal Holocaust (1980) above all other cannibal movies.  I’d warn you to skip Green Inferno (2013), but if you’re like me you’ll watch anyway… and then regret it since it’s just another cheap knockoff masquerading as something original since it came out over 30 years later.

In Cannibal Holocaust (1980) we were graced with an excellent introduction to our characters, their motivation, and why we’re all here.  But as if in a rush, we now find ourselves in the Amazon almost immediately as our three protagonists begin their search for a jungle village which, by all local accounts, doesn’t seem to exist.

Rudy (Danilo Mattei; Ironmaster), Gloria (Lorraine De Selle; House on the Edge of the Park, Wild Beasts) and Pat (Zora Kerova; The New York Ripper, Anthropophagous) venture into the Amazon so that Gloria may gather the information she needs to “prove” her dissertation’s thesis that “cannibalism as an organized practice in society” does not exist, nor has it ever.  You’d think Gloria would be intelligent, working on her PhD in anthropology and all, but she can’t be that smart… since these three American buffoons drive into the jungle without a guide, breakdown, and then travel aimlessly on foot and off-trail in hopes of basically “bumping into” Gloria’s alleged village of cannibals.  But they sure do seem to get lucky—or unlucky.

During their adventure hey bump into Mike (Giovanni Lombardo Radice; The Omen, City of the Living Dead) and Joe (Walter Lucchini; Ironmaster), who claim to have escaped cannibals!

Written and directed by Umberto Lenzi (Nightmare City, Ghosthouse), this film follows close in the footsteps of its predecessor Cannibal Holocaust (1980).  The tortuous use of a coatimundi (that narrow-snouted muskrat looking critter) echoes Holocaust’s influence—when we saw one stabbed in the neck and killed on film.  Keeping in the spirit of animal cruelty, we watch a coatimundi die to an anaconda (for real, on film) while yelping its last breaths, a jaguar kills a small monkey (for no good reason), Mike stabs a young pig to death (again, for no reason), an iguana ravages a boa, and an alligator is gutted.  Probably considered avant-garde filmmaking by some, this needless “real” gore contributes no more value to the film than the completely forced nudity.  Throw in a lot of violence against women, some genital mutilation, bloody eye gauging, child nudity (a la National Geographic), dismemberment and sloppy disembowelment and I guess we’ve got ourselves an exploitation film.

Overall the gore and violence aren’t very effective, but anyone would wince at the castration scene—we see quite a bit.  I was particularly surprised by the meat hooks through the breast!  It was also somewhat unexpected (or more hilariously unreasonable) that the natives had a special table designed just for skull-capping victims to expose and eat their brains.  But hey, that’s the kind of thing we signed up for with this film, right?

The grossest thing about this movie was when they found a native eating big fat beetle grubs alive.  You saw its guts as he bit into it and chewed with his mouth open. Yuck!

A lot of things happen but they never coalesce into a reasonable story.  Our trio encounters natives who had gorily died to booby traps, it’s explained that they had helped Mike and Joe escape, and when they all later return to the village together the natives sit quietly together as if scared of their white visitors (who do as they wish in the village like pale rulers).

“White Devil, White Devil.”

There seems to be no inspiration behind this stale film.  It just rides the coattails of Cannibal Holocaust (1980) with no more rhyme or reason than chasing a paycheck.  Holocaust was avant-garde extreme filmmaking, but Ferox is just one of the many random exploitation films inevitably to be found in its wake.  Don’t think I’m being fair to this film?  They even decapitate a large turtle and then butcher it while it’s still twitching… just because Holocaust did it. We flip-flop scenes between New York and the Amazon, just because it worked for Holocaust, and New York’s Lt. Rizzo is played by the star of Holocaust (Robert Kerman; Night of the Creeps, Cannibal Holocaust). As the story unfolds, a great deal more of the Ferox story (and the cast) mirrors Holocaust but continues to offer little in its honor in the process.

Everything that made Holocaust work is absent here, unless you count “real gore” from animal cruelty and a few boobs as highlights.  This is a cheap, uninspired knock-off and, while admittedly quite entertaining to a fan of the occasional extreme or exploitation film, it completely fails as a “film.”  This is an exploitation “flick” that has nothing original to say, and says nothing at all well outside of step-by-step instructions for field-dressing a turtle or pushing natives to cannibalism.

MY CALL:  Watching this will accomplish two things: 1) you’ll wait a whopping 90 minutes to see the monstrosity from the VHS/DVD cover art for 90 seconds, and 2) you’ll have bragging rights among horror hounds for having found and seen this incredibly obscure movie.  Those will be your only joys.  90 seconds of mutant monster baby, and bragging rights over a film most have never known to exist.  MOVIES LIKE The Night Feeder:  It’s Alive (1974, 2008), Dead-Alive (1992), Things (1989) and Hideous! (1997) also feature laughable mutant monster babies to various humorous or twisted effect.

This schlocky oldie opens with a murder crime scene in with a woman’s wounded dead body, clothing tattered and a breast exposed.  It’s the third such murder targeting young women and a local writer sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong when a friend of hers becomes the fourth.

The acting is pretty bad, but for deliberately watching an obscure B-movie it could really be a lot worse.  Adding to the super low budget and haphazard ambiance, the night club and band performance scenes feel and look as unnatural as an early 80s New Wave British music video.  This is where we are bombarded by boobs and stale exposition (e.g., who’s dating who, who works where, and who our victims will be for the evening).

Watching, or more accurately “enduring”, the first 30 minutes of this strange movie was not an enjoyable endeavor.  It’s terribly slow, having no sense of dynamic pace.  But things shift gears for the better for a few minutes during the awesomely gory autopsy scene which revealed that the victims were killed by brain extraction, leaving them with largely hollow skulls.  This scene was pretty cool, but it’ll be over an hour before anything interesting happens again.

There are no fewer than five women’s boobs in this not-so-classy and obscure horror film—however, it is always somehow unraunchy or brief enough that it never feels smutty despite the volume of nudity.  Not only that, but these must be the most boring boobs to ever grace the screen—I never knew I could care so little for boobs until this film came along.  I also didn’t think the discovery of so many dead bodies could be boring.  I’m not surprised the director (Jim Whiteaker) never did anything else.  One-and-done for sure.  Sometimes these bad movies can be quite laughable (e.g., Def By Temptation, Night Angel, Spellbinder, Nightwish), but unfortunately the cast and crew tried too hard for it to be enjoyably so-bad-it’s-good, yet didn’t try quite hard enough for anything to really be good at all.

Red herrings are abundant.  The local New Wave Punk band DZS (pronounced “disease”), a street drug of the exact same name (DZS), and a strange hobo known citywide as “the creeper” are presented as possible killers.  But if you bought or rented this movie, you’ve seen the cover art illustrating a mutant monster baby of sorts.  So there go those theories.

Outside of the typically lame eye-gauged corpses, the special effects include some momentary slime drool, slimy undead (during a dream sequence), the highly entertaining autopsy effects (complete with the sound of pulling the skin from the skull), and, of course, the killer mutant baby!

This monstrous infant is THE ONLY REASON to watch this movie.  You saw the awesome DVD cover, decided you had to see it (like me), you suffered through 90 minutes and now it’s finally time!  Yes, that’s right, you don’t even see the baby until the very end.  Take it or leave it.

Well, the mutant baby monster is pretty awesome (for an 80s B-movie).  The problem is that we only see it for about a minute and then the movie ends.  For real.  A minute.  Now, I really liked this monster and it looked like Evil Dead 2’s (1987) Henrietta and Total Recall’s (1990) Kuato had a baby.  But the looooong wait for such little payoff makes this obscure and bizarre movie hard to recommend.

MY CALL:  Watching this cult classic and its diverse 80s practical effects should bring a smile to your face. Equal parts dumb and fun abound in this campy, cheesy, somewhat raunchy Halloween movie.  Enjoy.  MOVIES LIKE Night of the Demons:  Night of the Demons 2 (1994), Night of the Demons 3 (1997) and The Hazing (2004).

It’s Halloween and for just one night all things evil roam among us freely.  And not just evil…douchebags are out tonight, too.

Stooge (Hal Havins; Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama, Witchtrap) and his fellow teenage delinquents are out on Halloween night harassing the elderly and looking for trouble.  Two couples (including Cathy Podewell) have the misfortune of joining these degenerates to a Halloween party thrown by “the weird girl” from school Angela (Mimi/Amelia Kinkade; Night of the Demons 2-3) and her sultry friend Suzanne (Scream Queen Linnea Quigley; Creepozoids, Silent Night, Deadly Night).

The party is being held in an abandoned funeral home, a haunted venue called Hull House where the family and staff were all brutally murdered. So what could possibly go wrong?

How about demonic possession?  Much as in the Evil Dead series (1981, 1987, 2013) and Demons 1-2 (1985, 1986), demonic possession is quite contagious.

This film was clearly the high point of director Kevin Tenney’s (Witchboard 1-2, Pinocchio’s Revenge, The Cellar) career.  This cult classic has its raunchy moments, taking every opportunity to have women changing clothes on-screen, bra and panty shots, abundant boobage, Linnea Quigley offers up the longest naughty panty shot in horror history, and a LOT of sexy dancing.  Sexy demon-possessed dancing actually turns out to be a theme in this franchise.

Wow! This is like Flashdance (1983) meets Legend (1985).

The raunchiness is heavily complemented by the campy cheese factor permeating the writing.  The malevolent old man with his razor blades, an underground stream that runs in a circle around Hull House (because we all know streams flow in circles!) entrapping the evil spirits, lame dialogue, girl-on-girl kissing to transmit demonic possession like an STD… need I go on?

The effects and gore include bitten out tongues, demonic faces with mangled demon teeth, the iconic “disappearing lipstick” scene, an awesomely eye-popping eye gauge, fire-scalded melty flesh, tattered demon zombies… this is no one trick pony.  We enjoy a nice range of horror effects entertainment.

But as far as the plot goes, it’s all pretty haphazard really.  Essentially, a bunch of teenagers go to a demon-infested house, people become possessed and then either try to infect or kill those who remain.  There is no sense of story, climax, challenge or goal other than to survive and escape the house.  Our once semi-clever demons had a few tricks up their sleeve, but by the end they are senselessly reduced to a nearly mindless and tactless zombie horde, and despite being featured on the DVD cover the “Angela demon” is no more menacing or in charge than the others.  Although she probably won the sexy demon-possessed dance off challenge!

Sort of reminds me of Soul Train or MTV’s The Grind.

After the “lipstick scene” of course, the best scene was the last—in which a crotchety old man (from the opening scene) eats a lethal pie made from his razor-blade apples.  Cheeky and memorable.

This reminds me of Bridesmaids fighting to catch the bouquet!

The diversity of effects and the silliness of the growling-laughing demons continues to make this work as a cult classic while clearly offering nothing in the way of substance (or style).  It’s pretty stupid.  But even more so, it’s pretty fun!  Highly recommended for a laugh while unwinding after your Halloween party, or as an installment to mark on your 31 Streaming Films for 31 Days “Horror Calendar.”

Like an alligator at feeding time. Haha

MY CALL:  I consider this sequel to be a far better film and far more fun than Night of the Demons (1988). Featuring everything you loved from before, but with more of it and more handsomely packaged.  If you only see one of the four Night of the Demons movies, make it this one.  MOVIES LIKE Night of the Demons 2:  Night of the Demons (1988), Night of the Demons 3 (1997) and The Hazing (2004).

Director Brian Trenchard-Smith (Leprechaun 3, Leprechaun 4: In Space) picks up where Kevin Tenney (Night of the Demons, Witchboard 1-2) left off.  We find the now permanently demonic and prettier Angela (Amelia Kinkade; Night of the Demons 1-3) residing in the same haunted house where we left her possessed by a demon in 1988.

And staying true to the somewhat raunchy path paved by Tenney, Trenchard-Smith doles out the nudity early and heavily by suggesting that bedtime in the Catholic school girls’ dormitory means “panties and topless time.”

“Is that really what you wear to bed?”

Creating a more formal continuity, the end of Night of the Demons (1988) is recounted as a dormitory ghost story noting that everyone was found mangled and dead except for Angela, who was missing and presumably remains a part of Hull House.  This ghost story is particularly troubling to Mouse (Merle Kennedy; May, Dollman, Leprechaun 3).

The actors in this sequel glow compare to those who came before them.  Both written and acted more convincingly, they include Z-Boy (Darin Heames; Dr. Giggles, Alien Nation: The Enemy Within), Rick (Rick Peters; Leprechaun 4: In Space), Terri (Christine Taylor; The Craft, Campfire Tales, Room 6) and Kurt (Ladd York; Leprechaun 4: In Space).

For his aptitude regarding the occult, Perry (Robert Jayne; Tremors 1 & 3 & TV series) seems to be modeled after Christian Slater’s role in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), and Shirley (Zoe Trilling; Night Terrors, Dr. Giggles, Leprechaun 3) appears to be assuming Linnea Quigley’s Night of the Demons (1988) role as the raunchy girl with the demonic lipstick-eating breasts.

Father Bob (Rod McCary; also Father Bob in Leprechaun 3, 976-Evil II, Komodo vs Cobra) and Sister Gloria (Jennifer Rhodes; Halloween, Slumber Party Massacre II, Charmed) run the Catholic school and both characters offer a lot of flavor and fun personality to this movie.

During preparations for the Halloween dance Perry’s interest in demonology inspires him to perform a summoning ritual using the dark tome called the Necronomicon (not sure where he got that exactly) and Shirley rounds everyone up for a Halloween party at Hull House.  So what could possibly go wrong?  How about demonic possession?  Much as in the Evil Dead series (1981, 1987, 2013) and Demons 1-2 (1985, 1986), demonic possession is quite contagious.

Like its predecessor—but bigger and better—it has its raunchy moments, taking every opportunity to deliver boobs, bra and panty shots, more boobs, some sex scenes both demonic and human, and a LOT of sexy dancing.  Sexy demon-possessed dancing actually turns out to be a theme in this franchise, and Angela has returned to defend her title!

The raunchiness is heavily complemented by the campy yet clearly deliberate cheese factor.  For example, like in part 1 either injury or kissing transmits demonic possession like an STD… and more often than not, it’s girl-on-girl kissing or forced kissing.  We also have demon heads in toilets, deliberately lame creepy shadow stalking and randomly “poof” appearing demons, a nun arming herself like she’s Rambo, filling water balloons and super soakers with holy water, sexually aggressive demon hands and infernal trouser snakes, multiple sports references involving a severed head, a ninja turtle head-poking nun, during the sacrifice finale Angela actually seems to use the Force to paralyze two teenagers, and at one point they play stock footage of part 1 Angela (with shorter non-permed hair) floating down the hall.  It’s all quite delightful.

Note the hairstyle change.

This sequel is to Night of the Demons what Evil Dead 2 (1987) was to Evil Dead (1981); a remake masquerading as a sequel.  Only in this case, it builds on the story much as The Thing (2011) was a prequel that replayed key scenes from the 1981 original as if it were a remake.  And like The Thing (2011) and Evil Dead 2 (1987), it offers a lot “more” of everything.  More boobs, more melty demons, more raunchiness, more cheesy ploys, more sexy dancing, more “lipstick scenes” and more gore.

The effects and gore include more demonic faces with mangled demon teeth, an infernal acidic handshake, bloody decapitation, a phallic lipstick demon parasite, holy water-soaked gore-slathered demons melting like Gremlins (1984), snake monster Angela and a deliciously chunky gory explosion. There is a solid range of horror effects entertainment.

Additionally, this sequel makes a great callback to the fan favorite Night of the Demons “lipstick scene.”  The very lipstick Suzanne (Linnea Quigley) inserted into her breast is discovered again.  After an attempted mouth-rape impregnation, the lipstick transforms into a fleshy tendril and crawls up into a girl like the Evil Dead (1987, 2013) tree rape—it was not consensual.  It’s gross and quite provocative, and now it’s possessed this young lady and imbued her with demonic breasts which then literally attack someone!

In the end evil is vanquished and the demonic lipstick is found outside of the Catholic school to usher in another sequel…which does in fact come along in 1997 followed by a 2009 remake.

However campy this sequel may be, the writing is far more credible (i.e., less silly), the acting is superior, and there is actually some substance and reason to the story.  Whether you love gore, boobs, or gore on boobs (yep, that happens), this movie is for you.  Honestly, even if not a single breast populated this movie, it would still be a popcorn favorite of mine.  It’s loads of fun, it’s never slow, and there is a broad range of gross effects waiting to entertain you.

Highly recommended for a laugh while unwinding after your Halloween party, or as an installment to mark on your 31 Streaming Films for 31 Days “Horror Calendar.”

MY CALL:  The kills remain highly creative, Freddy gets sillier, the characters get pithier, and the re-watchability remains top notch for this stellar franchise.  This movie is excellent for a fun popcorn horror night!  MOVIES LIKE Dream Master: First off, you should first see the original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985) and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.  Other classics everyone should see include Poltergeist (1982; discussed at length in our podcast episode #16), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Hellraiser (1987).  For more recent horror with a similar sense of humor try Wishmaster (1997) and Hatchet (2006).

As is typical for the franchise (but not at all boring or played out), we open with a surreal dream. Kristen pulls Joey and Kincaid into her nightmare as we are reminded of the excellent scoring and soundtracks that continue to grace this franchise and complement the spectacles of a most eerie atmosphere.  Whether for use of shadows, our villain’s skin-crawling chuckle, or elaborate set design, the mood is persistently uneasy when it should be.  This is a sequel worthy to follow the mighty Dream Warriors.

Dream Warriors ended with the unusual circumstance of three teen survivors: Joey, Kincaid and Kristen (replacing Patricia Arquette is Tuesday Knight; Wes Craven’s New Nightmare)—instead of the standard “final girl” survivor theme.  Contrary to the beginning of part 2 and part 3, both of which reference part 1 without really being “direct” sequels of the story, part 4 now continues with our three survivors back in high school after their apparent release from the mental health facility.

I love that we get a good sense of these characters, their relationships with each other and what they’re like individually—a luxury we typically don’t enjoy while watching horror movies, yet a thankful staple of the NOES franchise so far.  Their actions reveal their relationships instead of having a poorly written script “telling” us who’s who.

In addition to Joey, Kincaid and Kristen, there’s the nerdy Sheila (Toy Newkirk) who doesn’t pay attention to boys, the shy and virginal Alice (Lisa Wilcox; A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: Dream Child, Watchers Reborn), her dapper martial artist brother Rick (Andras Jones; Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama), his jock buddy Dan (Danny Hassel; A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: Dream Child), and the man-hungry fitness fanatic Debbie (Brooke Theiss; Beverly Hills, 90210).  Continuing the franchise legacy of prohibitively mettlesome alcoholic absentee parents, our protagonists must defend themselves against more than just Freddy.  So they have only on each other to rely.

By this fourth movie, Freddy’s menace has almost completely wicked away like his cindered flesh, leaving now the outwardly iconic sick sense humor left completely uncaged in Dream Warriors.  If there was any question about his heavy transition to comedy please take, for example, his beach sunglasses and Jaws (1975)-homaging shark fin claw.  Yeah, things are getting silly even for Freddy Krueger.  He’s peeling apples with his claws, speaking like a wise 1800s kung fu master, playfully eating pizza topped with teenage meatball souls, and feistily pelting out adages like “no pain, no gain,” “you can check in, but you can’t check out,” and “sayonara”—all appropriate to the murderous situation and all delivered with the shamelessness of a sitcom dad gleefully embarrassing his kids.

Freddy’s kills continue to entertain with creative flair.  Kincaid is killed after his dog’s flaming stream of urine resurrects our clawed killer; Joey succumbs to yet another way out-of-his-league topless dream girl (Hope Marie Carlton; Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Savage Beach, Slumber Party Massacre III, Slaughterhouse Rock); the nerd is life-sucked to a drained husk a la Lifeforce (1985) or Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988); and a fear of roaches and an evil bench press spotter lead to a grossly insectoid transformation death scene.

Freddy (Robert Englund; Wishmaster, Hatchet) has fully embraced being a known entity rather than the mysterious boogeyman he was in part 1 and Freddy’s Revenge.  Not only has Freddy evolved, but so has Freddy’s dream world.  Whereas Freddy once held all the power in his realm, with Dream Warriors the once defenseless teen dreamers became more empowered.  Playing on that notion of power as Kristen, the last of the Elm Street kids, dies she imbues Alice with her power sort of like a Highlander movie (1986, 1991).  Now Alice can pull people into her dreams and, after Rick dies, she can use nunchucks, too!

Even if it’s just a product of directorial flourishes, Freddy’s influence likewise continues to expand with each sequel. Two examples include Freddy being resurrected somehow by flaming dog piss and Alice awakening to find a postcard that ignites while she is clearly awake.  In part 1 Freddy’s realm of influence was only in dreams, then he used a dreamer’s body as a conduit (part 2), and his reach continues to ebb into reality leaving the line between dream and reality ever more blurred.

SIDEBAR: This is the kind of sequel the franchise deserves!  Not just for how it has evolved, but for what it retains.  Like every sequel before it, Dream Master calls back to the paramount NOES themes.  Parts 1-3 featured the steam-spewing boiler rooms, the power plant where Freddy worked and the junkyard where his remains were hidden, and here we revisit all of them.  Instead of face impressions on Nancy’s bedroom wall, Freddy’s form emerging through Jesse’s stomach, and Freddy manifesting himself through a television set, we find the impression of stolen souls trying to writhe free from Freddy’s body.
Where once the perverted Freddy licked Nancy through the phone, licked a young girls stomach, or tongue-tethered a teenager’s limbs in a sick fantasy, he now lecherously flicks his tongue and “sucks face” to kiss a teenager to death.  And rather than slicing off his own fingers, revealing his own brain, or uncovering his soul-embedded chest, he now reveals that he is literally filled with the souls of his victims.  Also continuing to flavor the franchise, we again revisit Nancy’s dilapidated house on 1428 Elm Street and the unnerving little girls, likely the ghosts of Freddy’s victims.

I must emphasize that I still enjoy all the practical effects in all four of the first NOES films that are now 30 years old.  Sometimes the simplicity makes it more gross, weird, off-putting, or even a bit more funny; and thrillingly FUN.  I especially enjoyed Freddy’s resurrection when his bones reassemble and, just like Hellraiser (1987), his fluids congeal over his joints and skull to form sinew and flesh (like reverse time lapse melting of wax).

The effects of the animated writing on the physics exam and the life-draining kiss were also noteworthy.  But Debbie has the most spectacular death since the Dream Warriors wrist tendon marionette.  She slowly turns into a roach—a creature for which her hatred is firmly established—first through her arms torn asunder, then she finds herself in one of her own roach motels and the glue gooily tears off her face!  And Freddy’s defeat in the cathedral finale is decidedly unique as the souls trapped within him manifest as slimy flayed arms emerging from his body, tearing him open while trying to escape themselves.  It’s quite a sight and a testament to 80s practical effects.

Despite the rapid release of sequels (following the 1984 original in ‘85, ‘87, and now ‘88), this movie triumphs with heavily diversified and interesting sets, and the deaths remain elaborate and creative…as are many of the themes of the film.  Director Renny Harlin (Deep Blue Sea, Exorcist: The Beginning) even tunes in to our childhood sentiments with The Wizard of Oz (1939; Alice’s ruby red shoes and the gale force wind pulling her into the black & white movie), another dream-like world ruled by someone with magical powers and beaten by a young woman who gains strength from her friends.

If I had one disappointment it would be that Dream Master does nothing to build on the mythology of Freddy Krueger after Dream Warriors gave us Amanda Krueger, the ghostly nun who told the story of Freddy’s rape-conception in a mental hospital.  That said, we do clearly observe a continued and gradual evolution of Freddy’s influence which will continue in subsequent sequels (Dream Child & New Nightmare).

If Dream Warriors was the “fan favorite” sequel, I’m tempted to say that Dream Master might be at the very least tied for the “most fun sequel,” ranking quite high for re-watchability.  Not only that, but I decree that anyone who fancies themselves a horror fan should own NOES 1-4.

Enjoy and pleasant nightmares.

MY CALL:  Boring, boring, and more boring–not even really “so bad it’s good.”  The best part of this movie was its silly Claymation, and they overplayed it so much that it became more annoying than entertaining.  Hard fail.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Mutilations:  Alien Predators (1985).  Or even Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) comes to mind just for the cheap claymation.

So why am I watching this?  I had never heard of it.  No one had recommended it.  And that is the reason.  I could say the same for the quite obscure Nightwish (1990) or The Night Feeder (1988) which, however poor and boring, did have a most bizarrely interesting payoff in the end with a tentacle-tongued brain-sucking mutant baby—not that I’d recommend it.  These are the often somewhat regrettable films that I just can’t help myself but to need to see from time to time.  And this is another one…

We open with an astronomy professor explaining the basics of the thousands of stars visible during an evening class trip with his students, of one which asks if any of those distant “specs” (i.e., the stars) could have life on them.  The answer is NO.  A burning star (i.e., a SUN) would fry any lifeform!  The planets that we cannot see, however, do have a shot at housing life.  Next question. LOL.

The same night, using the light from his hobo garbage fire, a vagrant reads in the newspaper about recent cattle mutilations as a meteor is revealed to actually be a UFO.  About as casually as approaching the new neighbors across the street, he casually approach the spaceship to meet a slimy-clawed reptilian alien—a more menacing Gorn (Star Trek) monster really.

Our astronomy class takes a trip out to the remote area where some “lights in the sky” sightings have been made and cattle have been mutilated.  They find the most terribly (yet hilariously) mutilated Claymation steer.  It’s pretty poor, and you can actually “see” the green screen separating the actors from the flayed-inside-out steer as it thrashes.  It’s pretty goofy.

Speaking of not taking this at all seriously, our professor uses phrases like “conduct legitimate scientific research” when he really means “gaze at the sky” with his students, and he identifies his job title, specialty and institution to basically everyone he meets. In fact, almost all dialogue in this movie is exposition, and often needless.

The effects are pretty entertaining (even if dumb). A victim is strangled and his head shrivels and transforms into a sloppy gory mess.  The finale includes some tentacle-armed Claymation aliens (looking like the Gorn and Brundlefly had a baby) against green-screened students armed with harpoons and flashlights.  And, of course, there was that Claymation steer.

Officially listed at 1:07:30 (67.5 minutes), there were 2.5 minutes of opening credits with no scenes taking place in the background—just empty space and theme music—and the closing credits begin at 1:05:00, leaving this haphazard film barely over 60 minutes.  Although that might be something of a blessing considering how boring it is.

This 60-minute B-movie was written, directed and produced by one-and-done filmmaker Larry Thomas (no other credits) and stars almost entirely actors who had never been in anything else, nor would they ever.  The acting is on the verge of robotic, like they were reading cue cards completely unrehearsed and limiting the filming to single takes.

As much as the Claymation scenes made me smile, they were overused and often repeated the same footage several times.  And as silly as the premise was, the movie was too boring to really embrace its badness.  It was almost as if they were trying to make a “real movie” on a shoestring budget and an inexperienced cast, rather than realizing what this truly was and running with it.

Just terrible.  I recommend this to no one unless you have a group of friends and a case of beer.

MY CALL:  We have horror films and horror movies. Make no mistake, this is a horror movie.  But it’s a horror movie crafted by a true horrorsmith and solid writer, acted on point by an excellent cast with a sensible story, and depicting a truly creepy child possession.  Very scary, very fun.  Enjoy!  MORE MOVIES LIKE Ouija: Origin of Evil:  Well, Witchboard (1986) also happens to involve a Ouija board-catalyzed possession. But in ceoncept I’d instead suggest the deep slowburn White Noise (2005) or, in style, Insidious (2010).

Written and directed by acclaimed horrorsmith Mike Flanagan (Absentia, Oculus, Hush), Origin of Evil seems to be an effort by a stylish director to make a more mainstream horror film.  This may lack the full Flanagan treatment of nuance and style we’ve seen from him before, but I couldn’t be happier to see this anyway.  His past films have been dark, intense, jarring and cerebral.  Origin of Evil has just enough of these elements to elevate the film above most of the slapped-together-plot horror releases that plague theaters, but not so much Flanaganism as to divide fans and critics with too many questions (as was observed with Oculus).

Ouija: Origin of Evil only seems to be given the subtitle to avoid direct association with Oujia (2014), a dastardly menace of a film that snuck past the direct-to-DVD Gods and somehow poisoned theaters with its inane stupidity.  This was originally titled Ouija 2—thank God, good taste prevailed.  So much more than “Ouija 2,” Flanagan delivers a more mainstream horror movie LOADED with excellent scares, writing and acting!  But it is connected in that the mouth-stitched ghost of Doris we met in Ouija (2014) now has her full story told in this prequel.

Providing an emotionally comforting service to her bereft and grieving clientele, Alice (Elizabeth Reaser; The Twilight Saga, Stay) and her two girls—the younger Doris (Lulu Wilson; Annabelle 2, Deliver Us from Evil) and high schooler Lina (Annalise Basso; Oculus, Dark House)—run a scam séance and fortune telling business out of their house in the 1960s.  It’s all an act, but when handled appropriately, it helps people who never got to say their goodbyes or apologies to move on.  But everything changes when Alice brings home a Ouija board as a new professional prop and Doris finds a special connection within it.

Believing that they have made contact with the benevolent spirit of her deceased husband, Alice and Doris end up opening the flood gates to a hostile apparition and, much as with Insidious’ (2010) Lipstick Demon, this spirit is one that had never been among the living; a demon.

From the initial contact with the other side, we all know something is very wrong. But it doesn’t make it any less creepy.  In fact, it is the process of Doris embracing the established contact that terrifyingly reveals the true nature of things and some of the brief “corner-of-your-eye” imagery will smite any sense of comfort you once had.  From there the physical manifestations are quite disarmingly uncomfortable (in a good way, of course).

I love that we get to know and really care about these characters. Flanagan and his cast makes it seem so effortless as both the acting and writing were splendid—especially our child actor Lulu Wilson as the transitioning innocent-to-Satanic Doris. WOW! The Catholic school principal Father Tom (Henry Thomas; Don’t Look Up, Dead Birds, Fire in the Sky, ET) is an excellent supporting character in identifying when things are amiss, and when they are malevolent.  And watch out for the brief creature-acting of Doug Jones (Crimson Peak, John Dies at the End, Legion) as, well, you’ll see. It’ll be obvious.

In a scene introducing us to the 1960s view of the “game” Ouija, we have a creepy and utterly hilarious experience watching one of Lina’s classmates react to the notion of contacting the dead.  It’s a real treat and it transcends the typically laughable jump scare of a “surprise cat” or loud junk unexpectedly falling out of the closet.  This may have been one of my favorite scenes.  But really, I had many favorite scenes, particularly in the first 60 minutes.  They packed a LOT of creepy in this and I don’t even want to mention most of it.

So where did Flanagan go more mainstream?  There were some components that felt stereotypical to the genre almost because they were easy, and these scenes were biased to the third act of the film.

For example, the rules of Ouija suggest that you never play alone, and never play near a graveyard.  Why no “graveyard play?”  Did the makers of the game know too many spirits in one place was a bad thing, or was this just an example of the movie being ironic when the evil spirits’ origins are revealed?  And not play alone?  Because it’s creepier?  These things were all in good fun.  But they weren’t so necessary and the graveyard reveal harkens back strongly to Poltergeist (1982).

Then the demon seemed a bit too much in the style of the Insidious’ (2010) lipstick demon, more in presentation than actual appearance.  I think the fault here is in showing us what this demon looked like at all.  It wasn’t necessary, all be it fun and quite shocking to watch!  And with the spiritual abduction came The Last Exorcism (2010) back bend—not that it was the first film to feature such a possessed bodily distortion.

While effectively scary, was the stitched mouth gag meant to be a direct callback to Ouija (2014), which did the very same thing? And the effects were a lot like Neo’s sealed mouth in The Matrix (1999)?  Don’t get me wrong, though, sealed and stitched mouths are creepy AF!

Then the often utilized “they” (or group of impostor spirits pretending to be your friendly spirit) of the other side manipulating the vulnerable or desperate among the living (e.g., Poltergeist, Insidious, White Noise).
The ending gets a bit bonkers with Exorcist (1973) wall-crawling, whited out eyes, evil grimaces and slack-jawed evil.  I guess this is also Flanagan going for a more mainstream approach.  Not that this imagery didn’t work…it was terrifying! LOL.

Doris, while being manipulated by evil, gains quite a bit of power.  She lures victims into insecurity and menace in different and satisfying ways, and the special effects behind her evil manifestations may readily disrupt your sleep.  But while this movie packs a lot of excitement and dread, it complements it with a great deal of sound storyline and practical plot development.  Kudos for that!  The writing in Origin of Evil reduces the Ouija (2014) script to something written with those fat Crayola markers on construction paper by someone with cerebral palsy.

I’m not calling this a great horror “film.” This is not a Flanagan caliber film in the sense of his last three conquests.  However, this is one of the better “mainstream style” horror movies of the year along with Lights Out (2016).  No one will be talking about their critical acclaim, but people will absolutely be buying these and enjoying them as fun, re-watchable popcorn horror.  And I’m one of those happy customers!  I hope you will be, too.  So please watch, leave your “film critic” hat at home, and enjoy.

MY CALL:  It might be fair to say that the Hellraiser sequels continue to drop in quality with each subsequent release.  However, they remain quite watchable and enjoyable, even if not “good” Hellraiser movies at this point.  This, like parts V and VI, is a standalone movie with a horror-mystery edge.  I think it’s worthwhile for the adventurous or Hellraiser completists.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Deader:  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).  Hellraiser: Inferno (2000) and Hellseeker (2002) are more standalone films, along with this part VII.

*************How it fits in the franchise (minor franchise spoilers)*************

Directed by Rick Bota (Haven, Hellraiser VI-VIII), this seventh installment to the Hellraiser franchise follows Inferno (2000) and Hellseeker (2002) by presenting another stand-alone story.  Hellraiser was a dark chamber thriller fueled by lustful desire, Hellbound more of a curious exploration of Clive 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, Inferno a crime thriller neatly packaged in the dark trappings of the Puzzle Box, Hellseeker yet another murder-mystery crime thriller, and now we follow in the steps of parts V and VI (Inferno and Hellseeker) with crime, cults, mystery and mysticism.  From its very start we expected Hellseeker to be playing out the flashbacked fantasies of someone already condemned to Hell and, like Hellseeker, Deader isn’t overly predictable.

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 the fifth, sixth and this seventh direct-to-video installment, but it remains comforting that we never seem to find the same story simply recycled and retold with different victims.  And more importantly, despite the drop in quality, I still enjoy them a lot!  A major fault of Hell on Earth and Bloodline was the nuisance of over-exposition. I didn’t find that to be a problem in Deader (at least not until the third act) nor in parts V-VI.

The franchise continues to expand the Hellraiser mythology, although with less impact here than before. Whereas parts I-IV revolve around the Box or Pinhead (Doug Bradley), parts V-VI and this chapter are illustrative of what experiences befall those damned souls who open the Box. Thus, we see much less of Pinhead and focus more on our curious and potentially damned souls—as it probably should be. Now with part VII, Amy’s journey begins as a rational investigation of something potentially supernatural, shifts to supernatural experiences of her own, and ultimately steers us into what feels like a surreal dreamscape of her life.

***************How it fits in the franchise ***************

Meet Amy (Kari Wuhrer; Eight-Legged Freaks, Sharknado 2), a top-notch undercover investigative reporter.  She does whatever it takes to nail the major scoops and now she’s been recruited to investigate the “deaders,” a group of Romanian cultists who appear to be able to resurrect the recently deceased following ritual suicide.

Upon arrival in Bucharest everything seems…well, appropriately wrong given this is a Hellraiser movie.  A lead’s apartment wreaks of rotting flesh and flies, and houses a dead body clutching the Puzzle Box artifact after an apparent suicide.  A video from the suicide victim admonishes us not to “open” the box.  Which, of course, cues Amy’s interest to do exactly that.

From the moment the Puzzle Box is opened we are struck with the hooked-chain urgency of the old days.  Well, perhaps it’s a bit weakened by the CGI.  But whatever, they’re trying.  An unfortunate trend in this franchise is that the effects go from “Holy Shit Awesome” (for their time and even today) in parts I-II, to pretty good in III-IV, to typical direct-to-DVD in V-VI.  But fret not, it’s all still quite entertaining and Pinhead’s tissue-rending hooked chains get their pound of flesh.  Some sloppy gory scenes are present, but it’s just not exactly in the dire theme to which we’re accustomed.

If anything about this film specifically bothered me, it would be that the new Cenobites don’t even seem to matter.  Chatterbox is here… and some others.  But they’re really just “there,” offering no substance.  These Cenobites are more akin to Christmas tree ornaments.  You may stop and enjoy noticing one here or there for a fleeting moment, but it’s the tree (i.e., Amy’s relationship with the Box) that we truly “see.”  Even Pinhead is quite downplayed.

At times this movie tries to be a bit too neo-contemporary and, for all its effort to appear in-touch, this makes it feel momentarily out-of-touch…like it’s trying too hard to impress us with its self-awareness and social sub-cultured edginess.  Much as Hell on Earth tried and failed to capture the big city club scene, so does Deader fail to capture whatever “this” all is… whether it be afterlife-challenging cultists or trippy underground punks.  Speaking of whom, the Romanian underground subway seems to be a nihilistic Satanic sex trade loaded with disconcerting imagery.

Of course, Amy locates the cult, ends up in over her head, and this is the point at which the film sadly turns to heavy exposition to tell its story.

The final act is weird, bloody, weird, trippy, weird, culty and more weird.  The film ends on a dark cyclical note after a finale offering honestly no satisfaction other than a gory rending, but that’s perfectly fine with me.  I enjoyed most of the movie, so I won’t let the last five minutes ruin the experience.  Although I was a bit bothered by how the ending seemed to violate our understanding of Pinhead’s influence and control regarding soul ownership and Box openers.

Parts I-III of this franchise should be watched in order. After seeing them, there seems to be no consequence to seeing part V, VI or VII before part IV outside of the fact that Bloodline is much better. This film is nothing special, nor is it even a “good” Hellraiser story—yet it’s not bad either.  I take it for what it is and appreciate of it what I can. I didn’t regret watching it, and—while I wouldn’t necessarily “highly” recommend it to viewers—I have, in fact, seen it about four times now.  It’s pretty neat.

Overall, I was pleased with this as a direct-to-DVD horror film, but disappointed as a major Hellraiser fan.  In either case, I’d still recommend it (to a choice few of you).  But only AFTER seeing parts I-IV.

MY CALL:  This gory B-movie callback to The Thing (1982) was far better than expected.  More of a B+ movie, the creature effects were frequent, diverse, fun and satisfying—so I’d highly recommend this to fans of monster movies and old school practical effects.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor:  Blue Monkey (1987), The Nest (1988), The Deadly Spawn (1983)…The Thing (1981, 2011), Leviathan (1989), Blood Glacier (2013) and Harbinger Down (2015).

I rather enjoy it when B-movies just jump right into things.  Not three minutes after the opening credits we are made aware of the presence of some mutant tentacle monster that’s already racking up a body count.

Written and directed by Glenn Takakjian (who never directed again), I was quite pleasantly surprised by this movie!  It didn’t suck at all.  I mean it’s bad, but it’s also sort of awesome.

A research facility has been experimenting with alien DNA—which means good news for us horror fans. We see glimpses of alien plants, strange reptilian creatures, and other mutant critters.  Everything seems fine until one of the scientists accidentally hurts one of the creatures and is bitten by the frightened beast.  Naturally, the researcher becomes infected…and it advances quickly.

Dr. Viallini (Marcus Powell; Rejuvenatrix, Time Bandits) and Dr. Stein (Allen Lewis Rickman; Flesh Eating Mothers, Slime City) decide to keep the infected scientist on site—obviously a mistake.  As their patient transforms I’m reminded of From Beyond (1986) and Aliens (1986), as he becomes more amorphous and his blood becomes acidic.  His now inhuman form has sealed shut his mouth and eyes, but opened entirely new orifices from which it “shoots” clawed harpoon-like tentacles and strange toothed parasites (a lot like in Without Warning).

After their father doesn’t come home from his night security job at the lab, sisters Sherry (Tara Leigh; Sabbath, Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension) and Kim (Dianna Flaherty; Class of Nuke ’em High, The Toxic Avenger) go to facility to investigate.  Viallini only tries to cover things up and he makes an excellent villain, his very speech patterns sounding like he is perpetually conniving.

The budget is surprisingly not so low (considering I had never heard of this), and significant efforts were made on the gore by the effects team.  The gore and effects are frequent and care was taken in their presentation.  I didn’t mind at all when a scene from The Thing (1982) was emulated as our patient’s head was tearing away from its body and small tentacles thrashed from its chest cavity.  We also find an inside-out dog reminiscent of The Fly II (1989), which also dealt with genetic mutations, transformations, and monsters running amok in shady private research company buildings.

Eventually an all new monster somewhat “emerges” from within the infected transforming patient and it resembles the “husky ball” from The Thing (1982).  As if that wasn’t already pretty spiffy, we’ll even enjoy a fair bit of cool Claymation to complement the animatronics.  Another funny observation is that with the monster’s final form, its tentacles and its projectile infectious parasites, it seems that the alien monster from The Faculty (1998) might have been modeled after this!

The creature effects were frequent, diverse, fun and satisfying!  The monsters got loads of screen time, and they are consistently slimy, gross, tentacular, gooey—just all that good stuff.  So I highly recommend this to any fans of monster movies or practical effects fanatics.

MY CALL:  If The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) family had a cabin in the woods and swapped chainsaws and cleavers for bows and axes, this fun gross-out hillbilly horror is what you’d have.  Highly recommended for fans of brutal horror.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Wrong Turn:  Wrong Turn 2 (2007), The Hills Have Eyes 1-2 (1977, 1984, 2006, 2007), Just Before Dawn (1981), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) will all continue to satisfy the hillbilly horror subgenre.

After a playful death scene, the opening credits are accompanied by a montage of news clippings about legends of mountain men, deformities from inbreeding, disappearing hikers, freakish strength and psychosis, and maps of West Virginia (our lovely Appalachian setting).

That’s right.  When it comes to inbred cannibal redneck hillbilly horror, the locals are the monsters.  They scramble through the forest laughing with maniacal yips and haws rustling every bush in their path all the while as noisy as simian Planet of the Apes extras.  But what changes the pace from most of the horror genre is that these woods are well-lit and gorgeous.

After finding some barb wire tire caltrops and crashing, Chris (Desmond Harrington; The Neon Demon, Dexter, Ghost Ship) ends up stranded in the woods with Jessie (Eliza Dushku; Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Soul Survivors), Scott (Jeremy Sisto; Six Feet Under), Carly (Emmanuelle Chriqui; Entourage, Thundercats), Evan (Kevin Zegers; The Colony, Vampire, Frozen, Dawn of the Dead) and Francine (Lindy Booth; Cry_Wolf, American Psycho II, The Skulls 2) on a dirt mountain road.  Of course, they separate almost immediately as two stay behind while the others go seek help.

They find an old shanty cabin besieged by old broken-down cars with some very old models among them.  “Maybe they have a phone we can use.”  Yeah, right!  The interior is alarmingly unclean.  Bowls of car keys; crude rusty cutting implements; crates with sorted cameras, shoes and children’s toys; and all manner of sorted organs in jars create the hoarded décor.  In case that wasn’t enough, the fridge is loaded with leftovers (i.e., Tupperware filled with kidneys).

Can’t find the phone?
Well, the owners seem to be getting home so we can just ask them.

This gory shock flick may run deeper in the tropes than it does in the woods, featuring cliché horror drags pulling victims off-screen, tank topped scream queens, and maniacal briar-stirring mongoloids with a taste for human flesh.  In the beginning when Chris stops by a gas station, the owner (Wayne Robson; Cube, Wrong Turn 2) is about as “harbinger creepy” as they come.  He’s filthy, sparsely toothed, chugging Pepto-Bismol (because whatever), and his phone doesn’t work.  That’s a lot of red flags screaming for an escape to a populated city!  But, unluckily for Chris, the road is blocked and he decides to take an unpaved detour that surprises even the uber-creepy backwater gas station attendant.

The characters are decently written considering there isn’t much to the story (i.e., victims are stranded in the woods and are hunted by cannibals), but the highlight is clearly Jeremy Sisto’s idiosyncratic comic relief—he almost reminds me of Jeff Goldblum.  Outside of his clever banter, we’re really just waiting for the cast to get through their lines so as to hurry us along to the next death scene.  But this is due to the absence of story development and not because of bad acting.  The acting is fine.

The kills are generally more fun than brutal (but still a bit brutal), including a mangled variation of a choking and an excellent pseudo-decapitation high in the tree canopies.

And speaking of tree canopies, that “set design” was pretty unrealistic and mostly CGI.  I didn’t even notice this when I first saw it (in theaters 13 years ago), but now it is blaringly obvious.

Whether audibly sawing flesh and chopping limbs as they butcher a victim, or their wheezy grunts and maniacal laughs—someone put a lot of thought into the visceral sounds.  And if it “sounds” uncomfortably brutal then know you’ll love the gory butchered corpse, exaggerated hair lips, and “Three-Finger” (Julian Richings; The Witch, Urban Legend, Cube) who looks like someone lit Dee Snyder on fire and then extinguished the flames by pushing him into a septic tank.

Our nerves are tested several times over by director Rob Schmidt (The Alphabet Killer)—when the victims tip-toe around the sleeping rednecks, when they hide under the table while their friend is carved for dinner, and the cat-and-mouse game played high in the trees.

I love how campy this movie is and that it doesn’t rely on any gratuitous nudity to be as such.  The redneck family’s mania and their gory wake accomplish it perfectly.  It’s not very jumpy.  But it may find you on edge with a nervous smile and, despite its gory brutal nature, this West Virginian horror feels far more playful than its mean-spirited Texas counterpart.  The movie ends on a humorous note that is more than a bit suggestive of a sequel.  I would expect nothing less.

MY CALL:  A satisfyingly fun creature feature for fans of Gremlins (1984) and Ghoulies 2 (1988).  Not much of a plot, but loads of off-the-wall inventiveness, playful nods to the genre, and likably cute miscreant monsters.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Critters:  Critters 2 (1988), Gremlins (1984), Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), Ghoulies 2 (1988), Tremors (1990), Grabbers (2012)…maybe even Munchies (1987) and Hobgoblins (1988), although they are of considerably lower quality.

This movie’s opening is as cheesy as it gets.  After a batch of fuzzy little aliens escape a maximum security “prison asteroid” they are followed to Earth by a pair of intergalactic bounty hunters reputed for their destructive methods.

Meanwhile on Earth, Helen (Dee Wallace; The Howling, Lords of Salem, Halloween, Cujo), Jay (Billy Green Bush; The Hitcher), and their kids April (Nadine Van der Velde; Munchies) and Brad (Scott Grimes; Critters 2) have a pretty normal life…that is, until the critters land their spaceship on their family farm to turn Kansas into their buffet.

Their small town has its fair share of personality.  Sheriff Harv (M. Emmet Walsh) tries and fails to keep the peace while Deputy Jeff (Ethan Phillips; Star Trek: Voyager, Critters 3) hits on their dispatcher Sally (Lin Shaye; Insidious 1-4, Chillerama).  And keeping the sheriff on his toes is Charlie (Don Keith Opper; Critters 2-4), an alcoholic simpleton whose belief in little green men is known all throughout town.  His “crying wolf” archetype and friendship with Brad clearly served as a model for the similar dynamic in Leprechaun (1993), which is a decent R-rated horror comedy follow-up for adult fans of Critters.

The shape-shifting bounty hunters learn about Earth much as Leeloo and Neo (in The Fifth Element and The Matrix) and assume the form of a rock star (Terrence Mann; Critters 2-4) and a few locals.  This hardly serves the story, but it garnishes an additional layer of silly icing on this cheesy B-movie cake.

The special effects feature a transformation scene that serves as a predecessor for Hellraiser (1987) with reverse time lapse wax melting.  The UFO and scenes in outer space are forgivably laughable—mostly because it all feels deliberate and suits the younger PG-13 demographic.  This movie transcends the “so bad it’s good” territory and finds itself comfortably in the “good” zone…in the sense that it’s timelessly entertaining.  I mean, the critters’ main objective on Earth is comically “food,” they roll around like Sonic the Hedgehog, and they grow as they eat creating a giant Tribble-like threat.  Much as Ghoulies 2 (1988) has a giant ghoulie, Critters has a giant critter.

I still like the creature effects. The critters’ toothy maws are menacing.  These critters are met with a comical impish first impression.  But make no mistake, they are here to kill and eat!  They rampage a steer leaving a ripped up gory cadaver, they eat April’s boyfriend Steve (Billy Zane; Demon Knight, Bloodrayne, Survival Island), and brutally maul any within biting range.  To level the playing field these diminutive monsters are 50% teeth, swarm like piranhas when they can, and they shoot tranquilizing sleep quills.

Helming his first of many feisty movies to come, director Stephen Herek (Rock Star, The Three Musketeers, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure) knows how to entertain us…and our kids!  That’s right.  Horror for kids?  This is PG-13 but it’s every bit as gory as some convincing R-rated movies of its time—although it’s not trying overly hard to shock us and there is nothing brutal or mean-spirited about it.  There are a few swear words here and there (uttered by cute aliens and our kid hero Brad), but this is easily suited for preteens.  It’s never really “scary” and you never “see” anyone die (although it’s implied once).

There’s a lot to love about this movie—but most of all is that Stephen Herek really tries to entertain you instead of doing just enough to hold things together between special effects. It’s kind of adorable that the critters are intergalactic fugitives, Brad hypothesizes that the critters are radioactive gophers created by the government, a critter confronts an ET plush, Brad’s cat is named Chewie, and Jay’s bowling team shirt looks like the Ghostbusters’ logo.  Also grin-worthy is that when the critters “speak” it sounds like a Pomeranian shaking a chew toy, despite the subtitles of totally normal dialogue.

This fun creature feature will happily please fans of Gremlins (1984) and Ghoulies 2 (1988).  What it lacks in cohesive plot, it more than compensates in off-the-wall inventiveness, frequent self-aware nods to the genre, and likable miscreant alien monsters.

Watch this, then watch for more since, at the end, they laid eggs!!!

MY CALL:  Easily one of my favorite movies…EVER!  It’s a zany, exhilarating, sci-fi adventure movie about hope, love and overcoming evil to save the Universe.  Featuring a slew of highly memorable and quotable characters, this is one of my Desert Island movies; I can happily watch it any time.  MORE MOVIES LIKE The Fifth Element:  For something newer try Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005), for something older maybe Total Recall (1990).

Director Luc Besson (Leon: The Professional, La Femme Nikita) is an artist, and bonkers characters fill his pallet.  From the zany opening scenes we find a strangely divine character dynamic in Egypt, an evil planet attack loaded with sci-fi zest, and our graphic novel-esque antihero starts his day to one of the most cosmically cool soundtracks to emerge from the 90s.

Corbin (Bruce Willis; A Good Day to Die Hard) is a has-been decorated military officer who now struggles to keep his cat fed and license to drive his hover-cab valid.  He awakens like a washed up John McClane after a rough night, expresses that he wishes he had a woman in his life, and dodges calls from his pestilent boss and mother.

Despite the massive amount of looney transpiring on screen, we meet numerous memorable and substantial characters and all of them will make you smile.  Tiny “Zeus” Lister (Friday, No Holds Barred) is an intergalactic President.  Father Vito Cornelius (Ian Holm; Lord of the Rings, Alien) informs him that they have only 48 hours to stop a cosmic force of ancient evil which will wipe out all life in the Universe and only one thing can stop it: a mystical supreme being.

After an attack, remnants of an engineered lifeform are recovered and reconstituted into a genetically “perfect” orange-haired woman. Clothed in the thermal bandages so beloved by Comic Con cosplayers around the world, Leeloo (Milla Jovavich; Resident Evil 1-7, Faces in the Crowd) escapes into a world that she clearly doesn’t understand and falls into Corbin’s cab babbling a dead language and being all sorts of indescribably adorable.

When she asks Corbin for help, hardly understanding her own tear-soaked words, no one with a heart could say no. Although Corbin almost does. But in helping her, he earns her trust and becomes her antihero protector and the co-savior of the Universe.

Peppering more crazy into the cast, Gary Oldman (Leon: The Professional, The Dark Knight) serves up his villainy deliciously as Zorg.  Despite being a super-rich evil mastermind, he makes a lot of poor decisions.  Rounding out all manner of plays and players, Chris Tucker (Rush Hour 1-3, Friday) is brilliantly idiosyncratic as the manic sex-addict Radio Host Ruby Rod, and Maïwenn (High Tension, Leon: The Professional) plays the mystical operatic Diva.

The favorite scene of mine would have to be the Diva’s concert.  The Diva’s song is unlike anything you’ve heard, and its high notes score and punctuate the action of Leeloo’s awesome fight sequence on the Floston Paradise cruise ship.  There is nothing technically wowing about the fight choreography, which is clearly meant to be more amusingly dynamic than a demonstration of martial prowess, but with the music and Besson’s humorous approach I could watch it all day.  This scene steamrolls into a bigger, longer, more explosive action sequence full of Corbin’s cynicism, Ruby’s hysteria, and Leeloo’s endangerment.

Now almost 20 years old, The Fifth Element’s special effects will not wow you. And whereas I feel they hold up more than well enough on their own, when combined with the score the scenes remain highly entertaining.  The music alone will ignite your attention.  This is especially evident during the taxi-police chase scene, during which I completely forgive the dated CGI as I watch Leeloo pinballing around the back seat to Cheb Khaled’s “Alech Taadi.”

Most entertaining for me is how Leeloo (the supreme being) speeds through the internet learning 5000 years of history, culture and language, along with mastering Kung Fu in order to save all humanity much as Neo (“the one”) did in The Matrix (1999)…two years later, and now apparently less original.  Of course, The Fifth Element isn’t 100% original either—in fact, Ug in Critters (1986) did the same thing. You’ll find parallels and homages to loads of other sci-fi.  Many ships look like Empire Star Destroyers, there’s the Dark Side of the Force and Mr. Shadow coming to bring darkness to the Universe, and the Diva appears to be a cross between the Xenomorph and Jabba’s Twi’lek slave girl dancer Oola.  Oh, and Bruce Willis is basically playing Die Hard in Space—but in the best way possible!

For all its awesome fun, it’s Leeloo that breathes life into this film.  Leeloo is among the most beloved characters in the Sci-Fi genre—making the ranks of Yoda, Luke and Han.  When Leeloo smiles it’s sincere emotion, naïve to the workings of the world around her, and she will infect your heart.  There is such purity to her goodness.  And when she says “multipass” it will brighten your day.

I recommend this movie to everyone.  EVERYONE.  I was 16 when I saw it in theaters so I know this movie carries a lot of nostalgia for me.  But watching this just makes me feel good, satisfied, happy, hopeful, warm-fuzzy, awesome…all that.  I expect it to affect you the same.  Enjoy!

MY CALL:  This monster movie is nothing special at all outside of providing a less mainstream B-movie to entertain horror fans.  The effects are more entertaining than good, but unlike the acting and writing, the effects clearly put forth a solid effort. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Being:  This movie is similar to but not as good as Xtro (1983), Without Warning (1980), Blue Monkey (1987), The Kindred (1987), The Nest (1988), Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor (1990), The Deadly Spawn (1983) and Humanoids from the Deep (1980).  I’d recommend you see all of these before attempting The Being.

Written and directed by first-time filmmaker Jackie Kong (Blood Diner), this film opens uninventively with a narration of the most basic exposition—locals are missing, strange things are happening, and “the ultimate terror has taken form” right there in Pottsville, Idaho.  We are “told” these three things.

The creature effects swing into action early, which is always a good thing when dealing with B movies since the creature effects are really the only reason we’re here—and I can gladly say the effects are satisfying even if truly nothing special.  They include gross slimy monster limbs, gory on-screen decapitation, an out-of-focus monster attacking an in-focus naked woman, the old ripping the heart out of the chest gag, a prehensile frog-like tongue, and loads of green slime and gelatinous sludge.

Propagandist scientist Dr. Garson Jones (Martin Landau; Without Warning, Ed Wood) addresses the public regarding the safety of dumping nuclear waste into drinking water sources.

Because what harm is a little toxic waste?
I guess this movie is telling us!

At first things don’t totally make sense.  For example, during a gratuitous sex scene in a car green sludge oozes through the AC vents and radio as our Casanova rounds third base.  Then, all of a sudden, a skeletal slimy sludge hand reaches up and attacks the young lovers—so the thing must have formed right there in the car!  But wait…did the monster liquefy then reform?  We never find out!  Speaking of slimy monster arms, that is all we see until we find a slimy mutant monster fetus and a throwback creature to the Husky lump in The Thing (1981).

When our protagonist meets our monster and tries to warn Mayor Gordon (José Ferrer; Dune, The Sentinel, The Swarm), he could care less.  His only concern is the town’s revenue stream of potato exports.  The mayor actually hires Dr. Jones to look into things and keep the situation quiet.  This all highlights some of the dumber aspects of the movie, among some other probably unintentionally silly scenes poorly held together by wooden acting and some incredibly lazy dialogue.  These actors couldn’t be troubled to care about delivering a single line.  But hey, it’s a fun B-movie.  What did you expect, right?  I mean, whenever the monster leaps towards someone, it seems a production assistant just throws a monster dummy across the camera and onto the victim.  There’s even a low-speed chase scene and a needless car explosion.

It’s not until the finale that we get to see something awesome.  The somehwat full-body creature is a sloppy, gory mess of teeth.  We actually just see its head and an arm.  But the head is pretty cool. Not creative at all, but fun to watch.

And that’s what this movie is.  It’s “fun to watch” and nothing else.  There’s nothing to brag in terms of interesting effects or story and the death scenes are uninspired.  But this bad movie is a good bad (i.e., so bad it’s good).  The fight between our hero and the toxic mutant is about as bad as it gets—and I giggled throughout.  If you enjoy B horror movies, you probably will, too.

MY CALL:  Anyone seeking a worthy follow-up to Pumpkinhead will surely be disappointed.  But adventures in search of a worthy B-movie or a silly scary movie date night will find an entertaining evening.   MORE MOVIES LIKE Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings:  Pumpkinhead (1988), of course, is FAR superior.  Maybe even try the later sequels (2006 and 2007)—I haven’t seen them but they couldn’t possibly measure up to the original.  But this sequel harkens to the quality of Leprechaun 2 (1994), Leprechaun 3 (1995), Leprechaun in Space (1996), Wishmaster 2 (1999) and Wishmaster 3 (2001).

Some people dread the sequels of their favorite classic horror movies, often picked up by different and less experienced writers and directors and remanded to direct-to-video/DVD.  Not me.  Even when they never measure up, I’m happy someone tried.

Director Jeff Burr (Puppet Master 4-5, Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III) takes the helm and follows in the footsteps of makeup special effects wizard turned one-time horror director Stan Winston (Pumpkinhead).  Those are some big shoes to fill.

The opening scene is far from promising.  It’s a shining example of how the video era made the 90s a terrible decade for horror.  Anyone could make a film in the 90s (and today…but not in the 80s).  They couldn’t necessarily act, write, direct or edit.  But they could film whatever drivel that wandered in front of the camera.  In this sequel the acting is bottom tier, the characters aren’t at all likable, and the dialogue is 80% lame exposition; just awful.

We flash back to 1958, when a disfigured boy is tortured and killed by a clique of malicious greasers as his elderly mother watched.  Then we shift to present day and find the modern counterparts of those young criminals.  These delinquents waste no time smoking pot, drinking underage, and making unwanted sexual advances.  Pumpkinhead (1988) was heavily troped up, but at least I could enjoy the characters.  This is just crass.

Even at a glance the 1988 victims (above) look way more credible than the bright-eyed bushy-tailed “delinquents” in 1993 (below).

A big city cop (Andrew Robinson; Hellraiser, Trancers 3, Child’s Play 3) moves his family to the woods to become a small town sheriff.  His daughter Jenny (Ami Dolenz; Ticks, Witchboard 2) falls into the wrong crowd almost instantly.

While out late and up to no good they hit the local witch (Lilyan Chauvin; Predator 2, Silent Night, Deadly Night) with their car and stumble across her cabin.  In her primitive and filthy home they find a ritual, a spell from the Book of Shadows to raise the dead.  But the vehicular assault clearly wasn’t enough, so a teenager (J. Trevor Edmond; Lord of Illusions, Return of the Living Dead 3) beats her, steals a magical totem and leaves her to die as her cabin burns down with her in it.  So naturally, the witch curses them that the demonic entity Pumpkinhead will exact her revenge.

But what’s strange is that, after being cursed, the kids go dig up her dead son (somehow knowing exactly where to dig), desecrate his grave, and perform the dead-awakening ritual themselves!  Soooooo… did the curse even matter?  Well, like I said, it’s not competently written.

Well now somehow all the locals know that “it’s back” and “it won’t stop until it gets what it wants.”  Evidently the local folklore is more like common knowledge.

SIDEBAR with SPOILERS: The Nature of the Curse, Part 1 vs Part 2.  Another unfortunate shortcoming is that this sequel completely ignores the rules of the curse as they were laid out in Pumpkinhead.  In Pumpkinhead Ed has the witch invoke the ritual to summon Pumpkinhead, a demonic spirit of vengeance.  In doing so, he tied his own fate to that of the demon such that when Pumpkinhead was injured, he would suffer the same injury, and when Pumpkinhead was killed, he also would die.  But it wasn’t so simple.  Ed not only died with Pumpkinhead, but Ed “became” the placeholder for the next Pumpkinhead summoning and as the demon came closer to completing Ed’s revenge, Ed took on some aspects of the demon (e.g., his whitening eyes).  Ed’s body was buried in the pumpkin patch, disfigured as the neo-natal, pre-summoned Pumpkinhead before him.

This sequel now identifies that Pumpkinhead was Tommy’s father.  Well, Tommy died in 1958 when he and Ed were both children.  So when Ed (in his childhood flashback in Pumpkinhead) saw the demon, did he see Tommy’s father as Pumpkinhead?  Even if so, Ed replaced the former Pumpkinhead.  So it should instead be Ed who is this iteration of Pumpkinhead.  Moreover, the second Pumpkinhead was formed from Tommy’s body (not his father’s) in his own grave site (not the pumpkin patch).  And this new Pumpkinhead was summoned by the witch, who dies while Pumpkinhead continues to exact his revenge—so there goes the bound fate idea.  Shame…it was a great idea in Pumpkinhead.
I can’t explain why they’d break that continuity.  Was it really so much easier to do it this way instead, thus throwing out such excellent folklore?  Of course, the binding fate conferred a sense of human frailty and realized morality.  Even though Ed Harley summoned the beast and tied their fates, he stopped the demon despite it meaning his own end.  There is no such grace to be found in this sequel.

So we eventually learned that this Pumpkinhead is actually Tommy!  Not his father.  And at the end of the movie Pumpkinhead has no implied successor—certainly not the dead witch.  Only a lame finale.  So the once-harrowing cursed sense of legacy is also squandered.  Yet further perplexing is that Ed Harley’s father was Tom in Pumpkinhead, but Tom had a ten year old Ed back in 1958.  So there’s no dispute that this Tom is not Tommy-Pumpkinhead nor is there any link between them.  I wonder if the writer and director even saw Pumpkinhead!

To call the special effects inferior to Stan Winston’s glorious original wouldn’t be unwarranted.  This rubber monster is certainly more than passable.  The long fingers lack some of the refinement of Winston’s Pumpkinhead, which also had a perpetual mucousy sheen and a more expressive face that conferred greater personality.

1988 above, 1993 below

There’s some blood and dismemberment, but most of the flesh-rending action takes place off-screen.  The important thing is that we really get to see the monster—it’s entire body—and not just his head in some shots and a swinging claw in others.  We see it and we see a lot of it!  And if I had never seen part 1 for comparison, I’d be pleased with this creature feature’s Pumpkinhead.  One deficit, though, would be this monster’s feet.  They lack the spindly xenomorphic look of 1988.  No, this 1993 model is a bit more lumbering T-rex than velociraptor.

Hulking 1993 demon above, spindly 1988 demon below.

When it came to the witch, this sequel was barely even phoning it in.  The 1988 witch was shrouded in menace and primitive mysticism.  When she spoke your ears listened and your stomach tightened.  She exuded that backwoods black magic atmosphere.  This which was a lumpy latex-faced menace with no lines of substance and a cheaply over-staged cabin lair.  But that would fit most comparisons to be made between 1993 and 1988.  Woefully ill-written, less expertly effected, and unthoughtfully over-staged.  Don’t even get me started comparing Lance Henriksen (Harbinger Down, Aliens, AVP, The Pit and the Pendulum) to Andrew Robinson; it wouldn’t be fair, especially with the hand Robinson (who was once great in Hellraiser) was dealt in terms of the script and director.

The “okay” 1993 witch above; the harrowing 1988 witch below.

This sequel feels more campy.  Kane Hodder (Smothered, Wishmaster, Hatchet, Love in the Time of Monsters) and Linnea Quigley (Night of the Demons, Silent Night, Deadly Night, Creepazoids) have cameos—really just an excuse to throw in some boobs and fan favorite actors.  At one point Pumpkinhead picks up a victim and executes a WWF backbreaker—at which point any minimal semblance of creepy atmosphere the film had, is lost.  A broken spine is devastating and all, but it didn’t seem like the style of a demon, nor did the “death by pecking chickens” scene.

And therein lies this movie’s greatest shortcoming: completely uninventive death scenes.  It’s awesome seeing Pumpkinhead, but almost boring watching him kill (largely off-screen).  That is, of course, outside of the so-bad-it’s-good chuckle here or there.  With the exception of one sloppy campy decapitation, there is no gore worth mentioning.  And, by the way, there are no “wings” in Blood Wings despite some suggestive movie posters.  It’s just a really stupid play on a really stupid plot point.

See the “blood wings” on the wall?  Yeah.  That’s our title.  SMH.

Anyone seeking a worthy follow-up to Pumpkinhead will surely be disappointed…very disappointed.  But adventures in search of a worthy B-movie or a silly scary movie date night will find an entertaining evening.

MY CALL:  People often discuss this epic film for its nudity (and not much else) and I consider that a shame.  It’s excellent, features strong acting and an elaborate story, and including great concepts and special effects.  I’d recommend it to all horror fans, new and old, critical and horror-hound alike.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Lifeforce:  For life-draining horror films featuring excellent effects and interesting stories, I’d highly recommend Hellraiser (1987) and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988).

Director Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, Poltergeist, Funhouse) is a horror master!  Many know of Steven Spielberg’s heavy-handed involvement in Poltergeist and thus question Hooper’s contribution as a director.  True.  Spielberg is awesome and the family-urgency was likely a product of his influence.  But have these Poltergeist nay-sayers even seen Lifeforce!?!?!  Get ready for an AMAZING experience!

An investigative space mission is graced with the discovery of the millennium!  The astronauts unexpectedly encounter a 150-mile-long space vessel during an exploratory mission of Hailey’s Comet.  The influence of H. R. Giger is undeniable as the vessel’s interior has an organic motif, as if the explorers were entering the anatomy (even the womb) of a leviathan being—much as in Poltergeist (1982; late in the film) or Alien/Aliens (1979, 1986).  The spaceship’s inhabitants are all deceased, and they resemble bat people.  You may be thinking “Holy shit! Are we really only 6 minutes into the running time?” The answer is YES. This film has a LOT to offer and it wastes none of your time!

While most of the bat-like inhabitants are long dead, the explorers find three preserved, naked, uncannily human lifeforms in stasis chambers—two men, and a woman.  Then…something mysterious happens and the mission returns home with zero contact for thirty days.  So what happened on that ship that returned with no living crew members? It’s not as obvious as you may think.

It’s not until mid-story that Colonel Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback; Alligator II: The Mutation, Barb Wire, Ed Gein), who was on the original exploratory mission, is recovered as the sole mission survivor in an escape pod to inform the military that an alien vessel was encountered…and what happened on that ship.  He comes back a changed man, and the only hope of hunting down the escaped female who is now wandering the streets of London and draining its inhabitants.

Our interstellar succubus (Mathilda May; The Jackal) is beyond stunning, supernaturally manipulative, and clearly is on some sort of life-draining mission of her own.  Her abilities infect our sexual weaknesses as well as our subconscious desires.  So much so that a grown man might feel compelled to kiss Patrick Stewart (Green Room, Dune).

For 1985 the special effects are fantastic!!!  Utilizing Star Wars-like rotoscoping for space scenes and Ghostbusters-style ectoplasm for supernatural life-sucking effects, you almost forget this film is over 30 years old.  The life-drained bodies are desiccated husks and the zombie-esque animatronics of their movement is impressive.

Not only are the effects genuinely fantastic, but the concepts are as well.  Classical vampire notions like the charming gaze, life-draining, telepathic links, and shapeshifting are clearly present, although cleverly modified.  When the astronauts first enter the alien spaceship, it feels “strangely familiar” and when Tom sees the preserved female (Mathilda May) he seems to be entranced.  And one can’t argue here, Mathilda May has entrancing boobs and a serious enthusiasm for kissing.  Most men would be powerless.

The first 20 minutes of this film are more substantial than most entire horror films.  I know…you’re thinking “really, John, but all the nudity.”  But you’d be wrong.  This film remains something special even if there was not a nipple to be seen.

Most interesting to me is how this 1985 movie, in the early HIV/AIDS era, captured the raw pansexuality of the vampire.  Much as Anne Rice’s Lestat, even a withered male husk can allure another man to his charm.  Although the “kiss” is admittedly more distant when male-to-male than when Mathilda tongue-wrangles her drained prey, infectious male-male kissing (or, at least, its implication) is quite frequent.  It seems that Hellraiser (1987) and Hellbound (1988) were influenced by the exquisite life-draining effects, which set the bar high.

The final segment erupts into an epidemic owing much to Dawn of the Dead (1978), with London immersed in a contagious essence-feeding maelstrom.  The effects are consistently high quality and the bat monster is awesome, but the gore doesn’t properly kick in until this third act.

Is this movie a work of film art? No.
Is it an amazing horror film? YES!
Does it have its fair share of heavy exposition? Sure.
Do I care? Not at all! They deliver it well and in plausible context.

This excellent horror film has my 100% backing.  I may have fallen in love with it as a teenager (understandably for the boobs, at that age), but now I would love it if there were not a single nipple to boast.  This film is smart, oddly elaborate without getting carried away with itself, and 96% serious in its delivery.  Unusual in many respects, and noteworthy in more, this is not the film to miss.

MY CALL:  Intense, beautiful, artificial, dangerous…and ultimately BRUTAL.  Difficult to explain—but even as a fan of brutal films, I’d say I “appreciated” this movie a lot more than I “enjoyed” it.  MORE MOVIES LIKE The Neon Demon:  Above all, Drive (2011) and Antichrist (2009).

Drive (2011) was an excellent yet soul-rattling film of sociopathy-laced catharsis; an intense, sensory, noirish tale so tone-sensitive that one would hardly notice the plot.  I loved it!  Director and writer Nicolas Winding Refn (Valhalla Rising, Drive, Only God Forgives) embarks on a similarly disorienting journey when an aspiring model moves to Los Angeles only to have her youth and vitality devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will take any means necessary to possess what she has.

Scintillating from the first minute, the colors are vibrant and the score enchanting—somehow feeling gorgeous yet totally artificial.  Every effort is made to test our morality while taunting our senses, as if True Blood glamoring us.  Like Charlie or Alice, at first impressed by the magical wonders of Wonderland and Willy Wonka’s factory, only to eventually reveal their true nature; their dangers.

Imagine the prettiest teenage girl from a small Idaho town.  She’s probably the “Potato Princess” in the Cadillac for the 4^th of July parade and perpetually told her beauty would take her far in life and far from this little old town.  Fresh off the bus to Los Angeles and full of youth, beauty and naivete, Jesse (Elle Fanning; Super 8, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) is a young model succumbing to the most avant-garde artists’ whims.  Like a black lamb centering a snowy field, her stark innocence is readily apparent to the ever-vigil predatory denizens of the tree line preparing for the slaughter.  She is marinaded with compliments, if only to prepare her fair flesh for rending.

Some of the imagery and dialogue is coarse, with tongues sharpened.  Despite the lovely strobe-lit iridescence you can’t help but to momentarily react as if a small piece of metal had struck glass.  Perhaps aiming for a brutally honest revelation behind the curtain of the Los Angeles fashion industry, we find ourselves in blunt and shallow waters where we may encounter the kindest compliment one moment, only to be followed by a scathing remark the next—however, both delivered with a glimmering smile as if the speaker equally found pleasure in both.  Ah, Los Angeles—where small town girls’ big dreams come to die…or, more honestly put, to be crucified.

Pleasant and candid, Ruby (Jena Malone; Sucker Punch, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire & The Mockingjay) seems to actually care for Jesse’s well-being…but her intentions will be tested as the viewer comes to suspect everyone of foul play.  Rounding out the cast, Abbey Lee (Mad Max: Fury Road, Gods of Egypt) and Bella Heathcote (Dark Shadows, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) play immensely shallow models, Christina Hendricks (Drive, Mad Men) has a brief but wonderful role at the modeling agency, Jesse’s landlord is strangely played by Keanu Reeves (John Wick, 47 Ronin, Man of Tai Chi), and Desmond Harrington (Wrong Turn, Dexter) is an enigmatic photographer who is ghoulishly gaunt and enthralled in his own art.

A great many themes run amok in the third act.  Among such concepts are voyeurism, homicidally erotic shower scenes, bloody nudity, murderous models, strangely urinating in the moonlight, macabre vomit, gory self-mutilation, suicide, consuming thy enemy, and a diversity of severe mental illness.

This film observes Jesse’s rapid social degeneration, and her downward spiral finds peril in others’ jealousy and attraction to her.  The treacherous journey endures forced sexual advances, necrophilia, fixations leading to murderous behavior, a brutal fall from grace, and a blood of virgins finale.

This film may not paint the modeling industry in a positive light, but it is serenely shot with a fleeting sense of reality.  Like a model, many of the shots are perfect and beautiful.  But like the industry, the waters are shallow yet dangerous.

Highly recommended for fans of brutal, nourish films like Drive (2011).

MY CALL:  More of a slapstick, less credible, “bad movie” version of Wrong Turn (2003), offering less in almost every way…except for Henry Rollins.  Rollins and some over-the-top gore make this worth a watch for fans of the original.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Wrong Turn 2: Dead End:  Wrong Turn (2003), The Hills Have Eyes 1-2 (1977, 1984, 2006, 2007), Just Before Dawn (1981), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) will all continue to satisfy the hillbilly horror subgenre.  Maybe Cabin Fever 1-3 (2002-2014) for the gore hounds.

Director Joe Lynch (Chillerama, Knights of Badassdom) picks up where Wrong Turn’s director Rob Schmidt left off in the Greenbriar Back Country of West Virginia.  Unfortunately, Lynch doesn’t do nearly as well, except when almost satirizing part 1 with slapstick gorefest violence.

This sequel features less flattering introductory shots of the Appalachian woods.  But I happily enjoyed the cameos in the opening sequence.  While on the phone with her agent her agent (Patton Oswalt; Odd Thomas), singer Kimberly Caldwell (as herself) makes the very same “wrong turn” that got those folks into trouble in Wrong Turn (2003) and hits a young mutant hillbilly.  The brutal tone is set immediately as the disfigured boy bites off her lips and she is cut top-to-bottom in half, dropping her intestines in a gore-slathered mess as we watch her legs fall in opposite directions!  If you don’t simply love that, then you may as well stop the movie right there.

Retired marine and TV show personality Dale (Henry Rollins; He Never Died, Feast) hosts Ultimate Survivor.  The contestants include the X Games athlete Jonesy (Steve Braun; The Skulls III, Pterodactyl), overly conceited Elena (Crystal Lowe; Insomnia, Final Destination 3), artist Nina (Scream Queen Erica Leerhsen; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Book of Shadows: The Blair Witch 2), ex-football star Jake (Texas Battle; Final Destination 3), marine Amber (Daniella Alonso; The Hills Have Eyes 2, The Collector), and the recently deceased Kimberly Caldwell.  To win The Ultimate Survivor they need to endure five days in the wilderness.  Producers Mara (Aleksa Palladino; Holidays, The Ring Two) and M (Matthew Currie Holmes; The Fog) organize as Dale barks survivalist melodrama at the contestants.

As we meet our cast of victims, the acting wreaks of stagnant direct-to-DVD dialogue—the writers clearly didn’t care.  It just “feels bad.”  What holds it together is Henry Rollins.  Maybe I’m just a fan, but he seems to be the only one who cares about his role—or maybe he’s the only member of the cast the director liked.  His scenes produced the majority of entertaining action and decent on-screen kills.  It seems like this movie was made thinking of him, and to that end I withdraw my previous complaints about the film.

With head-cams on each contestant and hidden cameras throughout the forest, we watch as our victims wander into harm’s way.  We encounter deformed mountain men scalping people, shamefully forced gratuitous nudity, a messy birth scene of a monster baby, some decent after-the-fact gore, and a goofy incest scene.  Even if you consider Wrong Turn (2003) a “bad movie,” this is a “badder movie” that thankfully retains its so-bad-it’s-good status for our entertainment.  Attention was only aimed at over-the-top details (i.e., goofy incest) and not the atmospheric aspects (e.g., the inbred family cabin contains not a fraction of the macabre unkempt horror of part 1).

We have a new mutant redneck family that is a bit less animalistic than before.  Three-Finger returns from part 1 (played by a different actor) and is a less menacing, more slapstick farce of his former self.  And part 1’s gas station owner (Wayne Robson; Cube, Wrong Turn) is back and, for some reason, looks far healthier.

I don’t know about you, but I really loved Wrong Turn (2003). It was nothing stunning film-wise, but it scratches an itch I have every now and then—like when I want something brutal, but not The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, 2003) brutal.  It cultivates a fun experience, has several recognizable actors and is highly rewatchable. The shots of the forest were gorgeous (when not CGI), there was thematic admixture of things feisty and dire, and the brutality was visceral!

This sequel, however, has zero cinematography worth mentioning.  All in all, this is a mixed bag.  The brutality (outside of the playful death of Kimberly Caldwell) is over-staged and uninspired in the first hour yet somehow spectacular in the third act.  The characters are bottom-of-the-barrel, but the inbred cannibal rednecks manage to live up to the hillbilly horror subgenre in the end after a stale early introduction.  We are never nervous, shocked or on edge.  Although you’ll enjoy more than a few gory chuckles during Henry Rollins’ scenes.  They reach sloppy delight status towards the end.

Rollins basically goes survivalist Rambo. He stitches himself up, escapes being butchered, detonates incestuous hillbillies, and makes explosive arrows.  He essentially saves this movie from complete unwatchability.  By the end, this was basically trying to be The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) with its macabre cannibal butchery, the dinner scene, and Dale’s crazed rescue mission into their lair.

Dead End (top); The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (bottom)

The first half of this movie may be terrible, but it might just be worth it for the last gloriously gut-sloppy 30 minutes and, of course, the opening sequence.  It becomes a great B-movie death scene mess of gore as bodies are literally ground into chum and offal.  Oh, and of course, it gives a direct nod to usher in future sequels.

MY CALL:  Still a pretty fun watch for fans of mindless action and some occasionally decent gore, balanced by some terrible CGI and a lame boss.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Resident Evil:  The Silent Hill movies (2006, 2012) and the Underworld franchise (2003-2017) come to mind.

I remember seeing Resident Evil in theaters in 2002 (LOVED it; I was 21), again in 2003 after I bought the movie, and once more (rewatching parts 1-2) before seeing part 3 in 2007.  Three times I had seen it and I recall quite enjoying it. But it’s been ten years and I was easier to please back then.  So I wondered, how would these videogame-to-movie-adaptation films hold up to my criticism now…?

Profiteering from bioengineered virus technology (weaponized for the military) while masquerading as a home wares conglomerate whose products can be found in every household, the Umbrella Corporation is an original Proctor and Gamble…only evil.  Or at least one of their scientists was; the one who threw a glass vile of evil virus across the laboratory to volatilize through the vents and corrupt humanity.

Sometime after the incident, we find Alice (Milla Jovavich; The Fifth Element, Faces in the Crowd, Ultraviolet) with amnesia, leaving her memory as bare as her breasts.  Awakening naked in the shower in a lavish mansion, she has no idea who she is or how she got there.  She is taken by force by some sort of black ops team who expect her to remember much more than she does, and then things get interesting.

There’s a nice mix of characters, even if none of them ever develop into anything (except for more zombies, of course).  As Rain, Michelle Rodriguez (Furious 7, Machete Kills) continues her cute tough girl flavor that began with Girlfight (2000) and has persisted 17 years later (Fast & Furious 8).  In that vein, she has sort of a Hicks and Vasquez (Aliens) relationship with a colleague, both part of a larger team infiltrating the Hive and taking Alice along for the ride.  We also find Spence (James Purefoy; The Following, Rome, High-Rise) who, along with Alice, works for the Umbrella Corporation protecting the Hive’s entrance… but now neither of them remember that.

We come to learn that The Hive, a subterranean research megaplex below Raccoon City, has an artificial intelligence: the Red Queen.  Her defense systems whittle down the infiltration team and at least one such scene really stuck with me.  To that end, the effects held up well enough and included some much-appreciated nuance. The CGI was pretty damned good for some parts and very bad for others.  For example, after getting laser-cubed, a soldier’s eyeball leaks some white goo before its severed parts fell asunder.  I also liked the zombie dogs, which were less CGI and more live dog covered in goo suits.  On the other hand, certain zombies missing chunks of their face were blaring examples of obsolete CGI technology and the main monster almost looked as it would in the actual videogame complete with 128-bit graphics.  The boss creature was little more than a dumb tongue-lashing monster depicted as a CGI mess. I preferred the dogs and the chop suey lasers over this nondescript beast.

Director and writer Paul W. S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon, Soldier) did justice to the popular videogame with this popular horror-action franchise starter.  The movie may lean on heavy exposition (e.g., the introductory narration)—but, hey, so did the game.  A lot of it is videogamified over-the-top…and that’s okay sometimes.  We have Milla jumping off walls to do jump kicks like Donnie Yen or Carrie-Anne Moss.  But I don’t mind at all.

A major shortcoming for me was that the zombie action scenes were all pretty weak.  The bites were lame, the horde was uninspired, and outside of a few zombie kills by Milla, I could have done without them entirely.  It felt like stock footage from The Walking Dead—you know, the kills you don’t really care about as the characters kill their way from points A to B.  Although I did enjoy our first meetings with zombies as the team was learning what they were (i.e., not alive).

In the end, a bunch of Umbrella scientists “just appear” as Alice and our other surviving (but clearly infected) hero escape the Hive.  Back to the exposition, one says: “He’s mutating. I want him in the Nemesis program…we’re re-opening the Hive…”  Aaaaannnnnd cue the sequel as Alice wakes up again, now in a lab, and stumbles into the Apocalypse!

So there you have it.  There’s nothing particularly thoughtful to be found here, yet still a lot of effort was evident behind making this fun and exciting.  It came as no surprise that it was successful and infected multiple sequels.

MY CALL:  Many consider this sequel superior to part 1.  I’m middle of the road.  The action is better but the writing seems worse, with the clichés turned up—a lot.  Still a pretty fun watch, though.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Resident Evil:  Resident Evil (2002), Doom (2005), the Silent Hill movies (2006, 2012) and the Underworld franchise (2003-2017) come to mind.

Narrated by Alice (Milla Jovovich; The Fifth Element, Resident Evil, Ultraviolet), a brief flashback montage catches us up with the story, which picks right up where it left off in 2002 as suited-up Umbrella technicians re-open the Hive.

Like part 1, Alice once again awakens quite scantily clad with no clue where she is.  This time in a surgical gown…errrr…a “piece” of one.  LOL. They sure do like having her wake up with a heavy dose of legs and side boob.  She has also clearly been operated upon or the subject of experimentation.  Alice wanders outside the facility to find the streets of Racoon City barren—a newspaper headlined “The Dead Walk” blows by.  Nice touch, right?  We come to find that after her capture at the end of part 1 she had been dosed with the T-virus (a special strain, I suppose), making her a superhuman killing machine.

Picking up where Paul W. S. Anderson (Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon, Soldier) left off, newcomer director Alexander Witt (his only directorial feature, by the way) has turned the clichés up hard. Supercop Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory; Eragon, The Time Machine) slips out of her heels and into her Lara Croft Tomb Raider gear to solve Racoon City’s zombie apocalypse one headshot at a time in her tight breasty tube top and short-shorts; Carlos (Oded Fehr; The Mummy) likewise receives a nonsense-fueled opening action sequence; and the highly melodramatically written Dr. Ashford (Jared Harris; The Quiet Ones, Poltergeist) wheels out of his McMansion all smarty-pantsish like Professor Xavier.  There is also no shortage of various things random like ridiculous gratuitous acrobatics, zombies rising from the shallowest graves ever, no one ever missing a shot, topless zombie prostitutes, and yet more generally poor writing.

Racoon City is quarantined, trapping all within along with the virus-raging zombies.  Among those trapped is Dr. Ashford’s young daughter.  Safely watching from outside the city, Ashford agrees to help Alice and Valentine escape if they can rescue her.  It’s all very Escape from New York-ish (1981). Trapped in a city of undesirables, our bad-ass hero is infected with a virus and will find a grim outcome nearing the end of the film unless she can save the daughter of a scientist who waits safely outside the city.

There’s just one problem.  The “Nemesis Program” (mentioned at the end of part 1) is activated, awakening Alice’s old buddy who has now mutated into an unrecognizably hulking dreadnought resembling Hellraiser’s (1987) Chatterbox on steroids.

This sequel, much as its predecessor, features the lamest zombie scenes—all phoned in and clearly wastes of film and make-up.  However, once Alice fights the Nemesis hulk, things get REALLY entertaining.  I’m not a fan of the 30’ Crouching Tiger Jedi jumps, the canned fight scenes, or how thousands of bullets perpetually miss Alice despite having no cover and minimal evasive maneuvers.  But the action sequence is really quite entertaining.  I roll my eyes more here than at the original, and part 1 was clearly better written (in my opinion), but this sequel truly succeeds at being more FUN however over-the-top it may be.

After a better final boss battle than part 1 offered, there is a still a lot to be desired in the fighting photography and choreography.  Even when featuring a hand-to-hand combat action finale, this sequel is clearly more about big explosions and blatant exposition than the quality of anything between. But again, it’s fun.  And I’m grateful that the final boss wasn’t another miscarriage of bad CGI.

We end very much how we began—and paralleling how part 1 ended and began—with Alice recovered by Umbrella, naked (Amen for boobs, right guys?), and yet again the subject of further experimentation by Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen; Game of Thrones, Darkness).  No points for originality, but I enjoyed the ending anyway.  I enjoyed the whole thing.

Much as part 1 ended with the initiation of its sequel’s premise, so does part 2 leave the doors wide open for part 3: “Initiate the Alice Program.”  I’d say keep going if you liked either of the first two.  There’s nothing particularly thoughtful to be found here, yet still a lot of effort was evident behind making this fun and exciting.